Why Identity Data Goes Stale, and How a Daily Graph Fixes It

Most teams think of their identity graph as a fixed asset: you license it, load it, and use it. But identity data isn't fixed. It decays every day, and a graph refreshed weekly or monthly is always working from an out-of-date picture of your audience.

How fast does identity data go stale?

Faster than most people expect:

• Cookies are short-lived. Our research found the average cookie lasts about 30 days, and many last far less. Every day, a slice of yesterday's cookies stops working and new ones appear.
• IP addresses move. Home IPs get reassigned, and people move between home, office and mobile networks throughout the day.
• Devices change hands. New phones are activated, old ones are reset, and apps reset or limit their advertising IDs.
• Consent changes. Users withdraw or update consent, and those choices must take effect quickly.

A graph built on last month's data can't see new IDs, still holds links that have broken, and may still use IDs whose consent has been withdrawn.

What stale data costs you

• Lost reach. New cookies and devices aren't in the graph yet, so your audience segments quietly shrink between refreshes.
• Wasted frequency. When one person's new cookie isn't linked to their profile, they look like a new user. They see your ad again, and your frequency cap stops working.
• Broken attribution. If a conversion happens on an ID the graph hasn't linked yet, the sale goes unattributed, or gets credited to the wrong channel.
• Compliance risk. A consent withdrawal that takes a month to reach your systems is a problem in any market regulated by GDPR.

What a daily graph changes

A daily graph is rebuilt or updated every day from fresh signals. That means:

• New IDs are linked to existing profiles within a day.
• Links that have broken are removed before they cause wrong matches.
• Opt-outs and consent changes reach downstream platforms on the next delivery.
• Your match rates stay steady instead of dropping between refreshes.

Freshness can't come at the cost of stability, though. A graph that reshuffles itself every day is just as hard to use as one that never changes. The goal is fresh links on top of stable profiles. For most use cases, ROQAD's benchmark is that at least 90% of clusters persist week over week.

Who benefits most

• DSPs get fresher segments and more accurate cross-device frequency capping.
• CDPs can link new online activity to known customers the same day.
• Publishers recognise more of their returning visitors, even after cookie churn.
• Measurement and attribution teams get conversions matched to exposures while the data is still fresh.

How ROQAD's Daily Graph works

The ROQAD Graph is rebuilt every day from 35 European data partners. As of September 2026, it covers 3.58 billion unique IDs (seen in the last 28 days) across 19 European markets, and 92% of connected EU households. Every link is labelled as deterministic or probabilistic, so you always know how a match was made. The graph only uses data with a TCF consent string attached, so consent changes flow through on the next daily build.