Have you wondered how the shift toward real-time data is reshaping the way companies connect with consumers? Traditional methods of third-party data collection and demographic targeting are being replaced by more privacy-conscious approaches. In our next Ask the Expert segment, we explore how Experian and Captify’s partnership is harnessing the power of real-time onsite search data to enhance personalized advertising, address identity fragmentation, and provide valuable insights for navigating modern advertising challenges.
We’re joined by industry leaders, Amelia Waddington, Chief Product Officer at Captify, and Chris Feo, Experian’s SVP of Sales & Partnerships. In this segment, they discuss the complexities of identity and the innovative use of real-time data in digital advertising. Watch the full Q&A below to learn more about these topics and discover how the collaborative efforts of Experian and Captify are shaping the future of personalized advertising.
Understanding the power of real-time marketing data
Real-time data provides an up-to-the-minute view of consumer behavior, enabling marketers to make quick, informed decisions. Captify’s use of real-time search data allows for immediate insights, contrasting with traditional third-party data, which often involves delay and prompted answers. This approach allows marketers to see trends and reactions as they unfold, making it possible to tweak campaigns and strategies and always reach the most in-market consumers. By using Captify’s real-time data, we can predict consumer interests and adapt to market changes quickly.
Staying ahead of market trends with predictive analytics
Captify analyzes more than a billion search signals daily, giving brands a detailed look at changes in audience behavior. These real-time insights help businesses make timely adjustments and reach their audiences in the moments that matter. Beyond digital media, Captify’s multi-channel activation strategy extends to platforms such as connected TV and digital out-of-home, ensuring messages remain relevant and effective.
How Experian and Captify work together
Imagine being able to tailor your ads to consumers’ needs and interests in real time. Our partnership with Captify enhances ad targeting and measurement by combining Experian’s vast Digital Graph with Captify’s real-time intent data. “Captify has evolved beyond relying on third-party cookies in isolation and now uses the Experian Graph to provide a more holistic view of identity at both the individual and household levels” says Amelia Waddington, Chief Product Officer at Captify.
As privacy concerns grow, we have built and continue to invest in a signal-agnostic Digital Graph that can make connections across a wide range of identifiers, including the Experian Living Unit ID (LUID). The LUID is a unique identifier representing each household in the United States, based on real households and real people. This allows essential demographic information to be enriched to a household, enriching first-party data with detailed consumer insights, like age, gender, historical purchase behavior, and future purchase intent. By continuously adding new data and building fresh audiences and segments, we provide greater insights into the consumer base. Our Digital Graph serves as Captify’s identity spine, allowing them to connect identifiers together at both the person and household levels. This helps their clients target ads more accurately across different channels, making it easier to track and understand consumer behavior across platforms like TV, digital, and radio.
Here are five key ways our partnership enhances ad targeting and measurement:
Enhancing personalized advertising with real-time insights
Identity fragmentation is a challenge for marketers because consumer data is scattered across different devices and platforms, making it difficult to effectively understand and target consumers. Experian and Captify’s partnership provides the fuel to help advertisers by integrating real-time search data with identity graphs, allowing for accurate targeting across various channels. By combining Experian’s robust Digital Graph with Captify’s real-time intent data, advertisers can deliver highly personalized ads on connected TV that retain their relevance and impact, no matter where the consumer engages with the content.
“We ingest the Experian Graph as part of our internal Graph, allowing us to connect identifiers together at both person and household levels, which aligns with our expansion into TV, out-of-home, and audio channels.”
Amelia waddington, chief product officer, captify
Addressing identity fragmentation
A fragmented identity occurs when consumer data is scattered across different devices and platforms, making it difficult to effectively understand and target consumers. Advertisers need holistic media plans instead of fragmented strategies that risk disengaging consumers, while publishers must demonstrate their platforms’ value by targeting seamlessly.
By enriching and distributing thousands of demographic and behavioral segments, Experian provides the essential data needed to effectively target diverse audiences. Experian’s Digital Graph complements Captify’s data by connecting various identifiers, providing a complete view of individuals and households. This approach helps advertisers overcome fragmentation challenges, and ensure their messages reach the right audience across multiple touchpoints.
Optimizing creative content dynamically
Using real-time data, advertisers can adjust creative elements of their ads to better match consumer interests. This means changing parts of an ad, like images or text, based on current audience data, making it more relevant to the consumer. By partnering with Experian, Captify continues to see a rounded view of a consumer, allowing them to provide clients around the globe with data-driven creatives. These creatives achieve better results than standard ones and enable more meaningful connections with consumers.
Integrating search data into connected TV
Real-time search data plays a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of connected TV (CTV) advertising. Captify’s identity solution uses persistent identifiers from the Experian Digital Graph to extract value from onsite search data. Machine learning technology then categorizes these searches to understand consumer intent and create highly relevant audiences. By integrating Captify’s consumer intent data, advertisers can deliver more targeted and relevant ads on CTV platforms. This integration helps marketers reach viewers with content that resonates.
Ensuring multi-channel message consistency
Consistency in messaging across multiple channels is key for maintaining brand integrity and consumer trust. By using Experian’s identity data, Captify ensures that advertisers can deliver cohesive messages across various platforms, including TV, digital, and radio. This integration not only enhances ad targeting precision but also solidifies the brand’s presence, ensuring that every touchpoint reinforces the same core message for a unified brand experience.
Watch the full Q&A
Visit our Ask the Expert content hub to watch Amelia and Chris’ full conversation. In their discussion, they cover identity beyond identifiers, personalized advertising strategies, and the evolving consumer journey. Amelia and Chris also share about interoperability challenges in CTV and how Captify is using alternative IDs like Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2).
About our experts
Amelia Waddington, Chief Product Officer, Captify
Amelia is Chief Product Officer at Captify, leading the Product, Engineering, Partnerships and Insight teams globally. During her three years at Captify, Amelia has delivered on her product vision to put Captify’s Search Intelligence in the hands of all advertisers—unlocking competitive advantage for clients and partners in a way that’s omnichannel, strategic, open and future-proof. She has launched Captify’s Advanced TV, cookieless and data partnerships product lines. Amelia brings over a decade of experience in driving product strategy, underpinned by expertise across data science, machine learning, and analytics. She has a PhD in computational neuroscience and previous roles include product leadership at LiveRamp and Aimia.
Chris Feo, SVP, Sales & Partnerships, Experian
As SVP of Sales & Partnerships, Chris has over a decade of experience across identity, data, and programmatic. Chris joined Experian during the Tapad acquisition in November 2020. He joined Tapad with less than 10 employees and has been part of the executive team through both the Telenor and Experian acquisitions. He’s an active advisor, board member, and investor within the AdTech ecosystem. Outside of work, he’s a die-hard golfer, frequent traveler, and husband to his wife, two dogs, and two goats!
Latest posts
Mother’s Day may not exactly be right around the corner, but the time to send your Mother’s Day emails sure is! Based on our analysis of 186 brands that sent Mother’s Day mailings in 2013, 75 percent of email volume and 80 percent of email-generated revenue occurred between May 1st and Mother’s Day (May 12, 2013). The highest revenue-producing days were five days before the holiday (Wednesday, May 8, 2013) and Mother’s Day itself. This year, the sentimental holiday falls one day sooner than last year (May 11), but you still have more than enough time consider these quick tips for easy wins while planning and executing your campaigns. Tip 1: Give them what they’re searching for Last year, online searches five weeks before Mother’s Day were dominated by searches for the date of the holiday. As such, we recommend including the date of Mother’s Day in your email subject lines, particularly those early in the season, when customers are searching online for, and opening emails with, that information. Tip 2: Set the tone early with your subject lines A sample of early season subject lines that outperformed the overall unique open rate included: Remember Mom on Mother’s Day, May 12 Get a head start on Mother’s Day (plus a gift for you) Just arrived: Mother’s Day Gift Sets To Mother, With Love Tip 3: When it comes to timing, it’s the thought that counts Think through the timing of your emails depending on order delivery deadlines. On May 8th of last year, the largest revenue producers for email were orders for flowers and gifts placed in time to be delivered by Mother’s Day. Email subject lines on May 8th included reminders of the delivery deadlines: Last Chance: Free Shipping/No Service Charge for Mother’s Day! ENDS TODAY: Enjoy Complimentary Second Day Delivery in Time for Mother’s Day Tip 4: Let them treat themselves On Mother’s Day, the top email revenue generators were “self-gifting” (treat yourself on Mother’s Day only), Mother’s Day online sales and free shipping, as well as e-gift cards: Free Shipping Today Only! Happy Mother’s Day You deserve a treat yourself! HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY! Treat yourself to 30% off today only Last Chance: eGift Cards in Time for Mother’s Day Other email performance highlights: Note: All email performance highlights are based on comparisons to Mother’s Day mailings without the highlighted feature from matched brands. To all those in the midst of Mother’s Day campaign planning, good luck and happy sending!
Whether it’s a result of the sky rocketing costs of razor blades, the increasing popularity of Movember or a general trend among Hollywood’s leading men to sport some scruff, it seems that facial hair hasn’t been this en vogue since the mid-70s. Whether you love it or hate it, shaving is big business and any rise in beardedness can shave significant revenue from the bottom lines of companies catering to men’s grooming products. As proof, CPG giant Proctor & Gamble recently announced that its second-quarter earnings were negatively impacted due to the growing preference among men for mustaches and beards. For years, Experian Marketing Services has been measuring the grooming habits of men for marketers via our trusted Simmons National Consumer Study and a recent analysis of the data shows a slight, yet clear, decline in the use of shaving products and an increase in the percent of men sporting facial hair in recent years, especially among the younger demographic. According to our estimates, 17 percent of all men and 35 percent of young men ages 18 to 24 have facial hair today, up from 14 percent and 31 percent, respectively, since 2009. That said, most men with facial hair at least occasionally use shaving products, like shaving cream, disposable razors, razor blades or electric shavers. In fact, the vast majority of all guys (94 percent) still use at least some shaving products, and that number has remained virtually unchanged in recent years. There is, however, a sizable and growing share of young men who are going all wooly mammoth and steering clear of shaving products all together. Specifically, 15 percent of men ages 18 to 24 today say they don’t use any shaving products up from 13 percent in 2009. As younger men’s beards fill in and they move into more professional occupations, most are likely to throw in the (hot) towel and pick up a razor, as evidenced by the fact that only 5 percent of men in the next-oldest age bracket (25 to 34) don’t shave. But the growing bearded trend among young men is hair raising nonetheless. Another trend worth monitoring is the declining frequency of use of shaving products overall, which clearly reflects the increasing popularity of the two-, three- or five-day beard. Among the 67 percent of all men who use shaving cream, for instance, less than a third (29 percent) say they use it seven times a week or more often (the equivalent of a daily shave). On average, men today use shaving cream only 4.3 times per week down from 4.5 times per week in 2009. Young men use shaving cream only 3.3 times a week on average, down from 3.6 times in 2009. Frequency of use is also down among the 36 percent of men who use an electric razor, a popular grooming tool for bearded men who wish to keep things a bit more tame. In fact, just 27 percent of men in the electric razor set say they use it seven or more times a week. On average men use an electric razor 3.7 times per week, down from 4.0 times per week in 2009. On the bright side, Proctor & Gamble, in their latest earnings report, said that despite bad news for their facial hair business, they see potential to offset losses with the increasing popularity of body-shaving by men. And they may have a point. Based on 52-week trend data from our Hitwise online search intelligence tool, searches for “manscaping,” a modern term used to refer to the shaving or trimming of excess body hair, are up a relative 14 percent in the past year.
Once upon a time, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) was primarily focused on their company’s branding efforts. They spent a lot of time thinking about things like look and feel, messaging, ad buys and what their competitors were up to. Of course, those are all still important components of a CMO’s job description, but the role has changed – expanded, really – over the last five or so years. The ongoing proliferation of devices in the hands of empowered consumers requires that CMOs understand things like consumer behavior, channel and device preference, triggered messaging and much more. They must have expertise in various technologies, real-time analytics and, oftentimes, be change agents who move their organizations toward a more customer-centric business model. Today’s CMO must know how their customers want to interact with their brand, then build messaging and execute campaigns that create engagement and ensure ongoing brand advocacy. In a newly published predictions piece: “#7for14: Seven ways digital marketing will change in 2014” several of Experian Marketing Services’ leaders weigh in on the changing role of today’s marketing heads. Check out prediction #1 – Challenges of the CMO and prediction #6 – The CMO as technologist to see more.