The Trade Desk's Stephanie Famolaro on privacy, data and consent in a cookie-less world

The impending end of cookies has helped propel the industry forward in terms of privacy, data and consent, according to The Trade Desk’s Stephanie Famolaro.

Famolaro, general manager, business development, ANZ at The Trade Desk, told Mediaweek that contrary to criticism that brands were not moving fast enough for the end of cookies in the second half of 2024, she was witnessing an industry that's becoming more privacy-conscious.

"It’s having a reverse effect, which has been fantastic for Unified ID 2.0 because brands are realising that they can’t wait, and it’s helped create a sense of urgency."

Famaloro added the deprecation of third-party cookies was "the best thing that could ever happen".

"It's such an old piece of technology. If you were to rebuild the internet from the ground up, you would not rebuild it with cookies. A lot of the fastest growing, emerging channels look at BVOD, audio, digital, out of home - these aren't reliant on cookies anyway," she said.

To combat the end of the cookie, The Trade Desk launched Unified ID (UID) - a universal cookie aggregation tool that provides holistic targeting and measurement in response to the Walled Gardens' reduction in available signals and identifiers.

Famolaro said: "I think that it’s well timed with the focus on a privacy-conscious approach, consent, and value exchange between sharing data and receiving content. We’ve seen great momentum in the pickup of new privacy-conscious practices and the progress the industry has made has just been incredible."

The Trade Desk's UID allows advertisers and brands to use and leverage their first-party data in a privacy-conscious approach and it now has 23% of adults' emails and phone numbers, is powering UID in Australia, along with 50 brands actively testing it and 6000 sites actively using it. The solution is also an interoperable and scalable solution at the same time.

Famolaro revealed that the concept for UID came from the IAB, which needed more resources to execute it. The Trade Desk stepped in to provide the engineering hours to build the solution and to eventually make it available on the open internet, which she said was: "the only way that the industry can effectively compete against the walled gardens."

"It's very easy to integrate with, and we will be handing it back to a third party to be able to manage this because, again, we don't believe identity is something that should be commoditised.

"We don't think it should be a competitive advantage, and we think it's critical to the health of the Australian publisher and journalism that there's a common foundation of identity that underpins the industry," she added.