Does the withdrawal spell curtains for the independent identity graph before it really got off the ground?

The consortium will now be helmed by LiveRamp, the only original founding member, and Index Exchange, which replaced MediaMath after it pulled out last year due to conflicts with LiveRamp’s IdentityLink product. LiveRamp is the only audience-targeting solution integrated with the consortium cookie pool, despite pledges last year that others would be forthcoming.

There are still 30 or so ad tech companies in the consortium, and its mission to improve match rates and tracking for non-walled garden inventory is still compelling.

But the loss of AppNexus is an ominous sign. For one thing, the shared cookie asset is built on the AppNexus domain, adnxs.com. At launch, the arrangement made perfect sense; AppNexus was committing the most data and product resources, and its cookie pool was the largest to start with.

Oops.



Still, the remaining members face the thorny problem of extracting consortium data from the AppNexus domain space and finding a new home for the ID, according to executives from five consortium participants who have worked on the product.