"Their identity tool boosts CPMs, that's why they win"

"Their identity tool boosts CPMs, that's why they win"

Fair: post-cookie, first-party identity solutions do help addressability, and networks with deeper ID partnerships can show a CPM edge on logged-in-ish audiences.

But the comparison rarely notes how much of your traffic the ID tool can actually resolve. On anonymous, cookieless, Safari-heavy traffic, identity matching falls off a cliff — and contextual targeting quietly does the heavy lifting instead.

🚩 Hidden variable: match rate on your specific audience. A network's ID advantage is huge on a 70%-Chrome logged-in audience and near-zero on mobile-Safari arbitrage traffic.

Compare the identity uplift on your real browser/device mix, not on the vendor's case-study audience.

Not saying identity tools don't work — saying their value depends entirely on a match rate nobody quotes you.