At A Glance
Infillion and Experian collaborate to help advertisers connect with audiences across devices and channels, as cookies and mobile identifiers disappear. By integrating Experian's Digital Graph and Offline Identity Resolution, Infillion strengthens identity connections, improves campaign reach, and enhances audience engagement across CTV, mobile, and web.In our Ask the Expert Series, we interview leaders from our partner organizations who are helping lead their brands to new heights in AdTech. Today’s interview is with Ben Smith, VP of Product, Data Products at Infillion.
Adapting to signal loss
What does the Experian–Infillion integration mean for advertisers looking to reach audiences as signals fade?
As cookies and mobile identifiers disappear, brands need a new way to find and reach their audiences. The Experian integration strengthens Infillion’s XGraph, a cookieless, interoperable identity graph that supports all major ID frameworks, unifying people and households across devices with privacy compliance, by providing a stronger identity foundation with household- and person-level data. This allows us to connect the dots deterministically and compliantly across devices and channels, including connected TV (CTV). The result is better match rates on your first-party data, more scalable reach in cookieless environments, and more effective frequency management across every screen.
Connecting audiences across channels
How does Experian’s Digital Graph strengthen Infillion’s ability to deliver addressable media across channels like CTV and mobile?
Experian strengthens the household spine of XGraph, which means we can accurately connect CTV impressions to the people and devices in that home – then extend those connections to mobile and web. This lets us plan, activate, and measure campaigns at the right level: household for CTV, and person or device for mobile and web. The outcome is smarter reach, less waste from over-frequency, and campaigns that truly work together across channels.
The value of earned attention
Infillion has long championed “guaranteed attention” in advertising. How does that philosophy translate into measurable outcomes for brands?
Our engagement formats, such as TrueX, are based on a simple principle: attention should be earned, not forced. Viewers choose to engage with the ad and complete an action, which means every impression represents real, voluntary attention rather than passive exposure. Because of that, we consistently see stronger completion rates, deeper engagement, and clearer downstream results – like lower acquisition costs, improved on-site behavior, and measurable brand lift.
To take that a step further, we measure attention through UpLift, our real-time brand lift tool. UpLift helps quantify how exposure to a campaign influences awareness, consideration, or purchase intent, providing a more complete picture of how earned attention translates into business impact.
Creative innovation and location insights
Beyond identity resolution, what are some of Infillion’s capabilities, like advanced creative formats or location-based insights, that set you apart in the market?
One key area is location intelligence, which combines privacy-safe geospatial insights with location-based targeting through our proprietary geofencing technology. This allows us to build custom, data-driven campaigns that connect media exposure to real-world outcomes – like store visits and dwell time – measured through Arrival, our in-house footfall attribution product.
We also build custom audiences using a mix of zero-party survey data, first-party location-based segments, and bespoke audience builds aligned to each advertiser’s specific strategy.
Then there’s creative innovation, which is a major differentiator for us. Our high-impact formats go beyond static display, such as interactive video units that let viewers explore products through hotspots or carousels, rich-media ads that feature polls, quizzes, dynamic distance, or gamified elements, and immersive experiences that encourage active participation rather than passive viewing. These creative formats not only capture attention but also generate deeper engagement and stronger performance for a variety of KPIs.
Future ready media strategies
How does Infillion’s ID-agnostic approach help brands future-proof their media strategies amid ongoing privacy and tech changes?
We don’t put all our eggs in one basket. XGraph securely unifies multiple durable identifiers alongside our proprietary TrueX supply to strengthen CTV household reach. This agnostic design allows us to adapt as platforms, regulations, and browsers evolve – so you can preserve reach and measurement capabilities without getting locked into a single ID or losing coverage when the next signal deprecates.
Raising the bar for media accountability
Looking ahead, how is Infillion evolving its platform to meet the next wave of challenges in audience engagement and media accountability?
From an engagement standpoint, we’re expanding our ability to support the full customer journey, offering ad experiences that move seamlessly from awareness to consideration to conversion. That includes smarter creative that adapts to context, intelligent targeting and retargeting informed by real data, and formats designed to drive measurable outcomes rather than just impressions.
When it comes to accountability, we’re ensuring that measurement is both flexible and credible. In addition to our proprietary tools, we partner with leading third-party measurement providers to validate results and give advertisers confidence that their investment is truly performing. Within our DSP, we emphasize full transparency and log-level data access, ensuring advertisers can see exactly what’s happening on every impression.
All of this builds toward the next era of agentic media buying – one enabled by our MCP suite and modular, component-based tools. This evolution brings greater accountability and next-generation audience engagement to an increasingly automated, intelligent media landscape. Our goal is to help brands connect more meaningfully with audiences while holding every impression – and every outcome – to a higher standard of transparency and effectiveness.
Driving impact across the funnel
What is a success story or use cases that demonstrate the impact of the Experian–Infillion integration?
We recently partnered with a national veterans’ organization to raise awareness of its programs for injured or ill veterans and their families. Using the Experian integration, we combined persistent household- and person-level identifiers with cross-device activation to reach veteran and donor audiences more precisely across CTV, display, and rich media. The campaign achieved standout results – industry-leading engagement rates, a 99% video completion rate, and measurable lifts in both brand awareness (3.6 % increase) and donation consideration (13.7% lift). It’s a clear example of how stronger identity and smarter activation can drive meaningful outcomes across the full funnel.
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FAQs
Identity resolution ensures accurate connections between devices, households, and individuals. Experian’s Offline Identity Resolution and Digital Graph strengthen these connections for improved targeting and consistent measurement across CTV, mobile, and web.
Solutions like Experian’s Digital Graph enable brands to connect first-party data to household and person-level identifiers, ensuring scalable reach and compliant audience targeting legacy signals fade.
Focusing on earned attention (where audiences actively choose to engage) leads to stronger completion rates, improves on-site behavior, and drives measurable increases in brand awareness and consideration.
By linking CTV impressions to households and extending those connections to mobile and web, Experian’s identity solutions ensure campaigns work together seamlessly, reducing over-frequency and improving overall reach.
About our expert
Ben Smith, VP Product, Data Products
Ben Smith leads Infillion’s Data Products organization, delivering identity, audience, and measurement solutions across the platform. Previously, he was CEO and co-founder of Fysical, a location intelligence startup acquired by Infillion in 2019.
About Infillion
Infillion is the first fully composable advertising platform, built to solve the challenges of complexity, fragmentation, and opacity in the digital media ecosystem. With MediaMath at its core, Infillion’s modular approach enables advertisers to seamlessly integrate or independently deploy key components—including demand, data, creative, and supply. This flexibility allows brands, agencies, commerce and retail media networks, and resellers to create tailored, high-performance solutions without the constraints of traditional, all-or-nothing legacy systems.
Latest posts
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/. Contact us
Retail media has been on everyone’s radar for a while. Commerce media has also established itself as a significant player in the AdTech industry over the past few years. While retail media focuses on engaging customers within a retailer’s ecosystem, commerce media goes beyond these boundaries to capture the entire shopping journey, spanning multiple touchpoints, channels, and platforms.But what is commerce media, and why should we care? Commerce media is here to stay Estimated to hit $33.86 billion this year and more than double by 2028, the hunt is on to capture as much of retail media’s projected ad spend as possible. However, given the numerous verticals expanding their retail media strategy to include any touchpoint within the commerce channel, it might be time to lower the retail media flag and hoist the LUMA dubbed "commerce media flag." So why are Travel, Financial Services, and other verticals focusing on the commerce media ship? Authenticated and digital users (usually app-driven) Consented data that provides unique insight into the household’s or consumer’s intent/purchase behavior Emerging focus on advertising as an important revenue stream for the future With all this “data” at their disposal — why is it not smooth sailing for commerce media to build an ad-supported business? What’s missing for them to acquire the lucrative billions efficiently and effectively? Why retail media networks are important Retail media networks (RMNs) are now a major tool for brands to connect with shoppers. These networks gather valuable data from customers who browse and shop on e-commerce sites and apps. What makes RMNs so powerful is that they allow brands to advertise directly to people who are already interested in buying, leading to more successful sales. For marketers, RMNs offer a clear way to reach potential customers and ensure their advertising dollars are well spent. But as competition grows and consumer habits change, these networks must keep improving. To stay ahead, brands will have to find new ways to use RMNs effectively, linking them with other parts of the commerce media world to unlock even greater results. Differences between building a loyalty program and developing ad products Loyalty programs are the backbone of commerce media networks; however, creating a loyalty program is much different than building an advertising product. It requires commerce companies to bring on additional people, technology, and partners to execute flawlessly. There are four areas to consider: 1. Organizing your data at scale To successfully build an ad-supported business at scale, data must be organized to initiate action (targeting and/or measurement). However, this requires changes in company culture. Both the business and technology infrastructure must be updated. Additionally, commerce media companies must update their mindset around creating and selling products. 2. People We have seen this story before, with large opportunities comes the requirement for new talent. Where are we seeing commerce media companies recruit from? AdTech and MarTech. Whether it’s engineers or data scientists, business development and partnership leads, or even your direct sales team, the poaching has begun. To build a successful business around advertising, experts are needed who can navigate the waters. 3. Partner vs. build The Requests for Information (RFIs) and Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for any combination of agency, demand-side platform, supply-side platform, customer data platform, identity graph, clean room, and beyond are piling up. One trend is clear: commerce media companies are looking for collaborative partners to provide a true strategic partnership to take on the complexities of the transition away from retail media. 4. Identity will remain the keystone to success All commerce media companies have some identity data that reveals a slice of their customers’ viewpoint. Yet, unlocking the broad view of these audiences is crucial to success. These companies need to use the “full pie” to see well-rounded profiles, gain the reach required to access them across many channels, and turn opportunities into revenue. Advertisers can finally close the loop with commerce media networks Commerce media companies with real-time transaction data enable advertisers to see true ROI on their ad spend when products move off the shelves. Measuring real product lift/sale touch points across multiple channels will put performance and measurement front and center. Programmatic was the promise of performance advertising. Well, commerce media may finally fulfill that vow, creating enough value for companies to make it a real competitor to social channels. While retail media will always exist, the transition to commerce media has become increasingly popular and is here to stay. The journey might not be a straight shot to perfect results, but the data, partnerships, and resources are out there and ready to hop aboard to help guide commerce media companies to success. The future of commerce media Commerce media shows no signs of slowing down. More industries are seeing the benefit of making every customer touchpoint an opportunity to drive sales. Whether through social media shopping or in-app purchases, commerce media pushes businesses to create smoother, more connected shopping experiences for consumers. In the future, brands won’t just compete on prices or products — they’ll stand out by offering simple, seamless shopping experiences across all devices. With better data and tools to track consumer behavior, brands will be able to personalize their ads and measure their success in real time. Commerce media allows brands to see a direct link between their ads and sales. Those who can adapt and keep up with these changes will come out on top. Create a connected customer view with Experian At Experian, we empower RMNs to unlock the full potential of their first-party data through comprehensive identity and audience solutions. Our data-driven capabilities enable RMNs to build a deeper understanding of their customers, optimize audience targeting across channels, and create enriched, actionable segments that drive measurable outcomes. By seamlessly connecting our offline and digital data, we help RMNs organize identities into households, device IDs, and more. Each household is enriched with valuable marketing insights, allowing you to gain better customer understanding, create targeted advertising, and reach the right customers across different devices. Additionally, you’ll be able to measure the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. With our support, RMNs can maximize revenue opportunities, extend reach, and confidently demonstrate the value of the network to advertisers. Contact us today to find out how Experian can help you succeed in commerce media. Contact us Latest posts
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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