
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.
Latest posts

B2B marketers can now deliver the right message to the right user at the right time across devices and channels NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwired – Jun 1, 2016) – Madison Logic, one of the world's fastest growing companies dedicated to solving the digital needs of B2B marketers, is partnering with Tapad, the leading provider of unified and now a part of Experian, cross-screen marketing technology solutions. Now business-to-business (B2B) marketers can power targeted advertising and content syndication programs across all channels, including smartphones, computers and tablets. The increasing shift in content consumption across mobile devices makes cross-device identification and attribution a top priority for B2B marketers. The Madison Logic and Tapad partnership gives B2B marketers unprecedented reach and scale with the ability to run always-on, cross-device, account-based marketing programs targeting decision makers who are actively researching similar products and services. "Screens are everywhere and so is the B2B buyer," said Vin Turk, SVP of Audience Development for Madison Logic. "This partnership allows marketers to harness the power of Madison Logic's intent data and combine it with Tapad's cross-device solutions to connect with the most-likely-to-convert prospects with hyper-relevant content wherever and whenever they're doing their research." "Relevance is essential to the success of B2B marketers, particularly now, when breaking through the clutter is difficult," said Dave Fall, COO of Tapad. "This partnership with Madison Logic allows marketers to leverage their existing customers while identifying and reaching new audiences with messaging tailored to every device." For more information about Madison Logic's account-based marketing platform, please visit https://www.madisonlogic.com/account-based-marketing/. For more information about Tapad's cross-platform advertising solutions, please visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync. Contact us today!

NEW YORK, June 1, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Are Traasdahl, CEO and founder of Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian, has been named Founder of the Year by the Nordic Startup Awards. The Nordic Startup Awards' Founder of the Year Award recognizes an individual that has shown exceptional achievements in fundraising, customer growth, financial savvy, and/or leadership throughout the past year. The Nordic Startup Awards evaluates hundreds of players in the startup ecosystem, ranging from investors and founders, to developers and journalists in Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, Norway and Finland. Taking place in two stages, each country selects its nominees for consideration for the regional awards which were held in Iceland on May 31, 2016. Traasdahl is recognized for his continuous investment in Tapad as a whole, as well as his dedication to growing and developing Tapad since founding the company in 2010. He has led Tapad from startup through a steady period of growth resulting in an acquisition by the Telenor Group for $360 million in February 2016. "I am truly honored to be named Founder of the Year by the Nordic Startup Awards, among so many other remarkable leaders in the space," said Traasdahl. "That said, this has always been a team effort. We started Tapad with the goal of giving employees unprecedented growth opportunities while developing breakthrough solutions for our clients. This is a win for everyone at Tapad who has committed themselves to these principles over the past four-and-a-half years." Tapad is reinforcing its commitment to fostering entrepreneurship with the launch of their new Propeller Program. Through Propeller, Tapad will host five early-stage companies at Tapad's New York headquarters for a year to set them up for global expansion. In its inaugural year, the first participants will come from Traasdahl's native Norway. For more information on the Nordic Startup Awards, please visit: http://www.nordicstartupawards.com/. Contact us today!

NEW YORK, May 4, 2016 /PRNewswire/ – Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian, has been honored with two iMedia ASPY Awards. Announced on May 3rd at the iMedia Summit in Lost Pines, TX, Tapad's 2016 ASPY Awards include "Best Customer Service" and "Best Mobile Partner." In 2015, Tapad's proprietary technology, Tapad Device Graph™, was named "Best New Media Innovation" and Tapad employee Chris Martin was awarded the "Rising Star Award." The iMedia ASPY Awards – determined exclusively by agency votes – recognize the industry's top marketing technology, media companies and publishers for outstanding service to agencies. The award for "Best Customer Service" recognizes Tapad's client services team and their dedication to helping agencies fully understand their consumers' behavior and achieve the best cross-screen campaign ROI through Tapad's Campaign Pulse and TV Pulse analytics reporting. The "Best Mobile Partner" win recognizes the abilities of the Tapad Device Graph™ to deliver unified cross-screen solutions for the company's partners. "We are privileged to have a talented and dynamic group of people on our client services team, and we are honored to be recognized by iMedia Connection and our agency partners," said Tapad Founder and CEO, Are Traasdahl. "We have always strived to provide the best solutions and the best customer support, so it's extremely gratifying to be rewarded for our efforts. If our clients and partners are happy, we are happy." For more information on the iMedia ASPY Awards please visit: http://aspyawards.com. Read the full press release here. Contact us today!