As cookies crumble, some ad tech players are quietly proving they don’t need them. Case in point: Intent IQ and EXTE. The two companies announced that their partnership has led to a 73% jump in revenue from cookieless inventory—a result that challenges the industry’s skepticism about post-cookie monetization.
EXTE, a global ad tech platform supporting more than 800 publishers and handling a staggering 700 billion ad requests per month, has been using Intent IQ’s privacy-first identity resolution technology since late 2024. The results, both companies claim, speak for themselves: stronger match rates, sharper targeting, and more addressable reach—all without leaning on third-party cookies.
Why This Matters
For years, the looming death of cookies has been the ad industry’s favorite doomsday narrative. While Google keeps delaying the inevitable, publishers and advertisers have scrambled to find scalable alternatives that won’t tank revenue. Many solutions promise privacy compliance, but few have shown real performance gains. A 73% revenue boost is hard to ignore.
EXTE’s strategy hinges on Intent IQ’s deterministic identity tech, which can resolve users across browsers, devices, and channels in real time. That means advertisers can still find and measure audiences with precision—even when cookies or mobile IDs are off the table. In practice, it turns what was once considered “waste” inventory into a valuable revenue stream.
Industry Context
The broader market has seen a rush of identity solutions—LiveRamp, The Trade Desk’s UID2, and Neustar’s Fabrick among them—all competing to be the post-cookie standard. Intent IQ is staking its claim by emphasizing privacy-first, deterministic matching rather than probabilistic guesswork. By integrating directly into EXTE’s full-stack infrastructure, the solution gains scale and credibility with publishers looking for revenue stability.
The Bigger Picture
EXTE positions itself as a future-proof platform, already offering dynamic creative optimization, contextual targeting, and programmatic delivery. With Intent IQ baked in, it can now extend these features seamlessly across both cookie and cookieless environments. In other words: advertisers don’t need two playbooks anymore.
As Alex Martinez, Chief Strategy Officer at EXTE, put it, the mission is “measurable results across the entire funnel.” Intent IQ’s Roy Shkedi was blunter: privacy-first identity isn’t just essential—it’s a performance driver.
That’s the line publishers and brands want to hear. Because if cookieless inventory can actually outperform the cookie era, the so-called identity crisis might look less like a crisis and more like an upgrade.
