Table of Contents
Here is a plain-language reference guide for the key terms used when talking about the Realize ID data advantage.
Identity Infrastructure
Identifier
Any identifier that we can get across the TBLA network that enables us to mark the user and track them across different platforms (see list of identifiers below).
Cluster / Unified ID / RealizeID
- What it does: Group of connected identifiers that represent one user. This is our best proxy for a single persona ID on our network aka every user we can track on our network
- What it’s made of: Cluster id that encodes all the single identifiers we were able to connect in the cluster.
- Industry definition: Standardized identifier across platforms and devices
- Taboola name: RealizeID
- Competitor names: UID (The Trade Desk), ConnectID (Yahoo)
Identity Graph / User Graph
- What it does: Links a user to all their identifiers at scale. It is Taboola’s system for recognizing the same user across devices, browsers, and websites
- What it’s made of: All the clusters of users we hold in the TBLA network
- Industry definition: A database that maps multiple identifiers to a single real person, enabling consistent recognition across devices and sessions.
- Taboola name: Realize Identity Graph
- Competitor names: Identity Alliance (The Trade Desk), Yahoo Identity Graph
Identity Mapping / User Mapping
- What it does: Ability to link multiple IDs to one user across devices and domains. We can map any IDs into our graph and support any integration
- What it’s made of: N/A
- Industry definition: Linking multiple identifiers to one user profile across devices and domains.
Data Spine / Identity Spine
- What it does: The architectural backbone that allows us to have one comprehensive cross-device view of a user.
- What it’s made of: connected set of identifiers that allows fragmented user touchpoints to be resolved into one stable, cross-device profile.
- Industry definition: the persistent, unified identifier that serves as the backbone for an identity graph. It acts as the central connective tissue that stitches together fragmented, anonymous data points (like cookies, device IDs, and IP addresses) into a single, comprehensive view of a consumer.
- Taboola name: N/A
- Competitor names: N/A
Signals (Interests, Behavioural Patterns, Demographic, Location)
- What it does: Signals represent the meta data that we have for each user. This allows the system to reach the right personas, as well as advertisers via our audience targeting toolkit.
- What it’s made of: Signals we have include contextual signals, interests, purchase behaviour, search KWs, mail domains, and demographic
- Industry definition: Observable data points from user behaviour — what people read, search, click, and engage with — used to infer intent and inform ad targeting decisions.
- Taboola name: Signals (see audience targeting toolkit)
User Profile (Who the User Is and What are they Interested In)
- What it does: Provides a comprehensive view of the user e.g. what their preferences and behaviours are, and what they are interested in
- What it’s made of: Collection of all the signals we can place across each cluster
- Industry definition: The aggregated view of an individual built from all available data signals, e,g, content consumption, search behaviour, purchase history, ad interactions — unified across touchpoints.
- Taboola name: User Profile
Identifiers
The below are identifiers that we currently support in our graph which enables us to mark the user and track them across different platforms
Taboola ID
- What it does: our main identifier for users that land on any page that we have our code on page (adv and supply)
- What it’s made of: Cookie. The challenge we have is connecting this across domains due to lack of log-in data. Which is why we need to connect to more persistent identifiers
- Industry definition: N/A. Unique numeric string. Most platforms will have their own ID
- Taboola name: Taboola ID (not spoken about externally)
Yahoo PAXID (internal only)
- What it does: Identifier of a user who’s logged in to Yahoo Mail (or other Yahoo supply if the user is logged in)
- What it’s made of: Deterministic, first-party data collected across Yahoo’s publisher network
- Industry definition: N/A
- Taboola name: N/A
Microsoft UID (internal only)
- What it does: Identifier of a user who’s logged in to MSFT supply (MSN, outlook, etc)
- What it’s made of: Deterministic, first-party data collected across Yahoo’s publisher network
- Industry definition: N/A
- Taboola name: N/A
External ID
Any kind of identifier outside of the Taboola ID (see examples below). Our purpose is to connect different IDs and serve as a bridge.
Hashed Emails (HEM)
- What it does: when a user logs in to a publisher site, the publisher captures their email, which is then hashed. This is the #1 most valuable identifier a publisher can share.
- What it’s made of: e-mail converted into a scrambled, irreversible string. We never see the raw email — only the hash.
- Industry definition: An email address transformed into a fixed-length encrypted string, allowing privacy-safe identity matching across platforms without exposing the raw address
- Taboola name: Hashed Email
MAID (mobile advertising ID)
- What it does: A device-level identifier assigned to smartphones (mostly Android devices)
- What it’s made of: made of a 128-bit alphanumeric string formatted as a Universally Unique Identifier
- Industry definition: A device-level identifier assigned to smartphones (IDFA on iOS, GAID on Android) used for user recognition and ad targeting on mobile devices
- Taboola name: MAID
RampID
- What it does: Replacement for hashed emails from LiveRamp with whom we have an integration
- What it’s made of: A standard RampID is a string of characters formatted into three segments
- Industry definition: LiveRamp’s people-based identifier, built from hashed emails and other deterministic signals, widely used by agencies and advertisers for cross-platform identity resolution and data collaboration.
- Taboola name: RampID
Other Important Terms
Identity and Infrastructure
UID2 (Unified ID 2.0)
An open-source identity standard built on hashed and encrypted email addresses, developed by The Trade Desk as a privacy-conscious alternative to the third-party cookie.
A small tracking file set by a domain other than the one a user is visiting, historically the primary tool for cross-site user tracking — being phased out across major browsers.
Cross-device resolution
The process of deterministically or probabilistically linking multiple devices to a single user, enabling consistent ad frequency, targeting, and attribution across screens.
Deterministic matching
Identity resolution based on a known, confirmed identifier such as a logged-in email — highly accurate but limited to authenticated environments.
Probabilistic matching
Identity resolution based on statistical inference from shared signals (IP address, device type, browser) — broader reach but lower accuracy than deterministic matching.
The process of connecting fragmented user identifiers and signals into a single unified profile of a real person across devices, sessions, and data sources.
Data Collaboration and Privacy
Clean room
A secure, privacy-safe technology environment where two parties can match and analyse overlapping data sets without either side seeing raw user-level data from the other.
Data collaboration
The practice of two or more parties sharing or combining their data assets in a controlled, privacy-safe manner to unlock insights or targeting capabilities neither could achieve alone.
AWS Clean Rooms
Amazon Web Services’ data clean room product, enabling companies to run joint analyses on combined datasets without exposing raw user-level data to the other party.
InfoSum
A data collaboration platform that uses decentralised data bunkers to enable privacy-safe matching and analysis between brands, agencies, and publishers.
LiveRamp
A data connectivity platform that helps companies onboard, match, and activate first-party data across the advertising ecosystem using its RampID identity infrastructure.
Consent Management Platform (CMP)
Software that captures, stores, and communicates user consent for data collection and processing, typically via a cookie banner — required under GDPR and similar regulations.
TCF (Transparency and Consent Framework)
An IAB Europe standard that defines how consent for digital advertising data use is captured and communicated across the programmatic supply chain.
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
EU regulation that governs how personal data is collected, stored, and processed — the most significant privacy law affecting digital advertising in Europe.
GPP (Global Privacy Platform)
An IAB framework for standardising how consent and privacy signals are communicated across markets with different privacy regulations.
Signal Types
A signal derived from the content being consumed at the moment of ad serving — the topic, sentiment, and category of the page — rather than from user identity or history.
A signal derived from a user’s past actions across the web — sites visited, content consumed, ads engaged with — used to model likely future behaviour.
A signal indicating which email services or brand newsletters a user engages with — used to infer brand affinity and competitive intent.
A defined audience of users showing active purchase intent for a specific product or service category, identified through a combination of behavioural and intent signals.
Signals captured via a tracking pixel placed on an advertiser’s website — recording user actions such as product views, add-to-cart events, and purchases.
Demographic
Signals based on declared or inferred attributes such as age, gender, income, or location.
