By collaborating with pilot, one of Germany’s leading independent media agencies, Decentriq supports their bold contribution to a wider industry effort to build an open-web ecosystem as a strong and sustainable alternative to the growing dominance of walled gardens.
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A coordinated push to strengthen the open web
A new initiative pioneered by a leading German marketing industry association and major advertisers is giving fresh momentum to the development of an open, privacy-safe digital advertising ecosystem in Germany. As part of this broader collaboration, pilot is playing a central role alongside identity providers like Utiq and netID as well as leading publisher partners including Ad Alliance, Seven.One Media and other premium publishers in the German market.
To enable this cross-ecosystem coordination, pilot is testing Decentriq’s data clean room technology as part of the current trial phase. The goal of this exploratory collaboration is to evaluate how privacy-preserving data environments can support secure cooperation between advertisers, publishers and identity providers. Decentriq’s clean rooms allow these stakeholders to test, activate and measure campaigns while respecting data sovereignty and enabling fair, transparent comparisons to walled-garden performance.
This test-phase collaboration supports pilot’s mission to help advertisers redirect investment toward diverse, high-quality publishers and reinforce the economic foundations of free journalism. As Decentriq’s Sylwia Iwanejko-Sajewska notes, pilot has been “bold enough to organize the media, ID and AdTech ecosystem to demonstrate that there are alternatives possible to the current situation where media dollars are increasingly going to the walled gardens.”
A strategic contribution to an industry-wide effort
The effort to reinvigorate the open web spans the entire German media ecosystem: advertiser associations, identity providers, publishers and agencies alike. pilot stands out within this group not by consistently advocating for openness, collaboration and shared infrastructure, with HORIZONT referring to pilot CEO Kristian Meinken as a forward-thinker in this space.
For pilot, the goal is clear: ensure that Europe’s independent publishers can compete effectively, not only through technology but through coordinated action and transparent measurement. The current test collaboration with Decentriq provides a privacy-safe environment to explore how deterministic IDs and publisher data can be activated more effectively across the open web.
A call for collective progress across the ecosystem
This initiative also highlights an important industry shift: publishers have invested heavily in technology, identity frameworks and quality environments, and many now call on advertisers and agencies to follow through with meaningful budgets. The open-web ecosystem can only strengthen if all parties move together, which entails testing, learning and scaling in collaboration rather than isolation.
Kristian Meinken captured this sentiment in his recent public remarks, emphasizing the need for shared responsibility: “We do well in challenging each other intensively when it comes to development and transformation so that we can move forward together.”
His words reflect the ethos of the initiative: progress is not driven by any single actor, but by coordinated effort across the media ecosystem.
And while some voices in the market question whether regional initiatives can meet the needs of global advertisers, pilot’s work demonstrates that European diversity is not a barrier but an advantage. Germany’s leading publishers are aligned in their commitment to open, privacy-first infrastructure, and privacy-enhancing clean-room technologies can integrate seamlessly into global marketing strategies while respecting local realities.
What this trial collaboration enables
By combining pilot’s strategic role in the initiative and strong presence in the German market with Decentriq’s clean-room technology, publishers, agencies and advertisers gain a shared space to experiment with secure and transparent collaboration. Even in this test phase, the work lays a stronger foundation for:
- testing cross-publisher reach with deterministic IDs
- measuring campaign performance across independent media
- enabling advertisers to reinvest in high-quality environments
Together, pilot and Decentriq are helping explore how the initiative’s strategic objectives can be made tangible, contributing to a more resilient and sustainable open-web ecosystem for Germany.
About pilot group
pilot is one of the largest independent and owner-managed agency groups in Germany. Started as a media agency for classic and digital media, pilot is now a full-service provider for effective brand communication. At its offices in Hamburg, Munich, Berlin, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Mainz and Zurich, more than 550 experts from various specialist areas work together in an integrated manner. This is how pilot creates innovative communication solutions that enable brands to successfully reach their target groups in the modern marketing and media landscape and achieve measurably greater impact. pilot is a founding member of the global agency network Local Planet. Among pilot's clients are well-known national and international companies from a wide range of industries - including 1&1, BORA, CEWE, Dr. Oetker, GetYourGuide, Klosterfrau, OBI and Techniker Krankenkasse.
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