Cookies are leaving us, but that doesn’t have to mean performance has to. That’s why Experian is taking the steps needed to future-proof identity in our Graph, including adding Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) from The Trade Desk.
Experian currently supports UID2 in our Graph outputs for demand-side platforms (DSPs). UID2 support in our Graph outputs will be available to all approved partners by December 2023.
In this blog post, we talk about why cookieless IDs, like UID2, that are coming to market because of cookie deprecation, are important, and how incorporating cookieless IDs into an identity graph can help you prepare for a cookieless future.
What are cookieless IDs?
Like cookies, cookieless IDs provide you with a comprehensive view of a consumer’s digital activity. Unlike cookies, identity providers produce cookieless IDs, using user-consented data and deterministic and probabilistic data signals (like hashed emails or mobile ad IDs).
Cookieless IDs are a newer identifier that allows the advertising industry to maintain our understanding of consumers’ digital actions, helping to ensure we continue to generate smart, data-driven insights, targets, activation strategies, personalized experiences, and measurement and attribution.
Why should you incorporate cookieless IDs into an identity graph?
Adding cookieless IDs to an identity graph allows for licensees of the graph to:
- Resolve the universal ID to a consolidated consumer profile and know which other digital IDs tie to the cookieless ID
- Establish a unified view of the consumer with a privacy-compliant ID
- Produce data-driven and informed advertising strategies that still drive results, without the use of cookies
Experian’s Graph
Experian’s Graph is one of the most robust and signal agnostic identity graphs in the market. Experian’s Graph supports most digital IDs, including cookieless IDs, such as ID5, UID2, and Hadron ID. When you license Experian’s Graph, you increase your ability to better understand the different digital IDs that tie to a household or individual. Additionally, with our cookieless ID support, you can continue to understand your consumer and their digital IDs in the cookieless world.
Why is it crucial to include UID2 support in Experian’s Graph outputs?
The Trade Desk is the largest, independent demand-side platform. They’ve created a cookieless ID, UID2, that they hope can power the advertising world to come across the open web. UID2 is an alternative solution to third-party cookies that when utilized in an identity graph, can offer a clearer picture of your consumer, enabling frequency controls and better management, across both digital and connected TV (CTV).
Approved DSPs can add UID2s to their Experian Graph, giving them access to one of the more trusted and prominent cookieless IDs in the market today. Additionally, DSPs can use this identifier to decide whether to bid on certain inventory or not, on behalf of their advertiser partner. And, if we hedge our bets, it will only grow in prominence and use.
While only available to approved DSPs today for use in the Experian Graph, the forthcoming encrypted UID2 token will provide this capability to the entire ecosystem, which allows us all to speak the same language and operate as efficiently as possible.
“We are excited to support UID2, one of the premier IDs to support the future of addressability across the open internet, in the Experian Graph. We continue to see the adoption of UID2 across the demand-side ecosystem, increasing addressability across growing channels like CTV and beyond. I am personally excited to see how this momentum continues to increase over the remainder of 2023 and into 2024.”
chris feo, svp, sales & partnerships, experian
Future-proof your identity strategy with Experian Graph and UID2
We’ve seen the impact that cookies have had on digital advertising and marketing. With the impending third-party cookie deprecation, you will need to adopt alternative cookieless ID solutions such as Unified ID 2.0. Experian is well-positioned to help you navigate this change, offering UID2 support in our Graph outputs for all approved partners by December 2023.
Take the right steps now to future-proof your identity strategy and discover lasting success even without cookies. Alongside Experian’s Graph solution, you can achieve resilience in an ever-changing world of digital marketing and advertising. Now is the time to get ready for a cookieless future. Connect with an Experian team member to learn more about our Graph capabilities today.
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Privacy-forward pharma media supports more informed healthcare journeys Effective pharma marketing depends on reaching patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals (HCPs) with useful information in appropriate, privacy-forward ways. The goal is to make relevant education easier to find, support more informed conversations, and help brands understand how media contributes across the health journey. In this Ask the Expert session, Natalie Mancuso, SVP, Data Partnerships at DeepIntent, joins Sheila Wirick, who leads the health team at Experian, to discuss how to craft patient and HCP campaigns, privacy-safe activation workflows, connected TV (CTV), and measurement approaches built for pharma. Why should your media plan start with understanding the patient and provider The patient-and-provider journey should inform your media plan, as treatment decisions in pharma are increasingly informed, personal, and patient-driven. With more health information available than ever, patients are playing a more active role in understanding their options and participating in treatment conversations. As other industries become more customer-centric, pharma media planning needs to become more patient-centric. “We’ve got patients who are more informed, more involved in their treatment decisions than ever. The accessibility of data and information and the ways we can consume it with just AI alone is so vast that if we’re not arming people with the right information in real time, we’re missing the boat.”Natalie Mancuso, SVP, Data Partnerships This means media should be aligned to where a patient or provider is in the decision journey and what they need at that moment. Early on, media may play an educational role by building awareness of a condition, symptom, or treatment category. Later, it may help support more specific questions, treatment consideration, access, affordability, or adherence. The patient-provider conversation remains the key boundary. That exchange should stay private and clinically led. Media can play a valuable role before and after those moments by offering information that helps patients and providers feel more informed. How can brands connect patient and HCP messaging responsibly? It’s critical for agencies and brands to deliver relevant messaging to inform each stakeholder’s needs throughout the treatment journey, especially ahead of key clinical milestones. To execute this, brands must exercise privacy-forward activation, keeping patient and HCP identity, activation, and measurement paths separate, while using a common workflow layer to support the same brand goal. Experian helps pharma marketers do this by acting as an independent, privacy-forward identity, data, and workflow layer. We bring together high-fidelity matching, governed onboarding, and non-clinical consumer context, so patient and HCP engagement can be activated more accurately across channels and connected to reporting. The distinction is not only where each audience is reached. HCPs may be engaged in both professional and personal environments, but their needs are different from patients’. For example, an HCP may receive messaging about co-pay savings for eligible patients, while a patient may receive information about patient support programs. These are different messages for different audiences, but they ladder up to the same goal: informing both parties in a privacy-forward, relevant way. Hear from Natalie Mancuso in our 2026 State of advertising report In our 2026 State of advertising report, Natalie shares why identity serves as the connective infrastructure that links planning, activation, and measurement across connected TV (CTV), programmatic, commerce media, and walled garden environments. Download the report Watch Natalie’s Q&A What does privacy-forward activation look like in pharma? Pharma brands often start with fragmented patient and HCP signals. Privacy-forward activation turns those inputs into usable audiences by first confirming that the data can be used, then translating identity in controlled environments that protect personally identifiable information through tokenization or other methodologies. For DTC, that means building and matching audiences without relying on inferred health conditions from browsing behavior. For HCPs, it means connecting professional identity to verified sources in a way that supports activation and measurement. In a category shaped by HIPAA, state privacy laws, internal review, and consumer sensitivity, building privacy in from sourcing through activation is what makes responsible health media possible. How can CTV play a more useful role in pharma? CTV can play a more useful role in healthcare when it’s connected to a larger, privacy-forward plan and not treated as just an awareness channel. DeepIntent connects CTV and digital exposure data using identity signals, such as National Provider Identifiers (NPIs), hashed email addresses, IP addresses, device IDs, and household signals, where permitted and reviewed. That identity layer helps support sequencing and suppression across streaming, endemic, mobile, and digital settings. In practice, CTV can introduce targeted education or broad brand awareness, and later touchpoints can provide sequential information in the right channels. Instead of repeating the same message, brands can make pivots based on engagement and context. “For us, it starts with identity and not panels. When we’re resolving CTV and digital exposures to the same person, we’re leveraging signals so that every touchpoint across streaming, endemic, and mobile is recognized as the same individual, not model lookalikes.”Natalie Mancuso, SVP, Data Partnerships For pharma, campaign performance should not be measured by reach alone. A stronger approach looks at whether sequenced engagement contributes to meaningful downstream signals, including: Prescription activity Provider engagement Referral patterns Patient compliance Adherence signals, where measurement is permitted Why should messaging and reporting change in pharma? Pharma campaigns are journeys with changing information needs. Reporting should guide the campaign optimization. “If I’m launching into a market with a new class of drug, I’m asking what education needs to be put into the market – from both an HCP and a consumer standpoint – to build awareness?”Natalie Mancuso, SVP, Data Partnerships Clicks and website visits still have a place, but they can’t tell the full pharma story. DeepIntent processes data in real time, giving brands an up-to-date read on how media connects to campaign engagement. Campaign signals can help teams optimize audience logic, creative, channel mix, or sequencing during a live campaign. Heading Test for Media & Text Block Content Test for Media &Text Block Learn more Heading Test for Media & Text Block Content Test for Media &Text Block Learn more Heading Test for Media & Text Block Content Test for Media &Text Block Learn more Explore how privacy-safe pharma activation can make an impact Experian brings marketing data and identity expertise for health marketing and DeepIntent adds pharma-specific activation experience. Together, we help brands connect patient and HCP strategies responsibly, with privacy built in from the start. Watch the full video with our experts to hear Sheila Wirick and Natalie Mancuso discuss patient and HCP messaging, CTV, privacy-safe activation, and outcome measurement for pharma brands. About our experts Natalie Mancuso SVP, Data Partnerships, DeepIntent Natalie Mancuso is SVP, Data Partnerships at DeepIntent and a leader in health-focused AdTech and DSP strategy. With over 20 years of experience growing billion-dollar healthcare brands, she turns complex data into scalable, performance-driven solutions that keep marketers ahead of industry change. Sheila Wirick Director of Health Sales, Experian Sheila Wirick is the Director of Health Sales at Experian with more than 20 years of experience in data and analytics. As Director of Health Sales at Experian Marketing Services, she collaborates with healthcare, pharmaceutical, and nonprofit organizations to apply data and insights that enhance customer retention, brand awareness, and acquisition. She is committed to helping organizations use data to deliver measurable results and meaningful impact. FAQs What makes a pharma audience activation-ready? A pharma audience is activation-ready when patient or HCP inputs can be translated into usable audiences with the right accuracy, controls, interoperability, and destination readiness. For patient engagement, that may include privacy-safe cohort construction, caregiver logic, non-clinical enrichment and appropriate exclusion rules. For HCP engagement, it may include governed identity inputs such as NPI, specialty, practice location, professional address and other verified attributes where appropriate. How can pharma brands sequence messages across channels responsibly? Pharma brands can sequence messages responsibly by giving each channel a clear role and using audience logic to maintain continuity. CTV and out-of-home can support awareness, social can reinforce the message, search can capture active research and point-of-care or rep-triggered channels can support decision moments. The workflow should preserve separation between patient and HCP identity strategies. What should pharma marketers measure beyond clicks and site visits? Pharma marketers should measure whether media connects to outcomes such as audience quality, prescription activity, qualified HCP engagement, verified delivery, referral patterns, therapy starts or adherence signals where permitted. These outcomes often depend on partner-enabled workflows, clean rooms, and aggregated outputs rather than direct end-to-end tracking. How does Experian help pharma brands connect identity, activation and measurement? Experian acts as an independent privacy-first identity, data, and workflow layer for pharma marketers. We help brands bring together identity, high-fidelity matching, governed onboarding, non-clinical consumer context, and partner interoperability so patient and HCP engagement can be activated more accurately across channels and connected more cleanly to partner-enabled measurement. Latest posts
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