(Part 1 of our Seller Defined Audience briefing)
On February 24th, 2022, the IAB Tech Lab announced: “Seller Defined Audiences” (SDA) to democratize the open web ecosystem. SDA allows publishers to create a cohort of their users and pass this information through the bid request directly to buyers, theoretically bypassing 3P data.
Why it Matters
The hope is that SDAs will allow publishers to leverage their own first-party data without the risk of data leakage and reliance upon third-party identifiers. Importantly, this should enable publishers to deliver scale to buyers without reliance on 3P data and their vendors. To be clear, one of the enormous advantages of the techniques in this method is that SDA empowers publishers to enrich all their inventory with this first-party data to give more fidelity to brands about the nature of the audience. Publishers can expect higher bids by showing buyers they have the audiences they need with more scale (and they have a trusted and transparent means to prove how the audience was created).
It’s also important to note, that SDAs don’t rely on the mechanics of a PMP (and the often empty commitments), meaning that there doesn’t need to be a pre-negotiated agreement between the buyer and the seller and the buyer doesn’t need to create a deal ID and the seller doesn’t need to enter that deal ID. If SDA works, it allows a buyer to find audiences to work across any web browser, app, or CTV environment.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of SDA from the perspective of a publisher is that it offers a way to monetize granular first-party data at scale without the need to rely on a third-party cookie, ID, or tech partner. It can also do this outside of any single technical environment, meaning users across browsers, apps, and CTV can be included in SDA cohorts. What’s more, publishers retain complete control over their data, opting instead to assign relevant segment IDs on their side, then passing them via bid requests for demand-side decisioning.
SDAs require publishers to segment their own audience into one or more of the IAB’s Audience Taxonomy of which there are currently over 1700 categories available that fall across three primary areas: i) Interests, ii) Purchase Intent, and iii) Demographics.
How it Works
In order to complete the segment-building process publishers, must use a Data Transparency Schema, or DTS. This DTS is then mapped to the IAB taxonomy and passes the segment ID in the bid request using any Open RTB 2.6 specifications. Once included in the bid request, buyers can directly bid based on this information.
Once in the bidstream, buyers can access these audiences, check their definitions to be sure they align with their targeting then buy against them at scale.
Critically, SDA utilizes multiple pre-existing programmatic technologies – OpenRTB, Prebid, DTS (Data Transparency Standard), and so on – to achieve a privacy-first, cohort-based targeting solution.