Mobile-Ad-IDs-FullContact-Guide-2021

Creating the Whole Person Picture with the Help of Mobile Advertising IDs

At FullContact, we believe that people are more than ones and zeroes, more than what they click or don’t click. They’re more than just fragmented identifiers.

Our whole-person Identity Graph provides both personal and professional attributes of an individual, as well as online and offline identifiers. These can include names, physical addresses, Placekey IDs, phone numbers, social IDs, email addresses, and Mobile Advertising IDs (MAIDs).

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What is a MAID?

A MAID is a unique, anonymous alphanumeric identifier that iOS or Android assigns to each mobile device.

MAID Type Description Example ID
IDFA iOS Identifier for Advertising BCDE4299-01DT-98TC-D3F4-P%7263876209
AAID Google Advertising ID for Android 28757bwa-bd67-6d1c74bb-ae-4d19ab5d34

MAIDs were built for the marketing and advertising community, and are tied to an individual mobile device, which makes them precise in identifying specific people. Marketers use MAIDs to improve customer experiences by targeting audiences, usage tracking, and mobile behavioral tracking.

Like cookies, they connect activity back to a real person. And because they're tied to an individual device, MAIDs can be an input for FullContact's Identity Resolution to access the whole person.

There are Endless Use Cases when Leveraging MAIDs

Amplify Your Media From Channel to Channel

If you have a postal mailing list, name, address, Placekey ID, or email opt-in file of engaged prospects and customers, and you’d like to advertise to them through multiple channels, we can amplify your media reach and results. We provide you with additional identifiers, MAIDs and beyond, for you to activate on any platform.

Personalize the Customer Experience

If customers use their email to sign up for your monthly newsletter, you can enrich with MAIDs (as well as additional attributes) to personalize your mobile messaging and segment your marketing campaigns to increase conversions and improve your customer experience.

Suppression

As you advertise to potential prospects, you don’t want your already profitable customers seeing that same messaging. We can provide the MAIDs of your favorite customers to suppress advertising, avoiding inappropriate messaging and creating a consistent and highly-tailored brand experience.

Consolidate and Connect

When you collect MAIDs, we can help you connect and consolidate the customer data from your CRM, allowing you to speak to your customers in an omnichannel fashion to streamline and improve your customer engagements.

Confused About the Difference Between MAIDs and Cookies?

It’s not one-to-one, but you can think of a MAID like a cookie for a mobile device. As third-party cookies are in decline, they’re ever-changing, and lack of specificity, MAIDs are a better alternative.

Cookie MAID
Average Lifespan 7 days 7-8 months
In-App Advertising No Yes
Continuous Sync Required? Yes No
Set By Websites, Publishers, Ad Networks, and Users Operating System
Tracking Level Browser Individual

So what does the table above actually mean? Cookies are set by websites, publishers, and ad networks that need to continuously sync with DSPs and DMPs to triangulate an individual. Adding to the sync requirements, the lifespan of cookies is an average of 7 days. Since MAIDs are set by the operating system (not the browser), they’re common across all application publishers. So there’s no need to perform a sync, which can slow down identifying your customers and data collection. On top of that, the lifespan of a MAID is 7-8 months on average, keeping a persistent ID across and within a device.

Because MAIDs are tied to individual devices and cookies are tied to browsers, cookies are more likely to have inaccurate or misrepresented data. Being connected to a specific device also means that you have the ability to enrich MAIDs with additional insights, allowing you to segment and drive more personalized mobile ad campaigns. Not only are cookies unable to be enriched, but they also can’t track mobile in-app usage, which is where consumers spend the majority of their time when using a device.

FullContact

Amplify your ability to recognize and reach real people by 3X. Or it’s on us. Guaranteed.

Real People

Access and map fragmented physical and digital identities into a persistent Person ID from a single graph. Omnichannel input and outputs.

Real Control

Leverage FullContact Identity Stream™ to protect & control your first-party data across your enterprise. Enable permission-based partnering without commingling data.

Port the Person ID across your ecosystem improving targeting, reach, recognition and measurement.

Manage privacy and permission at a person level at every touchpoint. • SOC2 Type II Compliant

Real Time

Recognize people across platforms and engagement in the moments that matter.

Leverage our machine learning, applied graph theory, and distributed computing to improve resolution.

If you’re interested in learning more about FullContact, you can talk with an expert at fullcontact.com/contact.