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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Retail media networks (RMNs) rank among the fastest-growing media channels. According to eMarketer, retail media spend is forecasted to account for more than a fifth of overall digital spending in 2025, and retail media spend will grow by 21.8%. For RMNs, the path to realizing this opportunity is marked by navigating through a series of critical stages, each with its own set of challenges and solutions. Retail media strategies Simply put, RMNs need to know who their customers are, where they are, and how to reach them to succeed. But we know nothing is that simple. This blog post reviews the three pivotal stages of RMN success, offering a roadmap for networks aiming to optimize their operations and claim their share of the rapidly growing category. Stage 1: Develop a data foundation In a world where traditional tracking methods are fading, first-party data has become essential for targeted advertising. Retailers have a wealth of this valuable data due to their direct consumer relationships. The initial step in establishing an RMN is to organize and utilize this data effectively. Steps to develop a data foundation: Organize data: Bring together fragmented shopper data, loyalty program information, and other customer data into a unified location. Clean and deduplicate this data to create consistent customer profiles. Enhance profiles: Gain insights into your customers and your brand’s customers so you can learn who your best, lapsed, and non-customers are. Append additional attributes to your shopper data, including media consumption habits, lifestyle preferences, demographic information, and more. Use identity graphs: Identity providers, like Experian, enable you to learn about the anonymous – and known – visitors on your platform and organize disparate customer data points into households. This will allow RMNs to connect addressable identifiers to the household, making it easier to reach customers across channels. Create audience segments: With a solid data foundation, RMNs can build audience segments beyond basic shopper data. These segments will make your data more attractive and actionable for media buyers. For example, consider a retailer that knows its shoppers are primarily young professionals, but a CPG brand wants to target not only these shoppers but also young professionals who are parents. By partnering with an identity solution provider like Experian, the retailer can append additional data to identify and target the young parents within their existing customer base, enabling the CPG brand to reach both audience segments effectively. “Retail media networks thrive on clean, accurate, and actionable data. Simply put, it's crucial to know who your customers are, when they're most engaged, and where to reach them to drive effective marketing strategies and maximize ROI.”anne passon, sr. director, sales, retail Stage 2: Become a publisher for optimal retail media growth The next step for RMNs is to transition from building a data foundation to helping marketers reach their target audience, essentially becoming a publisher. This involves two main processes: organizing advertising inventory and connecting it to demand. Steps to become a publisher: Audit and organize inventory: Conduct a thorough review of all existing ad spaces, including websites, apps, and in-store placements. Identify gaps and consider creating new advertising opportunities, such as website and app features, interactive digital experiences, or expanded in-store touchpoints. Connect inventory to demand: Integrate the organized inventory with platforms, allowing advertisers to access it easily. This often involves using supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-side platforms (DSPs). Continuing with our example, the CPG brand can work with its DSP or SSP partners and easily access your ad inventory, and effectively target the young professional and young parent audience segments. Stage 3: Scale inventory for retail media growth As RMNs progress to the final stage of their success journey, they may face the challenge of limited inventory within their owned and operated (O&O) channels. To meet marketers' expansive reach requirements and to continue to drive growth and profitability for their organizations, RMNs must expand their inventory beyond O&O. Steps to scale inventory: Utilize data collaboration tools: Clean rooms allow secure merging and enrichment of data from various sources, creating richer audience profiles while maintaining privacy. Resolve identity and enhance addressability: Identity graphs help resolve known customer identifiers (e.g. emails) into addressable IDs (e.g. mobile IDs and connected TV IDs), which can be used to reach customers across all the platforms they consume media. Expand audience reach: Onboarders, like Experian, help extend data and audiences to programmatic destinations beyond a retailer's O&O inventory. By mapping audiences to digital identifiers maintained by identity partners, RMNs can significantly widen their reach, meeting advertisers' needs for engaging with broader and more diverse audience segments. The CPG brand can now reach young professionals and young parents on the retailer’s platform and in all the other places where they consume media, like watching their favorite shows on connected TV (CTV) or browsing the web on their phones. Measurement across stages for retail media growth Measurement is crucial and must be conducted during and after a campaign to understand and validate performance. Here are two types of measurement to consider: Cross-device campaign measurement: Measure performance by connecting an ad exposure in one environment (e.g. CTV) to an action in another (e.g. mobile purchase). This holistic, cross-device approach requires a partner for identity resolution as it will ensure that the impact of a campaign is fully understood. Aggregate performance analysis: Understand performance in aggregate across several campaign studies. Receive independent third-party measurement validation that you can promote to advertisers to drive increased spend. For our CPG brand, these measurement reports ensure that they can track the performance of their campaigns from the initial exposure on a CTV to the final purchase made on a mobile device, providing comprehensive insights and validation of their advertising strategy. The retailer can aggregate these studies and promote their network’s effectiveness to prospective advertisers. Accelerate retail media growth with strategic partnerships The journey through the stages of RMN success is riddled with deep technical challenges that are often beyond the institutional capabilities of non-media businesses. The intricacies of data management, audience insights, identity resolution, precise cross-device targeting, and measurement require specialized expertise and technologies that may not be readily available in-house. RMNs stand to benefit from forging strategic partnerships with companies that possess not only the necessary technological tools but also a profound understanding of the media landscape. The steps outlined here will accelerate your growth and ensure you capitalize on the opportunity in front of you. Connect with a member of our team to learn how we can support your journey toward RMN success. Contact us to enhance your retail media strategies Contact us Latest posts
Get ready for Cannes Lions 2024—the advertising industry is buzzing with excitement. This year's event promises to be a center of innovation, ideas, and networking. Here are five themes we expect will take center stage in conversations and how Experian can help marketers be prepared for what’s ahead. Cookie deprecation and signal loss At Cannes Lions 2024, the theme of transitioning to a cookieless advertising ecosystem is likely to dominate discussions. The saga of cookie deprecation continues to unfold, with Google recently pushing back the demise of third-party cookies once again. Experian remains fully committed to prioritizing continued testing of different industry solutions, including the Google Privacy Sandbox, to help customers prepare for a future without cookies. We've identified six viable alternatives to third-party cookies, how these alternatives fall short, and how Experian can help you navigate these alternatives. With Experian, the loss of cookies does not equate to a loss of coverage. With our strong roots in offline data and significant investments in our Graph, Experian ensures uninterrupted and effective marketing with robust signal coverage, with or without cookies. Based on early tests, we expect our Graph to maintain 97% of its household coverage. Read how MiQ, a leader in the cookieless era, strengthened its Identity Spine with the integration of Experian’s cross-device Graph here. Commerce The theme of commerce is poised to be a central topic of discussion at Cannes Lions 2024, reflecting the emergence and growth of retail media networks (RMNs). Evolving customer expectations are a key driver, with consumers demanding seamless and personalized experiences across all touchpoints of their shopping journey. The importance of bridging physical and digital experiences to create a cohesive customer journey will undoubtedly feature prominently in discussions at Cannes. Experian's Consumer Sync offerings facilitate seamless integration between online and in-person interactions, fostering a cohesive approach to engaging audiences across various platforms while measuring campaign effectiveness. As we heard at Shoptalk 2024, the evolution of retail media is propelling us into a new era of advertising and first-party data monetization. The integration of e-commerce with advertising presents an exciting opportunity for brands to drive direct sales through ads displayed within retail platforms, blurring the lines between marketing and commerce. Our Consumer View solutions provide access to over 5,000 demographic and behavioral data points, enriching your customer profiles for deeper insights. By combining first-party data with Experian's industry-leading data sets, you can create bespoke audience segments that drive increased return on investment (ROI), going beyond conventional category-based targeting strategies. Looking ahead, the future outlook for RMNs remains promising, with anticipated growth and expansion as brands increasingly recognize the value of reaching consumers precisely at the point of purchase. Connected TV At Cannes Lions 2024, we anticipate discussions to focus on how connected TV (CTV) can continue to live up to its promise. CTV is the most rapidly expanding advertising channel in the U.S and 95% of advertisers plan to increase their share of spend on programmatic CTV in 2024, according to The Trade Desk's latest CTV report. The growing adoption of CTV among viewers, driven by factors like quality content, reduced ad interruptions, and cost-saving alternatives to traditional cable, signals a shift in consumer behavior that marketers cannot afford to overlook. Experian supports the growth of advertising interest in CTV through our signal-agnostic Graph that connects CTV IDs, universal IDs like Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2), IPs, and mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) for effective activation. Our digital identity resolution with Activity Feed provides insights into CTV viewership behavior, linking CTV exposure to e-commerce conversions. CTV also enables greater collaboration, and we've recently announced new partnerships with CTV industry leaders Microsoft, Samsung, Attain, Sonobi, and EDO. Consumer privacy Consumers are increasingly aware of privacy concerns surrounding their data and numerous laws are going into effect across the U.S. at the state level. Most recently, there has been momentum on a federal data privacy law. We expect consumer privacy to be a significant topic of discussion at Cannes Lions 2024, reflecting the growing importance of ethical data practices in advertising. In a recent Q&A with Datavant, Jeremy Meade, VP of Marketing Data & Product Operations at Experian, highlights the importance of balancing data privacy and utility, focusing on "data for good" practices while using de-identification techniques to support research without compromising consumer privacy. Our Geo-Indexed audiences are an example of how Experian can help you reach your audience while balancing data privacy and accuracy. Our Geo-Indexed audiences combine location data with audience insights to deliver targeted marketing solutions. These audiences are created without the use of sensitive personal information, so you can confidently reach your target audience without sacrificing data privacy. With deep roots in data protection and security, you can confidently partner with Experian as we proactively stay ahead of regulations and strictly follow all consumer privacy laws. Campaigns and competition The theme of campaigns and competition is poised to be an important discussion point, driven by the convergence of major global events like the U.S. presidential election and this summer’s games—both occurring once every four years. These landmark occasions present opportunities for marketers to craft targeted campaigns that resonate with specific audience segments. As we approach the 2024 election season, the advertising landscape is primed for growth, with political ad spending projected to exceed $10 billion. Effective audience targeting during this crucial period can sway voters, shape public opinion, and influence election outcomes. Experian's 240+ politically relevant syndicated audiences, including our 10 political personas, enable a nuanced understanding of voter viewpoints and empower tailored engagement strategies to connect more effectively with constituents. At the same time, this summer’s games in Paris offer a unique opportunity for sports marketing. With one billion viewers expected to tune in, the global spectacle presents a platform to engage with passionate sports audiences worldwide. Using Experian's syndicated audiences, marketers can precisely target sporting goods shoppers, avid fans, athletes, and spectators alike. The combination of these major events emphasizes the need for careful planning and data-driven strategies and marketers should take advantage of the excitement surrounding both events. Follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our email newsletter for more informative content on the latest industry insights and data-driven marketing. Latest posts
With the back-to-school season approaching, marketers are preparing to engage both eager students and parents. Our Q&A video with Experian experts shares our predictions and tips for the 2024 back-to-school season so you can craft effective back-to-school marketing campaigns. From early campaign launches to the rise of online shopping and budget-conscious consumer behaviors, let’s explore what lies ahead and how brands and agencies can prepare. Watch the highlights from our video below. Three trends for the 2024 back-to-school marketing season Campaigns will start earlier We expect back-to-school marketing efforts to kick off earlier than usual. Brands will launch campaigns with special promotions to secure mind and market share ahead of competitors. Additionally, the traditional back-to-school season is extending, urging marketers to prolong their campaigns to capture the attention of consumers who are taking more time to make purchasing decisions. Online shopping will continue to rise The surge in online shopping during the pandemic has become a lasting trend – and is especially appreciated by busy parents seeking convenience. Brands should focus on enhancing online and mobile shopping experiences, including options for in-store pickup and delivery. Marketers should prioritize their online presence and optimize e-commerce platforms, including experimenting with shoppable ads on connected TV (CTV), to meet the needs of families shopping for back-to-school supplies. Budget consciousness is top of mind With inflation on the rise and tighter budgets at home, households are becoming more selective in their back-to-school spending. Marketers should align their efforts with value-driven products and prioritize advertising that resonates with these financial priorities. Strategies for brands and agencies Next, let's explore strategies brands and agencies can use to prepare for the upcoming back-to-school season. Brands First, we'll highlight three recommended strategies for brands. Maintain an evergreen presence Launch your back-to-school campaigns early and maintain a steady presence throughout the season. Experian's TrueTouchTM audience insights can guide your channel selection for maximum impact, helping you decide on key channels such as email, digital video, or specific social media platforms. Build loyalty programs that deepen customer relationships Use your customer data to create loyalty programs that foster stronger connections with your audience. By using insights from Experian, you can gain a holistic understanding of customer profiles and identify potential back-to-school prospects within your existing customer base. On average, Experian has 250 behavioral and demographic marketing attributes per individual, which means we can decorate households and people with marketing data to get a full customer profile and fill in any gaps you have on your audience. Prioritize value and convenience Offer flexible shopping options like in-store, online, and buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) to cater to busy families. Partner with services like Shipt or Instacart to streamline shopping experiences. Agencies Now, we'll share two ways agencies can effectively prepare for the back-to-school season. Engage early and extend your campaigns Initiate conversations with brands earlier to ensure timely planning and execution. Extend campaign durations to capture late-decision makers. Adapt your channel strategies Shift focus to digital channels like CTV and social media, aligning with evolving consumer habits and preferences. Experian works with major platforms, marketers, and agencies, which means we have existing partnerships across the ecosystem for you to connect with and bring your consumer data to life to meet your needs. Watch the full Q&A The 2024 back-to-school season promises new challenges and opportunities for marketers. By starting campaigns earlier, optimizing online experiences, and aligning with budget-conscious consumers, brands and agencies can position themselves for success. Watch our full Q&A video where our experts cover: Tactics we predict marketers will employ to navigate signal loss Which channels will be the most successful Recommended audiences for targeting And more! Watch now Latest posts