They may not be the first thing that comes to mind when talking about IDs in an advertising context, but creative IDs are a key part of advertising infrastructure.
From the audience’s perspective, it’s obvious when they’re seeing the same ad twice – especially if it’s played two times back-to-back in an ad pod, an issue which continues to plague CTV advertising. But within the digital pipes which transact and place ads, it’s not so obvious.
Creative IDs remedy this. And while their prevalence in digital video and CTV isn’t as high as it could be, there’s a push within the industry, notably from IAB Tech Lab, to standardise and drive further adoption.
The Basics
Akin to how a consumer ID enables buyers, sellers, and ad tech companies to recognise the same individual in different contexts, a creative ID does the same for a piece of ad creative. It’s a string of characters assigned to a piece of creative which can be passed through the supply chain, enabling consistent identification of a piece of creative.
This identifier also usually includes other useful information about the ad itself, such as the brand and specific product represented in the ad, the media type, and information about the campaign such as start date and end date.
This ID then makes it easier to quickly recognise the same piece of creative. For example, when a creative ID is passed along, a publisher-side ad server can recognise when two different buyers are passing along the same creative, therefore knowing not to play those two ads within the same ad break.
The Technical Details
Creative IDs are created and managed by various registries, such as Ad-ID, Clearcast, and EIDR. And there are significant differences between the identifiers created by these bodies.
For example, Ad-ID covers lots of different media types, while Clearcast is specific to TV, and EIDR covers all audiovisual content. And EIDR covers all AV media, not just ads, while Ad-ID and Clearcast work specifically with ad creative.
Some publishers create their own, separate creative identifiers for any ads they run, specifically to manage advertising across their own properties.
Regardless, the core logic remains similar. An advertiser or agency signs up with one of these bodies, and then submits a specific piece of ad creative. They then provide whichever metadata is necessary (which varies depending on the registry) and the registry creates the identifier, a string of numbers and letters which is assigned to the ad.
For example, and Ad-ID code might look something like this: COCO0005000H.
Sometimes, this code itself contains relevant information about the ad. Ad-ID and Clearcast’s clock number for example both use the first few digits to identify the agency or advertiser registering the creative.
But the registry itself may also hold further metadata relating to the ad, meaning the ID code itself can be used to access extra metadata even when that’s not evident within the string of letters and numbers itself (similar to how a consumer ID is usually completely randomised, meaning it’s not the code itself which holds valuable information, but the fact that the code can be reliably linked back to other data).
This creative identifier can then be passed through the supply chain during transactions, meaning each relevant player within a supply chain can recognise the creative. On a basic level, by simply matching the identifier itself, a tech player (for example, an ad server), can recognise when it’s being sent the exact same ad by different sources.
And if any player involved in a transaction knows how to interpret the code itself, or is able to reference the registry which handles the identifier, they can then get more relevant information about the ad, and react appropriately. Using the ad server example, an ad server might use a creative identifier to understand which brand the ad belongs to, thus enabling competitive separation, and avoiding playing other ads from the same brand (which would have different identifiers, if they’re different pieces of creative) within the same break.
The Pros and Cons
Creative IDs have a whole host of uses, some of which have already been mentioned. Alongside frequency capping and competitive separation, creative IDs can help with things like campaign measurement and reconciliation, and contextual targeting.
One of the problems facing creative IDs is that, as mentioned, there has been a lack of standardisation. Where creative IDs have been built for specific corners of particular markets – such as Clearcast’s role in TV in the UK – this hasn’t been a big problem. But with more media being traded digitally, bringing in ad tech platforms which operate globally, standardisation has become more important.
IAB Tech Lab earlier this year announced a new framework which would bring an element of standardisation, making it easier to work with different creative identifiers.
Part of the motive behind this framework was to tackle another problem – a lack of adoption in digital media like CTV. Despite the utility behind creative IDs, there’s been a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem with adoption. Since they’ve not been widely used by advertisers, media companies and ad tech companies haven’t all supported them. And since they’ve not been widely supported across the industry, there’s been less incentive for advertisers to use them.
There could also be challenges for creative ID registries in keeping up with the potential flood of content – both ad creative and other media types – caused by the growth of generative AI.
