As the third-party cookie’s imminent demise sparks new ideas, data firms InfoSum and Throtle have teamed up in hopes of selling marketers on a way to use first-party data to target consumers while keeping information private.
“The partnership allows us both to compete aggressively against other providers, but in a much more deterministic and highly accurate atmosphere within the InfoSum platform,” Throtle CEO Paul Chachko told Adweek.
The deal could present a challenge for data onboarding leader LiveRamp, which has gained an early edge among ad-tech firms adapting to a post-cookie world.
While LiveRamp has advanced a centralized approach to managing first-party data, the Throtle-InfoSum offering promises decentralization. “[A centralized solution] is very messy. It requires full adoption from both sides in order for it to scale. And there’s a big question mark about what this is going to cost the ecosystem,” said Throtle vp of business development Moira McKenna.
InfoSum CEO Nicholas Halstead has struck similar notes against centralization in the past. In February, Halstead publicly criticized the concept of a universal ad ID, noting such a solution would require a single entity to hold data on all consumers—creating a centralized target for hacking and other privacy mishaps.
March saw AT&T’s ad-tech arm Xandr take a minority stake in InfoSum. Throtle, too, has an ongoing business relationship with Xandr, though Xandr owns no stake in Throtle. The firm’s preexisting relationship with Xandr “basically becomes glue between InfoSum clients, Xandr clients, Xandr and Throtle,” Chachko explained.
“The future of identity is an open ecosystem,” noted Halstead in a statement about the deal. “By partnering with Throtle, our clients will benefit from robust identity resolution capabilities, accessible in a decentralized open-identity infrastructure.”
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