First-party audience data is gaining momentum and is among the most prized methods, thanks to highly performant, privacy safe techniques where Advertisers and Publishers still retain full control of their data.
Both publishers and advertisers have acquired authenticated and deterministic first-party data over the years, along with the required regulatory permissions for advertising use. Deploying this for activation of audiences offers better personalization, as well as accurate targeting.
PAIR (Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation) protocol, originally developed by Google Ads team is a privacy-centric approach to enable advertisers and publishers to reconcile their first-party data for advertising use cases without the reliance on third-party cookies. PAIR relies on commutative cryptography which makes it possible to match the multiple-encrypted join keys (IDs, PII) without decrypting to cleartext. This is particularly powerful as a means to interoperate between Data Clean Rooms owned by different administrative parties.
This protocol will replace the Open Private Join and Activation (OPJA) specification, as both specifications solve the same problem. Going forward PAIR will be the designated standard for secure data matching of advertiser and publisher first party data within data clean rooms and programmatic activation.
This document has been developed as an open industry standard by Rearc Addressability and PETs Working Group. We describe the privacy design goals, PAIR protocol, Data Clean Room and TEE operations and encryption details to activate the matched common audience in the programmatic supply chain.
At the close of the public comment period and release of the final protocol, IAB Tech Lab will cease to support the OPJA specification.
It is open for public comment until Oct 25, 2024. Please send your comments to support@iabtechlab.com