Verizon Media rolls out Next-Gen Solutions for the future of ID-less advertising in Southeast Asia

Verizon Media today announced the roll-out of its Next-Gen Audiences and Next-Gen Buying in Southeast Asia, the first two tools from its newly introduced Next-Gen Solutions suite. This first-to-market offering for advertisers and publishers is independent of advertising identifiers for audience creation, buying or measurement. The Next-Gen Solutions suite is built for the identity-less era to deliver relevant ad experiences while strengthening consumer trust.

The new tools use content and other real-time data signals like weather, location and device types to power machine-learning algorithms that allow advertisers to connect with their most relevant audiences without the need for cookies, mobile app IDs, browser storage or creating user-level profiles.

As legislation and consumer privacy preferences shift, and the ad ecosystem moves away from third-party cookies, advertisers and publishers need new solutions that can reach consumers in relevant and meaningful ways. There is an expanding opportunity, given the massive digitisation wave sweeping across Southeast Asia that netted 40 million new internet users in 2020 alone.

However, more than 98% of businesses in the region are in the early stages of digital marketing maturity and still rely on third-party data for customer insights. Next-Gen Solutions will enable brands and marketers in the world’s leading mobile-first consumer economy to future-proof their business as they seek to be less reliant on mobile app IDs, while still effectively reaching out to mobile audiences.

“Innovative solutions for non-addressable inventory are no longer a choice as the post-cookie future approaches, they are a necessity. Yet in this privacy-first landscape and the mobile-first economy in SEA, advertisers still find themselves lacking ready access to privacy-centric identifiers that effectively reach the region’s swelling digital population. The roll-out of Next-Gen Audiences and Next-Gen Buying will allow advertisers who are identity-constrained to reach an addressable audience. The new tools will help advertisers achieve targeted scale, delivering relevant consumer experiences and enable better publisher monetization in the absence of IDs,” said Rico Chan, Head of APAC Sales, Verizon Media.

Verizon Media’s Next-Gen Solutions suite is an extension of its identity-enhanced offerings, which also include Verizon Media ConnectID, a unified identity solution built on top of Verizon Media’s diverse and consent-based Identity Graph. Advertisers and publishers now have solutions for when an ID is present, with Verizon Media ConnectID, and when it is not, with Next-Gen Solutions. With a full-stack, unified ad platform, Verizon Media is uniquely positioned to help advertisers and publishers navigate the identity-less future simply and effectively.

The Next-Gen Solutions suite of audience creation and buying tools, now available, include:

Next-Gen Audiences to create audiences from machine-learning models built on Verizon Media’s extensive first-party data signals. Enriched by contextual and real-time signals, Next-Gen Audiences leverage existing demo, interest, look-alike and predictive audience signals in an aggregated, privacy-centric manner to provide ad campaign accuracy and performance for brands, agencies and publishers for identity-less impressions.

Next-Gen Buying, leveraging Next-Gen Audiences, maintains healthy end-user marketing experiences for identity-less impressions while optimising advertiser campaigns. Using machine learning-based frequency to limit over-exposures, Next-Gen Buying natively integrates into the Verizon Media DSP to intelligently bid between addressable and identity-less supply for seamless buying and delivery.

As cookies and mobile app IDs disappear, conversion blindspots and inaccuracies will explode, severely limiting the ability to connect touchpoints for measurement. Additionally, siloed or clean-room measurement solutions may hamper understanding customer journeys or true ROAS.

Next-Gen Measurement, available in Q4 2021, will allow advertisers to maintain omnichannel insights and measurement. By combining Verizon Media’s measurement methodology, based on first-party aggregated data, with third-party solutions provided by browsers and operating systems, it will provide a comprehensive, reliable and privacy-preserving foundation for measurement.

Next-Gen Audiences and Next-Gen Buying is now available in North America, APAC, and select LATAM markets with expanded market availability in the future. Advertisers will also be able to access Next-Gen Measurement by Q4 2021.