Meet Katie Swanson, Manager, Email Identity Performance

Identity 101

Identity in advertising can feel confusing, but it’s surprisingly simple. Identity is knowing who’s visiting your site because they’ve chosen to share their email or subscribe, not because they’re being tracked around the web by a cookie.

This shift from cookies to identity is changing how advertisers decide where to spend money. When advertisers know they’re reaching real people who’ve opted in—readers who genuinely care about your content—they trust your site’s value. That confidence means they’re willing to pay more for ad space, which boosts your revenue.

And because identity is built from consent, your readers’ data stays safe. They’re in control of what they share, and you’re rewarded for the authentic audience you’ve built.

In short: identity is how creators turn trust and consent into stronger, privacy-safe earnings. Katie explains more below!

Email identity can be a nebulous concept for people who aren’t immersed in it. How do you talk about your job with someone you just met? 

First, I say that Raptive helps independent creators and publishers make money while they sleep, through customized ad placements on their websites. I always tell people, “Don’t get mad if you see advertising on the internet. You’re probably paying someone’s grocery bill or mortgage.” 

And from there, I say that advertisers need information about audiences to make confident bids for ad space on creator and publisher websites. The more information they have, the more confident they are, which means they place higher value on the ads. 

Raptive’s email identity technology helps creators and publishers build “identified traffic,” which means visits from readers who have subscribed to a newsletter or chosen to share their email with a site. We pass that information to advertisers so they can understand who they’re reaching in a privacy-safe way. That all drives higher earnings for creators without compromising the audience’s data. 

What sets Raptive’s email identity approach apart from other ad management companies? 

We have really, really good data, and our team members are naturally curious people. When they have a wealth of data to dig into, they’re able to build a story from it. From there, we see how the story can change, and how we can shape what we want the result to look like, which is a balance between reader experience and revenue. 

We work together to match up what we know about our ad code, tech, identity solutions, and partnerships, then figure out how to get the best results. Raptive creators and publishers with a majority of U.S. traffic typically have 70-90% identified traffic at this point. If a site is seeing lower identified traffic, I’ll go through and see if they’re using all of our strategic solutions and have a conversation with them about how to strengthen their approach. 

It seems like we’ve finally moved beyond the will-they-won’t-they discussion around Google removing third-party cookies from Chrome (they won’t). Has that been replaced by a new hot topic? 

We know that Google is always going to be able to change its mind about anything.

We’re always going to advocate for our creators and publishers to make sure they have ownership of their revenue, no matter what Google does.  

The conversation is no longer about cookies, but about identity. Advertisers understand that identifying your readers is valuable, and also understand that we need to respect reader privacy. That’s where the conversation is changing. 

How does that shift from cookies to identity show up in the day-to-day work you do with creators?

Everything we do to identify traffic is consent-based: it comes directly from readers who’ve opted in, not from tracking them across the web. That’s what makes it compliant and privacy-safe while still helping creators grow their revenue.

We have a nice Rolodex of identity solutions now, where a hashed, privacy-safe email ID can be set with email signups and re-verified over time with newsletter links. And for sites with Cloudflare Worker in place, first-party cookies are set for up to 400 days. All of this together results in consistently higher CPMs for creators and publishers. 

So much of email identity is about understanding your audience. How can paying attention to reader behavior change the way creators think about email performance and engagement?

You’ll always see better performance when you send readers to pages where they can engage. Readers who land on your site via email behave differently than those who come through search. 

They may open their email in the morning with a cup of coffee; they’re not in the kitchen ready to cook something. So you may not see much performance from that. But that afternoon, they may remember that recipe. Next time they run to the store, it’s to get ingredients for it. Then they’re re-engaging when they actually sit down to cook the recipe or work through the project. 

So when you look at your email data, it’s often better to get a larger slice of data, because you’ll get the bigger picture of its actual performance. 

How does your own creative background influence the way you think about the creators you work with?

I love painting. With three kids I don’t get to it as often, but I used to call it my “creative 2” x 4”.” This feeling would hit me out of nowhere that I needed to paint something, right now. But then there’s the other side of my brain that loves to create a story out of data. That helps me connect with creators, because I understand how they have to balance that creativity and structure.

I know they’re not just thinking about how to make my life easier through their content. It’s much more than knitting a blanket—which takes a lot of time on its own—it’s writing out every step in the pattern and doing it in a way where others can produce similar results. I look at their sites and I know it’s not just a creative endeavor; it’s also a lot of technical work, and I really appreciate what they’re able to do.