Background
Adform is a multifaceted advertising platform that provides enhanced control and transparency across different advertising operations. The company has created technologies to benefit digital advertisers, agencies, and publishers. These solutions include a Demand Side Platform, an identity solution, and ad serving.
A key factor in any ad tech platform is optimizing the user experience. To achieve this, you must understand the audience.
The Challenge
Before partnering with 51Degrees, Adform maintained their own internal device library. Initially, this worked well, however industry changes put a spanner in the works. New devices, brands, and marketing channels (think connected TVs) or privacy changes (like Google’s User-Agent reduction and User-Agent Client Hints) were heavily impacting Adform’s ability to keep their device library up to date.
It was clear that Adform needed a solution to help them scale, all while providing quality device model targeting and reporting capabilities for their customers.
The Solution
Once the decision was made to use an external device library provider, Adform researched all known device detection vendors.
Our device detection library is updated Monday through Friday by a dedicated team of data analysts. The team only source data from real devices, vendors, and optional anonymous global usage sharing, resulting in data you can trust. We have 2,647,073 device combinations and greater than 99.9% accuracy. You can see how our Device Detection stacks up via our comparisons page.
After reviewing all their options, Adform decided 51Degrees was the provider for them.
After careful consideration, 51Degrees came out on top for meeting our quality, reliability, and performance goals. Jurjen de WalVP, Global Integrations and Compliance, Adform
The Result
Adform made the right choice to outsource their device library to a solution that could keep up with the increasing number of devices.
Each year, Adform are audited for their Media Rating Council accreditation, and working with 51Degrees as a trusted partner has helped to minimize the number of unknown devices. At the same time, Adform’s detection of mobile web, in-app, and desktop environments improved when using 51Degrees at scale.
About 51Degrees
Since 2015, the industry has changed quite a lot. Fundamental changes to device detection and the User-Agent were announced by Google in 2020, and as of 2023, those changes are complete.
Version 4 of 51Degrees has full support for Google’s User-Agent reduction and the new User-Agent Client Hints HTTP request header. Our Device Detection solution can also detect Apple devices, which have also seen device information reduced in the User-Agent.
51Degrees has been at the forefront of industry campaigns via our involvement in Movement for an Open Web, a group campaigning for open competition that benefits all. We’ve also created a Structured User-Agent and User-Agent Client Hints solution to aid ad tech companies following changes to the OpenRTB specification (which also helped Adform achieve support for increased user privacy!)
To join Adform and access our extensive device library, follow our guide to getting started with 51Degrees.