Every ad knows which ad it is. Not who’s in it. Commercials have carried a standard identifier for decades. Ad-ID tells the supply chain which ad ran. EIDR tells it which program ran around it. Neither says who is on screen: the athlete, the actor, the voice, the face the campaign was built on. That’s the gap HAND fills. For brands, agencies, ad tech platforms and measurement companies, it means talent attribution checked against a persistent, public record.
A Licensed Human Likeness gets a HAND ID (Type 02) only when it is created with the consent of the person it depicts. That ID stays tied to the person’s own HAND ID (Type 01) for good. The bond between a human and their likeness is what makes it a trust signal.
The consent milestone that created the likeness, linked to the verified person it depicts. A resolvable record anyone in the supply chain can check.
License how the likeness is used. Whether a licensed likeness sells a candy bar, who gets paid and on what terms, is for the talent, their representatives and the brand to agree. HAND stays out of that deal.
Countless synthetic likenesses already circulate with no recorded consent. Going forward, a likeness with a HAND consent chain is one a buyer can check, and a likeness without one raises a question worth asking.
A Licensed Human Likeness gets its HAND ID only as a timestamped consent milestone of the person it depicts. Or it doesn’t happen. There is no exception to that rule.
Talent rarely act alone, and they shouldn’t have to. Agents, managers, guilds, unions and leagues hold delegated authority as a contractual right of the people they represent — and that matters more than ever as consent-based licensing of name, image, likeness and voice grows more complex. The question isn’t “does HAND police consent?” It’s “who holds delegated authority, and is it on the record?” That’s why the organizations that represent talent aren’t just gatekeepers to HAND — they’re members.
License terms and payment belong to the talent, their representatives and the brand. HAND stays out of that deal — which is exactly what lets every party in it trust the record.
Before HAND existed, its founder was working on the same problem from the advertising side.
TAXI showed that content and ads could be identified together across the chain. It never named the people in them. HAND is the missing third ID.
When an ad features a real person’s licensed likeness rather than an invented one, the people buying, clearing and running it need a way to tell the difference. A consented, resolvable record of who that person is gives them one.
IBC 2024 carried HAND IDs through the file and the playback chain, end to end. Advertising runs on ad servers and the ad call. That’s the next proof, and it’s a co-funded one. Partners bring a live ad server or measurement stack, engineering time, and a share of the cost. HAND brings the registry, the IDs and the consent records. Both sides walk away with results they can show their own buyers.
Brands, ad agencies, ad-tech platforms, measurement companies and publishers — and the talent agencies, management companies, guilds, unions and leagues that hold delegated authority for the people in the ads. HAND is a B2B standards body: lookup is always free, and membership is how you shape the standard.