top of page
4.png

Moving Beyond IDs

ree


For years, digital advertising relied on user IDs (cookies, device IDs, hashed emails) to find and follow audiences. But as those identifiers fade, many advertisers are realizing something big: reach is shrinking, not because audiences disappeared, but because their data did.


The industry’s shift to privacy-first buying has forced a reset. Suddenly, the questions are different. How do you find new audiences without IDs? How do you maintain scale and precision at the same time?


The Problem: The ID Dependency Trap


When every impression depends on a user ID, your reach becomes limited to the percentage of inventory that can still be matched. On CTV and mobile, that number is shrinking fast. We’re talking about 30–50% of bid requests carrying any reliable ID, depending on the platform. The rest is what we call ID-free inventory, and it’s where a lot of valuable audiences live.

Advertisers sticking only to ID-based strategies are effectively ignoring half the room.


The Solution: Context and Intent as the New Signals


Instead of relying on who the user is, contextual and intent-based signals focus on what the user is doing right now.That means targeting based on:

  • The content being consumed (context)

  • The mindset or purchase intent inferred from that content

  • The quality and relevance of the environment where the ad appears


Contextual targeting isn’t new, but what’s changed is how precise it’s become.


AI-driven systems like SignalTap use semantic mapping and behavioral intent recognition to understand not just topics, but tone, relevance, and engagement probability. This bridges the gap between scale and accuracy, letting advertisers run campaigns across both ID and ID-free inventory with equal intelligence.


The Outcome: Incremental Reach That Performs


Here’s where contextual PMPs shine: they don’t compete with your existing ID-based buys. They expand them. By layering contextual and intent data, brands can reach entirely new audiences that would’ve been invisible in a user-based world...incremental reach without overlap or waste.


Across multiple client campaigns, we’ve seen this hybrid approach deliver:

  • 20–40% lift in reach without driving up CPMs

  • Improved attention metrics in CTV and OLV environments

  • More consistent performance across both authenticated and anonymous traffic


The Industry Hole: The Missing Context Layer


Here’s the gap most platforms aren’t solving: they’re still chasing precision through IDs while ignoring context-rich, intent-driven supply paths. Without real-time analysis of where ads run, what the viewer is consuming, and how relevant the placement is, programmatic buying risks becoming a guessing game again.


That’s the hole SignalTap AI fills, by making contextual intelligence actionable at the deal level. Our system surfaces supply that aligns with brand goals, measures relevance in real time, and curates PMPs that perform even when IDs aren’t in play.


The Takeaway


The future of reach isn’t identity, it’s intelligence.


Advertisers that adapt to intent- and context-driven PMPs aren’t just future-proofing their media, they’re expanding it.


The open web, CTV, and mobile ecosystems are rich with signals; they just need smarter ways to be read, scored, and activated.


And that’s where the next generation of contextual AI steps in.

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page