The AdTech industry is undergoing rapid changes as it adjusts to the impacts of data deprecation and ever-changing privacy regulations. At the same time, there are fears of a potential economic downturn. How should you handle marketing in a recession? What should your marketing mix look like? In this blog post, we’ll cover how to navigate this uncertainty and three essential ingredients for your marketing mix.
First, we’ll look at the complexity and uncertainty facing marketers.
Turbulence with Twitter
After Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover in October 2022, half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers left the platform and started to seek out alternatives.
The retail media boom
In the next four years, Forrester Research projects that U.S. retail media ad sales will double to reach 85 billion by 2026.1
Most of this growth is catalyzed by CPG and consumer electronic brands that have a scarcity of zero- and first-party data; they need more media closer to the point of purchase, especially as CFOs are scrutinizing budgets.
Consumption continues to fragment
It’s becoming harder than ever to reach the right person, at the right time, predict their intent, and get a 360-degree view of your customer.2
Data deprecation is top of mind
According to Forrester Research, updating their data strategy to address data deprecation is the number one priority for marketers. Addressing data deprecation is also a priority for consumers, who increasingly feel that audience targeting is more intrusive than beneficial.3
Data deprecation affects identity solutions
Third-party data and mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) are the connective tissue for identity solutions. As we see those signals go away, there are fewer linkages to resolve identity and it’s leading to a rise in fragmented, duplicated, and shallow identity.
Recession fears
In addition to everything happening in AdTech, there are also fears of a possible recession. According to Forrester, 40% of Gen Z and 41% of Millennials believe fears of an upcoming recession are greatly exaggerated. On the other hand, only 24% of Gen X and 12% of Baby Boomers agree.4
Navigate uncertainty and marketing in a recession
With the current macroeconomic conditions, data deprecation, and fragmented consumption in mind, what should your strategy look like for marketing in a recession? Forrester recommends three strategies:
- People-led planning
- Test creative
- Optimize for marginal costs
People-led planning
Planning doesn’t have to be fragmented. Map offline and online media exposures to consumer decision journeys. Strategies like lifetime value (LTV) driven audience segmentation to correlate awareness at top of the funnel layered with demand generation exposures harvested later in the funnel. To do this, it’s crucial to work with providers that give you visibility into the audience buyer’s journey to awareness, intent, consideration, and purchase, all the way through to loyalty.5
Test creative
Make your creative work harder for you. Apply the same rigor with your creative that you applied to segmentation. Utilize multivariate testing to identify creative that is winning or losing. When you understand how each variable performs, you can scale the variables with creative optimization to have a material impact on performance.
Optimize for marginal costs
Optimize for marginal costs of acquisition, not just the average. Adjust for incrementality – what is the cost to acquire one more customer, rather than the average cost of acquisition.
Find the right marketing mix in a recession
With these changes in mind, how can you find the right marketing mix in a recession? We can show you the way.
You can create the right marketing mix with three key ingredients:
- Audiences
- Identity
- Activation
Let’s explore each ingredient to start you down the path toward marketing campaign success.
Audiences: Know your customer
The first ingredient to add to your marketing mix in a recession is your audience. Knowing your customer is key to targeting the right audiences successfully. Data-driven targeting can help you find your best audiences based on demographics, modeled lifestyles, and behaviors to improve marketing campaign performance.
Not sure where to start when it comes to developing your target audience strategy? We can help. We track digital usage of our data used by advertisers and identified the top four digital audiences that advertisers purchased over the last four years.
Four digital audiences to consider
Marketing strategies are only as strong as the data foundation they’re built on. The top four digital audiences that advertisers are purchasing from Experian include:
- Demographics
- Behavioral
- Modeled Lifestyles
- Custom Audiences
Demographics
Examples include age, gender, relationship status, living situation, life experience, and employment.
Behavioral
This audience allows marketers to identify households that are more likely to engage in certain activities or belong to certain groups.
Modeled Lifestyles
Experian’s Mosaic® USA segmentation. This is a household-based consumer lifestyle segmentation system that classifies all U.S. households and neighborhoods into 71 unique types and 19 overarching groups, providing a 360-degree view of consumers’ choices, preferences, and habits.
Custom Audiences
This is an audience blended from multiple sources or derived from first-party look-alike modeling.
Changes in digital audience strategies
Over the last four years, Modeled Lifestyles and Custom Audience purchases represented the smallest share of digital activation, while Behavioral and Demographic segments were more popular with advertisers.
When the U.S. rolled out the COVID-19 vaccine, consumers became more active. People were shopping in stores, returning to the gym, and taking trips that they had postponed during the height of the pandemic. Marketers turned to higher compositions of Demographic and Modeled Lifestyles to reach these audiences between April and December of 2021.
Sustained growth in Demographic audience activation could suggest a move back to tried and true audience strategies as signals continue to decline and amid evolving regulation. With economic uncertainty, marketers return to what they know. Traditional targeting methods like Demographics and Modeled Lifestyles are the baseline of many marketing strategies and we predict that we will continue to see marketers activating against these data sets.
Download our 2023 digital audience trends and predictions report to discover our full insights on how digital activation has changed and where we’re headed.
Identity: Understand the customer journey
Identity resolution is the next ingredient that you should add to your marketing mix in a recession. It should be a foundational element of every marketer’s strategy.
What is identity resolution? In the simplest terms, identity resolution is the process of matching different devices, IDs, and touchpoints back to a single person. Identity resolution expands marketers’ addressability and reach of their target audience and helps inform and measure accurate customer journeys.
Identity resolution challenges
Identity resolution faces two main challenges:
- Making the data actionable. Humans are complex. We have behaviors that change based on our current social groups and life events, we use dozens of internet-connected devices in a single day, and we exhibit distinct behaviors that happen online and in the physical world. This means marketers have mounds of data being collected from different channels based on that dynamic behavior of people, making it feel impossible to organize the data in a way that makes it feel actionable, know how it ties back to real humans, and ensure they’re doing it in a responsible and compliant way.
- Signal loss. Marketers continue to lose important signals that they’ve previously been able to rely on to inform their next move. Signals are being lost as our industry places more privacy regulations and restrictions on what can be tracked and as consumers themselves change behaviors to protect their privacy.
As consumer behaviors continue to change and signals disappear, identity resolution gets exponentially harder.
Expand addressability and reach with identity resolution
Data deprecation adversely affects identity solutions, but identity resolution should be a key ingredient in your marketing mix. Identity resolution ensures that consumers experience more relevant products, offers, and messaging – allowing you to reap the ROI benefits of hitting consumers at the perfect point in their journey.
Finding an identity resolution partner
When selecting an identity resolution partner, you should understand the data and processes that are implemented behind the scenes. It’s important to know:
- What makes up their consumer database?
- How fresh is their data?
- What identifiers can they match?
- How do they protect consumer privacy?
At Experian, we’re rooted in deterministic offline data which creates a stable foundation. We then layer in digital and behavioral touchpoints. We have decades of experience managing consumer data safely. We have insights on 250 million individuals, three billion devices, and one trillion device signals. Our databases evolve as quickly as the human behavior powering them does.
Our approach to identity resolution is open and agnostic. This means we can collect and ingest nearly all available offline and online identifiers. We can do this in all types of environments, including connected TV (CTV), mobile, and cookieless. We have two types of identity resolution:
- Offline
- Digital
This ensures we control how known and anonymous data points are connected for consumer privacy purposes.
Identity resolution in action
Our depth of data gives our clients access to see the whole human and gain the context around singular data points.
Let’s walk through an example of our identity resolution capabilities.
Challenge
Our TV media platform client needed to measure the effectiveness of an ad campaign they were running on behalf of a leading consumer electronics brand. The TV platform wanted to be able to accurately report on which consumers made a purchase after seeing the brand’s TV commercial on their platforms.
Solution
Using our digital identity resolution services, our client could capture online purchases made on the brand’s website and link them back to a consumer profile. In addition to online transactions, our client used our offline resolution services to resolve email addresses of consumers that purchased offline, using warranty registration details.
With online and offline purchase data now resolved back to an individual ID, we also performed identity resolution on viewers in their TV subscriber files that had also been exposed to the TV commercial. This allowed us to identify subscribers that had both seen the ad and purchased a product.
We provided our client with a packaged report that they could white-label and pass along to the brand.
Results
By providing this attribution reporting to the brand, the TV platform could validate the ROI spent on their platform. The brand was extremely satisfied with the results, and they transitioned the one-off TV commercial into an ongoing campaign and purchased quarterly measurement. This led to solid recurring revenue for the TV platform.
Activation: Experiment and measure the impact
The third and final ingredient to finding the right marketing mix in a recession is activation. Experimentation is the best way to determine which channels work best for your business and provide the most ROI.
Demand-side platforms (DSP), video platforms, and sell-side targeting are three important activation channels that you should consider experimenting with.
Demand-side platforms
We continue to see increased demand for environments where alternative identifiers are being transacted (like DSPs and video). Social channels are decreasing; this can be attributed to changes in privacy, security, and concerns around brand safety.
Amazon’s DSP is catching up with Google and Meta to become a top ad platform.
Video platforms
Digital video and other video channels like over-the-top (OTT) and CTV will continue to grow. Digital video will capture the most ad spend in 2023 (22.4% in 2023 vs 19.3% in 2022). Because of this, advertisers are placing bigger bets on the combination of addressable and CTV.
Sell-side targeting
Data sharing relationships will become strongest on the sell-side as we move toward consented first-party data. Ad dollars are shifting to channels that use the sell-side approach, like retail media and CTV.
Sell-side targeting enables brands to access large amounts of inventory across publishers and retailers. By getting closer to the ad inventory, advertisers can future-proof their strategies by having more access to better data signals. Direct relationships like these will be necessary as privacy regulations increase and signal loss continues.
We can help you find the right marketing mix in a recession
Now is the time to be opportunistic. Gaining share of voice during a downturn is cost-effective. Proactive marketing builds pent-up demand.
Delivering the right message in the right place at the right time means truly knowing your prospects and customers as individuals. At Experian, we bring you the highest-resolution picture of people, so you and your customers can connect with confidence.
You can turn prospects into customers with the right audience. By understanding your customers better, you can find more like them. Together we can power better results.
Find the right marketing mix
Check out our webinar, “Find the right marketing mix with rising consumer expectations.” Guest speaker, Nikhil Lai, Senior Analyst from Forrester Research, joined Experian experts Erin Haselkorn and Eden Wilbur. Watch the recording to learn:
- New data on the complexity and uncertainty facing marketers
- Consumer trends for 2023
- Recommendations on finding the right channel mix and the right consumers
Sources
- 2022 Retail Media Ad Sales Forecast, US. Forrester Research, Inc. 2022.
- Forrester Analytics Consumer Technographics® Technology, Media, and Telecom Topic Insights 1 Survey. Forrester Research, Inc. 2020.
- CMO Pulse Survey. Forrester Research, Inc. July 2021.
- Forrester’s Consumer Energy And Retail Online Survey. Forrester Research, Inc.
- People-Led Planning Solves Customer Problems to Drive Growth. Forrester Research, Inc. August 2, 2021.
Latest posts
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam vitae nibh eu massa cursus eleifend quis in quam. Nunc mollis aliquam eros sed laoreet. Suspendisse et elit ut metus elementum aliquet ut sit amet metus. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia curae; Pellentesque fringilla, nibh eget convallis scelerisque, nisl nisl vestibulum ipsum, sit amet placerat neque nunc eget nisi. Cras cursus, sapien non interdum mollis, nibh augue efficitur eros, eget congue tellus nulla id lectus. Nullam vestibulum vitae erat sit amet mollis. Sed gravida tortor nec nibh blandit ultrices. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Nam justo lectus, tempus a velit at, tempus malesuada est. Aenean dictum tellus id lorem venenatis, quis sodales nisl tempus. In quis libero id est rhoncus dictum. Praesent ipsum dui, mattis vel augue ut, lacinia ultricies ex. Suspendisse sit amet gravida purus. Vivamus tempus tellus augue, ac placerat arcu efficitur non. Nam auctor at nulla sed porta. Vivamus lobortis eu nunc a efficitur. Vestibulum condimentum ante nec nisi imperdiet vulputate. Duis varius metus ac est fermentum congue. Aenean tincidunt ut erat non pharetra. Nulla elit orci, semper sed porttitor ac, convallis vitae velit. Praesent egestas blandit ullamcorper. Praesent a porta lectus. Aliquam et pellentesque lectus. Integer placerat mauris risus, ut semper dui commodo at. Vivamus efficitur pharetra ligula id rhoncus. Pellentesque gravida purus vitae viverra luctus. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia curae; In vitae augue nec odio fermentum ultrices a sed libero. Nulla ullamcorper nulla id sagittis convallis. Pellentesque cursus metus et orci iaculis, non laoreet nisi aliquam. Proin porta velit risus, ac ultricies lectus tincidunt at. Pellentesque scelerisque ullamcorper euismod. Phasellus eget velit malesuada, faucibus enim a, ultrices ante. Morbi ut diam non metus interdum placerat gravida quis arcu. Integer ultricies molestie nulla sed convallis. Curabitur mi dui, aliquam vel nibh rutrum, convallis tempor lacus. Cras porttitor laoreet varius. Ut tincidunt massa congue mauris lobortis euismod. Pellentesque a odio ut est consequat tristique ut in mi. Nullam sed ultricies justo, eu varius eros. Nunc ipsum nulla, vehicula at sagittis a, ornare ut nisi. Aenean imperdiet felis at aliquet porta. Nunc sed leo ut justo efficitur aliquet. Sed et urna vel urna maximus laoreet. In facilisis porttitor nisi in sagittis. Fusce magna sapien, molestie ac maximus eu, tincidunt sit amet massa. Praesent non mauris metus. Aliquam dapibus sit amet tortor at scelerisque. Ut vel dolor at nisi rhoncus finibus auctor non velit. Integer pellentesque venenatis diam, nec eleifend ipsum pellentesque quis. Vivamus vitae mi nisl. Curabitur lectus orci, ornare et ipsum venenatis, sagittis blandit mauris. FAQs Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam vitae nibh eu massa cursus eleifend quis in quam. Nunc mollis aliquam eros sed laoreet. Suspendisse et elit ut metus elementum aliquet ut sit amet metus. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia curae; Pellentesque fringilla, nibh eget convallis scelerisque, nisl nisl vestibulum ipsum, sit amet placerat neque nunc eget nisi. Cras cursus, sapien non interdum mollis, nibh augue efficitur eros, eget congue tellus nulla id lectus. Nullam vestibulum vitae erat sit amet mollis. Sed gravida tortor nec nibh blandit ultrices. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Nam justo lectus, tempus a velit at, tempus malesuada est. Aenean dictum tellus id lorem venenatis, quis sodales nisl tempus. In quis libero id est rhoncus dictum. Praesent ipsum dui, mattis vel augue ut, lacinia ultricies ex. Suspendisse sit amet gravida purus. Vivamus tempus tellus augue, ac placerat arcu efficitur non. Nam auctor at nulla sed porta. Vivamus lobortis eu nunc a efficitur. Vestibulum condimentum ante nec nisi imperdiet vulputate. Duis varius metus ac est fermentum congue. Aenean tincidunt ut erat non pharetra. Nulla elit orci, semper sed porttitor ac, convallis vitae velit. Praesent egestas blandit ullamcorper. Praesent a porta lectus. Aliquam et pellentesque lectus. Integer placerat mauris risus, ut semper dui commodo at. Vivamus efficitur pharetra ligula id rhoncus. Pellentesque gravida purus vitae viverra luctus. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia curae; In vitae augue nec odio fermentum ultrices a sed libero. Nulla ullamcorper nulla id sagittis convallis.
In our Ask the Expert Series, we interview leaders from our partner organizations who are helping lead their brands to new heights in AdTech. Today’s interview is with Ben Smith, VP of Product, Data Products at Infillion. Adapting to signal loss What does the Experian–Infillion integration mean for advertisers looking to reach audiences as signals fade? As cookies and mobile identifiers disappear, brands need a new way to find and reach their audiences. The Experian integration strengthens Infillion’s XGraph, a cookieless, interoperable identity graph that supports all major ID frameworks, unifying people and households across devices with privacy compliance, by providing a stronger identity foundation with household- and person-level data. This allows us to connect the dots deterministically and compliantly across devices and channels, including connected TV (CTV). The result is better match rates on your first-party data, more scalable reach in cookieless environments, and more effective frequency management across every screen. Connecting audiences across channels How does Experian’s Digital Graph strengthen Infillion’s ability to deliver addressable media across channels like CTV and mobile? Experian strengthens the household spine of XGraph, which means we can accurately connect CTV impressions to the people and devices in that home – then extend those connections to mobile and web. This lets us plan, activate, and measure campaigns at the right level: household for CTV, and person or device for mobile and web. The outcome is smarter reach, less waste from over-frequency, and campaigns that truly work together across channels. The value of earned attention Infillion has long championed “guaranteed attention” in advertising. How does that philosophy translate into measurable outcomes for brands? Our engagement formats, such as TrueX, are based on a simple principle: attention should be earned, not forced. Viewers choose to engage with the ad and complete an action, which means every impression represents real, voluntary attention rather than passive exposure. Because of that, we consistently see stronger completion rates, deeper engagement, and clearer downstream results – like lower acquisition costs, improved on-site behavior, and measurable brand lift. To take that a step further, we measure attention through UpLift, our real-time brand lift tool. UpLift helps quantify how exposure to a campaign influences awareness, consideration, or purchase intent, providing a more complete picture of how earned attention translates into business impact. Creative innovation and location insights Beyond identity resolution, what are some of Infillion’s capabilities, like advanced creative formats or location-based insights, that set you apart in the market? One key area is location intelligence, which combines privacy-safe geospatial insights with location-based targeting through our proprietary geofencing technology. This allows us to build custom, data-driven campaigns that connect media exposure to real-world outcomes – like store visits and dwell time – measured through Arrival, our in-house footfall attribution product. We also build custom audiences using a mix of zero-party survey data, first-party location-based segments, and bespoke audience builds aligned to each advertiser’s specific strategy. Then there’s creative innovation, which is a major differentiator for us. Our high-impact formats go beyond static display, such as interactive video units that let viewers explore products through hotspots or carousels, rich-media ads that feature polls, quizzes, dynamic distance, or gamified elements, and immersive experiences that encourage active participation rather than passive viewing. These creative formats not only capture attention but also generate deeper engagement and stronger performance for a variety of KPIs. Future ready media strategies How does Infillion’s ID-agnostic approach help brands future-proof their media strategies amid ongoing privacy and tech changes? We don’t put all our eggs in one basket. XGraph securely unifies multiple durable identifiers alongside our proprietary TrueX supply to strengthen CTV household reach. This agnostic design allows us to adapt as platforms, regulations, and browsers evolve – so you can preserve reach and measurement capabilities without getting locked into a single ID or losing coverage when the next signal deprecates. Raising the bar for media accountability Looking ahead, how is Infillion evolving its platform to meet the next wave of challenges in audience engagement and media accountability? From an engagement standpoint, we’re expanding our ability to support the full customer journey, offering ad experiences that move seamlessly from awareness to consideration to conversion. That includes smarter creative that adapts to context, intelligent targeting and retargeting informed by real data, and formats designed to drive measurable outcomes rather than just impressions. When it comes to accountability, we’re ensuring that measurement is both flexible and credible. In addition to our proprietary tools, we partner with leading third-party measurement providers to validate results and give advertisers confidence that their investment is truly performing. Within our DSP, we emphasize full transparency and log-level data access, ensuring advertisers can see exactly what’s happening on every impression. All of this builds toward the next era of agentic media buying – one enabled by our MCP suite and modular, component-based tools. This evolution brings greater accountability and next-generation audience engagement to an increasingly automated, intelligent media landscape. Our goal is to help brands connect more meaningfully with audiences while holding every impression – and every outcome – to a higher standard of transparency and effectiveness. Driving impact across the funnel What is a success story or use cases that demonstrate the impact of the Experian–Infillion integration? We recently partnered with a national veterans’ organization to raise awareness of its programs for injured or ill veterans and their families. Using the Experian integration, we combined persistent household- and person-level identifiers with cross-device activation to reach veteran and donor audiences more precisely across CTV, display, and rich media. The campaign achieved standout results – industry-leading engagement rates, a 99% video completion rate, and measurable lifts in both brand awareness (3.6 % increase) and donation consideration (13.7% lift). It’s a clear example of how stronger identity and smarter activation can drive meaningful outcomes across the full funnel. Contact us Identity resolution FAQs Why is identity resolution critical for CTV and cross-channel campaigns? Identity resolution ensures accurate connections between devices, households, and individuals. Experian's Offline Identity Resolution and Digital Graph strengthen these connections for improved targeting and consistent measurement across CTV, mobile, and web. What strategies help address the loss of cookies and mobile IDs? Solutions like Experian's Digital Graph enable brands to connect first-party data to household and person-level identifiers, ensuring scalable reach and compliant audience targeting legacy signals fade. How can engagement translate into measurable results? Focusing on earned attention (where audiences actively choose to engage) leads to stronger completion rates, improves on-site behavior, and drives measurable increases in brand awareness and consideration. What makes cross-channel targeting more effective? By linking CTV impressions to households and extending those connections to mobile and web, Experian's identity solutions ensure campaigns work together seamlessly, reducing over-frequency and improving overall reach. About our expert Ben Smith VP Product, Data Products, Infillion Ben Smith leads Infillion’s Data Products organization, delivering identity, audience, and measurement solutions across the platform. Previously, he was CEO and co-founder of Fysical, a location intelligence startup acquired by Infillion in 2019. About Infillion Infillion is the first fully composable advertising platform, built to solve the challenges of complexity, fragmentation, and opacity in the digital media ecosystem. With MediaMath at its core, Infillion’s modular approach enables advertisers to seamlessly integrate or independently deploy key components—including demand, data, creative, and supply. This flexibility allows brands, agencies, commerce and retail media networks, and resellers to create tailored, high-performance solutions without the constraints of traditional, all-or-nothing legacy systems. Latest posts
Kevin Dunn shares his thoughts after 30 days as Experian’s new Chief Revenue Officer.