Founded in 2012, Finnish Relevant Digital offers digital advertising-related technologies and services to help media companies increase their revenue on digital services. In addition to consulting, reselling advertising technologies, the commercialization and utilization of data, and online advertising support services, Relevant Digital has developed its own publisher solution, Relevant Yield, to optimize and streamline the digital advertising experience of its clients as we hurtle toward a cookieless future.

Relevant Digital collects data on behalf of over 300 publishing websites and sells it to advertisers for Demand Side Platform (DSP) targeting. It works with Piano as a partner and client to optimize its data strategy and drive its cookieless audience targeting.

As part of a larger push to completely remove third-party cookies from the digital ecosystem, more than 10 years ago, major internet browsers like Safari and Firefox removed third-party cookie support, which represent 30% of the global internet traffic. In 2024, Google announced that it would allow users to turn cookies on or off in Chrome. According to ID5’s State of Digital Identity Report, 2024, leading industry experts believe that Chrome cookie opt-out rates may be even higher than Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) on iOS which had an opt-out rate of ~65% in 2023.

While this is a win for data privacy advocates, it creates a significant challenge for advertisers and publishers alike: without third-party cookies, advertisers lose the ability to easily and precisely target audiences upon which they have relied for years, and publishers lose ad revenue. It also hinders their ability to measure the results of their campaigns.

Finding alternative means to ensure efficient ad targeting and measurement is essential to the survival of advertisers and publishers alike. In order to continue to provide value in a cookieless world, Relevant Digital faced several challenges:

• Helping their publishing and advertising clients reach a wider audience without third-party cookies
  Because Safari and Firefox account for around 30 percent of web traffic, and Chrome accounts for another 63 percent of traffic, publishers and advertisers need to develop new means to create reliable audience segments for successful post-third-party cookie programmatic advertising.

  
  

• The need for standardized, consolidated data that all DSPs can use



  While larger media organizations have access to sizable, direct first-party sales databases, they need to be able to scale the data and segment it properly in order for it to be sellable on the programmatic marketplace. This means the IDs need to be standardized into a universal format.

  
  

• Working with a privacy-centric provider that will ensure GDPR-compliance



  With all major browsers beginning to restrict how IDs are used and traded and global governments requiring more stringent consumer data protections, it’s vital to find a solution that is privacy-compliant.

To help its publisher clients prepare for the cookieless future, Relevant Digital, in collaboration with Piano, Adform, and Matterkind, beta tested ID5’s ID, a next-generation universal identifier that recognizes users and allows their information to be passed on to approved ad partners—without relying on third-party cookies. The team worked with Piano’s DMP (Data Management Platform)—which provides essential real-time data and segmentation—to integrate ID5 and collect data utilizing universal IDs.

Testing the effectiveness of ID5 vs. third-party cookies.



Working with global media agency group IPG’s programmatic division Matterkind as a testing partner, Relevant Digital was able to conduct a direct comparison between ID5’s universal ID and the use of third-party cookies. Matterkind had several campaigns running simultaneously with both methods in Safari and Firefox where the effects can be seen more clearly than in Chrome.

Understanding the viability of a universal ID as opposed to independent

first-party data.



Relevant Digital quickly recognized the value of ID5’s deterministic and probability-based solution as a way for both publishers and advertisers to gain the maximum benefit from data. It’s essential to develop clearly segmented, standardized universal IDs that can be sold in all DSPs.

Staying privacy compliant.



User privacy protections should be considered and implemented in every aspect of the digital ecosystem; respecting privacy regulations is essential for not only data security but business efficiency and optimization. ID5’s solution is privacy-bydesign and systematically requires user consent to create and send an ID.

Relevant Digital carried out A/B tests across a range of its sites, and audience segments based on both third-party cookies and ID5’s universal ID were exported to Adform’s DSP. The initial beta delivered the results they were looking for: ID5’s universal ID delivered a massive increase in ad impressions.

When using ID5-powered segments for targeting, the share of impressions and reach in Safari increased by over 100 percent in both mobile and desktop environments. On the publisher side, there was a 7 percent uplift in bid eCPMs (ad revenue generated per 1,000 ad impressions) in Safari and Firefox.

Using segments created with the ID5 ID performed better even in Chrome, increasing impressions by 26 percent on mobile and 36 percent on desktop.

"Working with Piano & ID5 helps our publisher clients improve the positioning of their relevant audiences, work more efficiently and significantly increase the revenue of their digital assets."

Olli Järvilehto



COO, Relevant Digital