Today, Hightouch launches ID Express — a one-click solution that converts emails and phone numbers into Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) identifiers for privacy-conscious audience targeting and conversion tracking through The Trade Desk.
UID2, pioneered by The Trade Desk, the world's largest independent demand-side platform, is an open-source, privacy-conscious alternative to third-party cookies that helps advertisers achieve precise targeting and measurement across premium publishers, streaming platforms, and retail media networks.
ID Express eliminates technical steps and accelerates UID2 adoption by automatically converting hashed emails and phone numbers into UID2 identifiers under Hightouch's global partnership agreement—no additional contracts or technical setup required.
“ID Express makes it faster and easier than ever for advertisers to put their first-party data to work. By streamlining activation into a simple one-click workflow, Hightouch can help brands unlock the full power of UID2—helping drive more addressable reach, stronger match rates, and smarter campaign optimization on The Trade Desk platform.”
Jay Goebel
Vice President, Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk
What makes ID Express different
UID2 offers clear privacy and performance benefits. Hightouch’s ID Express solution is designed to help enterprises realize those benefits faster by eliminating technical steps and streamlining access through our global UID2 partnership agreement.
- Streamlined UID2 access. The Trade Desk customers using Hightouch’s Composable CDP or Match Booster products can activate UID2 through Hightouch’s direct partnership with The Trade Desk—no additional contract required.
- One-click setup. Rather than requiring custom code, event triggers, or engineering-heavy workflows, ID Express reduces UID2 activation to a simple field mapping, making it accessible to marketing teams without a deep technical lift.
- Works across audiences, conversions, and marketplace integrations. Customers can use ID Express to sync first-party audiences for targeting and suppression, conversion events for measurement and optimization, and third-party marketplace audiences for monetization. Whether you’re a media buyer or seller, your data activation strategy is supported.
- Works from any supported data source. ID Express works with all of Hightouch’s supported data sources, including BigQuery, Databricks, Microsoft Fabric, Snowflake, and Trino.
- Match Booster integration. ID Express integrates UID2 seamlessly into Hightouch's data onboarding product, Match Booster, so that you can streamline activation and increase match rates. Better audience addressability improves first-party targeting and suppression, while better conversion data improves Kokai’s AI-optimization algorithms and generates more accurate attribution reports.
“Privacy-conscious targeting and measurement isn't just a technology problem—it's an operational one too. ID Express eliminates the need for technical setup or additional contracting, helping make privacy-conscious audiences and conversion events fast and straightforward to activate.”
Ian Maier
AdTech Lead at Hightouch
How it works
ID Express converts hashed emails and phone numbers to UID2 in-flight, before passing to The Trade Desk. This eliminates the need to copy sensitive customer data into a third-party platform, eliminates technical setup requirements, and maximizes match rates by consolidating multiple identifiers into a single audience or conversion feed.
1. Create an audience and sync to The Trade Desk
Use Hightouch’s visual audience builder to define custom audiences for suppression and targeting, or to create a conversion event feed for optimization and measurement. With Hightouch’s Composable CDP, audiences are defined using the customer data directly available in the customer’s cloud data warehouse without copying or storing it in a separate system.
ID Express supports four use-cases when sending data to The Trade Desk:
- Conversion events - Send online and offline events to The Trade Desk to measure campaign performance and optimize Kokai’s decisioning algorithms. ID Express supports conversions for first-party, third-party, and merchant data.
- First-party audiences - Target first-party audiences to deliver more relevant ads and suppress existing customers from acquisition campaigns, reducing wasted spend.
- Third-party audiences - Monetize audiences through The Trade Desk’s third-party data marketplace, without having to pay additional CPM fees to middlemen.
- Opt-out syncs - Send universal opt-out requests for first-party audiences, third-party audiences, and merchant data.
2. Map emails & phones to ID Express fields
Convert emails and phone numbers into UID2s by simply selecting those data points in Hightouch’s field mapping interface:
- Hashed email → UID2
- Hashed phone number → UID2
Hightouch uses hashed identifiers when translating to UID2. If your email or phone number attributes are not hashed already, Hightouch automatically detects unhashed data and hashes it for you.
Customers can choose to map one or both fields to maximize match rates. They can also map other non-PII identifiers alongside these fields for additional reach, including Mobile Ad IDs (MAIDs) and The Trade Desk IDs (TTIDs).
3. Hightouch converts PII to UID2s in-flight to The Trade Desk
At sync time, Hightouch translates PII into UID2s. Hightouch then shares only the UID2 identifiers downstream with The Trade Desk, excluding the email and phone data.
If non-PII identifiers like MAIDs and TDIDs are also mapped, Hightouch will recombine those identifiers with the UID2s and send all of them to The Trade Desk to maximize match rates.
The Trade Desk then processes the UID2s and other IDs and makes them available as audiences and conversion events. Audiences can then be used to target and suppress devices across the open internet, and conversion events can be used to measure campaign results and optimize ad performance by providing better data to Kokai’s AI systems.
Media buyers and sellers are accelerating activation with ID Express
ID Express is particularly helpful for advertisers in regulated industries, privacy-conscious enterprise brands, and businesses that monetize data through off-site media networks. Today, customers across every category are unlocking the value of UID2 with Hightouch.
A top quick-service restaurant activated UID2 audiences in days
A leading national QSR chain was looking for a solution to improve attribution and reach across its paid media campaigns with The Trade Desk. They had rich first-party data from their mobile app and loyalty program and wanted to use UID2 to sync those enhanced audiences and conversion events in a privacy-conscious way.
But after a thorough evaluation, they found that traditional CDPs and data onboarding platforms would require months of implementation to migrate data from their warehouse to a standalone platform, and more time to set up an integration that demanded extensive engineering work.
Instead, the brand chose to fast-track activation with Hightouch. Using ID Express and Match Booster, the brand was able to activate privacy-conscious audiences directly from its data warehouse in a matter of days. Hightouch’s warehouse-native approach eliminated the need for data migration, Match Booster improved attribution accuracy and audience reach, and ID Express enabled the data to be shared using privacy-conscious UID2 identifiers while eliminating the need for additional implementation work.
A leading company in a highly regulated industry unlocks privacy-safe targeting for the first time
For the first time, a rapidly growing US-based company in a regulated industry can target and suppress first-party audiences in a privacy-conscious way through ID Express.
The company was able to translate emails and mobile phone numbers into UID2 identifiers in a few clicks, without relying on a technical team to get set up. They are now effectively suppressing active customers from their acquisition campaigns on The Trade Desk, which has reduced wasted spend and improved ROAS.
Get started today
Privacy-conscious targeting and measurement have been too complex for too long. With ID Express, you can match audiences and conversion events to The Trade Desk with UID2 in just one click. No additional contracts, technical steps, or complex workflows.
To learn more about ID Express and see it in action, book a demo with our team.
