Key Takeaways
- Adstra’s new ID Connection Strength scoring framework helps advertisers assess identity-link quality before activation, addressing costly waste in programmatic CTV campaigns.
- Joint research with InterMedia found stronger person-linked CTV identifiers improve reach stability and outperform legacy IP-based targeting methods.
Adstra has launched ID Connection Strength (ICS), a configurable scoring framework that gives brands, agencies, and adtech platforms a verified measure of identity link quality before campaign activation.
As part of the launch, Adstra partnered with InterMedia Advertising on a joint research study evaluating identity signal quality across programmatic CTV campaigns and the findings expose a structural flaw that is costing advertisers before a single impression is served.
According to EMARKETER’s December 2025 forecast, U.S. CTV ad spending is projected to reach nearly $38 billion in 2026. Yet Truthset’s 2026 State of Data Accuracy report finds roughly 40% of every open-auction CTV dollar is wasted due to inaccurate identity data.
CTV Identity Waste Is Becoming a Bigger Cost Problem
Andy Johnson, Chief Data Officer of Adstra, noted that CTV buying has become incredibly sophisticated, but too often the identity signals underneath it have not kept pace.
“A campaign can have the right strategy, creative, DSP and frequency controls, yet still waste spend if the ID being activated is not reliably connected to a real person or household,” said Johnson in a statement. “ID Connection Strength gives buyers a transparent, actionable way to evaluate identity quality before activation, so they can protect budget, improve reach and make every impression work harder.”
How Adstra’s ID Connection Strength Score Works
ICS scores the strength of the connection between a digital identifier and a verified person or household across five dimensions: recency, frequency, signal integrity, congruency, and cardinality. Scores run from 1 (highest connection strength) to 6 (lowest) and cover every major identifier type: HEMs, UID2s, MAIDs, CTV IDs, TTD Cookies, and IPs.
Unlike standard match rates, which only confirm that an ID connected, ICS measures whether that connection is reliable, recent, and tied to a real person. Every score is calculated from user-consented signals within Adstra’s Match Partner Network and validated by a third-party fraud prevention provider.
Study Finds Stronger Identity Links Improve CTV Reach Stability
The joint study, which deployed ICS across programmatic CTV campaign data, found that verified person-linked CTV IDs produced significantly more stable reach and frequency metrics across every campaign delivery window tested. Key findings include:
- Just 23% of residential IP addresses ultimately reached the intended geographic target when targeted without ICS guidance, suggesting significant limitations in commonly used downstream IP-based targeting methodologies
- 71% of CTV IDs with high ICS scores maintained their link to the same person across measurement windows
- CTV-to-person identifiers showed a 24% stability premium over legacy IP mapping (71% vs. 57%), translating directly into more durable audience reach across the full campaign flight
Many marketers still view capabilities like geo-targeting, household targeting, and identity-based activation as largely deterministic, according to David Nyurenberg, SVP of Digital at InterMedia Advertising. The reality is that the underlying signals powering those capabilities are often dynamic, probabilistic, and subject to significant degradation over time.
“When those signals weaken, the impact extends far beyond targeting accuracy. It affects reach, frequency management, measurement, attribution, and ultimately confidence in campaign outcomes. As an industry, we do ourselves a disservice when we ignore these realities because they challenge long-held assumptions,” said Nyurenberg. “The solution is not to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. The solution is to confront it directly with greater transparency, better measurement, and more rigorous standards for evaluating identity quality.
“That’s what makes ICS so valuable. It gives advertisers a practical framework for understanding the strength of the identity connections they are activating against before media dollars are spent, rather than discovering those weaknesses after a campaign is already in market.”
Adstra’s ID Connection Strength is available now as part of the Conexa Identity Network.
