Among the companies looking to compete with Google’s Privacy Sandbox in the post-cookie landscape, The Trade Desk seems to have jockeyed for the best positioning.
In the last month alone, the programmatic ad platform’s UID 2.0 has earned support from numerous new partners on all sides of the ad targeting equation. That has included global CRM giant Salesforce, the world’s largest advertiser P&G and – closer to home in Canada – data clean room operators Environics Analytics and Optable.
They join an illustrious list of previous partners that include Amazon Web Services, Disney, Vox, Rogers Sports & Media, Comscore and major agency holding companies Publics, IPG and Omnicom.
Despite these pledges of support, public case studies and indications of how well UID 2.0 performs compared to what advertisers are used to have been hard to come by. Even though it has been available in beta to U.S. advertisers since last March, and has been tested in Canada for nearly a year, results from those early efforts have been kept close to the chest by both The Trade Desk and companies that have taken UID 2.0 for a spin.
One thing The Trade Desk has been touting in its recent announcements is how UID 2.0 can be applied in the booming area of connected TV, not just the web display ads the company is best known for.
The first partner to sign on with UID 2.0 on the connected TV front was Fubo TV, the sports-focused subscription streaming service (though in Canada, subscribers can also watch streams from the likes of CBC, Global, Food Network and HGTV, in addition to top-tier European soccer leagues). And some early results provide a hint of what might be to come.
Chris Flatley, VP of advertising sales at FuboTV, says the results the company has seen has made it a believer in “the power of identity-based solutions,” both in a world without cookies and in that 18 months until that reality comes to pass. “We’re just getting started with UID 2.0 and are looking forward to bringing the benefit to even more advertisers across FuboTV’s premium CTV inventory.”
Since adopting UID 2.0 early last year, FuboTV’s spend growth rate has been 112.8% faster than the growth in available impressions, according to the company’s own data. To put into simpler terms, this means advertisers served ads more accurately, while FuboTV was able to maximize its fully addressable video inventory.
Advertiser spend also increased by 61.5% year-over-year, ad impressions increased by 25% year-over-year and CPMs grew year-over-year for campaigns using UID 2.0 that were transacted through FuboTV. In one example campaign for an unnamed ecommerce retailer, cost per action was reduced by 9%, conversion rate was 25% higher and return on ad spend improved by 14% when compared to average campaign performance.
On the advertiser side, one of the few indicators of UID 2.0’s growth came from U.S.-based cookware brand Made In late last year. In a UID 2.0-based campaign, it saw a 20% decrease in its average cost per acquisition, with time to convert a customer dropping by 33%.