DigiTrust

A neutral, non-profit industry initiative within the IAB Tech Lab ecosystem focused on standardizing digital identity for programmatic advertising

DigiTrust was a non-profit initiative operating under the IAB Tech Lab umbrella that sought to create a standardized, industry-wide identity solution for digital advertising. Founded with the goal of simplifying user identification across the open web, DigiTrust developed a shared, encrypted user ID that publishers, advertisers, and ad tech vendors could use to recognize users without relying on fragmented, proprietary cookie-based systems. The initiative was designed to improve both user privacy and operational efficiency across the programmatic advertising ecosystem. The DigiTrust ID functioned as a neutral, consent-based identifier that could be adopted by any member of the digital advertising supply chain. By centralizing identity in a single, standardized token, DigiTrust aimed to reduce the number of individual tracking calls made on a webpage, thereby improving page load performance while also giving users more transparent control over their data. The project attracted participation from major publishers, DSPs, SSPs, and data companies who saw value in a collaborative, non-commercial approach to identity. Despite its promising vision, DigiTrust was ultimately wound down and its work was absorbed into the IAB Tech Lab's broader Unified ID and identity framework efforts, most notably contributing to the foundation of what became the Unified ID 2.0 initiative led by The Trade Desk and other industry players. DigiTrust's legacy lives on in the industry's ongoing push toward standardized, privacy-compliant identity solutions as the deprecation of third-party cookies accelerated the need for alternatives.