AdTech is entering a new chapter — one where precision, privacy, and predictive intelligence converge. As advertising marketers navigate fragmented identifiers, signal loss, and growing regulatory complexity, the need for adaptive, privacy-first identity resolution has never been greater. Roqad, an identity solutions provider built for the post-cookie era, is leading this transformation by helping forward-thinking companies connect audiences and data across regions and devices through privacy-safe, future-proof identity solutions.
To explore how Roqad is shaping the next era of digital identity, we sat down with CEO Carsten Frien to learn more about his vision for privacy-conscious innovation and how AI is redefining accuracy, trust, and performance in AdTech.
Q: Identity resolution is evolving rapidly. From your perspective, what are the biggest shifts shaping the space today?
We’ve gone from a cookie-based world to one built on multiple IDs — spanning web and app identifiers, CTV, and publisher IDs. The big change is that identity resolution now needs to be flexible and privacy-led, not tied to one signal.
Another shift I’m seeing is that privacy has moved to the core of how systems are designed. Compliance is no longer a checkbox item; it’s a critical part of the foundational architecture.
Q: How is the push toward privacy-conscious solutions reshaping the way companies think about customer identity?
Privacy rules are pushing identity work into safer, more controlled environments like clean rooms, where data never leaves the owner’s walls. Clean rooms should allow transparency, control, and heightened data protection. That’s a healthy shift for identity solutions and the industry as a whole.
At the same time, companies are realizing that respecting consent isn’t a limitation; it’s a strategy for building lasting trust. When you design your data model with privacy in mind from day one, you can still achieve great performance while staying ahead of regulations.
Finally, there’s an increased focus on measurable quality and data provenance. Today’s marketers want to see how accurate graphs really are, not just talk about scale, and prove it with data.
Q: Looking ahead, what do you envision for the future of identity resolution?
The future of identity resolution is multi-ID and predictive. Identify graphs will connect different identifiers seamlessly across devices and regions, and AI will help predict which links are most likely to be correct, and when to refresh them. That means marketers will get more accurate targeting and frequency controls, without breaching privacy or relying on outdated IDs.
Q: Organizations across the AdTech landscape turn to Roqad to help boost their digital marketing efficiency. What urgent challenges do they face around accuracy, privacy, and cost?
Accuracy and scale are the two biggest pain points for AdTechs and Martechs. As we move further into the era of signal loss, the ongoing fragmentation and complexity of IDs make it increasingly difficult to connect the dots reliably. Privacy concerns follow closely, with global compliance becoming especially complex — particularly in Europe and the U.S., where state laws are evolving rapidly.
The cost challenges we see are driven by inefficiency: running several ID systems with overlapping coverage leads to wasted impressions and campaign budgets. Roqad’s role is to simplify and unify these systems. With one identity graph, built for Europe and North America, we help companies cut waste and improve precision.
Q: Are there areas the industry tends to overlook or underestimate in supporting customers around accuracy, privacy, or cost?
Getting the foundations right in this complex, shifting environment requires thoughtful planning and teamwork. Another area many still underestimate is just how fragmented Europe is — it’s not a single market but 27 distinct ones. Designing with that complexity in mind provides a real competitive advantage.
Ultimately, the key is understanding that identity isn’t the end goal; it’s the enabler for more efficient addressable targeting, activation, and attribution.
Q: How are regulatory changes in different regions influencing innovation in identity resolution?
Regulation is pushing innovation forward more than holding it back. As new laws come into force, we see that the innovation that follows seeks to create a balance between business needs and consumer rights.
Q: How are your customers using Roqad’s technology in ways that excite you?
With Roqad’s recent acquisition of Zeotap Data, we offer brands, agencies and AdTechs a modular, end-to-end solution for customer first-party data enrichment, offline-to-online data onboarding, segmentation, and campaign activation. This full suite of solutions gives our clients the control and flexibility to enrich their CRM and run targeted campaigns safely and efficiently.
Q: What opportunities or use cases excite you most for predictive AI in identity resolution?
Predictive AI opens some interesting doors in the identity resolution space. Near-and medium-term wins include:
-
- Reducing friction in audience planning and campaign buying: Tools that understand the unique requirements of advertisers and campaign managers can streamline these processes. Examples include front-end audience creation and activation tools driven by natural language prompts.
- Developing more custom and personalized audience segments: This can involve merging combinations of audiences to match the specific characteristics of a campaign.
Longer term, AI will become an integral part of the creation of probabilistic identity graphs, which requires large volumes of data plus machine learning to generate models for training.
Q: What’s Roqad’s approach to maintaining trust and transparency with customers while innovating with AI?
As a European company born and raised in Germany, we’ve taken a very privacy-safe approach to our identity products. It will be important for customers to understand our use of AI in the future and how it may affect the usage of their data. To this end, we take a cautious approach and abide by the advertising industry’s IAB Transparency and Consent Framework, along with North American standards including the DAA, CCPA and other state laws.
Q: What specific strengths does Ocient bring to Roqad that enable scalable solutions with data and AI?
Ocient brings the kind of scale and performance we need to run complex identity graphs efficiently.
What really stands out is how the Ocient platform handles large data workloads securely and cost-effectively. That allows us to train and develop AI models faster, without compromising on privacy or compliance.
Ocient’s infrastructure supports privacy-safe computation, allowing us to analyse, predict, and optimise inside controlled environments, which fits perfectly with our privacy-by-design approach.
In short, Ocient gives us the power and flexibility to innovate.
Q: Choosing the right technology partner is critical for success. What capabilities do you look for when evaluating partners?
The capabilities most important to Roqad’s growth and success with customers are:
-
- Reliability and performance: Our partners must be able to handle the scale we operate at.
- Transparency: We like partners who are open about how their technology works and where its limits are. That builds trust.
- Flexibility and modularity: Regulations and data environments change quickly, so we need partners who can adapt with us.
- Privacy: Every partner we work with has to match our privacy-by-design approach; anonymity, consent enforcement, clean data environments, and full compliance with regional regulations.
That’s why our work with Ocient makes sense.