National Small Business Week is finally upon us, and we are proud to recognize the businesses that have had such a profound impact on the country, as well as our local communities. They truly are the heartbeat of the U.S. economy. Experian will be celebrating this week by hosting several activities to help small businesses manage their financial well-being and make decisions that enable success moving forward. Below are some of this week’s activities, as well as some resources that are available to small businesses: OFFERS: During National Small Business Week, small business owners will be able to access a free copy of their business credit report. By monitoring their business credit, small business owners can avoid unpleasant surprises when applying for funding, protect their business from potential identity theft, correct inaccuracies and build their business credit score. EVENTS: Tuesday, May 3 1 p.m. eastern – Experian has teamed with BBVA Compass to present a free webinar that explores the power of building and maintaining business credit, as well as examines how to obtain the capital needed to start a business. Thursday, May 5 1 p.m. eastern – A video chat with Experian and several other small business experts will air to discuss how small business owners can better manage their financial well-being. Learn how small businesses can access financial capital. RESOURCES: We will also post a week-long blog series dedicated to helping small businesses manage and understand their financial situation. Visit http://info.inbound-bis.com/blog to see all the great tips. To get a copy of your business credit report and assistance in understanding the impact maintaining a positive credit profile can have on a small business. To understand how financial plans and changes to commercial credit information can impact a business credit score, visit http://sbcr.experian.com/scoreplanner. To better understand and learn the benefits managing your business credit, visit businesscreditfacts.com At Experian, we understand how vitally important small businesses are to our local communities. After all, they are a critical component of job growth and success to the economy. But we also understand there are a number of challenges small businesses experience along the way. This is why Experian is committed to ensuring entrepreneurs and small business owners have access to the right tools, resources and expert advice to help manage and grow their businesses.
By Lisa Hertzberg, LifeSmarts Program Director Headlines bemoan the lack of personal finance being taught in our schools. Most students will graduate with little to no education on personal finance basics. But, with Experian’s help, LifeSmarts is making a difference for students across the country. Together, we are helping students get on the right path to a lifetime of success by equipping them with the financial knowledge and consumer skills they need to make informed, responsible choices. LifeSmarts, an educational program and scholarship opportunity, offers teens the opportunity to learn about the “real world” while in high school. LifeSmarts prepares students to be knowledgeable consumers and workers, and more engaged citizens. A student from Florida put it this way at the recently-held 2016 National LifeSmarts Championship: “Ignorance is the disease. LifeSmarts is the cure.” As the nation’s premier consumer education program and competition for high school students, the goal of the LifeSmarts program is to create smart, confident citizens prepared for today’s fast-paced, global marketplace. LifeSmarts does this by focusing on five core content areas: personal finance, consumer rights and responsibilities, technology, the environment, and health and safety. LifeSmarts is a program of the National Consumers League, the nation’s longest-serving consumer advocacy organization, and extends NCL’s mission to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers. LifeSmarts begins in the classroom. Using the treasure trove of lessons and learning activities found at www.LifeSmarts.org, educators provide classroom instruction on money management, budgeting, banking, credit, and much more. Content vocabulary helps educators focus instruction and provides students with a scaffold to use to synthesize new terms and concepts. The fun hook: Competition! What sets LifeSmarts apart and makes it fun for educators and students alike is competition. Students proceed through several levels – often beginning with local competitions in the classroom. When they are ready, students also compete online, at the state level, and state champion teams meet every April, during National Financial Literacy Month, to compete head to head for the National LifeSmarts Championship. This year’s 22nd anniversary event was in Denver, and four days of action-packed competition and fun culminated in the team from Pennsylvania being crowned this year’s national champs. Teams from Florida, Tennessee, and Hawaii also placed. During competition, students correctly answered such challenging questions as these: Name two things you can do to prevent excessive impulse purchases: Your mom co-signed for your credit card. If you don’t pay your credit card bills, whose credit records will be affected? Name the federal agency that enforces credit laws that protect your right to get, use, and maintain credit? Credit can be a valuable tool if you use it wisely. Name one thing you can do to use credit wisely? Name one advantage of the higher education savings account known as a “529”? Signed in 2003, the federal FACT Act allows consumers to request what consumer report for free once every twelve months? Teens gain knowledge through LifeSmarts that they are able to begin using right away in their daily lives—unlike some other traditional high school subjects. They also actively pass this knowledge and their new consumer skills on to peers and family members. Participants recognize an increase in self-efficacy due to participation in LifeSmarts, and, in the words of several recent LifeSmarts alumni, here is how LifeSmarts has helped them: LifeSmarts has helped me gain an interest in the stock market and our economy. In the time since I began in LifeSmarts I have opened an IRA and a money market account. When purchasing a car, I knew it was best to shop around and look for the best deal. And also, since I was buying used, I knew I needed to get the VIN and do a background check on the car and see if it had ever been in any accidents. I looked at several different stores and Web sites before I bought my camera, exercising my right to choose and also finding the best camera for my money. I just moved into my own apartment and have my own bank account and bills to pay. LifeSmarts gave me the know-how to handle my business on my own – from auto, rent and health insurance, to managing my money. I learned that you could actually call a credit card company and ask to have your interest rate lowered, and I did it. It is gratifying to work with long-term partners such as Experian. Over the past 20 years Experian has provided in-kind donations of time and expertise, such as writing competition questions, reviewing content, serving as officials at state and national LifeSmarts competitions, and serving on the LifeSmarts Advisory Board. Our partnership with Experian has provided LifeSmarts participants with a deeper understanding of credit issues, especially credit reports, and credit scoring. Experian has also generously supported LifeSmarts financially throughout that time, providing funding to help LifeSmarts extend its reach to other Student Leadership Organizations such as Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA), 4-H, and local JumpStart Coalitions. Funding from Experian has also allowed LifeSmarts to explore opportunities for growth in large, urban school districts. By partnering with LifeSmarts Experian has shown a commitment to educating the next generation and investing in today’s youth. When I think of what I didn’t know about consumer issues when I was a 16-year-old high school student, I’m even more impressed by the young people who participate in the LifeSmarts consumer education program and competition. Our goal is that everyone will learn something when they participate in LifeSmarts. So after reading this blog, did you learn something new? Were you able to answer those challenging questions that our champions conquered? For more, follow us on Facebook and check out the 5-question Daily Quiz! Answers: Set a time limit; consider changing how and where you shop; avoid shopping with impulsive buyers; give yourself a set “splurge” budget; keep a list of things you really want/need; keep your credit cards at home; limit the amount of money you carry Both yours and your mom's FTC; Federal Trade Commission Know the real cost of debt; don’t use credit to live beyond your means; read the fine print when comparing credit options; pay your bills in full each month; keep your total credit payments to less than 10% of your monthly income Deposits grow on a tax-deferred basis; when money is withdrawn to pay for higher education, it is taxed at the student’s rate; some states provide tax breaks in addition to the federal tax breaks; the money can be used for colleges in any state Credit report; personal credit report Photos Courtesy of: Jonathan Phillips Photography
Experian Marketing Services, a recognized leader in data-driven marketing and cloud-based marketing technology, today unveiled an audience management platform that will change the way the advertising industry buys and measures media. The Audience Engine platform deterministically links and matches data across the marketing ecosystem in a unified, automated platform for targeting, execution and measurement of addressable advertising campaigns. Advertisers, agencies and publishers can use Audience Engine to build and execute addressable advertising campaigns at scale in just a few clicks. Experian® developed the platform to automate the process of finding an advertiser’s audiences where they are today — at scale, across channels, networks and online and offline platforms. It provides users with a single, agnostic platform to create, understand and activate their addressable advertising campaigns leveraging a combination of first-, second- and third-party data sources. For TV advertisers, this includes linear, addressable and over-the-top audiences, such as connected TV. While in beta over the last nine months, more than 70 brands have used Audience Engine to launch addressable TV campaigns. Brands across verticals including major automotive, travel, retail and consumer packaged goods have already seen success, with an average sales lift of 67 percent. “We built Audience Engine with an open ecosystem in mind. As a result, we’ve been very successful in securing major accounts that have contributed to the impressive scale of our platform,” said Kevin Dean, president and general manager of targeting, Experian Marketing Services. “Our audience management platform allows media companies to monetize their data by making it accessible to the industry in a privacy-compliant, agnostic environment. Meanwhile, the media companies remain in control of their data and how that data is used for marketing.” Key facts about the Audience Engine platform Reach: Users of the Audience Engine platform can reach 85 percent of the entire U.S. population with addressable advertising campaigns. Advertisers can reach 100 percent of the household-level addressable TV operators in the United States through Audience Engine. People-based audiences, not cookies: Unlike a data management platform (DMP), Experian’s audience management platform generates “people-based” audiences by deterministically connecting data from across the industry, including online and offline platforms. It does not rely on cookies. Experian has direct partnerships with over 20 of the country’s largest media providers across TV, online, mobile, email and direct mail to enable deterministic matching and distribution across more than 8 billion variables. Media partners include Facebook, Yahoo, Viant, AOL, Cablevision, AT&T and Dish Network, among others. Users: Audience Engine is for users on both the buy and sell sides of advertising. End users include advertisers, agencies, media publishers and DMPs. Flexibility for distribution: Audience Engine offers users the flexibility to distribute audiences in perfect orchestration with demand side platforms (DSPs) and DMPs including Videology, Turn, MediaMath, x+1 and Lotame. Industry and partner quotes “Experian has become a critical component to today’s addressable ecosystem,” said Jamie Power, managing partner, Modi Media. “In five years, we’ll look back on this platform as a significant milestone in the ease and evolution of Advanced TV Advertising. Their direct link to the MVPD infrastructure drastically improves our ability to implement Addressable campaigns in reasonable time with accurate data and measurement." “Experian’s Audience Engine is integral to the future of TV and advertising,” said Andre Swanston, CEO of Tru Optik, which provides media and entertainment behavioral data for Audience Engine. “Our partnership with Experian has made Tru Optik data on the consumption of streaming media content available across addressable TV, opening an entire new revenue opportunity for our company and providing media companies and agencies with the insights they need to reach consumers, who are increasingly consuming content across multiple screens.” How Audience Engine works Directly in the Audience Engine platform, users are able to: Create custom audiences by selecting from their customer files and Experian’s consumer database (the largest in the world), as well as segments from other unique, emerging data sources. Users see the quantity and scale of the target audience immediately and can export the file within minutes. View audience insights that illustrate who this addressable audience is in terms of geographic, demographic and lifestyle attributes. The audience insight tool can be exported immediately into a report. Choose the channels and portals to distribute the addressable campaign across all channels: online, mobile, email, TV and direct mail. The audience targeting file is validated seamlessly to eliminate duplicate files across audiences. Through Experian’s matching capabilities embedded within the platform, users are able to view where an advertiser’s audience is active, regardless of the channel or platform. The platform then delivers addressable audiences for advertisers and agencies to use in their campaign targeting, all in a privacy-compliant manner. Users can view performance in a closed-loop reporting environment that shows the impact of their addressable campaigns across offline and online sales. “Traditionally, advertisers and media buyers think about the channel first — whether that’s targeting an audience via TV, on Facebook or an app — before they know if their audience is active in that channel. Audience Engine reverses this process,” said Dean. “The traditional approach gives advertisers ‘reach,’ but also results in a lot of wasted money, inaccurate data and irrelevant ads. With our audience-management platform, reach can be achieved with a level of unprecedented precision.” To learn more about the Audience Engine platform, please visit Experian’s website: http://ex.pn/audienceengine.
Today, we stand at the forefront of a digital revolution that is reshaping the financial services industry. And, against this backdrop, financial institutions are at vastly different levels of maturity; the world’s biggest banks are managing large-scale infrastructure migrations and making significant investments in AI while regional banks and credit unions are putting plans in place for modernization strategies, and fintechs are purpose-built and cloud native. To explore this more, I recently had the privilege of attending the annual Reuters NEXT live event in New York City. The event gathers globally recognized leaders across business, finance, technology, and government to tackle some of today’s most pressing issues. On the World Stage, I joined Del Irani, a talented anchor and broadcast journalist, to discuss the future of lending and the pivotal role of data and AI in building a more inclusive financial system. Improving financial access Our discussion highlighted the lack of access to traditional financial systems, and the impact it has on nearly 100 million people in North America alone. Globally, the problem affects over one billion people. These people, who are credit invisible, unscoreable, or have subprime credit scores, are unable to secure everyday financial products that many of us take for granted. What many don’t realize is, this is not a fringe subset of the population. Most of us, myself included, know someone who has faced the challenges of financial exclusion. Everyday Americans, including young people who are just starting out, new immigrants and people from diverse communities, often lack access to mainstream financial products. We discussed how traditional lending has a limited view of a consumer. Like looking through a keyhole, the lender’s understanding of the person in view is often incomplete and obstructed. However, with expanded data, technology, and advanced analytics, there is an opportunity to better understand the whole person, and as a result have a more inclusive financial system. At Experian, we have a unique ability to connect the power of traditional credit with alternative data, bringing a more holistic understanding of consumers and their behaviors. We are dedicated to leveraging our rich history in data and our expertise in technology to create the future of credit and ultimately bring financial power to everyone. The future of lending After spending two days with over 700 industry leaders from around the world, one thing is abundantly clear: much like the early days of the internet, today, we are at the cutting-edge of a technical revolution. Reflecting on my time at Reuters NEXT, I am particularly excited by the collective commitment to drive innovative, and smarter ways of working. We are only beginning to scratch the surface of how data and technology can transform financial services, and Experian is positioned to play a significant role. As we look to the future, I am excited about the ways we will create new opportunities for businesses and consumers alike.
The advertising ecosystem has seen significant transformation over the past few years, with increased privacy regulation, changes in available signals, and the rise of channels like connected TV and retail media. These changes are impacting the way that consumers interact with brands and how brands understand and continue to deliver relevant messages to consumers with precision. Experian has been helping marketers navigate these changes, and as a result, our marketing data and identity solutions underpin much of today’s advertising industry. We’re committed to empowering marketers and agencies to understand and reach their target audiences, across all channels. Today, we are excited to announce our acquisition of Audigent—a leading data and activation platform in the advertising industry. With Audigent’s combination of first-party publisher data, inventory and deep supply-side distribution relationships, publishers, big and small, can empower marketers to better understand their customers, expand the reach of their target audiences and activate those audiences across the most impactful inventory. I am excited to bring together Audigent’s supply-side network as a natural extension to our existing demand-side capabilities. Audigent’s ability to combine inventory with targeted audiences using first-party, third-party and contextual signals provides the best of all worlds, allowing marketers to deliver campaigns centered on consumer choices, preferences, and behaviors. The addition of Audigent further strengthens our strategy to be the premier independent provider of marketing data and identity, ultimately creating more relevant experiences for consumers. To learn more about Experian and Audigent, visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/ and https://audigent.com/.
When it comes to cybercriminals and threat vectors, we need to expect the unexpected. Experian’s 12th annual Data Breach Industry Forecast highlights several potential trends for 2025, with AI playing a central role. This year has already seen more data breaches and impacted consumers than 2023, indicating that global data breaches are not slowing down. Some things to watch out for next year includes the potential for more internal fraud. As companies train employees on AI, there is a growing risk that some will misuse their knowledge for internal theft and sourcing sensitive information. Another trend may be cyberattackers targeting large data centers, with the growth of generative AI introducing power as a new attack vector. It’s reported that a single ChatGPT query uses significantly more electricity than a standard Google search, making data centers and cloud infrastructure vulnerable, especially in countries with varying security standards. We expect AI-related attacks to dominate the headlines next year and investments in cybersecurity will increase to tackle this emerging threat, as hackers leverage AI for phishing, password cracking, malware, and deepfakes. Jim Steven, Head of Crisis and Data Response Services at Experian Global Data Breach Resolution in the UK, anticipates that global data breaches will persist at their current rate next year. He notes that ransomware attacks are likely to become even more sophisticated with the integration of AI. Additionally, Steven predicts that threat actors will escalate their tactics to achieve greater rewards, and the misuse of consumer data to damage reputations will increase in 2025. To access the complimentary report, click here.