Adopting IPv6 Will Improve CTV Advertising
For any identity wonks out there, a tipping point is likely to be reached in 2025: nearly 50% of online (aka Google) users have IPv6 availability today, and the numbers continue to climb.
This is good news, because IPV6 has the opportunity to solve for a number of targeting and measurement woes on CTV in particular. Unlike IPV4, which bundles devices within one household identifier because of limited available addresses and NAT protocol, with IPV6, the protocol enables you to have more consistent individual device level identification within the household, improving targeting accuracy, enabling frequency capping, cross-device targeting, and more accurate attribution. With added accuracy, brands can also expect less fraud and higher brand safety.
Though some have raised concerns around privacy implications of leveraging IP addresses, this can be controlled for with adequate consent capture and ethical usage standards, which are especially important with the rise of clean rooms and newer privacy enhancing technologies that obfuscate or encrypt data as part of a cohort. Given the increasing reliance on IP targeting on CTV, it’s hard to use this argument as a sole reason not to adopt IPv6. I believe it's a more effective tool for the future and we need to put more effort into adoption.
Despite these obvious improvements over today’s CTV advertising market based on IPv4, we’ve historically seen only a small proportion of signals with IPv6 data flowing through digital advertising pipes.
IPV6, The Sleeper Solution to Better Identity
IPv6 came about because the world was about to run out of IP addresses based on the limits of IPv4. It also is designed to improve privacy and security. Despite these benefits, adoption of IPV6 has been relatively slow since its launch 20 years ago.
Instead, companies from device makers to ISPs to data companies stayed focused on IPv4 as the world quickly ran out of IP addresses, instead developing complex workarounds to keep using IPv4. The world now needs more than 20 billion IP addresses to account for all internet devices, yet there are only about 3-4 billion unique IPv4 addresses available. It is estimated that because of this mismatch, any given IP address represents an average of seven devices (simple math, but worth pointing out!) For a typical household, that means a single IP address is being used for one or two TVs, a couple of smartphones, laptops or tablets.
The IP address scarcity of IPv4 has forced advertisers to rely on shared or rotated public IPs, which can expire or summarize multiple devices under a single address. For the advertising industry, this lack of precision severely hampers the ability to perform accurate attribution, cross-device tracking, and frequency capping.
IPv6 addresses these issues head-on by providing a virtually unlimited pool of IP addresses. With 128-bit addresses, IPv6 can support an exponentially larger number of devices, ensuring each household device can have its unique identifier. This granularity enables advertisers to track devices and households more accurately while maintaining a level of privacy by not relying solely on transient or summarized public IPs.
Another significant advantage of IPv6 is its stability and consistency. Unlike IPv4, which requires frequent updates to stay current, IPv6 offers more durable identifiers that allow advertisers to build long-term attribution models. For example, IP verification data from ISPs can help advertisers and tech companies to leverage deterministic IPv6 data to connect devices within a household more reliably, enabling advertisers to deliver highly targeted and frequency-capped campaigns.
Addressing CTV’s Unique Challenges
The adoption of IPv6 is particularly urgent in the CTV advertising landscape. CTV has been a goldmine for advertisers, offering unparalleled reach and engagement, but it is also rife with challenges, including fraud and misidentification. Devices incorrectly identified as CTV—I’ve seen everything from mobile phones to industrial machinery labeled as "CTV" devices as —can introduce noise and inaccuracies in the data. These challenges stem from the limitations of current identification methods, which often rely on IP addresses and timestamps, both of which are prone to error under IPv4.
IPv6’s expansive address space can mitigate these issues by allowing advertisers to target more precisely. Combining signals around a more stable device level IP identifier would help companies better analyze which devices are true CTV based on activity patterns. By incorporating device characteristics and user-agent data, IPv6 makes it easier to validate the authenticity of CTV devices and measure their activity. And platforms can leverage authenticated traffic—where users consent to data collection—to ensure that their campaigns are privacy-safe and free from fraudulent impressions.
Despite its advantages, IPv6 adoption in the ad tech industry has been slow. Many ad tech platforms, still deeply entrenched in IPv4, have resisted the switch due to perceived costs and the inertia of existing systems. Additionally, adoption is often tied to the readiness of ISPs and router technologies. Older hardware and infrastructure that do not support IPv6 create friction points that discourage broader uptake. And IPv6 does require new privacy protocols. Users need to opt in and data needs to be secured.
Despite the pain of making the switch to IPv6, the ad tech industry will benefit from taking proactive steps to integrate it into their data collection and transaction systems. Advertisers should connect with data providers to see what IPv6 data they can access to get things flowing. Additionally, certain partners like ISPs, while they don’t typically sell the data directly due to privacy concerns, can help verify IP and timestamp data for much better results.
The switch isn’t a complete one-for-one trade. Advertisers need to tie IPv6 traffic back to IPv4 to because not all traffic is IPv6 enabled, and so to use IP as a targeting signal, it’s important to have both. Many companies also have stabilization logic in place for IPv4 addresses that they will need to consider once they include IPv6. Such efforts can ensure a seamless transition while maintaining continuity with legacy systems.
The potential benefits of IPv6 adoption are worth the work. With verified, high-quality data, advertisers can achieve the “holistic household” view that has long been the industry’s holy grail. They can not only target audiences more effectively but also deliver better ad experiences through enhanced frequency capping and reduced redundancy. For users, this means seeing fewer repetitive ads and enjoying content that aligns more closely with their preferences, all while preserving their privacy.
[Editor's note: This is a contributed article from TrueData. Streaming Media accepts vendor bylines based solely on their value to our readers.]
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