Telco businesses are arguably more differentiated than at any time in the past, with operators around the world offering service-layer propositions in new industries including healthcare (telemedicine), manufacturing (IoT/smart factories), and even agriculture (IoT-enabled precision farming). Joining this roster is the emergence of a new market for telco-verification services for the digital marketing sector. What, exactly, is the promise of this market, and what should telcos consider when developing a proposition?
Also Read: Top Misconceptions Around Data Operations and Breaking Down the Role of a VP of Data Ops
Solving the digital marketing industry’s key challenge
Telco-verification services have emerged in response to a significant challenge facing the digital marketing industry: the deprecation of the signals used to identify, verify, and engage with web users for digital adverting. Whether that’s third-party cookies, mobile device IDs, IP hashing, or user agent string data, the old ways of tracking user behaviour to deliver personalised advertising are on the way out. Privacy regulations worldwide (most famously GDPR) are driving increasing demand from consumers for privacy compliant solutions (according to one survey, 95% of consumers demand that brands protect their data).
Publishers rely on such data to profile users and sell addressable audiences to advertisers. Their loss therefore puts the ad-funded internet model at risk. Of course, the adtech industry is responding with various solutions, such as Google’s Privacy Sandbox (which will essentially target people based on the websites they visit) and Authenticated IDs (essentially an identifier based on data from when people log-on to a service). However, most of the solutions lack the scale, reach, or accuracy needed to deliver against the needs of publishers and advertisers in the open web. And it’s here that telcos can step in with a new ID proposition.
What are telco-verified IDs?
Telco-verified IDs are identifiers that help publishers and advertisers resolve identities of users through verification that leverages telco network intelligence, build addressable audiences, and activate audiences for personalised programmatic advertising.
As no personal data is used (the telco is simply verifying that an anonymous user of a publisher/brand site is the same user for each visit), this is a privacy-compliant ID. Importantly, the ID is also able to resolve identities across multiple devices and websites, meaning it is a solution for resolving identities and building addressable audiences on the open web.
Telco verified IDs can also be used to activate these audiences securely and safely, and again without the need for personal data. Telco-verified IDs are therefore a truly scalable and privacy-centric approach and therefore an ideal replacement for the advertising signals that are currently being withdrawn or weakened.
Also Read: AI Integration Roadmap Planning for Cybersecurity Experts
Entering the telco-verification market
How can telcos best enter this market and start delivering telco-verified IDs? There are essentially two approaches they can take:
- In-network services. Here, the verification service is embedded into the service/application layer, making it a core part of the telco infrastructure. Importantly, the telco does not “own” the IDs – these belong to the publisher or brand. All that the telco provides is the verification process, which takes place automatically via the ID infrastructure, and which is seamlessly integrated with the broader programmatic ecosystem. As a result, the IDs are true first-party IDs. This is important because it means that they won’t be affected by any future regulation clamping down on third-party IDs. What’s more, in-network verification IDs leverage consent at the point of use, meaning that publishers’ existing consent frameworks are sufficient to deliver the service. Finally, this approach frees telcos to use their own first-party data for advertising efforts, enabling them to deliver highly relevant and timely content to their own customers and potential customers without breaching privacy laws.
- Bolt-on ID services. A faster approach is to connect the ID service via telco APIs. However, there are several drawbacks to this method. The first is that the telco in effect owns the ID service, which means that the identifier is arguably not a true first-party solution. This could cause regulatory headaches down the road. Second, the approach requires an additional consent mechanism (as the user is giving consent to the telco as an ID provider, rather than to the publisher). This adds friction to the customer experience and can be confusing (consumers may wonder why a telco organisation is asking for their consent when they’re visiting an unrelated site). Finally, where this approach has been used to date, it has been on condition that the telcos involved cannot use their own first-party data for internal advertising, limiting the value of the proposition.
Also Read: Will AI Replace or Enhance Cybersecurity Engineering?
The benefits of telco-verified IDs
Whichever approach is used, telco-verified IDs present a wide range of benefits to telcos, the digital advertising market, and web users. For telcos, the IDs deliver a profitable new revenue stream. At a stroke, telcos can find a place for themselves at the heart of the digital value exchange, playing a central role in the digital economy for years to come. This increases shareholder value and helps move telcos away from commoditised service delivery.
Meanwhile, telco-verified IDs solve the central issue facing the digital marketing industry, helping to maintain the ad-funded internet while also helping ensure that brand messages are served to the right audiences and at the right time. That means web users still have a choice over whether they pay to read content or not, safe in the knowledge that their privacy is protected.
Launching robust and reliable telco-verified IDs
The digital marketing industry is huge, currently amounting to around $780 billion worldwide. Telcos can play a key role in this industry by enabling programmatic personalised advertising to continue at scale.
The technology already exists to help telcos deliver on this promise, and leading carriers are already partnering with adtech companies and publishers to drive value and better serve customers. Now is the perfect time for telcos to start investigating the options on the market and weighing up which approach would work best within their business context. The market for digital marketing IDs promises to be a lucrative one, and telcos that move fastest stand to establish a strong market position.
[To share your insights with us as part of editorial or sponsored content, please write to psen@itechseries.com]
