Key takeaways:
- Strong partnerships align audiences, capabilities, and commercial goals, with the flexibility to add or change partners as needs shift.
- Interoperable identity creates companies and environments, with trust and governance providing clarity around how data and identity are used.
- Consumer intelligence creates more value when enrichment, planning, activation, curation, and measurement work together within the systems marketers already use.
- Better decisioning helps marketers navigate an abundance of data and find what’s relevant to their objectives, with AI helping support discovery and selection.
AdTech has built a range of technology for understanding audiences, resolving identity, activating media, and measuring performance. The opportunity now is to make those capabilities work together.
Data sits in different systems, identity changes between environments, and campaigns move across platforms and companies before anyone can tie media activity back to an outcome. Each capability serves a purpose. Greater interoperability creates a more consistent path from planning through measurement.
Interoperability brings those capabilities into alignment across systems, environments, and companies. For brands, agencies, publishers, and platforms, that can mean less complexity and greater continuity from one stage of the advertising workflow to the next.
Partnerships are becoming part of the operating model
Strong AdTech partnerships start by finding where companies fit together, from the audiences they serve to the capabilities and commercial goals they share.
That alignment creates room to build something more valuable together, including more relevant ad experiences that draw on what each company does best. It also creates optionality. Companies can bring in new partners or capabilities as needs change without rebuilding the strategy from the ground up. This is what turns a partnership into part of the operating model.
Companies align around shared goals, build on each other’s strengths, and create a structure that can adapt as the advertising ecosystem changes.
Connected advertising needs identity that works across companies
Consistent identity gives companies a shared foundation across planning, activation, and measurement, even when those activities happen across different platforms and environments.
Interoperable identity connects people, households, devices, data, media exposure, and outcomes across those environments without requiring every company to use the same technology stack.
That interoperability also requires trust. As identity moves across companies and environments, each participant needs clarity around how data and identity are used. Strong governance creates that clarity and gives companies a more reliable foundation for working together.
AI-powered identity resolution can interpret changing digital signals and connect them with more stable identity information, creating a more consistent view across environments. With AI increasingly informing advertising decisions, the quality of the data, identity, and governance behind those systems will shape the quality of their decisions.
Consumer intelligence should meet marketers where decisions happen
Consumer intelligence creates more value when it becomes part of the systems marketers already use to make decisions. Bringing enrichment, audience planning, activation, curation, and measurement closer together gives marketers a clearer path from understanding people to putting that understanding to work.
That consolidation matters. When the same system carries more of the workflow, marketers can enrich their data, build and activate audiences, curate media, and measure outcomes with greater consistency. The intelligence gained from measurement can then inform the decisions that come next. AI makes those connections even more valuable.
When AI supports audience selection, media choices, and measurement, reliable consumer intelligence across the workflow gives it the context needed to make informed decisions.
Better decisioning turns more data into value
AdTech has made huge amounts of data accessible, which creates a new challenge: helping marketers decide what to use. Making thousands of audiences available solved the access problem. But the next question is how marketers determine which options fit a particular objective.
AdTech companies can make that abundance easier to navigate by helping marketers find, evaluate, and apply relevant data within the systems they already use. AI can help interpret large catalogs and surface useful options, but those recommendations still depend on accurate data, consistent identity, and enough context to inform the decision.
What this shift means for AdTech
Interoperability gives AdTech a way to bring together what the industry has already built. Partnerships align companies, identity creates continuity across environments, consumer intelligence turns data into context, and better decisioning helps marketers find what matters for the objective at hand.
Together, those capabilities create an ecosystem where specialized companies and technologies can work together without passing complexity on to the customer. As more advertising decisions become AI-assisted, that connectivity becomes even more important.
AdTech has spent years building the pieces. Now the focus is removing the seams between them.
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About the author
Ali Mack
VP, AdTech Sales
Ali Mack leads Experian’s AdTech business, overseeing global revenue across the company’s expansive tech and media portfolio. With over a decade of experience in digital and TV advertising, Ali drives strategic growth by aligning sales, customer success, and solutions teams to deliver impactful outcomes for clients and partners.
She has successfully guided teams through two major acquisitions, integrating sales organizations and product portfolios into unified go-to-market strategies. Under her leadership, Experian has consistently exceeded revenue targets while fostering collaborative, results-driven teams and mentoring emerging leaders. Working closely with finance, product, and marketing, Ali develops strategies that support a diverse ecosystem of publishers, brands, and technology partners, positioning Experian at the forefront of data-driven advertising and identity resolution.
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Commerce media networks have had a strong start. Growth has been fast, demand has been strong, and brands have made it clear they want closer access to commerce-driven audiences. But as more networks mature and enter the space, many are starting to feel the same pressure point: scale. Most commerce media networks were built as managed service businesses. That model works well early on. High-touch, white-glove partnerships make sense when you’re working with a handful of strategic brands. But there’s a ceiling. There are only so many teams, only so much inventory, and only so many advertisers that model can realistically support. It’s one thing for a large retailer to build custom programs for a P&G. It’s another to do that at scale for hundreds or thousands of brands. At some point, growth slows, not because demand disappears, but because the model can’t stretch any further. The scale problem no one likes to talk about That’s where many commerce media leaders find themselves today. Pausing to assess what comes next. For a long time, growth has been measured almost entirely through media dollars. That mindset is understandable. Media is familiar, it’s easy to quantify. It shows up clearly in negotiations and revenue reports. But viewing commerce media networks purely as media sales engines creates long-term risk. It can strain brand relationships, limit innovation, and distract from what commerce media networks actually do better than almost anyone else: understand consumers deeply. Signals are the real asset Commerce platforms sit close to decision-making. They see what people search for, what they consider, what they buy, and when those behaviors change. Those signals are incredibly powerful. And yet, most networks only activate them inside their own walled environments. That’s a missed opportunity. Curation represents the next area of growth for commerce media networks, and it doesn’t require replacing or diminishing existing media revenue. In fact, it complements it. No single commerce media network has all the data needed to give advertisers the scale and reach they’re looking for. And no advertiser wants to recreate the same audience in dozens of disconnected platforms. That friction creates inefficiency and slows decision-making. Why collaboration supports sustainable growth The opportunity is to look beyond first-party data alone and start thinking about collaboration. Second-party data. Data partnerships. Signal sharing done responsibly and transparently. Imagine an advertiser defining an audience once and being able to understand and reach that audience across multiple commerce environments. Not through a series of disconnected buys, but through a more consistent approach built on shared understanding leading to increased reach and more impactful campaigns. That’s easier for advertisers to manage, and it creates an additional revenue stream for commerce media networks that complements media sales rather than competing with them. Curation strengthens media, it doesn’t replace it Media will always play an important role. There is clear value in custom experiences tied directly to a commerce environment. Think buyouts, sponsored experiences, custom creative integrations. Those are situations where brands want to work closely with the network itself. But the signals commerce media networks hold don’t need to be limited to those moments. Those signals can be monetized independently through data products, co-ops, and partnerships that extend their value into other channels. That’s how curation adds value without undercutting existing revenue. A practical path forward for commerce media leaders For commerce media leaders thinking about their next phase of growth, the focus should be on sustainability. Building a massive media operation takes time and investment. Data-driven revenue streams can be introduced more quickly, require fewer internal resources, and provide steadier margins. It’s a practical approach. Use signal-based revenue to fund growth. Let that revenue support investment in tooling, talent, and media innovation over time. Bootstrapping, in the truest sense. Why transparency matters early There’s also a broader responsibility here. In many advertising channels, transparency followed growth, often after pressure from the market. Commerce media networks have an opportunity to do this differently. To lead with transparency from the start. To be clear with brands and consumers about how data is used, how signals are created, and how value flows through the ecosystem. Because the reality is this: commerce media networks are holding some of the most valuable intent signals in the market today. But those signals don’t retain their value in isolation. If they aren’t enhanced, combined, and made accessible in the right ways, someone else will step in to do it. And when that happens, control shifts away from the source. The bottom line The next chapter of commerce media isn’t just about selling more media alone. It’s about recognizing the value of the signals already in hand, working together to make them more useful, and building additional revenue streams that support long-term growth. That’s how commerce media networks grow without eating their own lunch. About the author Kevin Dunn Chief Revenue Officer, Experian Kevin Dunn joins Experian Marketing Services with more than 20 years of leadership experience across marketing and advertising technology, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Brands and Agencies at LiveRamp. In that role, he led growth across retail, CPG, travel, hospitality, financial services, and healthcare, overseeing new business, account expansion, and channel partnerships. Kevin is known for building cohesive, accountable teams and leading with optimism, clarity, and a strong sense of shared purpose. His leadership philosophy centers on empowering people, driving positive outcomes for clients and fostering a culture where teams can grow, take smart risks, and succeed together. Latest posts
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