It’s been one week since the highly anticipated Cannes Lions 2024—the event of the year for advertising and creativity. We are excited to present our top five takeaways from the event, revealing the industry’s priorities for the year ahead.
Navigating the post-cookie era
One of the pivotal discussions at Cannes Lions 2024 centered around signal loss and identity resolution. The industry is grappling with the impact of third-party cookie deprecation, driving a move toward alternative identifiers such as Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2) and ID5, and contextual targeting. This shift aims to uphold accurate audience targeting while addressing privacy concerns through authenticated forms of identity. Brands and agencies are actively exploring these new strategies to replace traditional cookie-based methods with stable, privacy-compliant solutions.
First-party data providers are also seeking data onboarding solutions to navigate this transition. They need streamlined integration processes, comprehensive ID-matching capabilities, and transparent pricing structures.
Fortified by our roots in offline data and significant investments in our Graph, and our newest offering, Third-Party Onboarding, you can count on Experian’s solutions to maintain strong signal coverage in a cookieless world so you can have uninterrupted, effective marketing.
Unifying targeting across TV platforms
Another focal point at Cannes Lions 2024 was the challenge of navigating TV fragmentation. Advertisers strive for unified targeting across diverse TV platforms, including connected TV (CTV) and traditional linear TV. They emphasize integrating data sources and ad servers to reach audiences across these platforms. CTV continues to stand out in conversations as a crucial and expanding area for advertising, offering new opportunities for targeted campaigns and broader audience engagement.
We’re fueling the expansion of CTV advertising through our signal-agnostic Graph, which seamlessly integrates CTV IDs, universal identifiers such as UID2, IP addresses, and mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) for targeted campaigns. Our newest offering, Third-Party Onboarding, also provides connectivity to more than 10 TV destinations.
Transforming marketing with AI
We would be remiss not to mention the hottest topic at Cannes Lions 2024, the transformative power of AI within data and identity. Discussions highlighted AI’s pivotal role in revolutionizing marketing strategies by enhancing campaign planning, dynamic optimization, measurement, and analytics. AI is not just a tool; it enables marketers to work smarter and faster. With real-time data enrichment, AI will empower marketers to manage large-scale campaigns with unprecedented efficiency and precision.
Marketers envision a future where AI seamlessly integrates into every aspect of their strategy, from understanding and predicting consumer behavior to automating personalized engagement. They see AI as the key to unlocking new levels of precision and efficiency, allowing them to adjust real-time campaigns based on consumer interactions and preferences. This vision includes using AI for deeper audience insights, ensuring that every marketing touchpoint is relevant and impactful.
Striving for strategies for proven ROI
Discussions on measurement at Cannes Lions 2024 focused on how measurement metrics are evolving to keep pace with industry changes. Cross-device, multi-touch attribution, and outcome-based metrics like consumer lifetime value and conversion rates are becoming more important. Accurate measurement is critical for demonstrating campaign impact and optimizing future marketing efforts.
These developments reflect a shift toward more sophisticated measurement practices to optimize marketing strategies and prove tangible ROI.
Through our Consumer Sync solutions, you can improve your attribution quality to understand the true path to conversion by linking all digital touchpoints to a single person.
Creating integrated consumer experiences with retail media networks
Retail media networks (RMNs) are becoming more integrated and connected. Their goal is to provide consumers with a unified online and physical store experience and create a comprehensive marketplace where retailers can work together and use shared data to better reach and engage with their audiences.
“Throughout the conversations, it’s been clear that there’s a lot of demand and interest in building and growing retail media networks. What strikes me is that Experian products, both across identity and data, can be a big support to help grow and fill in these gaps.”
budi tanzi, vp, product
Discussions at Cannes Lions 2024 emphasized how collaborations with technology providers and industry groups can help set measurement standards and ensure transparency. These partnerships can enable RMNs to expand their reach and compete with larger advertising platforms, driving industry growth and innovation.
Experian offers comprehensive solutions for RMNs. Our Profile Insights and Enrichment tools offer valuable customer behavior insights, driving smarter inventory management. We enhance ad targeting beyond item-level purchases with accurate data and syndicated audiences, aligning with broader media strategies. Third-Party Onboarding enables expansion beyond owned and operated inventory, supported by our Graph for enhanced connectivity.
“Data providers are excited to eliminate digital hops in their data flow using Experian Third-Party Onboarding. Third-Party Onboarding is uniquely set up to reduce friction for third-party data and the ecosystem in general.”
adam kobus, director of data partnerships
Experian events at Cannes Lions 2024
This year, we hosted a kick-off happy hour, content studio, and members of our team joined various panels across the Croisette. Here’s a recap of our week at Cannes.
Experian’s kick-off event with Audigent and LG Ad Solutions
To kick off the week, we co-hosted a happy hour with Audigent and LG Ad Solutions. At our sold-out event, attendees enjoyed a live performance from St. Lucia.
Content studio
We interviewed 27 thought leaders across the industry in our content studio. Our interviews covered topics like:
• Signal loss
• Connected and linear TV
• Data collaboration
• Future of addressability and personalization
• Retail media networks
• And more
We’ll be sharing more from our content studio over the coming months. Follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our email newsletter for the latest updates.
Panel participation
The Experian team participated in four panels throughout the week across the Croisette:
- Scott Kozub, VP, Product Management, joined the Brand Innovators panel, “Future of media,” where he discussed how media companies can adapt their content and distribution strategies to cater to changing consumption habits as media becomes more fragmented across devices and platforms.
- Kimberly Gilberti, Chief Product Officer, joined OpenX’s panel, “Unlocking addressability: Navigating the post-cookie era,” to discuss the prevailing strategies for achieving addressability in a cookieless world.
- Budi Tanzi, VP, Product, participated in Audigent’s panel, “Curation in regulated industries,” where they talked about why curation is effective in regulated markets like finance and health.
- Rachael Donnelly, Chief Marketing Officer, joined The Female Quotient in the Equality Lounge for their panel “Emotional agility: Leading beyond the double standard,” where they explored the power of diverse storytelling and its impact on audience engagement, brand building, and the bottom line.
Let’s keep the momentum going
As we wrap up another exciting week at Cannes Lions, the discussions have shown us the potential for innovation in signal loss, TV fragmentation, AI, measurement, and retail media networks. These topics pave the way for a more connected future in advertising. Which trends are you most excited about? Let’s continue the conversation! Reach out to us, and let’s dive deeper into these topics together.
We understand that customers may be experiencing uncertainty with their marketing strategies with Oracle’s exit from advertising. Experian is one of Oracle’s primary data providers powering their audiences. We can help marketers easily make the switch from Oracle audiences to Experian audiences without changes in advertising effectiveness or efficiency.
We have mapped Oracle audiences to Experian audiences to make it easy for you to switch your campaign targeting to Experian. Reach out to your account representative or our audiences team for information about audience mapping and finding the most relevant Experian audience for your campaigns.
Latest posts
One of the biggest challenges marketers face when planning digital advertising campaigns is getting an adequate number of impressions that yields measurable results at the lowest possible cost. As agencies, operators and advertisers are increasingly challenged about media budget, it is more important than ever to plan campaigns that generate enough information at the lowest possible cost. Through our design, deployment and measurement of advertising on a variety of platforms, Experian has developed best practices when planning digital advertising campaigns. We share some of these here, to help marketers with future campaign planning to maximize marketing effectiveness at a minimal cost. Using Path to Purchase to Determine the Right Number of Touch Points The Path to Purchase Funnel provides a framework to determine the number of touchpoints required to turn a prospect into a buyer. There are various phases the consumer goes through at each contact, and these phases dictate the number of touch points (or ‘touches’) required to induce a purchase. In the table below, we’ve described what these phases are, and the number of touch points required for those phases. The required number of touches will vary greatly among marketers, who must consider the expected time for a prospect to make decisions, competition in the marketplace, the novelty of the offer, and the level of engagement of the audience. For example, 15-second or 30-second audio and video ads played during scheduled breaks in programming may require more repetition than an ad played at a moment of high engagement, such as when the user interacts with the app, or during a “pre-roll” advertisement view prior to streamed content. Determining the Target Number of Impressions Needed to Persuade The next step involves determining how many exposures will be required to get the impressions or touch points needed to satisfy the consumer’s path to purchase. Let’s say a marketer has decided that four impressions are enough to make the case for the consumer to purchase, and that the marketer plans to reach 1 million prospects during the campaign. Perhaps the most intuitive solution is to provide four impressions for each reached prospect, such that 4 million impressions would be served during the campaign. However, during a normal digital campaign, some prospects will have zero impressions while others will have many. Because of this, we recommend planning to reach a target fraction (typically 80%) of the audience to receive the required number of impressions for purchase. The following table shows the predicted percent of audience exposed by average number of impressions served. Factoring Advertising Half-Life into Impressions Required Advertisement decay, or the fading consumer memory that reduces ad effectiveness, should also be factored into determining the right number of impressions for a successful campaign. For example, if a campaign length is planned to be 6 weeks, but the half-life of the advertisement is only three weeks, then more impressions would be needed to attain the number of touches required for the path to purchase. When planning campaigns for our partners, we adjust the target mean exposure frequency by the square root of the proportion of campaign length over advertisement half-life. For example, assuming a 3-week half-life and a 6-week campaign, we should multiply our target 5.5MM impressions by to get 7.78MM impressions. In the table below, we’ve demonstrated several scenarios of varying advertisement half-life. Other Considerations During Post-Campaign Analysis Once the campaign is completed, Experian recommends analyzing the distribution of impression frequency to determine how closely the actual impression frequencies matched to what was predicted. If frequencies do not align with the predicted, check to see if these assumptions are met: Make sure that advertising impressions are independent of each other. If rules are in place such that a prior impression affects the likelihood of a subsequent impression, this can affect the impression frequency. Check that the entire targeted population is on the ad platform long enough to be available for targeting. Some campaigns may have been instructed to be deployed in phases, which could limit the number of impressions to be delivered. Confirm that exposures can only occur one at a time, so that the impressions are deployed at distinct time intervals, giving the consumer the opportunity to view the advertisement Planning a successful campaign is critical for a test-measure-learn environment for an agency, operator, platform or advertiser. While initial up-front costs can be expensive, the long-term value to the business is significantly greater if tests are designed and administered appropriately. As a result, spending a little extra time thinking about your consumer’s path to purchase, exposure frequency, and the half-life of your advertisement can pay significant dividends in developing your digital advertising strategy.
To our valued customers and partners,It’s been an exciting week here at Tapad! As announced in a press release this morning, Tapad is now a member of the Experian family. We’re thrilled to continue to grow as a leader in identity resolution under the umbrella of a global expert in data, analytics and technology. Tapad and Experian are deeply connected by our commitment to serving the needs of our customers; and with a focus on quality of the data we provide, we have a common goal for the future of identity in the advertising ecosystem. As part of this announcement, we wanted to assure you, our valued customer, that we remain deeply committed to serving you today just as we always have. Nothing will change in your daily operations with Tapad. Experian immediately recognized that the success and growth of Tapad was directly tied to the strength and depth of its team members. As such, the acquisition will not result in any changes to day-to-day contacts at Tapad, or processes with weekly graph deliveries and other product support. Experian’s faith and investment in Tapad’s future and the future of identity resolution underscores what we’ve always believed our products could achieve and that we will be able to continue serving brands, advertisers, publishers, and the advertising and marketing ecosystem for years to come. On a personal note, I am excited to be transitioning my role as Chief Operating Officer of Tapad to the General Manager position of a global business that’s achieved exponential growth over the past several years; culminating in this strategic acquisition that will no doubt bring even more value to our customers in the future. We remain committed to open communication and welcome any questions you may have. Thank you, Mark Connon | General Manager, Tapad
Addressable TV has been through a transformation in the past year. Streaming content has become the most coveted space for creators and advertisers with the rise of new apps and platforms; but the influx of stay-at-home orders around the country have shifted television viewership as we know it, and streaming apps are popping up in droves to take advantage. So, how can you? With no shortage of opportunities to advertise on addressable TV and CTV, how does it fit into the media mix? And furthermore, how can you attribute this household-level device into your overall strategy? Tying it all together Layering addressable TV within digital ad campaigns couldn’t be easier today — but applying the right targeting and cadence between all of your digital efforts; and tying them together in attribution takes the right kind of data. Marketers can use CTV identifiers coupled with other device identifiers available in The Tapad Graph to not only target impressions but also map addressable TVs within the consumer journey; and unify strategies between household decision makers to better personalize messaging. Let's get to work, together At Tapad, we provide actionable insights for marketers to deliver better ad experiences to their consumers through identity resolution. Interested in learning more? Contact us today at sales@tapad.com for a more personal conversation about your identity strategy. 1 The Trade Desk Q2 2020 Earnings Call Transcript, August 2020; 2 iSpot Report, via Deadline, July 2020; 3 Flixed.io, January 2020