Verizon Media launches Next-Gen Solutions, the future of ID-less advertising

NEW YORK - Verizon Media today announced the launch of its Next-Gen Solutions suite, a first-to-market offering for advertisers and publishers independent of cookies or mobile app IDs for audience creation, buying or measurement. Built for the identity-less era, this suite of solutions delivers relevant ad experiences while strengthening consumer trust.

As the ad ecosystem moves away from browser cookies and app advertising IDs, and legislation and privacy preferences shift, advertisers and publishers need solutions that help reach consumers in relevant and meaningful ways in the absence of IDs.

Verizon Media’s Next-Gen Solutions use content and other real-time data signals like weather, and location and device types to power machine-learning algorithms that allow advertisers to connect with their most relevant audiences without the need for cookies, mobile app IDs, browser storage or creating user-level profiles.

The new suite is an extension of Verizon Media’s identity-enhanced offerings, which also include ConnectID, a unified identity solution built on top of Verizon Media’s diverse and consent-based identity graph. Advertisers and publishers now have solutions for when an ID is present with ConnectID, or when they’re facing the challenge to reach and connect in meaningful ways with identity-less opportunities. With a full-stack, unified ad platform, Verizon Media is uniquely positioned to help advertisers and publishers navigate the identity-less future simply and effectively.

“The future of Identity lies in striking the right balance of providing a meaningful consumer experience and delivering growth for advertisers and publishers, while also preserving consumer trust,” said Iván Markman, Chief Business Officer, Verizon Media. “For advertisers who want to future-proof their businesses in an identity-constrained future, innovative solutions for non-addressable inventory are a necessity, not a choice. This is why we’re launching Next-Gen Solutions, helping advertisers achieve targeted scale, delivering relevant consumer experiences, and enabling better publisher monetization in the identity-less world.”

The Next-Gen Solutions suite of audience creation, buying and measurement tools include:

Next-Gen Audiences -- Audiences created from machine-learning models built on Verizon Media’s extensive first-party data signals. Enriched by contextual and real-time signals, Next-Gen Audiences leverage existing demo, interest, income, look-alike and predictive audience signals in an aggregated, privacy-centric manner. This offering provides ad campaign accuracy and performance for brands, agencies and publishers for identity-less impressions.

Next-Gen Buying -- Leveraging Next-Gen Audiences, Next-Gen Buying is natively integrated into the Verizon Media DSP for seamless buying and delivery. Machine learning-based frequency capping limits over-exposures and maintains healthy end-user marketing experiences for identity-less impressions. With Nex-Gen Buying built-in, Verizon Media DSP optimizes advertiser campaigns by intelligently bidding between addressable and identity-less supply.

Next-Gen Measurement -- As cookies and mobile app IDs disappear, conversion blindspots and inaccuracies will explode, severely limiting the ability to connect touchpoints for measurement. Additionally, siloed or clean-room measurement solutions may hamper understanding customer journeys or true ROAS. With Next-Gen Measurement, advertisers maintain omnichannel insights and measurement. To achieve this, Next-Gen Measurement combines Verizon Media’s measurement methodology, based on first-party aggregated data, with third-party solutions provided by browsers and operating systems, to provide a comprehensive, reliable and privacy-preserving foundation for measurement.

Advertisers will be able to access Next-Gen Audiences and Next-Gen Buying in Q2. Next-Gen Measurement will be available by Q4 2021.

“As the industry continues to shift, the divide is now sharper between those that have first-party data and those that do not, creating new challenges and opportunities to sustain and accelerate business growth” said Markman. “With today’s news, we are extending our ability to better serve our customers, offering solutions for both identity-led and identity-less opportunities.”