SALISBURY, CT — In the sometimes-convoluted landscape of digital advertising, where different currencies and identifiers proliferate, TransUnion wants to position itself as cog, translating and transacting on all identifiers.
“We essentially become the Rosetta Stone that sits in the middle of the ecosystem that can resolve data and move data effectively and efficiently with scale,” says Pete Hagerty, VP of Business Development at TransUnion.
In this video interview with Mike Shields for Beet.TV, Hagerty explains TransUnion’s approach today, and the future of identity resolution.
TransUnion’s Multi-Key Approach
TransUnion is the global information and insights company that provides various services related to credit reporting, marketing, advertising and identity verification.
Services include identity verification, audience segmentation and data analytics.
But TransUnion doesn’t favor any particular identifier in its operations. “At TransUnion, we want to be multi-key,” Hagerty explains, “which means it doesn’t matter what you want to transact on, we will have it in our identity graph.
“Whether it’s name and address or IP or hashed email or mobile ID, we can transact on them all and we can translate them all.”
This flexible approach allows the company to service a broad spectrum of clients in the ecosystem, from publishers to ad tech platforms to brands to agencies, each of which may use different identifiers.
Privacy, compliance and choice
Looking to the future, Hagerty sees privacy and compliance continuing to shape the identity space.
He also points to a trend toward ad buyers wanting to transact in different ways, citing a recent partnership with Snowflake for transfer-less identity resolution.
“You’re going to see identity resolution happening more and more in clean room environments. TransUnion has a clean room, but we also partner with multiple clean rooms,” Hagerty predicts.
Maintaining Fidelity
TransUnion’s own approach to data accuracy is an interesting one.
“Everything that we have is broken down and reassigned every 15 minutes,” Hagerty shares says. “In other words, nothing is stale. All of the identifiers are being remapped to each other and validated every 15 minutes.”
This process is also backed by a stable source of validation, enabling the company to confirm the accuracy of data points. “We can use the assets that we have to do very clear validation of name and address, for example,” Hagerty says.
You’re watching coverage of Beet Retreat Berkshires, our latest Retreat in Salisbury, Connecticut — presented by Magnite, KERV & TransUnion. For more videos from this event, please visit this page.
