Today, Experian announced a suite of next-generation solutions that will help marketers navigate the challenges of cookie deprecation. Powered by the Experian Graph, these solutions will enable marketers to maintain behavioral targeting at scale.
- In partnership with Audigent, Experian announced the early-stage limited availability of Experian Audiences inside the Privacy Sandbox through the Protected Audiences API.
- Experian has also co-developed, with Audigent, an AI-driven contextual targeting solution layered with Experian’s rich Experian Marketing Data to continue delivering marketers scale and performance from their campaigns.
- Finally, Experian continues to evolve its signal-agnostic Graph, including coverage for industry-leading universal IDs, and plans to support IPv6 and phone-based UID2s.
With these solutions, marketers can confidently deliver behavioral targeting after cookie deprecation and benefit from the power of Experian Marketing Data in their contextually targeted campaigns. As the industry prepares for ongoing signal loss and tightened privacy regulations, these solutions and further investments in Experian’s identity Graph ensure Experian continues to power data-driven advertising and achieves the needs of modern marketers: addressable advertising, cross-device targeting, and measurement.
Experian’s Graph allows marketers to target audiences in Privacy Sandbox via Audigent
Building off Audigent’s work with Privacy Sandbox, Experian and Audigent tested the scale of Experian audience data in Privacy Sandbox and found that over 15 days, they were able to match audiences to over 150M Chrome browsers in the US.
This solution – now in alpha – is powered by Experian’s Graph, leveraging an array of identifiers, including hashed emails and Hadron IDs. While the scale of targetable users and ad opportunities is still growing with the adoption of Privacy Sandbox by publishers and SSPs, the results are strong and provide a real-life illustration of how advertisers will be able to reach audiences in this new environment.
“As the industry’s leader in building Interest Group segments in PAAPI, Audigent is thrilled to see world-class data partners like Experian work with us to build innovative solutions that deliver value now and will be absolutely critical as third-party cookies are deprecated in 2025.”
DREW STEIN, FOUNDER AND CEO, AUDIGENT
Data-driven contextual targeting is available through partnerships with Audigent and Peer39
As marketers prepare for cookie deprecation, they are turning to tried and true methods of targeting, like contextual, as they offer targeting strategies based on content and behavior instead of user identity. Experian is co-developing ID-less solutions that upgrade contextual targeting by intelligently indexing and infusing Experian’s rich Experian Marketing Data against contextual signals. By using these products, advertisers gain the ability to reach their audiences with a new and improved solution that delivers scale, performance, and value.
We have beta launched a unique solution with Audigent that indexes Experian syndicated audiences against contextual signals through the power of the Experian Graph and Audigent’s Hadron ID to create PMPs that can be activated on any DSP. As part of the beta, a leading national advertiser ran a test via Audigent to see if this fully cookieless solution could deliver results at parity or better than today’s ID-based options. The scaled 15-day flight not only met existing campaign delivery targets but also exceeded CTR goals by 25%.
Experian has also partnered with Peer39 to make our geo-indexed syndicated audiences (e.g., Purchase Affinity and Demographic data) available through Peer39’s contextual integrations. This allows marketers to confidently reach the right audiences in their digital marketing campaigns without third-party cookies.
Experian’s Graph now includes leading Universal IDs
With the ever-changing nature of signal and identity, we’re continuing steps to be interoperable, and Experian’s signal-agnostic Graph now supports the leading universal IDs: UID2s, ID5 IDs, and Hadron IDs. This is in addition to hashed e-mails, mobile ad IDs, and Connected TV IDs. Our strong coverage against cookieless identifiers means marketers will maintain addressable advertising as the Graph continues resolving data back to consumers and households in a privacy-centric way. In addition to providing greater breadth and depth of signals to reach US consumers, Experian’s Graph is rebuilt weekly, which means our connections are highly accurate, refreshed, and addressable.
“Experian is a valued partner in Nexxen’s unified identity graph powering the Nexxen data platforms, which bring us the ability to seamlessly onboard client data, activate campaigns, and measure performance while maximizing biddable opportunities for our advertisers. They help ensure our clients can continue reaching audiences at scale and successfully execute campaigns.”
Chance Johnson, Chief Commercial Officer, Nexxen
Investments planned over the next year continue to ensure a Graph resilient to signal loss
As connected TV (CTV) viewing continues to dominate, the importance of being able to match to IPv6 increases. Later this year, we’ll add support for IPv6 in our Graph as well as phone-based UID2s. This is in addition to our current coverage of IPv4 and email-based UID2s. As a result, all IP signals and UID2s will be resolved back to Experian’s household and individual profiles and their associated devices, which means marketers and platforms can better understand the full customer journey and reach people across their devices.
Experian’s toolkit of cookieless solutions maintains addressability and ensures marketers can continue to do privacy-safe behavioral targeting at scale
As the industry braces for the challenges posed by signal loss and evolving regulation, the unparalleled breadth, depth, and stability of Experian’s Graph empowers our partners across the ad tech ecosystem to confidently achieve their objectives and navigate uncertainty.
What are you waiting for? Fill out the form to begin testing one of these cookieless solutions
About the author
Budi Tanzi, VP of Product and Solution Engineering, Experian Marketing Services
Budi Tanzi is the Vice President of Product at Experian Marketing Services, overseeing all Identity Products. Prior to joining Experian, Budi worked at various stakeholders of the ad-tech ecosystem, such as Tapad, Sizmek and StrikeAd. During his career, he held leadership roles in both Product Management and Solution Engineering. Budi has been living in New York for almost 11 years and enjoys being outdoors as well as sailing around NYC whenever possible.
Latest posts
Today, we are excited to announce our acquisition of Audigent—a leading data and activation platform in the advertising industry.
Commerce media has recently established itself as a significant player in the AdTech industry. What is it and why should you care?
Originally appeared on MarTech Series Marketing’s understanding of identity has evolved rapidly over the past decade, much like the shifting media landscape itself. From the early days of basic direct mail targeting to today's complex omnichannel environment, identity has become both more powerful and more fragmented. Each era has brought new tools, challenges, and opportunities, shaping how brands interact with their customers. We’ve moved from traditional media like mail, newspapers, and linear/network TV, to cable TV, the internet, mobile devices, and apps. Now, multiple streaming platforms dominate, creating a far more complex media landscape. As a result, understanding the customer journey and reaching consumers across these various touchpoints has become increasingly difficult. Managing frequency and ensuring effective communication across channels is now more challenging than ever. This development has led to a fragmented view of the consumer, making it harder for marketers to ensure that they are reaching the right audience at the right time while also avoiding oversaturation. Marketers must now navigate a fragmented customer journey across multiple channels, each with its own identity signals, to stitch together a cohesive view of the customer. Let’s break down this evolution, era by era, to understand how identity has progressed—and where it’s headed. 2010-2015: The rise of digital identity – Cookies and MAIDs Between 2010 and 2015, the digital era fundamentally changed how marketers approached identity. Mobile usage surged during this time, and programmatic advertising emerged as the dominant method for reaching consumers across the internet. The introduction of cookies and mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) became the foundation for tracking users across the web and mobile apps. With these identifiers, marketers gained new capabilities to deliver targeted, personalized messages and drive efficiency through programmatic advertising. This era gave birth to powerful tools for targeting. Marketers could now follow users’ digital footprints, regardless of whether they were browsing on desktop or mobile. This leap in precision allowed brands to optimize spend and performance at scale, but it came with its limitations. Identity was still tied to specific browsers or devices, leaving gaps when users switched platforms. The fragmentation across different devices and the reliance on cookies and MAIDs meant that a seamless, unified view of the customer was still out of reach. 2015-2020: The age of walled gardens From 2015 to 2020, the identity landscape grew more complex with the rise of walled gardens. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon created closed ecosystems of first-party data, offering rich, self-declared insights about consumers. These platforms built massive advertising businesses on the strength of their user data, giving marketers unprecedented targeting precision within their environments. However, the rise of walled gardens also marked the start of new challenges. While these platforms provided detailed identity solutions within their walls, they didn’t communicate with one another. Marketers could target users with pinpoint accuracy inside Facebook or Google, but they couldn’t connect those identities across different ecosystems. This siloed approach to identity left marketers with an incomplete picture of the customer journey, and brands struggled to piece together a cohesive understanding of their audience across platforms. The promise of detailed targeting was tempered by the fragmentation of the landscape. Marketers were dealing with disparate identity solutions, making it difficult to track users as they moved between these closed environments and the open web. 2020-2025: The multi-ID landscape – CTV, retail media, signal loss, and privacy By 2020, the identity landscape had splintered further, with the rise of connected TV (CTV) and retail media adding even more complexity to the mix. Consumers now engaged with brands across an increasing number of channels—CTV, mobile, desktop, and even in-store—and each of these channels had its own identifiers and systems for tracking. Simultaneously, privacy regulations are tightening the rules around data collection and usage. This, coupled with the planned deprecation of third-party cookies and MAIDs has thrown marketers into a state of flux. The tools they had relied on for years were disappearing, and new solutions had yet to fully emerge. The multi-ID landscape was born, where brands had to navigate multiple identity systems across different platforms, devices, and environments. Retail media networks became another significant player in the identity game. As large retailers like Amazon and Walmart built their own advertising ecosystems, they added yet another layer of first-party data to the mix. While these platforms offer robust insights into consumer behavior, they also operate within their own walled gardens, further fragmenting the identity landscape. With cookies and MAIDs being phased out, the industry began to experiment with alternatives like first-party data, contextual targeting, and new universal identity solutions. The challenge and opportunity for marketers lies in unifying these fragmented identity signals to create a consistent and actionable view of the customer. 2025: The omnichannel imperative Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, the identity landscape will continue to evolve, but the focus remains the same: activating and measuring across an increasingly fragmented and complex media environment. Consumers now expect seamless, personalized experiences across every channel—from CTV to digital to mobile—and marketers need to keep up. The future of identity lies in interoperability, scale, and availability. Marketers need solutions that can connect the dots across different platforms and devices, allowing them to follow their customers through every stage of the journey. Identity must be actionable in real-time, allowing for personalization and relevance across every touchpoint, so that media can be measurable and attributable. Brands that succeed in 2025 and beyond will be those that invest in scalable, omnichannel identity solutions. They’ll need to embrace privacy-friendly approaches like first-party data, while also ensuring their systems can adapt to an ever-changing landscape. Adapting to the future of identity The evolution of identity has been marked by increasing complexity, but also by growing opportunity. As marketers adapt to a world without third-party cookies and MAIDs, the need for unified identity solutions has never been more urgent. Brands that can navigate the multi-ID landscape will unlock new levels of efficiency and personalization, while those that fail to adapt risk falling behind. The path forward is clear: invest in identity solutions that bridge the gaps between devices, platforms, and channels, providing a full view of the customer. The future of marketing belongs to those who can manage identity in a fragmented world—and those who can’t will struggle to stay relevant. Explore our identity solutions Latest posts