New Study Finds IP Targeting Only 13–16% Accurate: What If Your Audience Isn’t Who You Think It Is?
December 16, 2025 - For years, IP addresses have been treated as a standard match key for CTV targeting. But new findings from TruthSet, benchmarking nearly one billion IP records against verified MVPD and ISP household data, reveal that IP accuracy is quietly lingering at alarmingly low levels.
TruthSet’s Findings:
Only 13 percent accuracy for IP-to-postal linkages
Only 16 percent accuracy for IP-to-email linkages
Cross-provider agreement as low as 2.8 percent for email matches
Three times more IPs per household than should exist
Wide inconsistencies in timestamp reporting, with severe underrepresentation of IPv6
This means marketers are often targeting the wrong household or the wrong device, thanks to identity stitched together from unstable and outdated signals. And when the audience layer breaks, performance follows: a $1 media investment can effectively perform like $0.09.
The Ampersand Advantage: Deterministic Accuracy at Scale
Ampersand provides a more reliable path forward. Accuracy isn’t a feature – it’s the foundation of performance. Through our MVPD ownership and partnerships, our addressable and cross-screen solutions are powered by deterministic, authenticated, household-level data sourced directly from MVPD and ISP partners. This ensures a verified and privacy-safe identity framework that is not subject to the volatility of IP-only matching because our data providers are the original source of the IP address itself.
As a result, marketers benefit from verified and privacy-compliant household assignment, reliable cross screen identity, 100% in-target delivery for the audience you actually want, transparent measurement, and stable and proven activation that is not affected by shifting IP signals. This is why our approach consistently outperforms probabilistic solutions that depend on IP as the primary match key.
“Accuracy and scale are the two pillars of effective addressable advertising,” said Justin Rosen, SVP Data & Insights at Ampersand. “While much of the industry still relies on unstable IP based data, Ampersand provides deterministic, privacy-safe household identity that marketers can trust, and that’s what drives real results.”
As cookies and mobile identifiers continue to fade, the industry is entering a new era of identity. The TruthSet findings highlight a major challenge, but they also reveal a clear path forward. Deterministic, authenticated household identity is quickly becoming the new standard for accuracy, accountability, and ROI in CTV. Ampersand is already delivering on this standard today, giving marketers the confidence and clarity they need to invest with certainty.
Learn how Ampersand delivers verified, household-level accuracy across every screen, and why deterministic identity is the new standard for CTV performance. Connect with our team to build a more accurate, future-proof strategy.