This week’s Future of TV briefing features the Innovative Media Measurement Coalition’s Identity Infrastructure 2.0 proposal, which aims to address the fragmented identity landscape of TV and streaming. But at what cost to people’s privacy?
The Coalition of Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) aims to address the identity crisis in television and streaming. Its proposal, Identity Infrastructure 2.0, is laudable from the perspective of TV and streaming advertising buyers and sellers. But from the perspective of TV and streaming viewers, this is alarming.
The problems that Identity Infrastructure 2.0 seeks to solve are: Television and streaming identity photography is more like a mosaic. A patchwork of different identity signals that suggest a person’s profile, unless you squint and see vaguely.
Case in point: the vast majority of ID matches involving IP addresses (CTV’s primary ID mechanism) are wrong.
However, CIMM is not trying to create a single identifier to control them all.
On page 55 of the document, which outlines a system that requires neither a single dominant provider nor a universal identity spine, it says: “The path forward is unlikely to be defined by a single dominant provider or universal identity spine, because, surprisingly, being able to identify individuals across businesses and platforms will become the default (with consent, of course, but we’ll get to that one day).”
Instead, Identity Infrastructure 2.0 is intended to filter and enhance existing identity mechanisms into a form of federated identity.
Identity Infrastructure 2.0 requires capturing a large number of different identifiers and connecting, comparing, and weighing them across a wide variety of scopes. And a combination of authenticated subscriber data, internet provider-provided user data, device IDs, transaction data, etc. all form the basis of what CIMM describes as “deterministic household identity.”
According to the paper, “household identity should be understood not as a single standardized identifier or centrally owned asset, but as a functional reference structure that can be implemented through multiple interoperable methodologies.”
Underpinning this identity are people’s addresses shared by pay-TV providers and internet service providers. This provides the framework for a new type of identity backbone that can connect other forms of identity, such as streaming subscriber data, device ID, transaction data, and more.
“The important thing is the postal address,” Jon Watts, managing director of CIMM, said in an interview.
My email address is certainly more stable than my IP address. That is something that concerns us as people in the world. Especially after reading Digital Envoy’s discussion of LocID on page 42 of this paper.
Since IP addresses are updated regularly, connected ID signals are blocked. LocID therefore uses device IDs and a “stable home spine” to maintain a persistent identity even when IP addresses change. In the words of the paper, LocID makes it possible to “recover and revalidate audience segments rather than discard them.” If I use my words, companies will be able to reacquaint themselves with me. In fact, in my words to Watts, “It’s like fingerprinting.”
“That’s right,” Watts said.
This is why I find Identity Infrastructure 2.0 alarming. I understand the problem you are trying to address. I understand that better targeted advertising that can be measured more accurately could lead to more money being spent on TV and streaming services, and potentially better shows and movies on those services. But at what cost to me?
(I’ll say it here: Identity Infrastructure 2.0 goes to great lengths to emphasize the importance of consent and privacy by design (its subheading includes the words “privacy-first architecture”). And perhaps the federated identity ecosystem should make it easier to manage consent and ensure that consent is reflected throughout the supply chain. But the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of National Advertisers Every time I update and approve a policy, I’m going to trust the industry’s consent management practices more.
If Identity Infrastructure 2.0 is successful, it’s impossible to imagine that if Identity Infrastructure 2.0 is successful, its impact and applications will be limited to making mid-roll advertising more personalized and performant, although the big assumption is that businesses and industry groups will need to work together to establish standards, rules, and practices to make their proprietary data sets interoperable and accessible.
What’s most impressive about CIMM’s Identity Infrastructure 2.0 isn’t just how ambitious it is. But that’s not the case. What’s most surprising is how modest its success is considering what it actually accomplishes.
This paper focuses on creating a consistent identity picture to make TV and streaming advertising targeting and measurement more coherent and consistent. But what it will actually create is a world where people are easily identified across companies and platforms, and anonymity becomes a matter of consent, to an even greater extent than it currently exists. It’s not about people’s consent, it’s about companies agreeing to honor people’s consent.
I said the same thing to Watts. “I don’t think it’s unfair to say this is an area of uncertainty in the market,” he said.
what we heard
“Advertisers with strict flighting, or key industry windows, need to be prepared to act early to ensure they get the inventory they want.”
— Horizon Media’s Teddy Montalvo talks about this year’s Upfront Market
Numbers you need to know
100 million: Number of active households using Roku’s connected TV platform.
$10 million: The price Disney is asking advertisers to pay for a 30-second spot in next year’s Super Bowl.
3 billion dollars: Netflix’s projected ad revenue in 2026.
16%: Percentage of employees that Snap lays off.
$78 billion: How much advertisers will spend on digital video in 2025.
$40 million: The amount paid by Viant to acquire TVision.
What we covered
As pre-negotiations approach, buyers are charted a path through the complex sports market.
- The annual TV Upfront season confronts media buyers and brands with unprecedented complexity in the sports media market.
- According to three buyers who spoke to Digiday, the increasing number of media companies promoting sports-related products is helping to curb CPM (cost per thousand).
Learn more about prepayments.
How Carson Loney went from TikTok to a Gatorade commercial:
- The former college basketball and volleyball player has 5 million followers on TikTok, nearly 700,000 followers on Instagram, and deals with brands such as the NBA, Gatorade, and Abercrombie.
- Ronnie saw his income increase by over 275% from 2024 to 2025, and his social media accounts had an engagement rate of over 10%.
Click here to learn more about Creator Athletes.
what we are reading
Agent advance payment:
According to Ad Age, “Agent” is expected to rival “Flexibility” and “Live Sports” among the big buzzwords in this year’s upfront market.
New NFL package on YouTube:
According to Front Office Sports, YouTube is trying to acquire a five-game package from the league.
Paramount’s pre-proposal priorities:
According to AdExchanger, the company is integrating its Paramount+ and Pluto TV ad technology stacks, launching new conversion measurement tools, and expanding dynamic ad insertion to more sports live streams.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.