For years, the advertising industry has been in various stages of panic about the death of third-party cookies. Audience signals have been getting fuzzier. Intent data has been playing hard to get. Privacy regulations are multiplying at record speed. As a result, marketers have been desperately seeking ways to target audiences in much more sophisticated ways…

Enter “Partner Match,” YouTube’s latest targeting feature.

Partner Match arrives as a response to this existential crisis, offering advertisers a way to leverage first-party data relationships without owning all that data outright. Approved third-party partners can now upload hashed user data (think emails, names, ZIP codes, the usual suspects) which Google then matches to signed-in YouTube accounts. The result? Custom audience lists that advertisers can target across Video Reach campaigns, Video Views campaigns, and Demand Gen campaigns.

Before you get too excited, Partner Match won’t support ad sequences or YouTube Select guaranteed deals. So those dreams of hyper-customized, sequential storytelling to your perfectly matched audience on premium inventory….will have to wait.

To get Partner Match running, advertisers need to: Authorize their data partner, accept the Partner Match terms, and apply the new audience lists during campaign setup.

In summary, Partner Match reflects where digital advertising is heading. As platforms become more protective of user data and privacy regulations tighten, the ability to effectively use third-party partnerships becomes increasingly crucial. This tool creates a middle ground between the wild west of unlimited third-party cookies and the walled garden of strictly  first-party data.

To know more, click here.