Data & identity · also called IP
IP address (in advertising)
In advertising, an IP address is the network address a device uses online, used for rough geolocation, household matching, frequency capping and fraud detection, and treated as personal data in many laws.
Every device connecting to the internet has an IP address, typically assigned by its internet provider or mobile carrier and often shared by everyone in a home. Ad systems see it in every request.
IPs have several uses in advertising: approximate geotargeting (country and city), linking devices on the same home network for household targeting and probabilistic matching, and above all fraud detection. IP reputation, known data-center ranges, proxy and VPN detection and unusual volumes per IP are core GIVT and SIVT signals.
IP addresses are legally sensitive. The EU's top court ruled in 2016 that dynamic IP addresses can be personal data, and they are treated as such under GDPR; California's CCPA / CPRA lists IP addresses as identifiers. Technology is also reducing IP usefulness: Apple's iCloud Private Relay, VPNs, and carrier-grade NAT share or hide addresses. In SSAI and CTV, the IP of the viewer's device must be forwarded by the server, which is exploited in SSAI spoofing.
Think of it like this
An IP address is like a building's street address: it tells you roughly where a letter came from, but not which flat or person sent it.
An example
A fraud vendor sees one IP in Frankfurt generating ad requests for 3,000 "different" smart TVs in an hour; normal homes show fewer than 10, so the traffic is flagged.
Related terms
Geotargeting
Geotargeting is showing ads to people based on their geographic location, from country and city down to postcode or a small radius around a store, using IP addresses, GPS or declared location.
Data center traffic
Data center traffic is ad or web activity coming from IP addresses owned by cloud and hosting providers rather than homes or mobile networks, which usually means automation rather than a person.
Residential proxy
A residential proxy routes internet traffic through real home or mobile IP addresses, making automated or fraudulent traffic look as if it comes from ordinary households instead of servers.
Household ID
A household ID is an identifier representing a home and the devices in it, rather than one person, used mainly in CTV and addressable TV for targeting, frequency capping and measurement.
PII (personally identifiable information)
PII (personally identifiable information) is information that identifies, or can be used to identify, a specific person, such as a name, email, phone number or government ID number.
Sources: GDPR Article 4: definitions, California Attorney General: CCPA, MRC Invalid Traffic Detection and Filtration Guidelines Addendum (2020 update)