Who’s got the (Creative) Ad ID?

Defining the Responsibilities and Benefits of ACIF adoption for All CTV supply chain Stakeholders

The Connected TV (CTV) advertising ecosystem is growing rapidly, but with this expansion come significant challenges in campaign reconciliation, measurement, and cross-platform reporting. One of the biggest hurdles is the inconsistent use of standardized creative identifiers. This is where adopting the Ad Creative ID Framework (ACIF) comes in. It offers a solution that streamlines the process and unlocks new efficiencies across the advertising supply chain.

The ACIF specification, which promotes the use of a unique identifier for each creative, provides tools for automating validation and integrates the ID into the VAST tags that power CTV advertising. This promises value for all parts of the supply chain. However, to fully realize this value, widespread adoption is essential. All stakeholders—advertisers, creative registries, creative delivery platforms, agencies, and publishers—must work together to ensure that the critical Creative ID flows from the advertiser to the VAST tags and delivery reports. This collaboration will make it easier to tie everything together, simplifying reconciliation and reporting.

Why Adopt the Ad Creative ID Framework Today?

In traditional linear TV advertising, AD-ID is already widely adopted—100% of linear transactions use Ad IDs. However, in streaming environments, adoption remains low – Based on a 2024 IAB report, only ~10% of streaming or CTV transactions include Ad IDs, creating challenges in typing performance to specific ads.

This discrepancy in adoption of this universal Ad ID makes cross-platform reporting difficult, if not impossible. Advertisers buying both linear and streaming campaigns expect a unified view, but without a common identifier, measurement across platforms remains fragmented.

Consider the following before and after illustrations that show what happens with a single SKU ID per creative.

Cross Platform reporting without ACIF

Without a consistent Creative ID the same ad on Linear and Streaming are treated as separate Ads.

So, how do you calculate cross platform impressions?

Cross Platform reporting with ACIF

With a single ID in place calculation is simple and accurate

When adding the impact of Cross Publisher reporting that the Buy side of the transaction needs so that they can gauge ad effectiveness this becomes almost impossible.

Cross Publisher reporting without ACIF

Without ACIF in place cross-publisher reporting is fragmented and difficult to understand:

Cross Publisher reporting with ACIF

Using ACIF brings immediate clarity to the same report, reducing reconciliation time and operational hours significantly, and enabling analysis of ad creative effectiveness.

Which outcome would you and your team prefer?

How can each stakeholder contribute?

To fully realize the benefits of ACIF, every participant in the CTV supply chain must take action. Some of these actions are straightforward and simply require a tweak in operational processes to ensure all systems have the ID in the correct framework, others require automation using the APIs that are part of the ACIF solution.

With the following actions, everyone will gain the benefits outlined in the earlier examples:

Advertisers: Continue registering creatives with AD-ID (US), or your local creative registry to ensure consistency across platforms.
Agencies: Treat streaming like linear TV by consistently appending Creative IDs to all creatives.
Creative Registries: Support validation of Creative IDs via the ACIF Validation API specification so that all partners can determine the accuracy of the IDs and pull additional metadata.
Creative Logistics Providers: Automate Creative ID validation and usage in VAST tags via standardized APIs, reducing manual effort and improving accuracy.
Ad Serving Platforms, and DSPs: Validate Creative IDs and ingest metadata from the Creative Registry needed to support frequency controls and competitive separation needs.
Publishers: Require Ad IDs on all campaigns to enable cross-publisher measurement and reconciliation.

The Path Forward

The industry is at an inflection point. As more streaming inventory is transacted programmatically, ensuring creative ID consistency is critical for campaign effectiveness. The Ad Creative ID Framework provides a clear path toward greater efficiency, better measurement, and seamless reconciliation.

Now is the time for the industry to align on a single creative identifier to unlock the full potential of CTV advertising, which 86% of respondents to the 2024 IAB study referenced earlier believe would increase ROI by 10%. But time is of the essence. If everyone does their part and addresses process change now, then by the time of the 2026 upfronts ACIF usage will be so ingrained that it will become second nature for all campaigns, much as it is for Linear campaigns today.