SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Velti (NASDAQ: VELT), the leading global provider of mobile marketing and advertising technology, today announced the Open Device Identification Number (“ODIN”) Working Group, a consortium focused on developing an alternative secure anonymous device identifier for the mobile advertising industry.
Several of the world’s top mobile thought leaders have joined Velti to form the ODIN Working Group, including Jumptap, RadiumOne, mdotm, StrikeAd, Smaato, Adfonic and SAY Media.
“By creating industry standards and best practices through ODIN, leaders in the mobile advertising industry will have a better foundation for providing consumers with targeted and relevant content in a safe and secure manner,” said Krishna Subramanian, Chief Marketing Officer of Velti.
The ODIN Working Group has been working to provide a solution to Apple’s signal of deprecating the use of UDIDs and creating an industry standard for mobile device identification. The current ODIN solution creates an ID derived from the MAC address and is obfuscated to protect user privacy. ODIN is intended to be a number designed to uniquely identify users’ mobile devices in a convenient, interoperable manner, and the goal for ODIN is to be anonymous, consistent and secure:
- Anonymous: A device’s ODIN would not encode any additional information beyond differentiating it from other ODINs. SHA-1 (secure hash algorithm) would be used so that it is ‘computationally impossible’ for the original ODIN to be traced back to the hashed ODIN, meaning it cannot be reversed to connect targeting or installation information to a particular user.
- Consistent: ODIN would provide a standardized format for identifying devices regardless of software platform. Thus iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and future devices would all use the same format.
- Secure: The ODIN specification considers device identifiers to be personal information and details precautions in its transport accordingly. Additionally, even if the identifier were to be captured no personally identifiable information would be revealed beyond a unique number.
“Our company fully supports the development of ODIN as a device identification method to run Cost-Per Install campaigns,” said Sourabh Niyogi, CEO of MdotM, a leading mobile Demand Side Platform. “Advertisers can continue to track their campaigns as UDIDs are fully deprecated, allowing them to continue focusing on running scalable and profitable performance-based campaigns.”
Anonymous device identifiers benefit the mobile ecosystem because they allow for anonymous personalization, ad frequency capping, and verification of application installations. The ODIN Working Group is actively working with leading privacy organizations including TrustE (TRUSTed Mobile Ads, the first unified mobile ad privacy management solution) and Evidon to ensure the highest levels of consumer privacy.
ODIN is an industry-wide working group not permanently tied to one technology. The current solution is another important step by the industry in creating a more secure and efficient approach to consumer privacy. The Working Group acknowledges that an industry wide opt-out is important to provide to consumers and is a top priority. A commitment to helping address industry privacy issues and to proposing solutions to privacy concerns that evolve as the industry and technology evolve is at the forefront of the Working Group. For more information on ODIN or if you are interested in becoming part of the group, please visit http://www.odinmobile.org.
About ODIN
The ODIN Working Group is a non-profit industry consortium of leading mobile developers and service providers focused on establishing and standardizing anonymous device identification privacy practices. ODIN-1 is being developed as a secure, anonymous device identifier for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. For more information, please visit http://www.odinmobile.org.
About Velti
Velti is the leading global provider of mobile marketing and advertising technology and solutions that enable brands, advertising agencies, mobile operators and media to implement highly targeted, interactive and measurable campaigns by communicating with and engaging consumers via their mobile devices. The Velti platform, called Velti mGage™, allows customers to use mobile and traditional media to reach targeted consumers, engage the consumer through the mobile Internet and applications, convert them into customers and continue to actively manage the relationship through the mobile channel. Velti is a publicly held corporation based in Jersey, and trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol VELT. For more information, visit www.velti.com.