Programmatic ad exchange Index Exchange has expanded its partnership with LiveRamp to make its IdentityLink product available globally after two years of testing. Its cookie-less identity product has now been extended to markets across the globe.

Mike O’Sullivan, VP of product at Index Exchange, says publishers are looking to adopt more “people-based identifiers,” an alternative to practices established when cookies were rampant that allowed ads to follow specific users around the web. With Google phasing out third-party cookie support on Chrome in less than two years – wiping out cookie support for some 60% of internet users – it puts both advertisers and publishers in a pinch.

For advertisers, it means fewer ways to pervasively target users, and for publishers, it means having to get used to a new system of ads and use tech to understand more about the users on their sites. This includes things like login environments and adopting new tools to target based on consented information.

“Digital advertising products must be built on the foundation of consumer trust,” says O’Sullivan. IdentityLink enables marketers and buyers to “understand when their audiences are present,” he says. “It also works with marketers’ attribution systems so they know when key audiences have made a specific action, completed a purchase for example.”

When enabled through the Index Exchange header-bidding product, the IdentityLink product enhances publishers’ inventory by essentially making it addressable. It will unlock revenue for publishers by providing DSPs and buyers more efficient reach and measurable impressions.

The partnership between Index Exchange and LiveRamp also enables DSPs that transact on IdentityLink to implement cross-device, omnichannel media buying through Index’s “matched audiences,” which is buyer-specific segments based on CRM-style data.