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ID5 partners with Future Today for CTV advertising addressability

Digital advertising identity provider teams with streaming publisher to enhance targeting capabilities across billion ad impressions.

Luis Rijo

• 5 min read
ID5 logo with 2025 design and CTV streaming image showing connected TV advertising technology partnership
ID5 logo with 2025 design and CTV streaming image showing connected TV advertising technology partnership

The connected television advertising landscape gained new momentum on June 5, 2025, when ID5 announced its partnership with streaming publisher Future Today. This collaboration, revealed just three days ago, represents a significant development in addressable advertising technology for the rapidly expanding free ad-supported streaming television market.

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According to the announcement, Future Today operates as a leading streaming publisher and technology provider that specializes in distributing premium, free CTV ad-supported services. The company reaches more than 50 million CTV viewers monthly through its flagship service Fawesome, along with other properties including HappyKids and iFood.tv. These channels consistently rank among the top free channels across nearly every over-the-top consumer platform.

The partnership centers on ID5's identity resolution technology, which the company describes as capable of identifying both authenticated and unauthenticated viewers through various signals. This capability addresses a fundamental challenge in connected television advertising, where traditional persistent identifiers face increasing regulatory scrutiny and technical limitations.

Future Today's streaming inventory encompasses 1.5 billion owned-and-operated CTV ad impressions, which the company has organized into what it calls the Future Today Marketplace. This advertising platform launched to serve Fortune 500 brands seeking to reach audiences with minimal overlap compared to traditional media services. The marketplace leverages advanced buying and measurement solutions to deliver what the company characterizes as incremental reach for major advertisers.

According to Vikrant Mathur, Co-Founder of Future Today, the partnership addresses a specific technical requirement. "The ID5 solution will enable our buy side partners to fully connect with our massive, family friendly viewership, without the presence of a persistent identifier," Mathur stated in the announcement.

The technical architecture underlying this collaboration reflects broader industry shifts toward privacy-compliant advertising solutions. ID5's technology operates by creating identity graphs that can function across different regulatory frameworks without relying on persistent identifiers that might conflict with emerging privacy regulations. This approach becomes particularly relevant given the complex patchwork of state-level privacy regulations governing the United States market.

Lisa Abousaleh, VP of Publisher and Distribution Partnerships at ID5, emphasized the technical challenges this partnership addresses. "Privacy-safe, scalable user identification that can be enabled for logged-in and non-logged-in users alike is critical for future-proofed addressable advertising, especially in a fragmented channel such as CTV," Abousaleh explained.

The timing of this partnership coincides with significant growth in free ad-supported video on demand content consumption. According to the announcement, viewership has continued to accelerate as content discovery mechanisms improve and legacy subscription video on demand services maintain paid tiers even for ad-supported content. This market dynamic creates opportunities for free services like those operated by Future Today to capture audience attention and advertiser investment.

Future Today's content strategy focuses on premium long-form studio-produced movies and television shows, positioning the company as what it describes as the top independent CTV programmer in this category. The company's proprietary cloud-based technology platform manages over-the-top services for hundreds of content owners, producers, distributors, and major media companies. This infrastructure enables rapid deployment of Connected TV channels across devices, often within days according to company specifications.

The integration between ID5 and Future Today addresses specific technical challenges related to non-logged-in viewing environments. Many Connected TV viewing sessions occur without user authentication, creating measurement and targeting difficulties for advertisers accustomed to more deterministic identification methods. ID5's adaptive identity technology attempts to solve this problem by learning and adjusting recognition patterns across media properties, devices, and channels.

Tim Ware, VP Future Today Marketplace, characterized the partnership decision as straightforward given regulatory considerations. "As we prepared to launch Future Today Marketplace, partnering with ID5 was a no-brainer as it provides enhanced addressability without regulatory concerns," Ware stated. The integration promises to deliver improved targeting, measurement, and campaign outcomes for brand marketers while maintaining privacy compliance and viewer experience quality.

The broader implications of this partnership extend beyond the two companies involved. Connected television advertising represents one of the fastest-growing segments within digital advertising, driven by cord-cutting trends and the proliferation of streaming services. However, the medium faces unique technical challenges related to device fragmentation, measurement standardization, and identity resolution across different viewing contexts.

ID5, founded in 2017 by industry professionals, positions its technology as addressing these systematic challenges through what it terms Adaptive Identity technology. This approach differs from traditional cookie-based identification by creating probabilistic connections between viewing sessions and user profiles without storing persistent identifiers on user devices.

The partnership's technical implementation involves integrating ID5's identity signals into Future Today's advertising serving infrastructure. This integration enables programmatic buyers to access Future Today's inventory with enhanced targeting capabilities while maintaining compliance with privacy regulations across different jurisdictions.

For Future Today, this collaboration supports its expansion into premium advertising markets. The company's comprehensive technology portfolio includes video management, content management and publishing, application development and maintenance, cross-channel promotion, advertising capabilities, and monetization tools. The ID5 integration enhances the advertising component of this technology stack.

The announcement comes as the Connected TV advertising market continues consolidating around several key technical standards and identity solutions. Major streaming platforms, advertisers, and technology providers are establishing partnerships that will likely define industry practices for the next several years.

Why This Matters for Marketing Community

This partnership signals important shifts in Connected TV advertising infrastructure that marketing professionals should understand. The collaboration demonstrates how streaming publishers are addressing identity resolution challenges that directly impact campaign targeting and measurement capabilities. For marketing teams planning Connected TV campaigns, this development indicates expanding opportunities for precise audience targeting on free ad-supported streaming services without relying on traditional persistent identifiers.

The integration also highlights the growing sophistication of advertising technology available on independent streaming platforms, potentially offering marketers alternatives to major streaming service advertising inventory. As Future Today's billion-plus ad impressions become more addressable through ID5's technology, marketing teams gain access to premium long-form content environments with enhanced targeting capabilities.

Timeline

  • 2017: ID5 founded by industry experts to develop privacy-focused identity solutions for digital advertising
  • June 5, 2025: ID5 announces partnership with Future Today to enhance addressability across 1.5 billion CTV ad impressions
  • Current status: Integration enables targeting for both authenticated and non-authenticated viewers across Future Today's flagship services including Fawesome

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