One technology that’s gaining traction is an advertising framework called Unified ID 2.0, or UID 2.0, developed by Trade Desk, an advertising technology company in Ventura, California.
Let’s say you’re shopping on a sneaker site with UID 2.0 when a prompt appears asking you to share your email address and agree to receive relevant advertising. As soon as you enter your email address, UID 2.0 converts it into a token consisting of a series of digits and characters. This token is transmitted with your email address when you use it to log into a sports streaming app on your TV that uses UID 2.0. Advertisers can link the two accounts based on the token and target you with sneaker ads on the sports streaming app, knowing you visited the sneaker website.
Because your email address is not disclosed to the advertiser, UID 2.0 can be viewed by consumers as an improvement over traditional cookie-based tracking, giving advertisers access to your detailed browsing history and personal information.
“Websites and apps are increasingly asking for email authentication, in part because there needs to be a better way for publishers to monetize their content that’s more privacy-conscious than cookies,” said Ian Colley, Trade Desk’s chief marketing officer, in an email . “After all, the internet isn’t free.”
However, Mozilla, the non-profit organization that makes the Firefox web browser, calls a UID 2.0 in an analysis “Retreat to Privacy” because it enabled the kind of tracking behavior that modern web browsers are designed to prevent.
There are easier ways for websites and apps to track your web activity through your email address. An email may contain your first and last name, and assuming you’ve been using it for some time, data brokers have already built a comprehensive profile of your interests based on your browsing activity. A website or app may upload your email address to an ad broker’s database to match your identity with a profile that contains enough insights to serve you targeted ads.
The bottom line is that if you’re wondering why you continue to see relevant ads despite the advent of privacy tools that fight digital tracking, it’s mostly because you’re still sharing your email address.
