Continuing our series of interviews on the subject of what a post-UDID world looks like, we hooked up with mobile ad network Adfonic.

It's taken a solid approach to situation, telling the industry "Don't Panic and Keep Tracking".

"We're taking an active stance in terms of promoting the alternatives," explains CTO Wes Biggs.

"The industry's going through a transitionary period, so it's important we keep talking to developers, advertisers and other organisations such as the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association), who are also working in the area of privacy."

Three-pronged approach

In terms of Adfonic's immediate reaction to the situation, it's part of the ODIN working group, supporting ODIN1, as well as using OpenUDID and the Mobile Future Group's AD-X technology, although it points out the latter isn't a direct UDID replacement.

"The amount of trading day-to-day that happens in the industry means deprecating UDIDs was always going to have an immediate impact," Biggs says.

"We expect there to be some short term opportunism from some vendors, but wider convergence fairly quickly."

In this manner, he agrees with Velti's CMO Krishna Subramanian that maintaining a unified front is key.

"The ODIN group has been set up to keep competition to a minimum and we're seeing that," he states.

"Velti formed the group but Jumptap chaired the last conference call. A cross section of the industry is involved. It's commercially-minded and it can act relatively quickly."

The bigger picture

Indeed, Biggs says the opportunity to look at user privacy across all mobile platforms will be healthy in the longterm.

"The debate is long overdue. We need to come up with a framework that works in terms of not being disruptive to the user experience but also provides a clear way for users to understand what tracking is all about," he argues.

And taking this broader view, he hopes groups such as ODIN can mesh with the work being carried out by the likes of the MMA on standardising unique mobile IDs.

"Some of these groups are moving quickly," he points out. "I'm optimistic this transition can be managed."