At Adform, we have long been vocal in stating that we believe the real solution to third-party cookie deprecation lies in first-party IDs, and primarily with server-side first-party cookies. While log-in based IDs are great from a marketing perspective, they are unlikely to reach a critical scale which can substitute for third-party cookies. In addition, some of the login-based solutions that have been proposed suggest transmission of hashed emails. This in turn brings some risk of being banned by regulators, many premium publishers, and/or individual browsers such as Apple which recently spoke out against such solutions.  

Naturally, any solution without adoption and critical mass is worthless. Similarly, many of the ID solutions currently being promoted haven’t actually been tested or are still prototypes that have yet to see the light of day. This is not the case with first-party cookie-based solutions. To help support the broader understanding of their adoption, and deliver on our focus on providing effortless modern marketing advertisers and agencies can rely on - we’ve done an analysis looking at how many existing publishers are currently sending us first-party cookies. 

The latest numbers are very promising, and show that we are well on our way, as an industry, to having significant first-party scale at the levels required by advertisers and publishers.  In addition, we see excellent results across early campaigns and deployments between advertisers, agencies, and publishers currently transacting on first-party IDs. 

• A first-party solution is live, tested, and already available.  The technology works and functionality will continue to be expanded in the coming quarter. 
• The foundation is in place to support a majority adoption of first-party IDs by mid-2021. 
• First-party ID setups work seamlessly alongside other setups, meaning they are not mutually exclusive. 

Third-party cookies have been a useful, but flawed piece of the equation for a long time. They delivered the ability for your technology vendor and partners to standardize some processes, so scaling them back lacked the direct fine-tuning and specificity required by today’s landscape. First-party cookies bridge that gap and unify the best of both worlds. You can find a 6-minute overview delivered by our Co-founder, Jakob Bak explaining elements of this in the video HERE. 

In the coming months, we’ll continue to share with you updates highlighting the adoption of first-party IDs by market. For recent exciting first-party related news, make sure you also read the recent industry-wide Prebid announcement HERE.  

For Adform clients eager to discuss unlocking the full potential for Adform FLOW’s full enterprise capabilities, and eager to get started running first party campaigns immediately, please reach out to your account manager.