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
As marketers, we all want to better leverage data to understand our customer and provide them with the best possible experience. It not only better serves our clients, but is ultimately more profitable for the company. But most of us struggle with large volumes of data, with no idea how to best use it. There are many factors that play into this problem. For most organizations, data is spread out across multiple systems with no consistent data management strategy. That means that as marketers, when we get the data, it comes in a wide variety of forms. The standardization could be different, customers could be missing certain record fields, purchase history could be divided into different accounts…you get the picture. This disparity makes it difficult for us to get any sort of insight from the information. How can we leverage data if it is inaccurate, incomplete and not accessible? Experian Data Quality recently completed a survey of over 250 chief information officers (CIOs) and found that they too are struggling to leverage data. Four out of five see data as a valuable asset that is not being fully utilized within the organization. In speaking with the CIOs, some of the biggest challenges aren’t just about technology, but rather organizational structure and company culture. Sixty-eight percent of CIOs struggle to find stakeholders who take anything other than a siloed view of data management. In addition, 70 percent of respondents say they struggle to implement data-driven decision making because no one seems to own the process. To improve data insight, organizations need to improve the structure around data management. This is where the chief data officer (CDO) comes into play. The chief data officer is a growing c-suite position that is getting more and more popular. Most of the CIOs we spoke with that had a CDO said the role had only been created in the last six months. The reasons companies are looking to put a CDO in place are all related to improving access and insight from data. CDOs are there to: Reduce risk around data-driven projects Curb costs from poor quality data Handle increasing data governance pressures As this role continues to grow, it is going to have a big impact not only on marketing, but also the organization as a whole. With that in mind, join us for a webinar on Tuesday, August 18th at 2 PM EST to talk about the emergence of the chief data officer. We’ll discuss data as an untapped resource, how the role is changing organizations and how to ensure your organization is ready for the shift that this new role brings. Register today!
There is much to be said about the differences between college-age consumers (19- to 21-year-olds) today and their counterparts five years ago. As many marketers recognize, young-adult consumers cannot be targeted based solely on generalizations and assumptions. To accurately and respectfully capitalize on this segment’s buying power, marketers need to understand how their spending patterns have changed in recent years and how to earn a slice of the group’s spend. Accounting for inflation, 19- to 21-year-olds are making more money than young adults did five years ago. Their pay has increased by 20 percent, and, interestingly, their spending has increased by 30 percent. So where are they spending this money? 1. Dressing for success According to Census Area Projected Estimates (CAPE) of expenditure data from Experian Marketing Services, both men and women in this age group are filling their closets with about 35 percent more professional attire — shoes included. This has brought 2015’s average spend up to $22,859 per year per household for college-age women and $11,196 per household for college-age men. This rise in spending on professional wardrobe could be attributed to more professional entry-level job expectations or a possible shift in technical trade positions to business professional positions. CAPE data also reveals a 70 percent increase in memberships to networking and recreational clubs. This increasingly professional outlook among college age consumers requires confidence and the right ensemble to proclaim success. Key takeaway: Position products and services to appeal to this career-minded consumer who is aiming to look the part. 2. “Go with the flow” What kinds of messages resonate with these individuals? According to TrueTouchSM data from Experian, college-age consumers can be best engaged when marketers appeal to them using a “Go with the flow” marketing message. “Go with the flow” has consistently ranked as the top motivating marketing message for college-age individuals in the study. The second and third most resonating marketing messages for this market are “Never show up empty handed” and “Work hard, play hard.” “Go with the flow” means this market has a live-and-let-live outlook on life. Brands who employ a similar outlook, don’t take themselves too seriously and extend no-risk offers may have a better chance to engage this cohort. Key takeaway: If marketers tailor messages around these motivating philosophies, they may have a better chance of earning this market’s business. 3. Offline entertainment For marketers in the retail industry, particularly those with clothing or supplies fit for the outdoors, be aware that this cohort of 19-21 year olds are visiting outdoor apparel and supplies sections more often than they did five years ago. In fact, they are spending 37 percent more on luggage and travel than the same age group 5 years ago. According to the same Experian CAPE study, renting RV’s and increasing spend on camping and winter sports equipment are expenditures getting more attention from college-age consumers this year. Key takeaway: Despite being pegged as a technology-first generation, this cohort also enjoys going “off the grid.” Even if you aren’t selling outdoorsy equipment, be aware that there is more to this age group than smartphones and Netflix. Combine the “go with the flow” attitude with their sense of adventure to better cater your messages to these consumers. A lot has changed in five years. Marketers trying to engage college-age consumers need to understand how spending habits (and motivations) are changing in order to provide the most relevant brand experiences and capture this hard-to-pin-down market. To see how Experian Marketing Services’ rich consumer data can help you profile your best customers, visit our website.
Data may not be the most glamorous aspect of marketing but it is at the heart creating meaningful consumer interactions in today’s data-driven world. In our award-winning, annual Digital Marketer Report we asked senior leaders about their top challenges and priorities. They said things like standing out against competitors, creating relevant interactions and customer acquisition. To my surprise, they didn’t say data. However, all the top challenges and priorities are predicated on having accurate, enriched data that is linked together in a central location for a complete customer view. The sobering fact is that most brands are not there yet. Most are not fully utilizing their data assets and maximizing their marketing intelligence. Take a look at these stats from the Digital Marketer Report to get an idea of where most brands are with data management practices. Overall, 45% of companies collect data via mobile – be it a mobile website, app or both TWEET THIS! 97% of companies suffer from common data errors. 61% of companies named human error as a top reason for data inaccuracies. TWEET THIS! On average globally, companies believe that 23% of their budget is wasted annually due to poor data quality. TWEET THIS! Today, only 35% of companies manage their data centrally through a single director. TWEET THIS! 99% of companies believe achieving a single customer view is important to their business. Only 24% of companies say they have a single customer view today. TWEET THIS! 29% of marketers who enrich their data with third-party data only add one type of data. TWEET THIS! One-quarter of marketers don’t enrich their data with any kind of third-party data. TWEET THIS! It’s important for marketing leaders to understand that they first need to focus on data and creating a customer-centric organization to support good data-management practices. Only then will they be able to reach their goals.