Think about the long climb from targeting ads through web browser cookies to connected IDs, and you'll better understand advancements made by Yahoo's ad-targeting strategy, ConnectID and the recent announcement around its integration with Snowflake, a cloud-based data warehouse platform.

The integration is part of a larger commitment to advertisers and addressability, said Gio Gardelli, vice president of ads data products at Yahoo.

"For the past five years, Yahoo has been working to find solutions to measure, target ads and buy inventory when no ideas have been available," he added.

It seems there are more cases where the user does not provide consent or opt-out. The IDs, even if they are present, cannot be used for advertising.

"It's an uncertain territory to explore, because there has not been a solution to sold, end-to-end nonaddressable use cases," Gardelli said.

When asked if any brand is still using cookies, Gardelli admitted that "everybody" still uses them in one way or another.

Many advertisers are not abandoning cookies but using them in conjunction with technology like ConnectID.

"It continues to be a gradual transition as third-party cookie accuracy and scale continues to deteriorate," he said. "We will eventually see reach and spend shift from legacy solutions to new ones. We don't expect advertisers to completely turn them off when still available to drive reach and performance."

The integration of Yahoo ConnectID into Snowflake supports several critical strategies for advertisers that accelerate and optimize campaign performance, including improved personalization and precise user-level targeting on the open internet in near real-time.

It also supports ad suppression to ensure campaigns reach the intended audience without over-delivery while protecting consumer privacy.

This is Yahoo's first integration with Snowflake, but Gardelli said other conversations are in the works including measurement. ConnectID is integrated with more than 55,000 publishers such as Paramount, and NBCUniversal. It's free to any advertising using Yahoo's demand side platform (DSP).

Many advertisers, but some very large in travel and automotive, that work with Yahoo have already invested in Snowflake.

While advertisers in the Yahoo ecosystem can bring in data keyed from cookies, the integration with Snowflake is completely cookieless. Gardelli said this integration does not leverage third-party cookies at all, which means advertisers must leave them behind.