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Summer may be vacation season for consumers, but it’s go time for marketers. Between holiday weekends, travel season, and changing shopping habits, the pressure is on to deliver campaigns that land and convert.
If you’re feeling behind, you’re not alone. Many marketers face the same challenge every year: How do you actually use the customer data you have to fuel high-impact, seasonal marketing? And how do you ensure your brand shows up in front of the right people in the right place before the competition beats you to it?
That’s where Experian comes in. With Experian’s advanced Audience solutions, you can get ahead of the trends, connect with vacation-ready shoppers, and optimize performance across digital, TV, and retail media using customer data for seasonal marketing.
Capitalize on vacation excitement to drive sales and growth
Summer travel often triggers a surge in pre-trip spending. Surveys show that 82% of consumers plan to travel this summer, and according to Fortune, today’s travelers spend thousands of dollars on things like luggage, apparel, and recreation gear before they even leave their homes!
But while consumer demand is heating up, so are the challenges. Marketers are navigating a turbulent economic environment shaped by shifting demand curves, tighter budgets, the rising cost of goods, and supply chain disruptions caused by newly imposed tariffs. These pressures are forcing teams to rethink everything from product positioning to pricing strategies.
In this climate, it’s more important than ever to maximize performance, reduce waste, and stay laser-focused on reaching high-intent audiences likely to convert. Using customer data for seasonal marketing helps brands predict and capture demand with precise, relevant targeting. Whether your customers are planning a trip to the beach or hiking the Rockies, timely messaging and audience alignment can drive engagement and conversion.
Experian Audiences power effective audience strategies
But even the most compelling campaigns can fall flat if you’re working with incomplete data, outdated segments, or generic targeting. Consumer data providers like Experian can help you fix that.
Our Audience solutions help you go beyond assumptions and truly understand who your shoppers are, what they’re planning, and how they behave, so you’re ready to get in front of their summer plans.
Six steps to creating a successful seasonal marketing campaign
When you’re ready to turn summer intent into strategy, Experian Audience solutions help you translate vacation-driven behaviors into high-performing campaigns. Each product in the Experian Audience suite supports a specific stage in seasonal marketing planning and execution.
1. Define your goals
Before diving into channels and creatives, get clear on your customer database marketing goals. Are you trying to increase online purchases? Drive in-store traffic? Expand brand awareness?
Use Syndicated Audiences to set fast, focused goals. If you’re short on time, Experian’s 2,400+ Syndicated Audiences give you a head start. These pre-built, behavior-based segments — from luxury travelers to seasonal sports enthusiasts — help you quickly identify who to target, where they spend time, and how to message to them.
With segments ready to plug into 30+ activation platforms, you can ensure quick, confident activation.
2. Decide what data you need and which audiences to target
Using customer data for seasonal marketing means mapping behavior to intent. This core tactic in customer database marketing can help you drive deeper engagement. Our data solutions simplify the process, whether you’re starting with limited data or already know your best customers.
- If you’re starting with a list, Enrichment can append lifestyle, income, and travel preference data to help you understand what motivates your existing customers.
- If you don’t have a list, Marketing Attributes gives you full control when building new audiences or lookalikes based on relevant seasonal traits like beach vacationers or frequent CTV watchers.
3. Identify key holidays and events
Summer is full of shopping triggers: Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, and countless local and regional events. However, not every customer behaves the same way.
Use Enrichment to understand when your customers are most likely to act. By comparing your first-party data to broader market segments, you can time promotions more strategically. For instance, enrichment might reveal that outdoor gear buyers convert in early June, while luxury travelers plan closer to July.
4. Activate across digital, TV, and retail media
Summer shoppers don’t stick to one screen. They’re streaming TV, reading travel blogs, browsing retail apps, and catching up on email — often from a beach chair or airplane seat. That’s why omnichannel delivery is a must, and it’s where consumer data vendors like Experian can help you reach your audience across channels with targeted messaging for key holidays and events:
- Syndicated Audiences simplifies omnichannel activation with built-in integrations to 30+ leading activation platforms. These pre-mapped segments let you deliver consistent messaging across the places where your audience is most engaged.
- Looking for privacy-forward reach? Contextually-Indexed Audiences are segments built by linking real-world behavioral data to the types of content those audiences typically consume online, allowing you to activate based on content instead of identity while offering a more contextually relevant experience. Using customer data for seasonal marketing, Experian maps real audience segments across web and app environments — like national park guides and travel blogs — for ID-free precision targeting in a cookieless environment.
5. Track and evaluate performance
Don’t wait until the end of the campaign to make changes. Experian’s measurement tools help you track performance in real time, so you can optimize early and often.
Measure how well specific audiences — enriched, syndicated, or contextual — are performing across platforms and use those insights to shift spend toward top performers.
6. Optimize and refine your strategy
After the season ends, it’s time to take what you’ve learned and build smarter for the next push.
Use Outcomes to analyze:
- Who converted
- Which segments underperformed
- How your customer base compares to the broader market
- How your audience evolved
- Which campaigns drove meaningful adoption
These insights can then inform your next round of audience building, so whether it’s back-to-school or a holiday, you’re already ahead.
Example 1: The beach vacation shopper
To illustrate Experian’s Audience solutions at work, let’s say a high-end swimsuit brand wants to reach women over 30 planning beach vacations to Florida, Hawaii, or Mexico. However, their CRM only includes basic transaction and purchase details and offers little insight into who their customers are.
Audience solution: Enrichment
Using Experian’s Enrichment solution, the brand could layer on lifestyle, income, and travel preference data to turn shallow profiles into rich audience segments.
With a deeper understanding of their shoppers, the brand could develop a targeted messaging strategy by destination, build high-performing lookalike audiences, and confidently activate across channels.
Example 2: The European traveler
As another example, suppose a footwear brand wants to reach millennial travelers heading to Europe between May and August. They specialize in stylish, comfortable walking shoes that are ideal for travel but lack the technical in-house resources to build custom segments.
Audience solution: Syndicated Audiences
Using our Syndicated Audiences, the brand could easily tap into pre-built segments tied to leisure travelers, international shoppers, and comfort-focused footwear buyers. With plug-and-play access to over 2,400 verified audience segments, the brand could quickly layer this targeting into their programmatic and paid social campaigns without requiring custom development.
And with fast speed-to-market and improved message relevance, the brand could launch cross-channel campaigns just in time for peak summer travel planning.
Example 3: The outdoorsman
Consider a camping tent company that wants to reach families planning summer trips to national parks, campgrounds, or RV resorts. They don’t have much first-party data to work with, but they know their audience is online, researching their next adventure.
Audience solution: Contextually-Indexed Audiences
With Experian’s Contextually-Indexed Audiences, the brand could target people actively reading content about outdoor travel (like hiking tips, campground reviews, or road trip itineraries) without relying on cookies or IDs. They’d be able to activate contextually relevant audiences mapped to sites that outdoor enthusiasts frequent and drive site traffic with strong click-through rates.
Example 4: Big-box retailer launching summer gear
Imagine a national retailer preparing to promote summer essentials like patio furniture, grills, fitness gear, and travel accessories. Their goal is to build predictive models for their summer product demand and reach new customers most likely to buy before they even search.
Audience solution: Marketing Attributes
With Experian’s Marketing Attributes, the retailer could license over 5,000 lifestyle, demographic, and behavioral variables to enrich internal models and uncover high-indexing consumer groups, such as outdoor entertainers or health-conscious families.
This data-powered insight would help them predict demand and identify audience segments worth testing across media channels. The team could find new, qualified segments ideal for email and CTV activation and get a head start on the season, eventually increasing ROI on their summer campaign spend.
Talk to Experian about your summer campaigns today
Using customer data for marketing doesn’t have to be overwhelming, especially when you have access to a trusted consumer data provider and plug-and-play audience tools for every stage of the funnel.
Whether you’re working with a robust CRM or starting fresh, consumer data vendors like Experian can help you reach the right audiences with speed, accuracy, and confidence. Our advanced tools are designed for both advanced marketers and teams just beginning to explore consumer database marketing. No matter your goals, Experian is here to help you build an audience strategy that performs.
Contact us today
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Programmatic media buying isn’t getting any easier. Buyers face rising signal loss, shrinking margins, and growing pressure to perform in a privacy-first world. Add in fragmented tech, shifting privacy regulations, and inconsistent identity signals, and reaching the right audience at scale has never been more complex (or costly). Meanwhile, advertisers demand more transparency, publishers want control, and consumers expect relevance without feeling watched. Open exchanges, legacy data management platforms (DMPs), and spray-and-pray strategies just aren’t cutting it. That’s why curation has become a trending topic in the AdTech space. In programmatic advertising, curation refers to the strategic integration of enriched data and quality inventory into a single package — often executed as a private marketplace (PMP) deal. This approach reshapes how campaigns are built, activated, and optimized by enabling performance-ready buys that reduce waste, increase relevance, and give marketers greater control over outcomes. It’s no wonder then that curation investments are accelerating, PMPs are gaining traction, and buyers are shifting budgets accordingly. Over 66% of the $150 billion+ open exchange programmatic market now flows through curated PMPs, with industry giants like Google publicly backing curation as a core strategy. So what exactly is programmatic curation, and why is it becoming essential for privacy-conscious, performance-driven marketers? Let’s break it down. What does programmatic curation mean in AdTech? Programmatic curation is the process of filtering, structuring, and packaging enriched data with high-quality programmatic inventory — enhanced by real-time optimization to create more targeted, efficient, and transparent media buys. Instead of buying at scale and hoping for the best, curation prioritizes accuracy and value over volume, resulting in more targeted, efficient, and transparent media buys. As privacy regulations reshape targeting, curation is becoming a key differentiator in an increasingly crowded AdTech space. It connects robust data with quality supply, helping marketers stay effective while giving publishers new ways to monetize with control. But not all curation is created equal. Programmatic curation requires three core elements: 1. Unique data Unique, privacy-compliant, and valuable. 2. Strong supply connections Access to quality inventory from publishers at scale. 3. Optimization tools To measure, refine, and improve performance during a campaign and improve performance throughout the campaign lifecycle. Without all of these elements, a so-called “curator” may simply be repackaging inventory without delivering the full value of a curated approach. Why does curation still matter with cookies sticking around? While third-party cookies and mobile IDs like IDFA haven’t gone away, the industry has already pivoted in anticipation of their decline. Even without Google flipping the switch, signal loss is here thanks to Apple’s ATT, tighter compliance rules, and new tracking restrictions. Marketers are dealing with less data, more fragmentation, and fewer reliable IDs. So if you want to run an effective, scalable media campaign today, you need tools that go beyond third-party cookies. That’s why programmatic curation is gaining ground as a better, more sustainable way to buy media. Investments in programmatic curation are growing, and not just for identity resolution. Marketers are leaning in because it: Combines verified audience data with premium inventory Supports ID-free or context-aware targeting Enables scalable, identity-agnostic strategies Improves data quality through enrichment Creates more controlled, pre-approved media paths via PMPs Experts anticipate that, at some point, publishers will have to lean into this method. “Curation will be bigger than header bidding and as big as programmatic or RTB — that’s our bet.”Andrew Casale, CEO Whether cookies stay or go in the future, curation works for an ecosystem that demands smarter, cleaner, and adaptable media buying. What are the benefits of curation and who wins? Curation is one of the few innovations in AdTech delivering meaningful wins across the ecosystem. By bringing better data, cleaner supply, and more intentional targeting into programmatic advertising, it helps brands, agencies, and media buyers drive stronger performance, gives publishers more control, and creates a more respectful experience for consumers. And unlike traditional approaches, curation is built for what’s now and what’s next. Here’s how each group benefits and why it matters. Brands and agencies Curation helps brands and agencies run smarter, more efficient campaigns by connecting high-quality data with premium supply. It delivers: More efficient supply paths with less waste and better performance Lower costs than DMP segments and open exchange buys Cleaner, pre-vetted inventory that aligns with audience and brand goals Future-proofed buying via cookieless and log-level data integrations Stronger targeting and measurement driven by enriched data and actual usage signals instead of modeled assumptions Better outcomes through real-time supply and data optimization Publishers For publishers, curation makes inventory more addressable without giving up control. It enables: Smarter packaging that aligns with buyer needs and campaign goals Higher CPMs by curating inventory above open exchange floors More control over how audiences are accessed and how inventory is monetized Access to higher-value demand through curated, data-backed deals Better protection of proprietary audience in a privacy-conscious environment Consumers At the end of the chain, curation improves the ad experience for those who matter most: your audience. It supports: Higher-quality content alignment for more natural, less disruptive ad experiences tailored to their interests Less invasive tracking, as targeting becomes more data-smart and privacy-aware, with reduced reliance on legacy identifiers and personally identifiable information (PII). Curation is setting a new standard for how data, inventory, and experience come together across the ad ecosystem. When media is smarter, cleaner, and more intentional, everyone wins. What’s Experian’s role in powering curation? With the acquisition of Audigent, Experian is now more than just a premier data provider. We’re also a full-service curation partner. Together, we deliver end-to-end programmatic curation across data, inventory, and optimization, helping brands and publishers unlock smarter, more scalable media strategies. What Experian + Audigent enable Whether you need speed-to-market with pre-curated deals or white-glove custom deals, Experian and Audigent make it easier to activate high-performing, privacy-compliant campaigns at scale with: End-to-end curation across data, inventory, and real-time optimization Pre-packaged and custom PMP deals with built-in performance signals Scalable, privacy-first media solutions aligned to brand objectives, verticals, and KPIs These aren’t just theoretical; curated marketplace deals are already delivering measurable gains. In OpenX, Audigent-curated campaigns increased bid competition by 20% and drove a 118% spike in impressions won over a two-month period. Key benefits for partners By bringing together our data depth and Audigent’s curation technology, we offer our partners a full suite of value-added capabilities, including: High-quality, verified data ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset and powered by Experian’s identity graph and deep programmatic data insights Data enrichment layers that boost addressability, accuracy, and contextual relevance Privacy-compliant infrastructure built for secure, cookieless data use at scale Platform integration across leading demand-side platforms (DSPs) and supply-side platforms (SSPs) for seamless activation and optimization How Boiron achieved smarter reach with Audigent’s curated PMP strategy A leading homeopathic brand partnered with Audigent to scale customer acquisition for its flu relief product without increasing media investment. They wanted to reach new, privacy-compliant audiences while improving CPA across display and video. Using Audigent’s curated SmartPMPs and CognitivePMPs, the campaign delivered measurable performance improvements: 80% lower CPA on display than historical benchmarks 40% lower CPA on video 30% reduction in data costs Significant media efficiency gains through real-time supply and data optimization Fully future-proof targeting with zero reliance on cookies or MAIDs See how Boiron’s success story is just one example of how curated deals backed by Experian identity and Audigent’s optimization technology can deliver efficiency and impact in a privacy-conscious environment. Our curation capabilities Together with Audigent, our curated solutions go beyond basic packaging. Every deal is designed for performance, privacy, and relevance, so you can activate smarter media with greater confidence: Deal ID-ready audiences for fast, turnkey activation Performance-specific curation, including viewability, CTR, and outcome-based targeting Custom audience + inventory packages tailored to campaign goals Vertical-specific curation for industries like auto, retail, CPG, and financial services Real-time optimization signals embedded into every curated deal Don’t wait: Curate today The future of programmatic advertising won’t be won by those waiting for perfect signals, clean cookies, or simplified tech stacks. It’ll be won by marketers and publishers who embrace smarter, cleaner ways to activate their data, inventory, and strategy now. With Experian and Audigent, you’re not just getting better data but also a partner that helps you activate it with accuracy, privacy, and performance at scale. Whether you’re trying to reduce media waste, gain supply path control, or future-proof your campaigns, curated deals can get you there faster. Let’s build a curation strategy that gives you control in a chaotic ecosystem. Latest posts
Traditional audience signals are fading, and the industry is facing a new reality: identity is no longer just about connectivity, it’s about outcomes. At Cannes Lions 2025, leaders from AdRoll, LG Ad Solutions, Magnite, MiQ, OpenAP, PubMatic, Stirista, Tatari shared how innovative identity approaches are cutting through the noise, improving performance, and delivering real ROI. Their insights reveal a clear path forward for those ready to turn identity into a performance driver. Here’s how you can apply the same principles to drive performance. 1. Make identity a performance engine Treating identity as a performance driver leads to measurable results by creating a clear connection between marketing efforts and outcomes. Identity resolution enables the effective retargeting of audiences, accurate performance attribution across connected TV (CTV), and personalized campaigns across multiple channels. By building household-level graphs and incorporating alternative identifiers, marketers can maintain accuracy as traditional signals change. Activating first-party data across both digital and offline channels ensures that every interaction, whether on-screen or in-store, can be tied back to specific actions, helping optimize campaigns, and improve ROI. How Experian helps Experian’s Consumer Sync solutions create a clean foundation and persistent identity spine by resolving and expanding your first-party data across digital and offline IDs (hashed emails, mobile ad IDs, CTV IDs). This enables activation across omnichannel campaigns, from CTV to social, and connects data to outcomes. \”Identity resolution is very important to our overall strategy today. Without that identity linkage, we couldn’t speak the same language as our clients. For example, a client might want to target people who engaged with their brand’s website four days ago via CRM data. Without identity resolution, that’s not possible. But with it, we’re changing the narrative – making TV a hospitable place for deploying first-party data and driving outcomes.\”Mike Brooks 2. Build trust through responsible data practices Consumer trust begins with responsible data practices that prioritize transparency and privacy. Deterministic match rates ensure accuracy by connecting data points with confidence, while clear methodologies provide visibility into how data is used. These practices improve overall campaign performance and protect consumer privacy by ensuring that every interaction is respectful. How Experian helps Experian’s privacy-first approach ensures that all data activation occurs with compliance and consent. By maintaining high match rates and adhering to transparent methodologies, Experian helps build trust and strengthen long-term connections with audiences. \”If people don\’t take any precautions and they don\’t actually care about data in the public, they probably don\’t care about it in private. Experian cares about data privacy and compliance, and that made it a no-brainer for us to work with them. When we combined our focus on privacy with Experian’s expertise, we knew we had to do it right – and we did.\”Henry Olawoye 3. Expand reach while maintaining high match rates Having more data points to identify individuals leads to higher match rates and broader reach. Enriching records with additional identifiers, like hashed emails, MAIDs, and CTV IDs, makes it easier to connect data across channels and create a unified view of each person. This approach ensures that campaigns can scale effectively while maintaining the accuracy needed to deliver personalized experiences. How Experian helps With a database of over 5,000 attributes spanning 15 verticals and categories, Experian provides a comprehensive view of consumers through a single provider. By sourcing data from over 200 sources (including public records, consumer surveys, and purchase records), Experian enables the creation of detailed audience profiles. This enriched data focuses on identity, creating a unified view of individuals that helps pinpoint the best opportunities to engage effectively across channels and deliver measurable outcomes tailored to specific audience needs. \”We’ve been able to extend our IDs by an average of 6.5 different identifiers, with a 70% match rate. That extension is huge – it underpins a lot of the connectivity in our platform and allows us to bring 300 data feeds together to make the most of them.\”Georgiana Haig 4. Create unified campaigns with interoperability Fragmented data often leads to fragmented results. Interoperability ensures that data from different platforms and systems can work together, creating a unified view that makes measurement and attribution more actionable. How Experian helps Experian simplifies interoperability by ensuring consistent data usage from activation and measurement. By connecting data from various sources, Experian enables a cohesive strategy where insights can be shared across publishers, measurement providers, and ad servers, ensuring campaigns remain aligned and effective at every stage. \”The ecosystem benefits from optimized interoperability. We’re focused on allowing advertisers to work seamlessly across IDs and identity solutions – from activation to resolution – so the same data set is used consistently across publishers, measurement providers, currencies, programmatic ecosystems, and ad servers.\”Chris LoRusso 5. Use AI to amplify, not replace, strategy Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how campaigns are optimized, but its success depends on clean, consented identity foundations. AI can analyze vast amounts of data to refine targeting, manage frequency, and uncover new efficiencies, but only when built on a strong identity framework. How Experian helps Experian uses AI and machine learning to deliver highly personalized marketing solutions. Advanced clustering algorithms in Experian’s Digital Graph analyze and create household and individual device connections, improving targeting and measurement accuracy, while machine learning models improve consumer insights by inferring household composition where data is limited. These innovations enable AI tools to quickly generate tailored audience solutions, analyze contextual signals in real time, and identify opportunities that improve results while maintaining a human centered approach to decision making. \”AI is a copilot to your marketing initiatives. For it to perform, it needs insights and information to learn from. That’s why having a strong foundational data asset rooted in deterministic data is so important.\”Howard Luks Five moves to turn identity into profit Here are five steps to get started: 1. Audit your data health Make sure your audience data is accurate, up-to-date, and complete so you’re starting from a strong foundation. 2. Layer in more context Enrich your records with details, like lifestyle, interests, or buying behaviors, that help you speak your audience’s language. 3. Unify touchpoints across channels Link your data so you can see the same person or household whether they’re engaging on CTV, mobile, desktop, in-store, or through other touchpoints. 4. Activate AI for stronger campaigns Use AI tools to fine-tune targeting, control ad frequency, and find hidden opportunities once your foundation is solid. 5. Align data across systems Ensure interoperability so data from different platforms and systems can work together, creating a unified view for actionable insights. The common thread across these insights is connection: connecting data, teams, and outcomes. Marketers who act on these imperatives will be ready for whatever new channel, format, or privacy rule comes next. Let’s start a conversation about how Experian can help you turn identity into ROI Latest posts
Audigent, a part of Experian, now offers turnkey, outcome-driven deals for brands through Amazon DSP, expanding advertisers’ options for advertising across the open internet. While buyers continue to activate through established supply paths with Amazon DSP, this collaboration introduces sell-side curation that expands data access and reduces overall buyer costs. Three paths to activation With Audigent\’s curation services now available through Amazon DSP, buyers have streamlined access to premium open-internet inventory and measurable results. Advertisers now have three simple ways to build or tap into curated deals: Off-the-shelf deals in Inventory Hub on Amazon DSP Buyers can access hundreds of pre-built curated deals, each designed to align with common campaign goals and accelerate time to market. Custom deal libraries built around KPIs Advertisers can work directly with Audigent and Amazon Ads to build tailored deal libraries that reflect their unique performance objectives. SimplePMP with AI-driven intelligence Audigent\’s proprietary AI technology powers its SimplePMP product, offering advertisers sophisticated segment recommendations to identify relevant audiences and inventory with enhanced accuracy. Data that drives performance Turnkey curation only works if the data behind it is immediate, precise, and actionable. With Audigent providing curation via Amazon DSP, each deal fuses premium, real-world signals with hand-picked inventory so every impression can move the needle. How turnkey curation works Here are three ready-made examples to spark ideas 1. Weather in real time When the temperature climbs above 85°F, a beverage brand’s “Hot-Day Hydration” creative can launch automatically. Twenty-four hours before a heavy-rain forecast, big-box retailers can push “Storm-Ready Supplies” for generators and batteries. Weather-triggered audiences from The Weather Company mean you buy only when conditions drive demand. 2. Moments that matter to fans Live Nation ticket-purchase signals that pinpoint two peak travel-booking windows—right after fans secure out-of-town concert or game tickets and again during the week leading up to the event—so airlines, online travel agencies, and hotels can serve timely seat-sale or last-minute lodging offers when intent (and conversion rates) are highest. 3. Intent you can see Bombora B2B signals surface companies researching topics like “zero-trust security” or “cloud cost reduction.” A cybersecurity SaaS can reach those accounts with demo ads, and an office-furniture brand can court firms exploring “hybrid-workspace redesign.” Media spend zeroes in on buyers already in-market. A customer-centric approach Audigent delivers turnkey, customer-centric solutions across the open internet through Amazon DSP, prioritizing quality over quantity through premium web inventory. As buyers and sellers embrace more direct, transparent, and addressable supply paths, this streamlined approach boosts efficiency and drives meaningful outcomes for brands. Interested in trying this new path with Amazon Ads and Audigent? Email: audigent_sales@experian.com. What\’s next? Audigent is committed to enhancing our curation services available through Amazon DSP. We\’re focusing on: Expanding our suite of turnkey solutions to address evolving advertiser needs in the open internet space Developing new data-driven insights to further refine audience segmentation and inventory selection Continuously improving our technology to deliver even greater value and efficiency for advertisers As the advertising landscape evolves, Audigent will continue to innovate, ensuring our offerings complement and enhance the capabilities available through Amazon DSP. Ready to cut supply path costs? Connect with us to design your first curated library Latest posts