
Originally appeared on MediaPost
As the digital ecosystem becomes more complex, managing multiple identifiers for consumers has emerged as a significant challenge. From cookies and IP addresses to mobile IDs and universal IDs, marketers and platforms face increasing difficulty in maintaining a unified view of their consumers. Without a coherent identity strategy, campaigns can suffer from poor targeting, limited personalization, and flawed attribution.
Experian understands these challenges and offers solutions to help our partners navigate the complexities of a multi-ID landscape. By utilizing both digital and offline data, we provide the tools to unify fragmented identifiers and maintain a persistent view of consumers. As a result, marketers and platforms get rich insights, accurate cross-device targeting, improved addressability, and measurable advertising.
The shifting identity landscape
For years, the industry has relied on cookies to identify consumers across devices and platforms. However, with ongoing signal loss, including the uncertainty around cookies, and the evolution of privacy regulations, the digital identity landscape has grown more complicated. As consumers hop from one device to another, they are now represented by multiple signals, each tied to a different aspect of their digital behavior.
While this shift brings complexity, it also opens the door for innovation. Marketers and ad platforms now have the opportunity to rethink their identity strategies and adopt more flexible approaches that are not reliant on a single identifier.
This is where Experian comes in.
Connecting the dots: A holistic view of the customer journey
Our identity solutions are designed to help manage today’s multi-ID ecosystem by connecting digital and offline identifiers to a single customer profile. This creates a unified view of the consumer, and when combined with our understanding of customer behavior (e.g. demo, interests, shopping patterns) marketers and platforms get both insights about their customers and the addressability to reach them across channels.

Four examples of what you can do with a strong identity foundation
- If an advertiser wants to make its first-party data more addressable, it can utilize our Digital Graph with universal IDs, hashed emails (HEMs), and connected TV (CTV) IDs to extend its reach.
- A publisher who wants to gain further insights into their audiences and create private marketplaces (PMPs) can achieve this goal with the use of our Digital Graph with hashed emails, universal IDs, mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), CTV IDs, and IPs. The publisher can use this in concert with Marketing Attributes to understand age, gender, household income, buying behavior, and more. The publisher can connect marketing attributes to the Digital Graph via our Living Unit ID (LUID) to understand more about consumers that fall into their segments.
- A demand-side platform (DSP) who wants to extend first-party and third-party audience reach across all digital devices on their platform will use the Digital Graph with all digital IDs to allow users of their platform to select cross-device extension against first-party and third-party audiences.
- A retail media network (RMN) can use our Offline and Digital Graphs to connect in-store and online purchases to a household profile—even when purchases are made by different people. The RMN can then reach that household across digital media platforms and accurately attribute the in-store purchase back to digital ad exposure.
Identity as a strategic asset: Today and in the future
In our paradoxical world where consumers are represented by multiple identifiers, yet marketers and platforms face signal loss, identity is more than a technical issue—it’s a strategic asset. The ability to unify identity data into a single profile provides marketers with the customer intelligence needed to drive growth and stay competitive. Here’s how we do it:
- Deep, persistent customer understanding: With roots in offline, deterministic data like names, addresses, and emails, we provide an accurate and persistent view of identity to our customers. This allows you to maintain a consistent and comprehensive understanding of your customers and their marketing attributes over time.
- Highly accurate and refreshed digital identities: Our signal-agnostic graph is not reliant on any one signal as it includes HEMs, cookies, MAIDs, IPs, Universal IDs, and CTV IDs. Our Digital Graph is updated weekly, ensuring the data is always fresh and addressable. This persistent linkage of individuals and households to their identifiers and devices means your campaigns are always targeting the right people.
- Connected offline and digital graphs for holistic insights: We connect offline and digital identities by following privacy-first best practices, such as preventing re-identification, to allow insights from the offline world to be used in the online world. This integrated approach, enriched with marketing data, gives you better insights, more addressable advertising, and the ability to engage customers across multiple devices while accurately measuring campaign impact.
Transform challenges into opportunities
The rise of the multi-ID landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for the advertising industry. We stand as the trusted partner to navigate this complexity, utilizing insights from the offline world to inform decisions in the online world, enabling personalized marketing and accurate attribution, and helping you achieve your current and future goals.
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Tapad's technology enhances Bidtellect clients frequency capping and audience extension capabilities cross device. NEW YORK, Feb. 28, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, part of Experian, is a global marketing technology company and leader in digital identity resolution solutions, today announced a new partnership with Bidtellect, a leading native Demand-Side Platform (DSP). Bidtellect's paid content distribution platform will leverage The Tapad Graph™ as its first cross-device partner. The integration will offer Bidtellect's clients in the U.S. and Canada cross-device frequency capping and enhanced audience extension capabilities. The combination of Tapad's leading cross-device technology, with Bidtellect's unparalleled scale and optimization capabilities, will allow content marketers within brands and agencies to develop even more strategic, effective content marketing campaigns. The Tapad Graph™ will allow content marketers to gain greater reach and create more relevant, unified messaging with targeted delivery, when used in conjunction with Bidtellect's technology. Marketers can expect to benefit from amplified reach, and enhanced, privacy-safe engagement with desired audiences as a result of this partnership. "Partnering with Tapad, the leaders in cross-device data, provides Bidtellect with a complete solution that leverages both probabilistic and deterministic mapping strategies," said Mike Conway, Chief Technology Officer at Bidtellect. "The Tapad relationship expands our audience size by providing the opportunity to reach the same user across multiple devices and, when used in conjunction with our frequency capping functionality, ensures increased reach, reduced ad saturation, and elimination of wasted ad spend." As the partnership progresses, Tapad will also work with Bidtellect to provide advanced attribution for conversions and engagement metrics including connectivity and amplification. These advanced insights will help brands and agencies develop a more holistic approach to content marketing, so they can build audiences and influence bidding algorithms that directly impact their business. "We're thrilled to be working with Bidtellect as the company's first cross-device partner," said Chris Feo, SVP of Global Data Licensing and Strategic Partnerships at Tapad. "At Tapad, we are continuously advancing our identity resolution solutions to keep pace with the ever-changing needs of marketers. As a part of that commitment, we look to work with partners where our technology is able to enhance their offering to better serve marketers. We are looking forward to creating that superior experience with the Bidtellect team." Contact us today to get started

What is the most valued asset an advertiser has? Is it their brand? Is it their inventory? Is it their ever-improving website? The answer is simple – it’s their CRM file. Without it, nothing else matters. People have several options when it comes to the wide variety of products and services in the marketplace, so advertisers need to communicate with their customers in a relevant manner through media channels their customers prefer. This creates a more pleasant experience for the customer, and the potential for a lifelong relationship. And the CRM file is the first part of that equation. The second part of the equation is quality, third-party information. When combined, advertisers can have a holistic view into the customer’s behaviors, preferences and interests – keys to relevant communication. And of course, Experian is here to help! OmniActivation is built upon Experian’s ability to leverage/match an advertiser’s own customer file including the names and addresses, email, phone numbers, social IDs, digital IDs, etc., with various media partners and destinations. As you can imagine, there is complexity in how each of these identifying points can be used for successful matching/targeting. For this article, we want to focus on the value of being able to match using the client’s names/addresses. Our clients have a common goal to ensure that they are sending the right messages/right offers at the right time to their customers to drive business and revenue. Matching (using name and address) is the ultimate means of being able to accomplish that goal. Experian has perfected the ability to match using names/addresses and has provided this support for decades to benefit our clients. Our matching expertise relies on the following three critical factors: Security: Experian ensures the security of any data by using encryption or secure transfer protocols in receiving data for matching projects. We understand the value of personally identifiable information (PII) and our high security standards reflect that focus. Accuracy: Our ability to match PII using custom logic and parameters ensures that we are identifying the most accurate matches. Matching PII between two files is the most direct and accurate way to target. We can identify PII matches based upon individual, household and address levels and have consistently outperformed our competitors on name/address matching standards. Confidence: Experian is a trusted third party for our clients and their most valued asset, their CRM files. While we know that the complexity of matching will continue to expand including all types of current and new digital applications, Experian is confident that the value of PII matching will continue to be a cornerstone for our clients to reach their customers.

The Tapad Graph Now Offered in Adobe Audience Manager, part of Adobe Analytics Cloud New York, NY — August 7, 2018 — Tapad, now part of Experian, is advancing personalization for the modern marketer, announced today that its proprietary Tapad Graph is now integrated with Adobe Audience Manager, part of Adobe Analytics Cloud, helping marketers expand their view of consumers and boost results through Tapad’s probabilistic solution. Tapad has been working closely with the Adobe Audience Manager team on this integration. With the Tapad Graph integration, customers based in the U.S. and Canada can use the Tapad Device Graph to expand the reach of audiences defined and activated in Adobe Audience Manager to extend first- and third-party data and deliver personalization across paid, earned and owned channels, publisher sites, programmatic, and more. Tapad worked closely with Adobe to develop the integration, allowing marketers to enable first-party data that has been previously tied to cookies and mobile. This offering has been beta-tested by leading organizations across retail, financial services, telecom providers, and more. “We're excited to publicly announce the solution our team has been closely designing over the past 12 months with Adobe,” said Chris Feo, SVP, Global Data Licensing and Strategic Partnerships at Tapad. “This solution will give marketers in the U.S. and Canada the ability to unlock increased value from Adobe Audience Manager through the power of the Tapad Graph and its ability to expand customer prospects.” Tapad has repeatedly proven its ability to provide marketers with a unified view of the customer across channels and screens. With the Tapad Graph, a global identity graph that currently supports more than 100 enterprise customers and 200 integration partners, marketers can extend their reach and customize messages based on user and household-level data. Contact us today