MiQ's new APAC CEO on data clean rooms and tackling identity

Programmatic media partner MiQ has promoted Jason Scott to chief executive officer for Asia Pacific. He will retain his Australia and New Zealand responsibilities and expand his remit to APAC, excluding China and India.

In an exclusive interview with Campaign Asia-Pacific, Scott says that because many advertisers remain dependent on third-party cookies, MiQ's post-cookie programmatic package aims to support emerging solutions for identity to help advertisers function in a world without cookies.

MiQ announced its cookieless solution in March 2022 and is already running more than 50% of its media in Australia without the support of cookies. It is looking to grow that to 100% in the long run.

MiQ's clients can mix, match, and leverage different identifiers that will exist in the programmatic ecosystem. It has partnered with LiveRamp and Similarweb and established an MiQ audience panel of 7,000 with plans to expand to 15,000.

Scott notes LiveRamp's RampID as one possible cookie replacement and a way to leverage advertisers' first-party data.

"The programmatic world now supports DOOH, advanced TV, logged-in environments like YouTube, and can continue many targeting and measurement activities via clean room technologies such as Google's Ads Data Hub," he explains.

"Many of these media channels and activations do not use cookies. Instead, we can drive value through advanced geo-intelligence, real-time smart TV data, household intelligence based on IP addresses, modern versions of audience panels, and contextual data signals."

While big players like Amazon, Google, and Samsung will have direct logged-in relationships with consumers, MiQ will be able to leverage data within these many 'walled garden' environments and their privacy-preserving data clean rooms.

As they work to preserve the essential value exchange of relevant advertising while improving consumer controls, advertisers are increasingly finding that consumers want them to use first-party data only when creating personalised services.

For example, a recent Dentsu Data Consciousness Project report found that 66% of respondents expect to be able to decline to share any personal data.

Scott points out that all primary candidates for cookie replacements—such as LiveRamp's RampID—have privacy, respect and consumer control at the heart of their design. Where MiQ leverages walled garden environments like Google to make ads relevant, these will usually rely on the first-party data relationship between the publisher and the consumer, which is something the consumer can control.

"Data and inventory will surface in specific technologies like DV360, Amazon DSP, and Samsung DSP. Their respective data clean rooms will enable advanced targeting and measurement as those platforms mature," he explains.

"Another critical approach is using cohorts or groups of people with similarities. This approach does not rely on consumer control and instead moves away from the need for an individual's specific identity. Instead, contextual media signals, geographic intelligence, and emerging cohort technologies such as google topics will play roles in making ads more relevant."

Scott adds that MiQ does not aim to create a new industry replacement for cookies or compete with Unified IDs, data clean rooms, or others. This is because MiQ is partner- and tech-agnostic, meaning it will work across the various IDs, walled gardens, and DSPs to maximise value for advertisers.

"Our strength is integrating and leveraging these to maximise value in a complex and fragmented programmatic world. We believe that's the only way to maximise value to advertisers in the programmatic future," he says.