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Publishers are already torn over whether using email-based identity technologies in the hopes of generating higher ad revenue is worth scaring off visitors with a roadblock requiring their email addresses.
Complicating the dilemma: apps that generate temporary email addresses and render ID tech useless.
For now, there’s no data to quantify the impact of these auto-generated burner email services, but publishers say they create just one more problem that could disrupt their goals of garnering genuine personal information for their own first-party data purposes or enabling the email matches that identity technologies need to work.
“When you start to introduce these types of apps, you end up with the same softness, that same churn that cookies always had,” said an exec at a large news publisher who asked not to be named. Third-party cookies — which are in their last throes of life before Google disables them in its Chrome browser by January 2022 — were “always inconsistent” said the executive, but, “This is further exacerbating that because it’s not even identifying people consistently.” At this point, however, it’s not clear that many publishers are actively addressing potential problems that might arise from auto-email generators.
For years data brokers and consultancies have used email addresses as a key piece of information to match a digital identity to an offline one, potentially unlocking information that builds an even more detailed picture of someone. That concept has evolved to form the foundation of many of the technologies marketed today as replacements for third-party cookies. But if one side of the equation provides a bogus email address, identity tech reliant upon matches of encrypted emails is stuck searching for the keys. (To learn the basics of how identity technologies use emails, watch Digiday’s explainer video.)
Burner emails, trash emails, throwaway emails or temporary emails — whatever the name, Google’s Play store offers at least 60 apps, many of which are free, that generate randomized email addresses and enable email verification. These technologies are promoted to people as ways to reduce unwanted marketing messages or enable a way to register to view content or get discounts without worrying about disseminating a personal or business email address out into the data universe.
Sites including LifeWire and Wired advise readers to try out apps that generate one-time emails. Apple allows people to hide their email when using its Sign in with Apple feature by sharing an Apple-generated address instead of their actual email address. One of a multitude of tools with similar names, a browser extension for Mozilla’s Firefox browser called Temp Mail lets users of its free version store up to 50 fake emails; a premium version lets them store up to 500 fake emails, a service that could be exploited for fraud if used to mass-produce phony subscription, social media or e-commerce accounts.
Publishers, hoping to generate identifiable first-party data about their audiences and feed identity tech that promise to deliver higher ad revenues, are grappling with whether to put up gates requiring email registration before people can access content. If they do, said Ian Trider, vp of real time bidding platform operations at ad tech firm Centro, “I fully expect lots and lots of users to supply fake information.”
Email quality problems could affect the efficacy of identity tech, said David Spiegel, former vp of digital revenue at the Los Angeles Times who just joined G/O Media as its chief revenue officer. “There are ways very easily to see the cracks in the mirror of this wonderful solution,” he said of email-based identity tech.
“When mobile Apple users don’t opt-in, we don’t attempt to serve these consumers targeted ads. We respect their privacy choice,” said Eliot Dahood, CTO of identity tech firm BritePool. “Consumers who use temporary email addresses want to stay anonymous. Our system operates so that users of temporary email addresses are never served targeted ads.”
However, for publishers, the inherent appeal of identity tech is enabling higher-priced targeted ads based on identity, often derived through email matches. Other identity tech firms that use email addresses to establish identity, including LiveRamp and Zeotap did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The commodification of the email as an identity link…
