Dan Salmon: I got a 2-parter here. Jeff, maybe could you give us an update on any discussions you’re having with industry bodies to act as a public administrator for UID2 in various markets? Is that still an important goal? Are you happy with existing relationships? And obviously, you’ve got a lot of private integrations you’ve done as well. And then second, you mentioned how identity is increasingly anchored by an e-mail address, yet it’s pretty clear that Apple doesn’t exactly love the use of e-mails for marketing purposes. Is that something that matters to you? Or do you feel comfortable with the level of consent that UID2 collects because Apple also seems fine when digital advertising uses consent in first-party data. Any views on that would be great.
Jeff Green: Yes. So let me go in reverse order just because I think the significance of your comments around Apple is important. So any of us that operate in the Apple ecosystem are putting in our Apple ID, which incidentally is an e-mail address over and over and over again. In fact, we’re not even – we don’t even know why we’re putting it in most of the time. You’re asked to put it in. You say, why? And then you put it in. And then you’re asked again and then you put it in and you are asked again. Apple has used their e-mail-based identifier to provide personalization, they have updated many of the things that they said they wouldn’t do before so that they can leverage that Apple ID to provide personalization.
It is exactly that, that I think provides a validation that UID2 is one of the most privacy- centric ways to provide personalization across the Internet. It’s used across many of the biggest platforms and with some of the biggest companies in the world, whether that’s at Amazon, whether that’s at Snowflake, whether that’s at Disney, there’s just hundreds of companies that are leveraging that, which of course, is based on an e-mail address not dissimilar from the massive empires at Google and Apple, which are also built around e-mail-based identifiers. So I don’t think the comparison that Apple is allergic to them is fair because their entire ecosystem is built on an e-mail-based identifier. As it relates to the public administrator of UID2.
Honestly, it’s not that important. Most of our integrations are done privately. Of course, we were happy to hand it off and look for the right public administrator, as it continues to scale and as if it comes to a more pressing issue, but it hasn’t been yet. We want to make certain that somebody that is that public administrator, of course, shares the vision of protecting the open Internet. And at times is willing to stand up and do the right thing even if it’s not popular. That can be very difficult to find. And so that’s something that we’ll be very deliberate about, but it has not slowed down anything in not having that. So we’re not in any rush to change the status quo.
Operator: Our next question is from Mark Zgutowicz with Benchmark.
Mark Zgutowicz: Jeff, just regarding earlier comment you made, I was hoping to get clarification how – I think you had said UID2 benefits you more in a cookie-less world. And I’m just curious how that is because it’s predominantly used as a matching mechanism between large pubs and advertisers and that data signal isn’t sort of privy to you. So I’m trying to just understand that a bit more. And then secondly, regarding OpenPath, appears that there’s a natural hesitancy that we’re hearing among publishers, large pubs to giving you more view into their CTV inventory or autonomy per se. I’m just curious if you agree with that and how you overcome it.
Jeff Green: Yes. Thanks for the question, Mark. So the reason why we benefit from cookies potentially going away in the form of UID2 is that we have been saying to advertisers, every advertiser needs to have an identity strategy. We’ve been saying to publishers, every publisher needs to have an identity strategy and an authentication strategy. And by authentication, we mean there needs to be some way that you’re encouraging people to log in. And in the case that you have log-ins, finding some way to leverage them. Very few companies on the Internet are leveraging their log-ins to provide personalization to the level that they could be. And there certainly hasn’t been much effort to leverage those outside of their own ecosystems or to make it possible for those that are bringing advertising demand to leverage the authentication on those particular publishers.
If cookies were to go away, the need for that goes up dramatically and so for many of the publishers – and we saw this with GDPR, we saw this with the IDFA movement. There are many publishers that are saying, “oh, well, wait until I have to. I’ll wait to make changes until I have to.” When they have to, they will make changes quickly. We saw a fire drill around GDPR among publishers, where they were very quickly working to create the right personalization again. And again, I just want to remind everybody what’s at stake here. Think of how many print journalism companies have struggled to stay in business due to the Internet. And if you take their CPMs where they get a significant amount of revenue from $5 per ad to $2 per because relevance goes down, then they no longer can stay around.
And that’s why I say that cookies going away poses a threat to journalism. But that would make it so that they’re very quickly leveraging those log-ins. And when you’re saying, “Oh, I get to see 1 out of 3 articles before I have to pay.” I think you’ll see a lot more of authentication at the beginning of almost every website, not dissimilar from if you go to a furniture or clothing website today. The very first thing you see is type in your e-mail address, you’ll get 10% off. If you type in your e-mail address, only then will you get access to content, that will create much more authentication across the browsing web and that will make it so that UID can be end-to-end without the thinking problems that cookie has and those thinking problems going away would create a much more personalized Internet.
And again, because we go from the 12 million ads available every second, down to the 1 million that we buy, if there’s identity on slightly fewer of those, or in some cases, slightly fewer, but the signal is much, much stronger and reliable, that can be an upgrade. So there’s a whole bunch of room for upgrades. As it relates to your OpenPath question, I would say I’m not really seeing the same thing that you’re describing in terms of the obstacles. There’s lots of discussion around the way that we integrate. There’s lots of discussion around priority because many of the companies that are in the ad-funded CTV space are trying to enhance their ad-funded options, and they’re working very quickly to try to enhance those. The amount of pressure on streaming companies, I would say is at an all-time high right now, to grow and to grow profitably and to fund the content.
