On Tuesday, July 12, Disney and The Trade Desk announced a partnership that would allow for the uploading of first-party data into The Trade Desk’s platform so it can be anonymized, matched and made targetable (via UID 2.0) across any available Disney media placements.

So … How Does That Work?
In a world with increasing privacy policies, fractured data, opaque audience segments and the deprecation of third-party cookies, marketers and brands are looking for new and improved ways to reach audiences as they consume digital media.

This is where UID 2.0 through The Trade Desk comes in.

Put simply, UID 2.0 enables the conversion of first-party data emails into anonymized and secure identifiers that can be used as cookie replacements for digital identification. This allows brands to reach audiences at scale in a way that’s “future-proof” from a privacy standpoint and also enables more tracking/targeting sophistication as technology and media consumption habits evolve.

How Does This Deal Between Disney and The Trade Desk Come Into Play?

For something new to be successful, adoption must be widespread. Take a new social media app, for example. For a new social media app to be successful, people must consistently use the app and find value in the platform. This value usually comes from friends, family and content creators also using the app, but content creators and your friends and family won’t use the app if nobody is there in the first place.

Very quickly, this can become a cycle of failure, and the new social app (or any new service, product or technology) can fizzle out.

This is no different for a technology like UID 2.0, and deals like this with Disney and The Trade Desk help promote adoption.

Marketers and brands benefit by being able to reach audiences securely and effectively across the vast and popular media inventory that Disney offers. Disney benefits by increased ad revenue at scale with the help of automation and programmatic ad buying. And The Trade Desk benefits from marketers using their platform to employ UID 2.0 with media buys.

What’s Next?

The honest answer to that question is, “There’s no way to be sure.” Brands and marketers can breathe a little easier knowing that Google has pushed back the removal of third-party cookies to sometime late in 2024, but there’s still the need to prepare now for what’s to come – and it can be assumed that similar deals like this will be struck in the near future.

More to come!