Audience targeting is about to change. And most advertisers are walking into this change eyes wide open, without a strategy.
Soon, Google will give Chrome users the choice to allow or decline third-party cookies as they browse the web. If the acceptance rate of Apple's opt-in tracking is any indication, most US users will choose to revoke consent.
Advertisers need a DSP that drives campaign performance without sacrificing user privacy. Otherwise, they run the risk of manually cobbling a strategy together with multiple DSPs, or simply losing a chunk of their targeting capabilities with one DSP. Many platforms are trying to shore up losses from cookies with IDs, but varying degrees of adoption from advertisers, publishers, and other adtech solutions only furthers the fragmentation problem.
AdRoll’s ability to activate third- and first-party data with its unique BidIQ bidding technology and privacy-forward targeting strategy is precisely what advertisers need to succeed going forward.
How is AdRoll different? To understand the current digital advertising landscape, you first need to know the differences between first- and third-party data sources.
First-party data: This is your brand’s personal goldmine — customer data, website interactions, and any information you collect directly. AdRoll simplifies your ability to activate first-party data with tools like CSV uploads, partnership with LiveRamp, and our tracking pixel, which captures crucial behavioral data. This data will become the foundation of personalized campaigns.
Third-party audience data: To expand your reach and brand awareness beyond your existing audience, you need third-party data. This data comes from sources outside yourself. AdRoll partners with leading data providers to offer comprehensive audience segments, extending your reach to new potential customers.
Third-party data helps advertisers segment and target new customers by categories that fit their ideal customer profile (such as interests, lifestyle, demographics, and purchase intent). When they use third-party data with first-party data, advertisers can reach a larger audience, therefore building a bigger customer base.
AdRoll collaborates with data providers to enrich your audience targeting. If you want to broaden your audience or increase brand awareness among unknown individuals, you need access to data beyond your own. Third-party data providers open doors to audiences you might otherwise miss, which is particularly valuable for top-of-funnel targeting.
The future of digital advertising is third-party cookieless. To reach consumers on Chrome, which holds 66.3% of the global browser market share, you'll need access to cookieless audience data for interest group targeting. With Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) showing less than 14% global opt-in rates and predictions of up to 90% browser traffic being unreachable without third-party cookies, the shift is undeniable.
If you want access to the same targeting options you have today, look for platforms that partner with third-party data providers who are able to build cookieless audiences and have bidding models that ensure the highest ROI.
AdRoll has partnered with Audigent, which is owned by one of our third-party data providers, Experian, to create and activate cookieless audiences within the Privacy Sandbox. We're the first DSP to activate a cookieless audience in the Privacy Sandbox, and we’re continually testing to ensure our BidIQ bidding model remains accurate and efficient.
Third-party data opens targeting opportunities you otherwise wouldn’t be able to access.
For example, in our partnership with Experian, we use Experian’s Digital Household ID graph for targeting on CTV. The ID graph gives you more opportunities to reach these same audiences with other ad targeting strategies:
Web to CTV Retargeting
CTV to Web Retargeting
CRM Targeting
Account Targeting
Attribution Reporting
Experian also uses Syndicated Audiences for US customers, which include over 1,800 upper-funnel audience targeting segments across CTV, desktop web, and mobile web, including:
Lifestyle/Interests
Behavior
Business (B2B)
Financial Insights
Life Events
Location-Based
Purchase Predictors
This data is excellent for reaching new audiences who are interested in your competitors, increasing likelihood that they’ll take in your brand, too.
What makes AdRoll particularly unique is our proprietary, AI-native bidding system that optimizes ad strategies in real time. BidIQ works with third-party data and your existing first-party data to maximize ROAS.
AdRoll’s BidIQ algorithm optimizes bidding strategies using machine learning. With over 40 data scientists and analysts continuously enhancing its capabilities, BidIQ makes 2.5 trillion predictions daily and analyzes 4.6 billion proprietary signals monthly.
For over 16 years, BidIQ has been learning about anyone tagged with the AdRoll pixel to efficiently and cost-effectively bid on ad placements. A trove of rich data combined with cutting edge AI creates targeting opportunities that are timely and relevant.
AdRoll’s data partnerships expand these targeting capabilities even further with demographic, financial, lifestyle, and purchase predictor data. And the process to use third-party data is simple. You simply create a campaign and look for the Third-Party Audience option:
Adjust settings like ad group, budget, schedule:
Then create your audience:
Choose from 2,400+ audience segments based on the characteristics of your ideal audience:
And finally, choose your ad creatives.
The future of privacy will be cookieless — or at the very least, cookie-light. We are proactively preparing for this future by building a new bidding system from the ground up based on our learning form BidIQ, using Google’s Privacy APIs (PAAPI and ARA), and continuing to build partnerships with cookieless audience providers.
Our partnership with Audigent enables cookieless audiences for interest group targeting on Chrome. AdRoll and Audigent are the first in the industry to successfully activate a cookieless audience, meaning we’re ahead of other DSPs who are relying on IDs, which vary by publisher.
Advertisers shouldn’t try to navigate impending privacy changes alone. Look to AdRoll to enrich and supplement the data you already have and ensure continued programmatic advertising success.
Last updated on April 8th, 2025.
