DevCon 2026 Keynote for Developers

Welcome to this session for developers that looks at all the different aspects of 51Degrees in the context of Prebid publishing and advertising.

We're going to look at how we can add device intelligence, IP, and location intelligence to the OpenRTB programmatic ecosystem, and indeed any website.

Then we're going to move into some new features, identifiers, and then how we can implement context validation within the advertising and publishing ecosystem, and how the Model Terms for Marketing developed by Movement for an Open Web and the contributors there underpins the whole thing.

So I'm going to jump straight in with a live code demo.

So I'm going to start by opening up or starting the Prebid server, and then also starting a local web server as well.

So those are now running in the background.

And there's my local publisher coming up, standard CMP, and we're using Professor Prebid to show what's going on the system.

So absolute vanilla deployment that you'll know how to do if you're familiar with Prebid.

What I'm now going to do is rebuild the Prebid JS wrapper to include the 51Degrees RTD module and also the consent TCF modules as well.

So that's going to take a few minutes to compile in the background or build in the background.

So now let's go to how do we actually enable that.

So I've gone to the Prebid developer documentation for 51Degrees, and you can see it's pretty comprehensive.

Don't worry, we're not going to go through this step by step.

You can do this in your own time.

I'm just going to show you the salient points.

So towards the top of this documentation and at various parts throughout the documentation, there's a link to the 51Degrees configuration tool.

So that's already populated with all the properties you need from 51Degrees, covering all the different services that are applicable to Prebid.

So if I go in to look at device, we can see we've got information about price band, release age.

We're not using them today, but I just want to show you the breadth of what's available.

We're looking more at hardware vendor and model and things like that for OpenRTB.

We can look at the connection type.

We can then also look at the location confidence.

So not all IP addresses can be resolved with the same level of confidence.

We can see all the other sorts of information that are available to developers using this solution.

Human probability.

This is based on IP address.

We've got another one I'll show you in a second around human confidence.

We've then got diversity.

So how diverse is the population of browsers that come from a particular IP address or platform and hardware?

For those interested in protecting content, we provide robots.txt that keyed on the usage types.

So you could prevent AIs, for example, but still allow search and monitoring.

When it comes to bot detection, we can look at crawler usage that drives that, and you can use that in real time to put your own decisioning logic in.

We've got identifiers.

We've got three different types.

We've got probabilistic identifiers with global and local scope.

So global would be across the 51Degrees ecosystem.

Local is just for an individual publisher or advertiser, and we do hashed email, random, and probabilistic.

We've got human confidence.

This is high, medium, or low.

This can be used to determine how to treat a particular connection based on what we think the probability of a human is.

But let's move on.

So I've got my properties, those 39 that come with the Prebid configuration, and I'm going to add in my license key.

So this is what you would buy from us, and it would then enable those properties.

And there are different subscriptions that you can see on the website.

We're not going to fill in website domains because this is a demo, but for a production resource key, you would do that.

So we've got that license key, which is what you buy, and we've turned it into a resource key, which we can now use within the demo publisher.

So the first thing I need to do now that we've built a Prebid wrapper with 51Degrees in, is put the resource key into that wrapper, and I've just done that by putting in the configuration.

And what I'm also going to do, because we do a different take on consent dialog boxes and that user prompt, is enable the 51Degrees PMP, a preference management platform.

And with those two changes enabled, I can simply restart the demo.

Now we're being asked a PMP question.

So this is just very simple.

You get three choices.

There's none of the stuff about vendors and all that kind of stuff.

Very simple.

Standard marketing or personalized marketing.

You can choose the two, and as a publisher, if you don't want standard, you could get rid of it and just present the two choices.

I'm just going to need to refresh.

Yeah, there we go.

It's come in.

So if we now go to Professor Prebid, I can now look at the installed modules, and I'm seeing that I've got these extra ones.

So I've got 51Degrees, consent, and the real-time data module running there now in the wrapper.

And that's all configured, otherwise we wouldn't have seen the PMP.

Now let's look at the console and see what's actually happening in the background for the developers.

So if I just refresh that page.

Now I've moved to Pixel.

So I'm just emulating that.

I'm going to need to clear out the data again because it caches very heavily.

Let's just delete that and then rerun the page.

And my demo is not quite as responsive, but you get the idea.

So I've answered the CMP.

Now I'm emulating the Pixel.

In this case, it's Pixel 9.

So I've got the device ID.

So this is the hardware operating system and browser.

I've got the location.

There you go, 51Degrees.

This is actually using a remote desktop in Reading.

And I've got Pixel version 9 there. And all the other information that we need to know.

And we know from the tests we've done, this can increase revenue for publishers by up to 9% when used smartly.

So that's the sort of basic data that we can provide around IP intelligence and device.

But I showed you those IDs earlier.

We enabled them in the selection, but they weren't there in the result.

And that's because in order to get access to IDs, you need two license keys.

One gives you access to the properties, the other enables you to create them for marketing.

And that means that you have passed certain tests with us as a customer around know your customer, and also insurance around data protection insurance.

Because what we're doing is using these Model Terms for Marketing, that I'll explain a little bit more in a minute, in order to deliver some of the improvements, like the different preference management platform, for example.

So you can see there I've put in two license keys, one for normal services and the other for the 51Degrees identifiers.

And if I go back into the developer demo page, I just need to update those resource keys.

One for the PMP and one for the 51Degrees module.

There we go.

Done that.

Now we're going to have to refresh the page again, and I'm going to clear the data to get rid of the cache.

And now we will refresh the page.

We've got the PMP.

I'm not going to show you the mobile emulator this time.

And what we can now do is look at the click to the advertiser, and we can see when we go in there, we've added for this demo, this little icon in the top left-hand corner, and I can now show you some of the information that's being passed across from the publisher to the advertiser.

So I've got the identifier.

I can see it's probabilistic.

I can see that it's allowed for personalized marketing.

I can see that identifier was set from a direct request through the PMP.

I've got a short domain that I can use for validation.

There's a number there that we can use as 51Degrees to identify who we created the identifier for, and we can see that it was created in under a minute.

And then we've got those Model Terms for Marketing.

So that's the contractual clauses that cover the use.

And because we're taking that approach, we can transfer this data from a publisher to an advertiser in a link.

We are covered because both parties are signed up to the Model Terms for Marketing.

So now let's take that URL for the click and move on to a different browser.

And what we can see here is we've got exactly the same information, but it's red.

And the reason it's red is because whilst the signature verification works, the context is different.

We've moved to a different browser.

So even though it's the same device, there's a different browser, and that browser context is different.

So what we might think would be happening in a normal situation is a click wouldn't change browser or app in this way, certainly in the open web environment.

Okay, so you've seen this in practice, and throughout this, there's been the Model Terms for Marketing that I've been talking about.

So let me just flick back to the presentation.

We can talk a little bit more about this.

So basically what you're seeing there with 51Degrees identifiers is they're not personal data.

What we're doing is combining the identifier as covered data with the Model Terms for Marketing, so that together they become non-personal data.

And we've spent a very long time working on this with lawyers, with contributors, people who are interested in this, because we think for low risk data, it doesn't need to be personal data.

We can still establish the value exchange with the user when they come to the site through the PMP.

And indeed, everything I've shown you would work with a CMP.

If you look at the MTM, it matches to TCF purposes, for example.

And the Model Terms for Marketing is what is protecting the data.

So we're using contracts as well as technology.

We're adding things to that identifier that can be used to improve verification, auditability, accountability.

We're combining them together to provide something that provides a great deal of utility.

At the moment, passing that type of data in a click between a publisher and advertiser is very hard to do at scale.

With the Model Terms for Marketing, which are standard terms and conditions, they can be incorporated into the contracts between the parties, and therefore, it just becomes very simple as it's adopted more widely.

So if we move on, let's look at the rules of the Model Terms for Marketing.

So there is a critical rule that everyone needs to understand, and that's pass it on.

So if you have data that's covered by the Model Terms, then when you pass it on to a receiving party, that receiving party has to be bound by the same Model Terms, and so on and so forth.

And it's that feature of the Model Terms for Marketing that enable us to have these identifiers that are non-personal data that flow through quite a diverse supply chain.

Now, what happens if you pass it to someone who is not bound by the Model Terms for Marketing?

Then there's a breach of the Model Terms for Marketing.

If you do it accidentally, you've got 72 hours to rectify.

If not, then you have to publish a notice, and those people or those parties that pass the data for you have to turn you off.

So it's not dissimilar to a breach under TCF.

It's just easier to spot. So the first rule of Model Terms for Marketing is you pass them on.

And the second rule of Model Terms for Marketing is you pass them on.

So if you remember one thing about the concepts of this demonstration in this video, it's the Model Terms for Marketing and the need to pass them on.

And when you enable data with Model Terms for Marketing, you can do some really cool things with it that are just too difficult to do today.

So let's move on to some real publishers.

So our demo is available to you in a easy to consume form.

So if you go to yoursite.51degrees.com, you'll be presented with this screen.

So we can choose one of these publishers.

You can type in any URL.

I'm going to pick on The Guardian.

So what we're now doing is presenting this experience in the context of The Guardian's real website.

So rather than that more complex CMP that would come up typically when you access a publisher, we've got this simple PMP.

We've got standard and personalized marketing exactly like you saw before.

The Model Terms for Marketing describe exactly the language that has to be here for standard and personalized.

So when you see that flag in the identifier, you know exactly the language that was used with the person that was responding to the computer when that happened.

Of course, these identifiers are for the device and the software, they're not for an individual.

And there's lots of restrictions in the Model Terms for Marketing that prevent certain things happening, like re-identification and things like that.

They're very limited, just to the core use cases that are needed to support digital marketing and advertising funded publishing.

So I'm going to click personalized.

Now I've got the option here.

This is a future state, so perhaps a number of publishers wanted to come together and actually avoid repeating that question over and over again, then you can actually set it for all sites.

I complete that.

The advertising is run.

One of the things this is enabling is a significant simplification of the technical stack.

So actually, the advertising here is loading in under a second.

If I then click on the advert, I'm going across to the advertiser, and you get what I showed you earlier, which is all those features exactly like you saw in the code demo earlier.

And if I copy that link and go to another browser, which I'm going to set up Chrome, and I put that in there, then I'm getting my red logo, and we can see there's a mismatch, and we can see again, there's a mismatch with the browser.

So if that link was being used in click fraud, for example, then we would see this happening.

So it's a way of combating some of those things that concern the industry.

Let's go back to the publisher, and I'm going to go into another site.

So let's take Business Insider.

So I come here.

I'm not asked again for the preference question.

Therefore, everything can start quicker and the advertising loaded so much faster.

So what I'm going to do now, if I click in the top left hand corner, I can bring up a QR code.

So if you want to, you can now get your phone out, you can scan that QR code, and then you can take the demo away with you.

But if you want to share it with people as you're showing them and demonstrating what the future could look like with this technology, then that QR code is available to you.

So the key rule for Model Terms for Marketing is that you pass them on, and if you want to access the 51Degrees identifiers for standard or personalized marketing, then there's a special license key you need to get from us, and what that requires is insurance.

So we need to make sure that you've got insurance to cover your liabilities under the Model Terms for Marketing as a business.

And also know your customer.

So if those identifiers were to turn up in a place that they shouldn't, we will at least know who we created it for.

And obviously, what you do with your suppliers is going to be up to you.

So all the things you expect from 51Degrees have been shown.

High quality data, diverse data covering IP, location, device, robots, and humans.

But what we've also added is identifiers that have integrity.

They support verification, time, who created them, where did they come from?

Have they been corrupted?

The context is also valid.

You can determine whether it is the correct device for a particular purpose.

So a browser version might change over time.

A long-lived 51Degrees identifier, it might be fine to accept a change in browser version, but probably not a change in device or operating system.

You've got hashed email, probabilistic identifiers, and random.

Plus, we've got a preference management platform that significantly simplifies the user experience when coming to a site, and where the technology enables can be used to share that preference across multiple sites.

So thank you very much for your time watching.

Have a look at the links under the video and then contact us to find out more and get started.

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