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 event 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 replica 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 digital replicas 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.
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.
Brands, agencies, ad-tech platforms, measurement companies and publishers. HAND is a B2B standards body: lookup is always free, and membership is how you shape the standard.