IX Open Highlights: Index Exchange Drives New Programmatic Industry Leaps in Identity, Speed and Partner Value

By STS News Desk On Jun 13, 2019

IX Open Highlights: Index Exchange Drives New Programmatic Industry Leaps in Identity, Speed and Partner Value

Keynote event highlighted by flurry of product announcements enhancing connections among trusted publishers, favored brands and global consumers on the trusted web

Index Exchange (IX), the world’s largest independent ad exchange, recently unveiled new and powerful innovations that foster real-time, personalized connections between brands and audiences at its IX Open event series. Headlining a range of product announcements, Index Exchange debuted its IX Library, comprised of the programmatic industry’s most powerful set of solutions for Identity and user experience on the trusted web. The company also detailed new features that enhance speed to deliver more value to both publishers and the brands that rely upon them for trusted content, bringing parity with the Walled Gardens and leveraging machine learning.

Index Exchange’s cornerstone product, the IX wrapper, was rebranded to the IX Library. The wrapper evolved from its beginnings as a revolution over the waterfall to a platform product with a robust ecosystem. In its next phase, it brings even more innovation, adaptation, and optimization for partners. There are three standalone versions of the IX Library, outlined below:

Identity Library – IX is opening its expansive Identity products to all publishers, increasing the scope of Identity enriched inventory available on the trusted web. The Identity Library packages up Real-Time Identity (RTI) adapters in a simple installation, designed to operate seamlessly with a Publisher’s header bidding set up, agnostic to solutions already in place on the page.
Wrapper Library – IX’s most popular product offering requires little integration work by publishers and also comes with the Identity Library. The managed service accesses IX’s team of experts to maximize header bidding configurations and is complemented by a fully functional user interface. It includes all adapters including IX RTI Adapters, and it automatically connects with Google Ad Manager (GAM).
Custom Library – Custom Library is IX’s most versatile product, which allows publishers the ability to integrate RTI Adapters and Bidding Adapters within their own solutions on each page. It helps publishers customize a product offering that works for any use case and includes three modules: PostBid, Universal, and Manual. As with the Wrapper Library, the Custom Library also comes with the Identity Library.

Other key product release announcements at the event series included:

Adaptive Timeouts – By measuring device and network conditions, the Adaptive Timeout feature leverages machine learning via an algorithm that determines a custom, intelligent timeout for each individual user on each individual page view. This includes a time landscape, which is the time it takes from a bid request to a bid response for each participating bidder. By adaptively modifying timeouts, the feature ensures the maximum number of bids make it to the publisher, thereby increasing revenue, while improving user experience in each unique condition.
RTI Integration with LiveIntent – IX announced its integration with LiveIntent via the RTI Framework. By adding LiveIntent’s robust identity graph driven by email, marketers gain more choice and can target key people-verified audiences tied to a validated and active email hash. The LiveIntent RTI adapter will be available for beta testing in the US only at this time.
Matched Audiences – IX is extending the ability to support audience-based deals using people-based graphs, via its newly unveiled Matched Audiences product. Matched Audiences are buyer specific, CRM-based audience segments powered by the third party graphs. Any DSP with deal ID support can now transact on people-based audiences, empowering buyers to reach their most important customers across high quality publishers, in real-time. This product is currently in beta.

IX also previewed a variety of upcoming features:

Publisher Sonar – Publisher Sonar is a new extension to the IX Library which unlocks people-based advertising in a world without third party cookies. By removing the barrier of transaction in cookie-less environments, Publisher Sonar will increase the breadth of inventory available to transact through Identity solutions, including LiveRamp’s Authenticated Traffic Solution, in the trusted web today. IX has a robust history in providing unique solutions to publishers at scale and are applying that same mentality to Publisher Sonar with an accountable, publisher-first design with no black boxes, fingerprinting or browser hacks. Publisher Sonar will be available in beta later this summer.
Blackbird – With the introduction of Blackbird, IX is offering industry leading opt-out controls for consumers, via a simplified and persistent people-based opt out. Users can generate or upload a hash of their email address, which will be used to opt out the user from all people-based advertising. This opt out status will be federated to participating companies, with the goal of ensuring consumers are in control of how their data is used across all advertising experiences. Blackbird will be released in beta later this summer.

“IX Open is always one of our most exciting weeks of the year because we get to share new products that will undoubtedly improve the programmatic ecosystem, while helping our partners achieve their goals more efficiently and effectively,” said Andrew Casale, President and CEO of Index Exchange. “With the consumer perception of ad tech on the decline largely driven by mainstream media attention, it’s imperative we put consumer trust at the forefront of any future solutions brought to market. The features we’ve launched do exactly this, and we look forward to putting the consumer first and pioneering a more trusted ecosystem on the road ahead.”

This new evolution of Index Exchange’s Header Bidding and Identity technology is another step towards further democratizing digital advertising. IX hosted IX Open events in Orange County, London and Paris.