Originally appeared on MarTech Series
Marketing’s understanding of identity has evolved rapidly over the past decade, much like the shifting media landscape itself. From the early days of basic direct mail targeting to today’s complex omnichannel environment, identity has become both more powerful and more fragmented. Each era has brought new tools, challenges, and opportunities, shaping how brands interact with their customers.
We’ve moved from traditional media like mail, newspapers, and linear/network TV, to cable TV, the internet, mobile devices, and apps. Now, multiple streaming platforms dominate, creating a far more complex media landscape. As a result, understanding the customer journey and reaching consumers across these various touchpoints has become increasingly difficult. Managing frequency and ensuring effective communication across channels is now more challenging than ever.
This development has led to a fragmented view of the consumer, making it harder for marketers to ensure that they are reaching the right audience at the right time while also avoiding oversaturation. Marketers must now navigate a fragmented customer journey across multiple channels, each with its own identity signals, to stitch together a cohesive view of the customer.
Let’s break down this evolution, era by era, to understand how identity has progressed—and where it’s headed.
2010-2015: The rise of digital identity – Cookies and MAIDs
Between 2010 and 2015, the digital era fundamentally changed how marketers approached identity. Mobile usage surged during this time, and programmatic advertising emerged as the dominant method for reaching consumers across the internet.
The introduction of cookies and mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) became the foundation for tracking users across the web and mobile apps. With these identifiers, marketers gained new capabilities to deliver targeted, personalized messages and drive efficiency through programmatic advertising.
This era gave birth to powerful tools for targeting. Marketers could now follow users’ digital footprints, regardless of whether they were browsing on desktop or mobile. This leap in precision allowed brands to optimize spend and performance at scale, but it came with its limitations. Identity was still tied to specific browsers or devices, leaving gaps when users switched platforms. The fragmentation across different devices and the reliance on cookies and MAIDs meant that a seamless, unified view of the customer was still out of reach.
2015-2020: The age of walled gardens
From 2015 to 2020, the identity landscape grew more complex with the rise of walled gardens. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon created closed ecosystems of first-party data, offering rich, self-declared insights about consumers. These platforms built massive advertising businesses on the strength of their user data, giving marketers unprecedented targeting precision within their environments.
However, the rise of walled gardens also marked the start of new challenges. While these platforms provided detailed identity solutions within their walls, they didn’t communicate with one another. Marketers could target users with pinpoint accuracy inside Facebook or Google, but they couldn’t connect those identities across different ecosystems. This siloed approach to identity left marketers with an incomplete picture of the customer journey, and brands struggled to piece together a cohesive understanding of their audience across platforms.
The promise of detailed targeting was tempered by the fragmentation of the landscape. Marketers were dealing with disparate identity solutions, making it difficult to track users as they moved between these closed environments and the open web.
2020-2025: The multi-ID landscape – CTV, retail media, signal loss, and privacy
By 2020, the identity landscape had splintered further, with the rise of connected TV (CTV) and retail media adding even more complexity to the mix. Consumers now engaged with brands across an increasing number of channels—CTV, mobile, desktop, and even in-store—and each of these channels had its own identifiers and systems for tracking.
Simultaneously, privacy regulations are tightening the rules around data collection and usage. This, coupled with the planned deprecation of third-party cookies and MAIDs has thrown marketers into a state of flux. The tools they had relied on for years were disappearing, and new solutions had yet to fully emerge. The multi-ID landscape was born, where brands had to navigate multiple identity systems across different platforms, devices, and environments.
Retail media networks became another significant player in the identity game. As large retailers like Amazon and Walmart built their own advertising ecosystems, they added yet another layer of first-party data to the mix. While these platforms offer robust insights into consumer behavior, they also operate within their own walled gardens, further fragmenting the identity landscape.
With cookies and MAIDs being phased out, the industry began to experiment with alternatives like first-party data, contextual targeting, and new universal identity solutions. The challenge and opportunity for marketers lies in unifying these fragmented identity signals to create a consistent and actionable view of the customer.
2025: The omnichannel imperative
Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, the identity landscape will continue to evolve, but the focus remains the same: activating and measuring across an increasingly fragmented and complex media environment. Consumers now expect seamless, personalized experiences across every channel—from CTV to digital to mobile—and marketers need to keep up.
The future of identity lies in interoperability, scale, and availability. Marketers need solutions that can connect the dots across different platforms and devices, allowing them to follow their customers through every stage of the journey. Identity must be actionable in real-time, allowing for personalization and relevance across every touchpoint, so that media can be measurable and attributable.
Brands that succeed in 2025 and beyond will be those that invest in scalable, omnichannel identity solutions. They’ll need to embrace privacy-friendly approaches like first-party data, while also ensuring their systems can adapt to an ever-changing landscape.
Adapting to the future of identity
The evolution of identity has been marked by increasing complexity, but also by growing opportunity. As marketers adapt to a world without third-party cookies and MAIDs, the need for unified identity solutions has never been more urgent. Brands that can navigate the multi-ID landscape will unlock new levels of efficiency and personalization, while those that fail to adapt risk falling behind.
The path forward is clear: invest in identity solutions that bridge the gaps between devices, platforms, and channels, providing a full view of the customer. The future of marketing belongs to those who can manage identity in a fragmented world—and those who can’t will struggle to stay relevant.
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In our upcoming 2011 Digital Marketer Report, we will cover what influences purchase decisions. While you'll have to wait to read the report to see the entire list, when ranking influencers to purchase decisions: 54% of U.S. adults identified old-fashioned Word of Mouth (WOM), while information from webpages (47%) ranked second and online consumer reviews (31%) ranked as the third most important. It's nearly impossible to measure old-fashioned WOM, and “Information from a website” is a very broad category. Gauging the uptake in online consumer reviews is another story, however. Visits to online review pure-play Yelp.com is a good proxy for the uptake in online reviews in the service sector (restaurants, dry cleaners and dentists to name a few). Over the past two years, visits to Yelp.com have increased over 136%. Given such impressive and steady growth since 2009, you might assume that Yelp and other sites like it have become ubiquitous. Your assumption, however, would be incorrect. While age demographics of visitors to the site show that use of the online consumer reviews has reached maturity (Internet users over the age of 55 make up the largest age bin at 25%), geo-demographics, or visits by DMA, tell a completely different story. The top five cities by representation; San Francisco, San Diego, Monterey, Los Angeles and Sacramento reveal the first skew, that Yelp.com visitors favor the West Coast, where the company was founded. So it seems that, by percentage, the largest U.S. cities also figure significant. When looking at visitors to the site by Mosaic™ segments, Americas Wealthiest, Young Cosmopolitans and other affluent types figure heavily in the site's traffic. Taken all together, the numbers reveal that while Yelp.com continues to grow, its participants continue to be a very distinct subset of U.S. Internet users. This niche set of users might explain why traditional WOM continues to show more significance in influencing purchase decisions. Want to learn more about other purchase decision influencers? Click here to request a copy of Experian Marketing Services highly-anticipated 2011 Digital Marketer Report, launching in late March. The report features an editorial by Bill Tancer as well as unreleased data spanning email, social, mobile, search and more.
College basketball mania is here. First round NCAA tournament action tips off this week leading up to the Final Four in Houston and Indianapolis for the men and women respectively. With March Madness just around the corner, Experian Marketing Services' data team started to wonder — how do TV viewers of the men's tournament differ from viewers of the women's tournament? The women's game has come a long way since the first women's collegiate basketball championship in 1972. This will be the ninth year that all 63 games of the tournament are televised nationally. Looking back to 1982 when the finals were contested in Norfolk, Virginia, only 37 media credentials were issued. This has increased 14 fold when compared to the 530 media credentials issued in San Antonio last year. The men's game is as popular as ever drawing impressive TV ratings, especially during tournament time. Remember Butler's drive to the Final Four last year and their near upset of Duke? CBS reported that 48 million viewers watched at least some of the championship game. According to viewership data from Experian Simmons, men's tournament viewers outnumbered women's tournament viewers by a ratio of 3.7 to 1. That's nearly four men's tournament viewers for every viewer of the women's tournament. So who might be watching this year? Using Experian's Mosaic consumer lifestyle segmentation system combined with last year's tournament viewership data from Experian Simmons, we took a closer look. Men's Tournament Viewers Rise Above The Rim On Affluence The men's tournament draws a significant share of viewers from affluent households. Nearly half of viewers have household income of $75,000 or over. The ten most affluent Mosaic segments have an over-representation of men's tournament viewers compared to their corresponding share of U.S. adults. This includes Dream Weavers (well-off families with school age children, living an affluent suburban version of the American Dream), Enterprising Couples (married couples with children and childless duos living in upper-middle-class commuter communities), and New Suburbia Families (young, affluent working couples with pre-school children concentrated in fast-growing, metro fringe communities). Nearly half of the men's tournament TV viewers have household income of $75,000 or over. True to its name, the Dream Weavers segment is a college basketball advertiser's dream for home electronics, home furnishings, home improvement and home office supplies. All of these home-centered categories are near and dear to Dream Weaver householders many of whom will be following the men's tournament very closely in a variety of media formats including online, in HDTV, and on their smart phones. Brands and retail stores that have particular appeal to Dream Weavers include Nordstrom, Ralph Lauren, Nike, Eddie Bauer, Sephora, Dick's Sporting Goods and Banana Republic. But that's not to say that only affluent consumers are watching the men's tournament. Other segments with an above average concentration of men's tournament viewers include African-American Neighborhoods, Minority Metro Communities, America's Farmlands, and Young Cosmopolitans. Men's tournament viewers participate in a wide range of leisure and sport's activities (most notably golfing, football, softball, racquet sports, and weight training), have a preference for driving Cadillac, Acura, and Lexus automobiles, and have a high concentration of readers of such magazine titles as Golf Digest, Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, Barron's, and Black Enterprise. Women's Tournament Delivers Younger, More Ethnically Diverse Audience The audience for the women's tournament is decidedly different from the men's. About six out of every ten viewers have household income below $75,000. Mosaic segments with the greatest over-representation of women's tournament viewers include Struggling City Centers (young, single and single-parent minority renters living in low-income city neighborhoods throughout the South) and Minority Metro Communities (married couples and single-parent minorities with above-average incomes working in a mix of service industry and white-collar jobs). These two segments alone account for nearly 20% of the women's tournament viewing audience and contain about 2.5 times the concentration of viewers relative to their corresponding share of U.S. adults. Women's college basketball advertisers should note that the tournament delivers a less affluent audience compared to the men. Using Minority Metro Communities as an example, brands and retail stores that have particular appeal to this group and to the broader women's tournament audience overall include 7-Eleven, Ace Hardware, Hallmark, Sam's Club, Kmart, Dollar General, Big Lots, and Marshall's. Women's college basketball advertisers should note that the tournament delivers a less affluent audience compared to the men. Only four of the ten most affluent Mosaic segments have an over-representation of women's tournament viewers. When comparing a segment's share of the overall women's tournament viewing audience to its corresponding share of the men's tournament viewing audience, three of these four segments account for a higher share of women's viewers. These are America's Wealthiest, White Collar Suburbia, and Affluent Urban Professionals. Advertisers will be pleased to know that interest in the tournament from these segments helps lift the viewing audience into a higher income demographic. Using White Collar Suburbia as an example, retail stores that have particular appeal to this segment of the population include Brooks Brothers, Costco, Gap, J. Crew, Kohl's, Lord & Taylor, and Victoria's Secret. Other segments that contain a significantly higher share of women's viewers compared to men include Small-city Endeavors (a mix of lower income singles, families, and single parents living in older homes and small apartments in working class towns) and Professional Urbanites (upper-middle-class empty nesting couples and older singles in metropolitan areas). Men’s Tournament Viewers Compared to Women’s Tournament Viewers Men’s Tournament Top Ten Most Affluent Mosaic Segments Women’s Tournament America’s Wealthiest Dream Weavers White Collar Suburbia Upscale Suburbanites Enterprising Couples Small-town Success New Suburbia Families Status-conscious Consumers Affluent Urban Professionals Urban Commuter Families = Index of 100 to 125 = Index of 126 to 150 = Index above 150 The index shows the concentration of viewers for the men's and women's tournament for a segment compared to the segment's share of U.S. adults. For example, an index above 150 means that adults from the segment are 50% more likely to watch the tournament compared to U.S. adults overall.
Along with death and taxes, the third certainty as an online marketer is change. When we combine the rapid rate of online innovation with consumers' relentless pursuit of finding the best possible price, a pursuit that kicks into overdrive with economic uncertainty, it's critical to anticipate changes in consumer behavior and the adoption of new buying modalities. Here are three things that you should know about the group coupon phenomenon. By now, most of us are aware of Groupon, the privately held Chicago group couponing-company that rejected Google's $6 billion dollar acquisition offer in late 2010. Since it's founding in 2009, Groupon has grown to over 5 million visits per week to take the #25 spot in the Experian Hitwise Shopping & Classifieds category1 for the week ending January 29, 2011. But is Groupon, or more generally the category of online group buying, a fad or a significant change in the way we buy online? Here are three things that you should know about the group coupon phenomenon. Group Buying Has Reached Mainstream Adoption If you think that this new social buying trend is fueled by early adopters of technology, the young and hip technocrats, you may have been correct in January 2010. Today, you would be completely off the mark. According to Experian Hitwise for the four weeks ending January 29, 2011, the largest age-bin for visitors to Groupon.com are those Internet users over the age of 55 (37.5%). There is Applicability to Local and National Retailers While group coupons were heralded as the perfect solution for local online commerce, successful deals with national retailers (both bricks-and-mortar such as GAP and online pure-plays like Amazon.com) indicate that this movement will take its place alongside email and search as a key channel for marketers to consider. On January 19, 2011, LivingSocial.com, a Groupon competitor, offered a $20 Amazon credit for $10 (it should be noted that Amazon invested $175 million in LivingSocial.com). According to PC Magazine, over 1.3 million certificates were sold at a rate of over 100,000 per hour. The Race to Dominate the Space is Heating Up LivingSocial's Amazon play did more than just put up impressive numbers; it was a clear sign that the site is a viable threat to category leader, Groupon. According to Groupon CEO Andrew Mason, Groupon has over 500 competitors in the marketplace and growing. Have you considered group buying for your business? Along with anticipating this trend, with the growing number of competitors and offers you should think one step ahead – will consumers succumb to daily deal fatigue? Want to learn more about digital marketing in 2011? Click here to request a copy of Experian Marketing Services highly-anticipated 2011 Digital Marketer Report, launching in late March. The report features an editorial by Bill Tancer as well as unreleased data spanning email, social, mobile, search and more. ——— 1 Shopping and Classifieds Category: 28,586 top sites that specialize in online shopping, auctions and classifieds