AdTech players now have a fast, free and future proof device detection solution
London, 15th May 2019 - Today 51Degrees' sub-microsecond device detection solution is granted a European patent, strengthening 51Degrees established patent portfolio. The newly patented technology is particularly suited to large global internet businesses including high volume programmatic advertising and video distribution.
Requests for advertising are more effective when the device screen size, price range, age, or currency of the operating system and browser (among many others) are understood. Publishers and SSPs can maximise revenue by charging more for higher value advertising opportunities and eliminating non-human actors. Advertisers and DSPs can exclude characteristics they're not interested in such as smaller screens or older devices. Advertising content can be optimised for the device resulting in a smooth user experience.
Large AdTech businesses handle in excess of four million programmatic bidding requests per second. The time taken to gain additional information about the device must be as short as possible. 51Degrees patented techniques provide sub-microsecond performance.
The solution works by storing hash values associated with critical segments of HTTP User-Agent headers. The combination of these numeric identifiers stored in an acyclic graph results in a unique combination for every device, operating system, browser and app. The combination provides an extremely fast and small device detection algorithm which typically provides sub-microsecond performance.
51Degrees implements the patented solution in open source code available for free under the popular Mozilla Public Licence 2 (MPL2) - the same licence used for the Firefox web browser. The licence allows anyone to use the source code under the condition they acknowledge 51Degrees' contribution in their own licences or end-user agreements.
Commenting on the milestone, James Rosewell CEO and founder of 51Degrees stated:
Four years ago AdTech businesses started coming to 51Degrees asking for high performance solutions to address concerns over the future of established vendors whose technology is rooted in the last decade prior to the invention of the iPhone. AdTech businesses are concerned over performance, operating costs, accuracy and global coverage. 51Degrees responded with a lightweight hash based solution providing sub-microsecond performance. Competitors responded by challenging one of 51Degrees granted patents, and failing. James RosewellCEO, 51Degrees
By granting the associated patent in under two years, the European Patent Office's decision reassures customers 51Degrees is genuinely the leading innovator in device detection.