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- [00:00]
Fabrice Bier Gabel
Accuracy is a huge topic in identity and there are massive inaccuracies out there. But it's not a deterministic versus probabilistic equation. The most optimized balance between having scale so that advertisers can reach their audience and publishers can monetize their content. But scale combined with accuracy, that is the world of the game here. And how can we push the limits there?
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Podcast Host
This week on nexting Media, I spoke
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Mike Shields
with Reece Bier Gabel. He's the senior vice president of strategy
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Podcast Host
and partnerships at Intent IQ.
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Mike Shields
Recently I talked about the state of
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Podcast Host
identity in 2026 in the face of the cookie apocalypse that never was and this renewed push for deterministic ideas just as AI threatens to upend the whole system. Recently I even got into where the brands are leaving money on the table right now by not getting their identity house in order. Lots to do.
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Mike Shields
So let's get started. Hi, everybody. Welcome to nexty Media. I am Mike Shields and my guest this week is Fabrice Beer Gabel. He is a sen. Vice president of strategy and partnerships at Intent iq. Hey, Fabrice, thanks for being here.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Hey, Michael, thanks for having me here. It's great to speak with you.
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Mike Shields
Lots, lots of stuff to get into. I think it's probably good place and this will be an easy one to start with because I think folks will know intent iq, but not everybody will know the specifics. Maybe just give us a little bit of what intent IQ is, a little bit of the backstory, if you would.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Sure. We're, we're really a deep technology company focused on identity resolution. We've been inventing a lot of technologies in that space and helping publishers as well as advertisers break through identity silos. In a universe that is increasingly fragmented and has idea less environments, we're helping advertisers, ad agencies, publishers better monetize their inventory or better reach their target audience.
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Mike Shields
Okay. And there's a lot to dig into there. Obviously there's a lot of pieces. Give us the. What has, what has changed? Like in the last couple years, we sort of went through this big period of anticipation and all these macro changes and some were calling for Armageddon. What has really changed and what hasn't? When it comes to like mobile identifiers, cookies, like what. Where do you, how do you kind of sum up the state of affairs right now?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
I like to talk about, you know, the, the challenges breaking through silos. We got a world. There's not one world of identity. There's tons of signals. And whether you look at different media environments or different geographies, just the signals vary and the ability to keep an identity continuum becomes increasingly challenging. We call that kind of new universe idless. Even though it's all about preserving the continuity of identity across all those fragmented silos. And that I think is the symptom that we're seeing over the past few years. It was before that all about cookies are going to go away until, you know, Google kind of set the tone.
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Mike Shields
Right.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
With a new direction. And now, you know, people who think the cookieless world, quote unquote is not relevant are actually misled because what is happening is a very fragmented audience and identity universe.
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Mike Shields
Right. That only got more complicated. It wasn't as though us, we thought a switch was going to be flipped. It didn't back to normal. It wasn't like that.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, you know, 150 plus million iPhone users in the US that's made less. Mostly browsers are cookie less. You got 70 million desktop browsers that are cookie less. You got CTV environments that work different types, you know, signals. So preserving that identity continuum across those environments is a real challenge.
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Mike Shields
Yeah. Okay, so speaking of how, of how we will preserve that, I think at one point there was thinking, and maybe this is so true, that there, rather than preserve, we would have a new, we would have a replacement. We would either we would create a new alternative that everyone would use or most of us would use, whether that being a live ramp ID or uid. Then there was thinking, well, maybe we won't do that, we'll do cohorts. Then I think today you're hearing a lot more about, okay, we've got to use deterministic identifiers and that's it. So that's a lot there. But like, where do, where have things evolved? And are any of those paths the right one?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Yeah. On the debate between deterministic and probabilistic, that's an interesting one. You know, a Probability can be 1%, but it can also be 99%. I can, you know, there's tons of cases where deterministic technologies are less accurate than probabilistic ones when they steer towards the 99% as opposed to being 1%. So accuracy is a huge topic in identity and there are massive inaccuracies out there, but it's not a deterministic versus probabilistic equation.
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Mike Shields
It's not, it's not as one is perfect, one is. Eh, that's not, that's not the state of affairs at all.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
No, no, no. The rule of the game is to striking the most optimized balance between having scale so that advertisers can reach, you know, their audience and you know, publishers can monetize their content. But scale combined with accuracy, that is the rule of the game here. And how can we push the limits there?
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Mike Shields
Okay, talk about if you could mobile because I think the mobile industry went through it. It was where, where it was a much more abrupt change or you talked about being madeless and it, you know, the predictions were pretty dire in terms of what you were going to be do, be able to do at some point. How does that look different now? How has mobile maybe steered its way through that? Has it looked different than the rest of the web?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
There's a lot of similarities in a sense. You know where mobile environments or mobile app environments have traditionally used what's called a maid mobile ad id and whether you're in Android or Apple environments, those IDs take different names or different shapes. In a sense what you still have is a third party identifier, one that follows the user across all the apps. And you have identifiers of the first party type that only are limited to a, to the user within an app or within a publisher of apps.
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Mike Shields
Right.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
You have the same thing in browser environments. You have what's called the third party cookie and the first party cookie. So those same parameters play in both the mobile app environment as well as in the browser environment. They just evolved at different paces. But today those fragmentations are there in both environments. Add to this that besides in addition to privacy regulation, you have, you know, some of the big vendor own policy. Apple came up with attention. Yeah, you know, app tracking, transparency. Then there's different ways those first party IDs benefit one company versus another. You know, Apple has had some issues with the way they handle it in Europe for example. So all of these are just, just contribute to creating these very fragmented environment.
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Mike Shields
Yeah, you mentioned regulation. I was going to ask you about that because I think we, I think from a US perspective it's sort of been hard to read where the, where the current administration is going, whether where, where things are going to change or not change with various states, where it's, I think it's more, you operate in lots of different regions where the rules are maybe more clear cut. How do you, how do you explain the differences and how do you navigate that, that very on, you know, muddled landscape to say.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Yeah, it's, it's a very tricky path to follow and it's critical to follow it. Right. Uh, there's no messing around with privacy regulation. And many, you know, it's another piece of the fragmented universe in identity resolution than is happening today. You mentioned several states in the U.S. obviously, you know, Europe and GDPR have their own, you know, approach and any media buyer or any publisher, whatever they do, must stay attuned and have a stack that's agile and able to maintain privacy compliance with all, all of those. It's tricky. It's tricky. There's a lot of these. We as a identity, you know, specialist, we have to absolutely support every single one of them and we have to follow very closely how they evolve what they require and make sure we, you know, comply with all of.
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Mike Shields
So you don't just pick the strictest standard and say that's what we're going to do everywhere. That doesn't make sense.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
No, that's. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense because it obfuscates traffics unnecessarily and you know, it, it limits, you know, options and it gives a, you know, disadvantage to companies that compete in that space for reach or for monetization. So, but, but you do have to comply with every single one of them. You know, even GDPR has different flavors. You know, in each country there may be a regulatory body that has their own view on.
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Mike Shields
Yeah, their own interpretation of these things. Right?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Absolutely.
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Mike Shields
Okay, why don't we take a step back, Give us some, if you can, some examples like who are some of your partners and what might be a way that they, they use your technology.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
We have two primary lines of business, if you will. On, on one side we help sellers companies that may be publishers, monetization platforms or SSPs. We help them identify that unidentified traffic because of signal constraint environments.
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Mike Shields
So these are, these are companies that don't have a million login users, for example.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Yeah, exactly. Companies that don't have logged in users and users who come to their sites or to their mobile apps or their CTD apps without being identified through a typical standard third party signal. And so we work with some of those partners we talked in the past, companies like Raptive, for example, or some SSPs and many others in the mobile world. We've been working a lot with a company called Bid Machine. So these are two examples. One is more web, the other one's mobile app. But in both cases the massive issue here is that there is a ton of traffic and users and audiences that are unidentified and therefore under monetized.
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Mike Shields
They're perceived as less valuable or they're maybe Treated as less valuable because of that.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Absolutely. And through a solution we call bid enhancement, we're able to identify those audiences in a way that's privacy compliant and accurate, which is again one of the major issues in our industry today. And then in turn we are able to bridge the gap of this identified user with the existing available demand which today is primarily based on cooking is actually. And that immediately improves monetization the for publishers and for those monetization, you know, platforms and sellers on the more buy side on media and you know, advertisers and ad agencies, you know, the, the flip side is that advertisers struggle to reach their target audience in those signal constraint environments outside of the wall gardens. Right, like outside of the walled gardens. That's right outside of the universe where users are logged in. And you know, we just announced a partnership with Horizon, you know, the largest independent, you know, ad agency. And similarly the goal is to help amplify data and data signals so that they can actually reach their desired and target users or an advertisers targeted users within those environments. Think of Apple users that are typically known to be, you know, of a, you know, more affluent, potentially desirable for advertisers. But in many of those environments, even though this is privacy compliant, the signals may not allow proper addressability. And we're helping those, you know, media buyers, advertisers restore that identity continuum.
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Mike Shields
Do you think are we seeing. I don't know if I'm simplifying this too much, but almost like there's an arms race going on where you have, you know, the Amazons and Google's out there talking about we have so you know, bazillion logged in users. We have a deterministic and then all the most of the big agency hold codes have either made acquisitions or they're building out their own identifiers or identity spines. Are, are they, are those two things in conflict? Is that are there always going to be just different factions and you got, you kind of help connect all the dots like what, what do you make of that landscape?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
You know, we're in a world of outcomes. There's more and more pressure for outcomes. That outcomes create competition, that drive for outcome creates competition. And in the case of ad agencies that you brought up, you know, but everybody has to differentiate and build differentiation in the world of ad agencies or advertisers. It comes a lot from the data and the knowledge they have about their users. Eventually that data and that differentiation needs to translate into the way they reach the target users. They activate, they Buy media, they measure performance and it resolves down to an identifier. Now you have identifiers that are used for those spines just to as an aggregator of data, insights and measurement. And you have identifiers that we call biddable. Biddable identifiers are specific beasts because they bridge between the supply side and the buy side. So while ad agencies, advertisers may have their own spine because that's part of building their differentiation in terms of retaining their data and understanding better their audience, they need to bridge from that those spines to biddable identifiers.
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Mike Shields
It's one thing to measure is another thing to make to do. Have a transaction.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
That's right. And the biddable IDs are the ones that enable the transactions.
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Mike Shields
Right.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Like, you know, we have one, we have a one that we call IIQ id. Because we work with both sellers and buyers, we're able to have an identifier that lives in the bit string.
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Mike Shields
Yeah. Okay. I got to ask you, of course, about AI and how it's changing things. You know, there has been some talk about whether, you know, that identifiers won't matter as much when the platforms know people based on their behavior better than, you know, than even the marketers, which there's definitely debate about that. Do you see? But then there's also talk about, like us heading towards more predictive, predictive ad buying. How do you see the use of AI changing things right now? Things playing out?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
It's huge. It's huge. AI has a huge impact on our industry. And in that sense, we have been using AI for years and we continue to do so and we could not do what we do without it. It's so fundamental in the ability to process massive amount of data driving sites out of it and being able to act fast. So in that sense, AI is essential. It's now also affecting the way consumers access content. I think tying this back to identity there is in terms of infrastructure, again, it's fundamental to use it. You cannot, you know, get scale and accuracy without using it. Using it. Right. And in terms of the way consumers change their behavior, identity remains an essential point in enabling re engagement. You know, the place of intent may happen in, maybe in an NLM or in some kind of chat environment, but once you've detected intent, how do you follow on? How do you follow through the engagement, the dialogue with that consumer?
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Mike Shields
That's not the only place that person's going to spend time or be. Be amenable to ads.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Exactly. And identity is, is key to all that.
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Mike Shields
So Are you, are you feeling it? Like there's, there's definitely a lot of pushback in the industry or presumed pushback that, this idea that you're going to just give all your money over to the two platforms and they'll know, they'll kind of know your, how your data is being used in the plan. It sounds like that brands don't want to give up that kind of direct relationship. Are you seeing that?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Absolutely. They don't want to give that up. They want to retain control over their differentiation, their core assets, their core audience, their core audience relationship. But consumers have a say in this, of course, and they go wherever they want to go. And so there is strong demand for interoperability and transparency across the ecosystem. I think walled gardens are seeing this. And even though it's not their core business, their core business to protect their own platform and their own data, that is their asset. I think we're seeing more opening in enabling kind of interoperability, recognizing that users, consumers don't go to one place, they go to many places. Advertisers need to retain their differentiation. And as there are more alternatives, we see an, I see an opening, I see more openness than there were there was before.
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Mike Shields
What do you, where are you on? There's a, there's a lot of excitement and enthusiasm around the potential for agentic to really change programmatic advertising. Then there is, I wouldn't say there's pushback, but some, there's some thinking that maybe we're, we got to see, you know, we gotta be cautious here or see how fast we can move. Where, where are you, are you seeing experimentation there? Are you bullish on that?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
I, I think this, this is something that has its own pace. It's not something that we're seeing, you know, right away take a very significant impact in our industry. But it's, it's something that people are experimenting with and watching closely. I think from, you know, what I'm, I'm seeing, people are more concerned about making sure that their core asset, which is their content on one side or their audience on another side, are protected and that they are able to preserve that value even as new consumption models emerge. And that is, I think, a pretty big deal that we see more in the US right now, less in, in Europe at the moment. But you know, someone was, State was saying that for every single visitor to a site, there are 200 crawlers on that site. Those 200 crawlers are, you know, non ad monetizable environments. If, if this situation doesn't Land on a sustainable model.
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Mike Shields
Not good for a lot of us.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Yeah, exactly. So I think these are the primary issues right now that we need to tackle.
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Mike Shields
What about does it, you know, I always think of the, the worst case scenario is, as a longtime journalist, like what, what are the dangers with agentic in terms of like identity protection, data protection, things going wrong? Should I assume that everything, that security is just, you know, inherent or is there are things to worry about?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Unfortunately, right now there are very significant issues in terms of identity accuracy in our industry and it's something that we should be opening up to a bigger, broader debate. That is a major issue and that can potentially cause a lot of people to think they're targeting or they are investing in certain areas and, or, you know, in certain reach or targeting. And actually that's not what's happening. I think that is a big issue in our industry that needs to be opened up further and for people to better understand what they are actually, what their identity is actually providing them, really.
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Mike Shields
Okay, so the more that AI gets used by brands, I wonder if they assume that this will sort of fix any inaccuracies in their data that they employ. But what are, what are some of the dangers there?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Maybe, yeah, there's indeed. Well, so the AI models are basically using, you know, training data sets and expanding them. The more accuracy you have in those training data sets, the more amplified they're going to be. Basically, AI is amplifying what it's being fed. If it's fed in accuracy, it's going to create even more inaccuracies. So it's very important. In fact, it's, it's putting emphasis on being accurate in what we do, especially in terms of identity. And I, you know, identity resolution accuracy is going to be more and more important as AI gets, you know, more and more used.
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Mike Shields
Because I imagine undoing those mistakes will be really challenging.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Well, it will be. I mean, you know, it, it may not be notified. That is the problem. And then you end up having AI can create scale, but if it doesn't come with accuracy, then you're going to have inaccuracy at scale.
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Mike Shields
I wonder if you get some advertisers asking, like, why is this so important? Like, can't we. Isn't. Isn't inaccurate data just like, you know, we don't care about those users anyway? Or it's not, it's the price of doing business. What do you see there? What do you say to them?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Well, I tell them that I totally understand that they live in a world of outcomes increasingly. And they have to deliver results, and identity in that sense needs to deliver results. Ultimately, the right identity resolution can double their reach or the right identity resolution can, you know, increase bottom funnel performance by 80% and increase conversion rates and increase, you know, ROAS. And the same way for publishers, you know, the right identity resolution lifts their ad revenue by 30, 40, 50, 60%. We have to tie everything to results because that's the world we live in right now. We have today outcomes.
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Mike Shields
So, yeah, if you're, you, if you don't get this right, it's not just a mis, you know, waste. It's leaving money on the table.
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Podcast Host
Absolutely.
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Mike Shields
Yeah, I guess. Lastly, what do you, what do you. Do you have any advice for brands right now who are. Maybe they're, they're, they're probably worried they're racing towards using more AI. They're, they're probably cautious about wanting to give away too much of their data or train help models, you know, get trained on their own insights. And they're, and they still want to make sure they're, they're targeting their customers they care about. What, what, what, what advice might you have for, for marketers right now?
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
I think, you know, more, more than ever. I. It's a, A life lesson. Let's, you know, we must be agile. I don't think there's a, you know, I'm, I'm not reinventing, you know, inventing the wheel here, but the world is changing very fast, and being agile means being able to experiment and doing our best not to get ourselves locked into one thing because that thing is likely to change. And if we're so dependent on it, then we're gonna get stuck. So experiment, remove your single points of dependency. Yeah, that, that would be, you know, my kind of general lesson here.
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Mike Shields
Don't get comfortable.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Yeah, absolutely.
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Mike Shields
All right, Fabrice, fascinating stuff. Thanks so much for your time here. Let's, let's chat again down the road here.
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Fabrice Bier Gabel
Sounds great, Mike. Thanks so much for this.
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Podcast Host
Thanks again to my guest this week, Fabrice Biragabel of Antenna iq. If you like this week's episode, please take a moment to rate and leave a review. We have lots more to bring you, so please hit that subscribe button and we'll see you next time for more on what's next in media. Thanks for listening.