About PAIR (Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation) (Beta)

PAIR (Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation) is a secure and privacy-safe way for advertisers and publishers to match their first-party data for marketing use cases via advanced data encryption methods without the reliance on third-party cookies. 

To get started, review the publisher requirements, and then contact your supported data clean room provider. By default, sending PAIR IDs on web ad requests is enabled in Ad Manager. 

Jump to the following section:

• Benefits of PAIR
• How does PAIR work?
• Data clean room integration
• Publisher requirements to deliver a campaign using PAIR
• Limitations
• Manage sharing of PAIR IDs

Benefits of PAIR

• Advertisers and publishers maintain ownership and fully control the data they share. Data can’t be pooled to create profiles.
• PAIR’s advanced encryption design protects against data leakage and prevents tracking users across the web.
• Publishers and advertisers have the choice of setting inventory, auction types, and desired CPMs for monetization controls.
• Decentralized PAIR protocol is integrated via supported third- party clean room providers.

How does PAIR work?

Both the advertiser and publisher first-party data is encrypted three times with three different encryption keys: an advertiser key, a publisher key, and a key shared between the advertiser and publisher.

These keys are unique for every advertiser-publisher relationship. Each participating entity has access to up to two of the keys. At no point in the workflow does any one party have access to all three keys to perform reverse decryption back to the original raw ID.

Data clean room integration

Because PAIR is advertiser-publisher specific, unique PAIR encryptions must be generated for every PAIR relationship. The usage requirement with a supported clean room partner ensures that the designated advertiser and publisher commutative encryption keys stay in their respective advertiser and publisher clean room instances. Neither the advertiser nor publisher can understand each other’s shared encrypted datasets.

Currently supported data clean room partners:

• LiveRamp
• Infosum

Publisher requirements to facilitate a campaign using PAIR

• You must be working with a supported data clean room. Each clean room manages their respective publisher and advertiser lists, and provides a matchmaking service.
• In web environments, publishers using the Prebid User ID Module must add the PAIR ID sub-module to their Prebid.js packagein order to pass PAIR IDs on bid requests.

Limitations

• At the beta stage, PAIR support is limited to web environments. Guidance for sending PAIR IDs in app and CTV environments will follow later. 
• Clean room interoperability is not currently supported, meaning publisher and advertiser pairings will need to execute a PAIR test using the same clean room provider.
• We cannot provide match rate estimates ahead of time. Each PAIR relationship will be between a single publisher and a single advertiser. Therefore, every relationship pairing will produce a match rate that is unique to the consented first-party datasets within the relationship pairing that the clean room will provide.
• Ad Manager reporting is not available at this time. To verify you are sending PAIR IDs on ad requests, you will need to use Developer tools.

Manage sharing of PAIR IDs

By default, sending PAIR IDs on ad requests is enabled. If you have followed the facilitation requirements and the generation of PAIR IDs is correctly set up on your inventory, no further action is necessary.

To update your PAIR ID settings:

1. Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
2. Click Delivery and then Demand channel settings. 
3. Under Publisher data sharing, click Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation (PAIR).
4. For each available demand channel, choose an option:
   • To allow PAIR ID sharing, turn the switch on .
     This is the default setting. 
   • To not allow PAIR ID sharing, turn the switch off .

Learn more about demand channel settings.