LiveIntent Says Its Graph Is Authenticated Daily. A Peer-Reviewed Study Shows It Gave a Declared Bot an ID.

By Pesach Lattin, based on ADOTAT reporting

A peer-reviewed study found 17 of 18 major identity vendors gave persistent IDs to the HTTP Archive crawler, a self-declared bot on the IAB Spiders and Bots list since 2013, and only Flashtalking flagged it. LiveIntent, which tells Prebid its graph is authenticated through newsletter engagement, shared 85% of its persistent IDs across the bot's phone and desktop crawls, and the MRC does not audit or accredit any identity provider.

Why it matters

Audience targeting, frequency caps and match-rate pricing all rest on the idea that an ID stands for a person. If a vendor assigns identities to a bot that announces itself, buyers may be paying for audiences and reach that include non-human traffic, and the vendor's description of how its graph is verified becomes a claim worth testing. Because no accreditation body audits identity providers, the buyer's protection mostly comes from contract terms such as bot filtering obligations, disclosure of how IDs are built, and the right to audit.

Questions to ask before you sign

1. Do you filter traffic on the IAB Spiders and Bots list before assigning an ID, and since when?
2. What share of your IDs are authenticated by a logged-in event, and how is that verified?
3. Do you send different IDs for the same page view to competing exchanges, and why?
4. Has any independent party audited your identity graph for bot contamination?
5. Will you credit spend on audiences later shown to include declared bots?

Read the ADOTAT investigation

Source: LiveIntent Says Its Graph Is "Authenticated Daily." It Gave a Bot an ID., ADOTAT

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