CANNES – If Cannes Lions was about creativity, now it’s also about connectivity.

At the festival in the south of France, ad-tech firm FreeWheel launched new integrations allowing advertisers and publishers to match their own first-party IDs to commonly-used ID technologies’.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Christopher Glover, VP, Marketing, FreeWheel, explains the news.

Connect the IDs

According to FreeWheel’s announcement, FreeWheel is allowing connections with IDs from Blockgraph, Experian, LiveRamp, Merkle, OpenAP and TransUnion, as well as device identifiers such as cookies, mobile IDs and CTV IDs.

FreeWheel Launches New Identity Initiative Enabling Enhanced ID Interoperability and Advanced Activation Capabilities for Premium TV Advertisers and Publishers

“FreeWheel really believes we need to work with a number of partners – buyers and sellers alike – to integrate across the ecosystem to really get the best results,” Glover says.

“We’re working with a number of partners across, across the ecosystem – Experian, Blockgraph, LiveRamp, TransUnion, Tapad, to name a few –  to build a data translation layer directly into our software that buyers and sellers can use.

“It’s going to allow them to transact on the currencies and identity sources of their choice, which is really important … that’s really what we’re aiming to foster.”

Assembling the pieces

The current challenge in advertising is how, in a fragmented environment that is also losing traditional audience indicators, to piece it back together.

A swathe of initiatives and vendor technologies aim to do just that.

As each rolls out, they each assemble the pieces of the targeting jigsaw.

Scale for future

FreeWheel’s new moves are a pilot.

In the company’s announcement, Jon Whitticom, Chief Product Officer, FreeWheel, says: “FreeWheel helps solve for this by creating interoperability across various industry ID solutions, as well as traditional device IDs, utilizing advanced privacy methodologies and minimizing data leakage.

“This enables a buyer or seller to build a segment in nearly any ID space and execute using FreeWheel technology to provide the connective tissue across the television industry enabling them to better reach their audience accurately, and at scale.”

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