The Trade Desk launches platform to activate first-party data

Galileo aims to provide a centralized hub for audience matching and measurement in a post-cookie world.

In the rush to adapt to a post-cookie future, advertisers have been adopting a range of new solutions to safely capture and use first party data. To that end, The Trade Desk has unveiled Galileo, which aims to make those processes easier and more transparent.

Announced Thursday at CES, Galileo – in essence – takes the technology and tools The Trade Desk already offers within its demand-side platform and allows advertisers to layer in first-party data sets in a privacy-safe environment, creating a single place for processes that previously had to be completed separately.

Samantha Jacobson, chief strategy officer at The Trade Desk, says the looming death of the cookie is a “tipping point” for the open internet, which is “creating the richest identity ecosystem we’ve ever experienced, and one that aims to put consumer privacy at the forefront.” With that in mind, Jacobson says the company’s goal is to help major advertisers actually make use of the value within their first-party customer data.

Audience matching through Galileo is possible across all digital publishers, platforms, devices and channels, including connected TV. It will also provide full measurement and performance services.

Galileo is also integrated with CRM and clean room providers, including Adobe, Amazon Web Services, Habu, InfoSum, LiveRamp, Salesforce and Snowflake to allow advertisers to instantly match audiences using data within those platforms.

“With most walled gardens’ onboarding proposals, advertisers do not get a transparent view of how their data is performing, and therefore how their campaigns are performing,” said Jacobson. “Galileo and Unified ID 2.0 remove this obstacle and allow advertisers to optimize their data across all digital advertising channels with granular reporting on data performance.”

The platform is meant to be solution-agnostic and work with any identity solution based around first-party data, and not just The Trade Desk’s own UID2. However, the company said the “majority” of its existing data and publishing partners have already adopted UID2; on Wednesday, Paramount was added to that list, enabling UID2 to work within channels that use its EyeQ video ad platform, including Paramount+ and Pluto TV, in addition to its traditional TV channels.