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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Brands are increasingly focused on offering personalized experiences while respecting consumer privacy. Addressability enables them to reach specific audiences with relevant messages, and personalization crafts unique content that aligns with each audience's interests and needs. By combining these strategies, brands can create more relevant and effective marketing campaigns. With new regulations and signal loss reshaping the landscape, alternative identifiers like the ID5 ID and The Trade Desk's Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2) are gaining importance. These tools give advertisers a more holistic view of consumers across channels, enhancing personalization and addressability even as traditional third-party cookies lose relevance. To shed light on this topic, we interviewed experts from Audigent, Basis Technologies, CvE, ID5, MiQ and others. They shared insights on navigating privacy, utilizing new identifiers, and enhancing personalization with consent. Drawing from their perspectives, we've identified five considerations to help brands adapt and succeed in this evolving landscape. 1. Embrace a privacy-centric approach With the increasing focus on consumer data protection, prioritizing privacy in your addressability efforts is essential. Implement strict data guidelines to protect personally identifiable information (PII) and maintain compliance with state-specific regulations. To achieve this, empower consumers by providing clear and transparent choices about data sharing and honoring their preferences. Avoid targeting based on protected categories or sensitive information. By adopting a privacy-first mindset, you can build consumer trust while still delivering relevant advertising experiences. “It's important to champion consumer privacy and the free internet. We need to strike a balance between the two. This balance is essential for our jobs, the economy, news, politics, and all the valuable content and information we rely on.”Drew Stein, Audigent 2. Personalize with consent Consumers are more willing to share their information when they see clear benefits. In fact, over half of shoppers—and two-thirds of Gen X and Millennials—express a desire to receive holiday shopping deals directly from their preferred brands1. By offering value through loyalty programs, special offers, or interactive platforms, you can personalize experiences without compromising privacy. To implement this strategy, encourage consumers to share their preferences and needs by being transparent and giving them control over their data. This approach builds trust, empowers your audience, and enhances personalization. “Building personalization based on the data consumers have consented to share should lead to a positive experience that drives better engagement because it's relevant to them.” April Weeks, Basis Technologies 3. Personalize with contextual targeting Contextual targeting involves delivering ads based on the content users are currently engaging with rather than user identifiers. By focusing on personalization through contextual targeting and dynamic content, you can align your strategies with your audience's real needs and interests. This approach allows advertisers to reach consumers on websites with more visitors matching the demographics, behaviors, or interests they want to target. “Personalization absolutely can thrive. We have various solutions, all utilizing IDs for targeting and personalization. Beyond that, we can also personalize using context, geo-contextual data, and creative strategies.” Georgiana Haig, MiQ 4. Use alternative identifiers As advertisers move beyond third-party cookies, exploring alternative identifiers offers reliable means to connect with consumers. Options like email addresses or device IDs provide direct connections, improving targeting accuracy. Utilize identity graphs to link different signals and identifiers to establish strong ties to individual users or households. This approach maintains, and can even enhance, your ability to reach the right audience and measure campaign performance. “It's not just about maintaining addressability. It's about massively improving addressability. When we run tests with some of our clients, they're seeing 30, 40, 50, 60% incremental reach by using ID5 versus cookies.” Mathieu Roche, ID5 5. Build partnerships Navigating the complexities of addressability doesn't have to be a solo effort. Partnerships between brands, publishers, and tech providers can lead to innovative solutions that benefit everyone. Consider engaging in data partnerships to access new audience segments without maintaining extensive data. Collaborations focused on your tech stack can enhance your ability to deliver personalized content effectively and at scale. “The rise of second-party data partnerships is going to be an interesting trend over the next couple of years. And if you need mass scale across the world, I think that's a much more cost effective and scalable way to do it.” Paul Frampton, CvE Steering toward success The future of addressability and personalization hinges on your ability to adapt to the changing privacy landscape while delivering meaningful, personalized experiences. By focusing on these five key considerations, you can navigate the complexities of modern advertising, build stronger relationships with consumers, and drive sustainable growth. Connect with our addressability experts Footnote Online survey conducted in June, 2024 among n=1,000 U.S. adults 18+. Sample balanced to look like the general population on key demographics (age, gender, household income, ethnicity, and region). Latest posts
Originally appeared on VideoNuze Connected TV (CTV) is a leading platform in digital advertising, combining the precise targeting of digital ads with the broad reach and storytelling power of traditional TV. This creates an immersive experience that offers full-funnel marketing results. As consumer time spent watching CTV has doubled over the past five years and linear TV viewing patterns have shifted, advertisers now see CTV as essential for reaching and engaging audiences. Of those CTV users, viewers increasingly choose to watch content with ads. By 2025, free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) viewers will increase to 49% of CTV users, further highlighting the opportunity for marketers to captivate audiences in ways standard digital display ads can't match. With the explosion of consumer time spent and advertising dollars following, making CTV more addressable and targeted requires a combination of identity and audience. Historically, the IP address has been the most popular way to target a household with a CTV (e.g., LG, Samsung, Vizio device) or streaming platform (e.g., Disney+, Paramount+, Roku, Amazon Prime, etc.). As IP addresses continue to fluctuate in terms of durability, consistency, and type, including the increased adoption of IPv6, we have seen a new incumbent enter the CTV ecosystem: Unified ID 2.0 (UID2). UID2 stands out as a particularly valuable tool for CTV advertisers. It provides a standardized way to identify and target users across CTV and traditional channels like display and mobile while respecting consumer privacy. Given that purchases might not occur on CTV, UID2's ability to link ad exposure on CTV to conversions on other devices is crucial for demonstrating a CTV campaign's true impact. Authenticated audiences are key to CTV's appeal A significant advantage of CTV is its high rate of logged-in, authenticated users. This provides marketers with reliable first-party data for targeting and measurement purposes. UID2 benefits from this since it's a universal identifier based primarily on first-party data, such as people’s email addresses and phone numbers. Authenticated viewers can also be connected across different devices, enabling marketers to understand the full customer journey, which helps attribute conversions more accurately to CTV ads. Key advantages of CTV for digital marketers Superior viewing experience: Larger screens and a captive audience watching high-quality on-demand content Authenticated users: Enables precise audience targeting, more personalized ad experiences, and enhanced cross-device attribution Value exchange: Viewers get cost-effective content with personalized ads, leading to higher engagement "Authenticated viewers and universal IDs like UID2 are revolutionizing CTV advertising, enabling the effective delivery of personalized content and ensuring strong engagement for marketers; Paramount is committed to optimizing across platforms and will continue to utilize tools and advancements that maximize reach for our partners and improve the user experience for our viewers."Travis Scoles, Executive Vice President, Paramount Advertising The role of universal IDs in CTV advertising Universal IDs, like UID2, play a critical role in CTV by ensuring consistent user identification across platforms while respecting privacy. Adoption of UID2 is gaining traction in the TV industry, with brands such as AMC Networks, Disney, Dish Media, FreeWheel, NBCUniversal, Roku, and Paramount integrating it into their digital advertising ecosystem. As authentication increases across traditional digital and mobile apps, especially CTV, universal IDs like UID2 enable cross-device and cross-channel identity strategies without cookies. This is especially important as traditional identifiers like third-party cookies and IP addresses face an uncertain future. Better understand and reach your audience with identity graphs For CTV ad spending to catch up to time spent with CTV, the industry must use these authenticated signals and universal IDs. Identity graphs, like Experian’s, integrate various identifiers (e.g., universal IDs, CTV IDs, IP addresses), allowing CTV platforms to understand relationships between households, individuals, and devices. This understanding enables: Publishers using universal IDs can make advertising on their platform more addressable, which will lead to higher demand. Marketers can achieve greater precision with cross-device targeting, cross-channel frequency management, and more holistic measurement since conversions often happen on non-CTV devices. Viewers receive a more personalized ad experience (without seeing the same ad repeatedly), which will increase engagement with a marketer's campaign. Watch our Ask the Expert video with The Trade Desk to deepen your knowledge on CTV advertising and UID2. Watch the video here Latest posts
In this article…The rise of omnichannel retailingData and identity-related retail marketing challengesStrategies to help you overcome retail marketing challengesExperian can help advance your retail marketing strategies The questions that keep retail marketers up at night have evolved significantly over the last decade. It wasn’t long ago that marketers would spend their time debating which highway to place their billboard on, whether or not their next TV commercial should be comical or heart-tugging, or even what the optimal time of day was to blast an email campaign to their entire customer list. In 2024, retail marketing has new challenges on the radar. The rise of omnichannel retailing The modern, digital-savvy customer expects a flawless and interconnected shopping experience across touchpoints — one of the many reasons omnichannel marketing is on the rise. Research shows that over half of B2C consumers engage with between three and five channels whenever they make a purchase. For businesses, omnichannel engagement is a lucrative opportunity; McKinsey reports that customers who engage across channels shop nearly twice as much as those using a single channel and usually spend more money. However, the rise in omnichannel engagement also presents several retail marketing challenges, such as the complexity of managing vast amounts of data and piecing together an accurate picture of consumer behavior. Data and identity-related retail marketing challenges Today’s data-driven environment has turned the retail marketing landscape on its head, and businesses have a whole new set of struggles that revolve around identity and data. We identified the top five retail marketing challenges and how to solve them. 1. Knowing what data to capture In the omnichannel era, online and offline data is abundant. When a customer shops at a physical store, they create data points like: What items they purchased What time they visited How long they were there When the same customer shops online, they create a whole new set of data points, such as: What device they used Which items they browsed but didn’t purchase How long they spent on specific pages The vast available data can overwhelm retailers and make it a challenge to determine which data points to prioritize. Start by identifying the challenge you’re addressing. By defining your problem, you can better decide which data is most relevant. For instance, if you’re optimizing the timing of incentives, analyze when customers shop most frequently and customize offers based on individual behavior patterns. How Experian’s Activity Feed can help Experian Activity Feed connects online and offline data to promote precise targeting and measurement across mobile, web, connected TV (CTV), and more. We provide addressable insights that work across all channels by integrating real-time device IDs, cookies, and IP addresses. Our case study with Cuebiq, found here, discusses how we used Activity Feed to deliver in-store lift analyses to Cuebiq’s clients. Because our impressive breadth of addressable data works across channels, we’re perfectly positioned to be your comprehensive identity solution, as we’re capable of addressing the entire U.S. population. With access to over 250 behavioral and demographic attributes per individual, our data fills in audience gaps to help you create a complete customer profile. 2. Understanding customer behavior The complexity of modern consumer behavior is growing, and one of the biggest retail marketing challenges is merging all this information into a single unified customer view. With consumers moving seamlessly between devices like tablets, mobile phones, and laptops, retailers face the grueling task of keeping up with their fragmented journey. For instance, a customer may spot a pair of shoes in-store, add them to their cart via mobile due to long cashier lines, and finish the purchase later from their laptop. However, if they cannot be recognized across these touchpoints, they may abandon the purchase out of frustration. Retailers need solutions that link offline customer relationship management (CRM) and purchase data with a customer's online activity, regardless of channel or device. This is where Experian identity resolution and Graph come into play. How Experian’s Graph and identity resolution can help Experian’s identity solutions help brands resolve disparate data by merging fragmented identifiers into a singular customer profile for a 360-degree view. We ensure each touchpoint is connected, whether the interaction happens online or offline, across mobile apps, or in-store. This enables retailers to recognize the same customer across various devices and enhances the customer experience by keeping items in their cart and personalizing their journey across platforms. With Experian’s identity graph, brands can further enrich these customer profiles with digital identifiers that span hashed emails (HEMs), cookies, mobile device IDs (MAIDs), IP addresses, universal IDs, and CTV IDs to create a more accurate, actionable view of consumer behavior. We rebuild the graph weekly, which ensures persistent and refreshed connections between households, individuals, and their devices. This ongoing linkage allows for precise targeting and measurement over time and aligns with privacy standards and compliance obligations. By organizing identity into households and device IDs and enriching them with marketing data, brands can gain deeper customer insights, addressability across devices, and the ability to measure the impact of their retail marketing strategies. 3. Building trust between consumers and your brand Trust is the foundation of online relationships, and consumers who trust your brand are likelier to share their data. To establish this trust, retailers must collect customer data transparently and respectfully. According to Experian data, 80% of consumers believe more transparency around the use of their information fosters greater trust in a business. Additionally, the same data revealed that 56% of companies plan to invest more in transparency initiatives, such as consumer education, clearer terms of communication, and consumer control over personal data. Experian’s commitment to data accuracy and transparency further strengthens this trust. Our data is ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset, which means you can power smarter insights, targeting, and measurement using the highest-rated, most reliable data to build customer profiles. 4. Establishing customer loyalty with retail marketing Today’s consumer has many opportunities and choices available at their fingertips, which makes it harder for retailers to build and maintain customer loyalty. Signal loss and the rise of omnichannel media consumption have made it even more of a challenge to keep loyal customers. By using data and insights to interact with people more meaningfully, you can overcome these difficulties to provide a more personalized, relevant experience and establish loyalty. Experian’s new Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes solution makes it easier to do just that. Experian’s Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes solution Using our Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes, you can gain comprehensive insights into consumer behavior by combining offline and digital data through our Living Unit ID (LUID). Our Digital Graph provides robust digital identifiers like MAIDs, CTV IDs, HEMs, and universal IDs, while our Marketing Attributes offer detailed consumer insights spanning age, gender, purchase behaviors, and content consumption habits. With this data, you can create relevant messaging and informed audience segmentation to enhance your personalization and targeting efforts across all digital channels. Using our solution can help you deliver what customers need when they need it — like winter gear before a ski trip or swimwear before a beach vacation. These personalized experiences drive additional revenue and build lasting relationships that keep customers coming back, establishing a strong foundation of loyalty in an increasingly competitive market. 5. Finding your technology solution Retailers need to integrate technology to make their data actionable and use it to streamline the customer experience. They need to integrate data storage platforms with fulfillment and reporting solutions, such as email service providers, display networks, and marketing intelligence tools. Whether retailers are exploring the industry or gearing up to make a substantial investment in the right technology partner, it’s vital to ensure you evaluate potential partners equally and consistently. Experian works with major platforms, marketers, and agencies, meaning we have existing partnerships across the ecosystem for you to connect with that can bring your consumer data to life and meet your needs. Our offline and digital graphs are baked into partner integrations so customers can achieve higher match rates that improve addressability. Strategies to help you overcome retail marketing challenges When it comes to modern retail marketing, you’ll need to take a strategic approach to handle emerging challenges. Here are five retail trends of 2024 to consider integrating into your retail marketing strategy: Use predictive analytics: Data can be overwhelming, but you can analyze historical purchase patterns to capture and prioritize the most relevant data for your retail marketing efforts. Optimize omnichannel campaigns: Cross-channel data integration can help you ensure consistent messaging, provide a seamless experience, capture a unified view of customer interactions, and improve engagement. Personalize experiences with AI: Utilize AI data capture across touchpoints to create personalized recommendations and tailored experiences that resonate with individual customer preferences and behaviors. Adopt dynamic pricing: Use real-time data to adjust prices based on customer behavior and market conditions so your pricing strategies align with current demand and maximize revenue. Invest in customer experience tech: Virtual fitting rooms, augmented reality, and other advanced technologies allow customers to engage with your brand across platforms, which can improve their shopping experience. Utilize Experian’s retail media network (RMN) solution Experian’s solution for RMNs is another tool for overcoming retail marketing challenges. We empower RMNs to better understand their customers with unified views of online and offline behavior across channels and extend their reach across environments. Using our top-ranked identity and audience services, we can help RMNs access expanded customer insights, enhance cross-channel audience targeting, and improve real-time measurement and attribution to enable precise, streamlined, personalized omnichannel campaigns. Our solution’s integration with major platforms improves data match rates and addressability so retailers can overcome data fragmentation and optimize their retail marketing strategies. Experian can help advance your retail marketing strategies Experian can help retailers effectively use data and insights to interact with customers and prospects meaningfully. Our data and identity solutions help you deliver relevant, impactful messaging to ensure the customer who puts shoes in the cart at the store is the same customer who wants to finalize their transaction later that evening online. As the holiday season approaches, it’s time to refine your retail marketing strategies and connect authentically with shoppers. With over a billion consumers preparing to shop, Experian offers 19 new syndicated audiences available for activation across major ad platforms, including TV and programmatic, to help you reach the most relevant prospects. Whether you’re targeting discount seekers, last-minute gift-buyers, or frequent travelers, our audiences align with diverse shopping styles and preferences. Choosing the right audience segments aligns your holiday marketing efforts with consumer expectations and maximizes impact. With our tools, you can seamlessly connect with the same customer across various channels, whether they’re shopping in-store or online. Embrace the holiday season confidently, and let Experian help your retail marketing strategy shine. Get started with us today Latest posts