Intent IQ Launches BidPulse℠, Bringing New Transparency to Identity Accuracy in Programmatic Advertising

New measurement methodology reveals significant accuracy gaps among leading identity providers and provides a transparent framework to independently evaluate results

NEW YORK, Oct. 08, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Intent IQ, a leader in identity resolution, today announced the launch of BidPulse™, a patent-pending methodology for deterministically measuring the accuracy of online identifiers associated with programmatic bid requests. Available at bidpulse.org, BidPulse provides ongoing measurement of identity accuracy across leading ID bridging providers and gives the advertising industry a new way to independently assess the quality of identity signals used for targeting, frequency capping and attribution.

Online identifiers associated with a bid request allow advertisers to access audience information and make decisions about whether and how much to bid on an impression. Advertisers expect those identifiers to represent the device generating the bid request, other devices used by that individual, or members of the same household. When an identifier is incorrectly associated with a device from a different household, however, advertisers can make bidding and targeting decisions based on an audience that is not actually present, leading to wasted advertiser budget.

BidPulse was developed to measure the extent to which the audience is misidentified and budget wasted.

The methodology compares the geolocation of a bid request, determined through reverse IP lookup of fixed-line IP addresses, with the prior 30-day geolocation history of the online identifier matched to the bid request or cookie synced with that identifier. When sufficient location history exists and an identifier or associated cookie has not appeared within a 100-mile radius of the bid request geolocation during the preceding 30 days, BidPulse assumes the identifier is associated with a different household.

Intent IQ uses a 100-mile radius as its primary benchmark to minimize the possibility that variations in reverse IP geolocation could incorrectly classify an identifier as inaccurate. Because the results are stable for Intent IQ regardless of whether a 100-mile, 50-mile, or 25-mile threshold is used, the reverse IP address lookup appears to have a high level of accuracy. Results are provided on bidpulse.org, not only for the 100-mile threshold, but for 50-mile and 25-mile thresholds as well.

“Online identity is the foundation of ad targeting, attribution and frequency capping, yet the industry has historically had limited ability to independently measure whether the identity signals being used are actually accurate,” said Roy Shkedi, Chairman of Intent IQ. “By measuring identity accuracy deterministically, BidPulse moves the industry from guesswork to science. We’re excited about what this does for the industry and invite others to compare their own analysis with ours.”

BidPulse Finds Wide Accuracy Gaps Among Leading ID Providers

Intent IQ has been tracking the leading ID bridging providers for more than a year, including LiveIntent, ID5 and Intent IQ itself.

BidPulse uses two complementary scores to measure ID provider accuracy. The Strict Accuracy Score classifies an entire bid request as inaccurate if any identifier associated with a provider falls outside the specified geographic threshold. The Proportional Accuracy Score evaluates all of a provider’s IDs within a bid request and measures the percentage that fall within the geographic threshold.

At the 100-mile threshold, Intent IQ recorded a 93% Strict Accuracy Score and 97.7% Proportional Accuracy Score. LiveIntent recorded scores of 46.6% and 51.6%, respectively, while ID5 recorded scores of 34% and 33.9%.

Results remained directionally consistent as the geographic threshold narrowed:

The Strict Accuracy Score reflects the potential impact of even a single incorrect ID. A single ID associated with a household outside the geographic threshold can open the bid request to a new set of advertisers and advertisements seeking to target the incorrect household audience represented by that ID. For example, ID5’s 34% Strict Accuracy Score at the 100-mile threshold means that 66% of ID5-enriched bid requests include at least one ID5-matched ID from a household more than 100 miles away from the bid request’s location.

The Proportional Accuracy Score provides a different view by measuring the share of a provider’s IDs within each bid request that meet the geographic accuracy threshold. For example, LiveIntent’s 40.8% Proportional Accuracy Score at the 25-mile threshold means that 59.2% of the LiveIntent-matched IDs in each bid request are more than 25 miles away from the bid request’s location.

To further illustrate the distinction between the two measures, in a bid request containing 10 bridged IDs from a provider, if four are more than 100 miles away, the Strict method counts the entire bid as inaccurate, resulting in a 0% Strict Accuracy Score, while the Proportional method reports it as 60% accurate. Each incorrect ID may introduce a distinct incorrect audience from another household or location, potentially inflating the bid’s apparent value by as much as 4x. The percentage accuracy of each bid is averaged across the total set of bids over a given time period to determine the provider’s overall Proportional Accuracy Score.

Independent Verification and Industry Access

In addition to Intent IQ’s year-long tracking, an external software expert also implemented the BidPulse methodology using Intent IQ’s data to independently replicate the results.

Intent IQ is now making BidPulse available to the broader advertising industry through bidpulse.org. The site provides continuously monitored results as well as historical data beginning January 1, 2026, allowing companies to track identity accuracy over time and compare performance across providers and geographic thresholds.

Intent IQ invites identity providers, publishers, ad platforms and other industry participants to compare their own results with BidPulse findings and independently verify BidPulse’s identity accuracy measurements.

Companies can access BidPulse by visiting bidpulse.org and entering a company email address. The complete BidPulse methodology is detailed in the white paper accompanying this release here.

Intent IQ
Silicon Alley Media
alex@siliconalley-media.com