AdTech has never had more data, yet it has rarely been harder for brands and agencies to answer a simple question: what actually drove the result?
Clicks, conversions, and platform-reported performance have long served as proxies for success, shaping how campaigns are evaluated, budgets are allocated, and results are communicated. But they were never designed to measure business impact directly. They offer a directional view of activity rather than a definitive answer.
Clicks indicate interest, conversions indicate action, and platform-reported metrics reflect performance within a given environment. Each of these signals plays a role, but none of them, on their own, can confirm whether marketing led to a business outcome.
That limitation isn’t new, but it’s becoming more visible as signals shift and measurement becomes more fragmented. Measurement systems are under increasing strain, shaped by signal fragmentation, privacy constraints, and data environments that make it harder to connect media exposure to outcomes. In fact, 75% of marketers say their current approaches are falling short.
Performance can appear strong in one platform and materially different in another, making it harder to reconcile results across partners. Connecting campaign performance to actual business outcomes remains difficult.
As identity, data collaboration, and measurement become more strategic to marketing performance, organizations are looking for infrastructure that can connect data across partners while preserving neutrality, flexibility, and interoperability.
Why performance doesn’t always reflect impact
Even when data is available, it doesn’t always tell a complete or accurate story.
A conversion after an ad exposure may suggest a relationship, but it doesn’t establish causation. Attribution models favor what’s easiest to measure, and platform-reported metrics often reflect biases toward their own ecosystems. Over time, this creates a version of performance that can appear accurate while overstating actual impact.
Measurement should move from signals to conversions, then to verified outcomes, and ultimately to incrementality. Each step brings measurement closer to understanding true business impact. In practice, most strategies stall in the middle, treating conversions as the endpoint even though they don’t show whether marketing drove the result.
This creates a gap between what’s measured and what matters. Incrementality is gaining focus because it isolates what changed due to marketing, separating true impact from what would have happened anyway. Industry guidance increasingly reflects this shift, recognizing incrementality as a reliable way to measure causal impact in a fragmented, privacy-first ecosystem.
As AI and agentic technologies become more involved in planning, optimization, and decision-making, the quality of the underlying identity and data foundation becomes increasingly important. Reliable outcomes require trusted identity and interoperable data.
The infrastructure shift: Why CAPI matters now
Measurement is evolving at both a conceptual and technical level.
As browser-based tracking becomes less reliable, the industry is shifting toward server-side approaches, including conversion APIs (CAPI). These approaches create a more direct, durable connection between advertiser data and platform systems, reducing reliance on signals limited by browsers and privacy controls.
Platforms are reinforcing this shift. Meta positions CAPI as a way to improve data quality, measurement accuracy, and optimization by enabling more complete event capture. Google similarly emphasizes server-side tagging to improve data control, resilience, and performance in modern measurement environments.
On their own, these approaches don’t solve the measurement challenge. Combined with identity, they create a stronger foundation for connecting marketing activity to real outcomes.
Stronger data collection infrastructure is most effective when paired with interoperable identity and privacy-first governance, giving marketers greater confidence in how data is connected, activated, and measured across environments.
Identity as the connective layer
Identity resolution is a key enabler of that foundation. By connecting identifiers across platforms, devices, and environments, it helps marketers tie exposure to consumers and, ultimately, to real-world outcomes. Without it, measurement stays siloed across platforms and channels. With it, marketers can see how activity across environments contributes to a single outcome.
Interoperable identity is becoming more than a marketing capability. It increasingly serves as a foundational layer that helps brands, agencies, publishers, platforms, and partners collaborate across a growing number of data and media environments.
Industry efforts around data clean rooms, interoperability, and privacy-safe collaboration all address the same challenge: how to connect data across environments without relying on outdated or fragile signals. Solutions that strengthen identity resolution within these environments improve match rates between partners, making collaboration more effective and measurement more complete.
As collaboration expands across clean rooms, platforms, and activation channels, marketers benefit from identity frameworks that support interoperability rather than limiting how data can move across the broader ecosystem.
What brands and agencies should expect next
For brands and agencies, the focus is shifting from what appears to perform within a platform and toward what drives results. That requires looking beyond platform-reported metrics, asking more of measurement partners, and incorporating incrementality into how success is defined.
It also requires investment in identity and measurement that enable outcome-based measurement. Without that foundation, even advanced reporting will struggle to provide a clear view of performance.
That foundation should include trusted consumer data, transparent governance practices, and identity capabilities that can adapt as technology, privacy expectations, and AI-driven workflows continue to change.
Many organizations are also evaluating how measurement, identity, and activation strategies can maintain long-term flexibility across agencies, platforms, publishers, commerce media networks, and emerging channels.
What this shift means for AdTech
Reporting within platforms or optimizing intermediary metrics is no longer enough. Success increasingly depends on demonstrating how marketing activity translates into business results across channels and environments.
As marketing systems become more automated, brands need visibility into the data and identity layers informing those decisions, along with confidence that those systems are operating on accurate, privacy-safe consumer information.
That shift requires interoperable identity, cross-platform measurement, and infrastructure that supports more complete and reliable data collection. It also requires validating whether marketing drove incremental business impact, rather than simply reporting observed conversions.
Independent identity and neutral data infrastructure can help support that effort by giving organizations the flexibility to work across partners, platforms, and channels while maintaining consistency in measurement and audience understanding.
This means building systems that connect exposure to outcomes, measure incremental impact, and link media investment and business results. Clicks and conversions remain useful, but their limitations are becoming more visible as reliability declines.
Trusted identity, privacy-safe data collaboration, and transparent measurement are becoming central to how marketers build durable strategies that can adapt as the ecosystem continues to change.
Measurement will be defined by the ability to connect marketing activity to verifiable outcomes, with incrementality at the center of understanding true impact.
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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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For the past several years ad-tech defined the value of identity at the individual level; made possible by the evolution of data, technology and machine-learning. But, earlier this year COVID-19 set in motion many shifts in consumer digital behavior. The more we’ve been working and learning from home, using devices that are shared amongst an entire household, the more apparent it is that marketers need to shift their strategies to align with these changes. Did you know the average household owns eleven or more connected devices? And the longer we’ve been at home, the more these devices are shared by multiple individuals. If you’re looking for a few simple ways to evolve from an individual focused strategy to a household strategy, here’s a good place to start: Audience segmentation Traditionally, audiences are built with a narrow focus on a single user, and what known attributes about that individual or their brand engagement can be leveraged for a targeting strategy. Now that screens are being shared between multiple users in a home, how can you be sure you’re identifying them correctly, and thus, segmenting them in the right buckets for targeting? The key lies in the ability to connect those points through identity resolution. Using ad exposure from household level devices, followed by a second engagement from an individual within that household can indicate a user is a better candidate for purchase or conversion than others. So before you build audiences for targeting, you can qualify them at the household level for segmentation with more confidence. Example: An auto advertiser uses audience segments from a third party provider such as ‘auto intenders’ to target individuals with new pricing offers. They would continue retargeting these users, unaware that some are connected in the same household, and thus are probably not all in the market to actually get a new car. By bucketing users that share a common household device within this third party segment, they can hone in on which individuals are actually in-market for a car and evolve their strategy to be more effective. Targeting Retargeting, frequency capping and sequential messaging have always been meant for an individual user — the more they’re exposed to your brand in a personalized way, the more likely they are to take the desired action. But, have you considered that multiple users could have a shared initial exposure to your brand? Today, you can target a household of potential consumers on a shared device like a CTV, and employ those retargeting strategies based on that common initial exposure. Starting at the household level, means you can compare movement through the funnel between different individuals in that household, and tailor your targeting accordingly. Perhaps you realize only one person in that household will convert and you tailor messaging to them more frequently, while confidently suppressing the other individuals. Example: a CPG brand uses OTT advertising, but doesn’t incorporate it within their sequential strategy, because they consider it just a ‘brand awareness’ opportunity. By using OTT more strategically as a household level engagement, it can reveal which individuals within a household are more favorable towards a brand further down the funnel. So, you can spend impressions targeting those users, rather than wasting impressions on multiple individuals within the household. Measurement Measurement and attribution are imperative to understanding the path to purchase and making strategies more efficient over time. Often that efficiency involves adding or removing devices and channels from a targeting strategy based on their contribution to an action or conversion by an individual. This year we’re seeing addressable TV devices explode in use, which are shared at the household level. Even desktop computers are being used by more people in the home due to COVID-19. So, assuming a linear path of attribution by an individual is missing the full picture. Identity resolution can help you understand where messaging was more effective for some users in the household than others, and leverage that insight to continue more effective strategies in the future. Example: Without a household view, a direct-to-consumer brand would assume all interactions from one device would be coming from a single individual, and that could create a higher cost-per analysis. By incorporating the household level devices into attribution models, they can find efficiencies between touch points of multiple users, and learn how those split off into individual paths to conversion. Not only can this DTC create a more effective model, but they can use that model to create cost efficiencies in the future. Contact us today
With the long-term effects to the economy unknown, many consumers are feeling the financial impact, while others are looking for opportunities, resulting in a transformational shift in spending. Some brands are experiencing decreased or paused marketing budgets, and you may be trepidatious about making the right decisions in your efforts to grow share of wallet. Recent events have been an impetus for change and we’re seeing brands make modifications to traditional marketing strategies. Some are developing innovative technologies and utilizing new sources of data and analytics. As we look at how these changes impact marketing results, we see the gap grow between those brands who are equipped to pivot and implement new strategies quickly, versus those who are not. So what steps can your organization implement now to make the smartest choices for both your customers and your business to secure more share of wallet? Here are four ideas to accelerate the success of your next financial marketing campaign: 1. Meet your customers wherever they are: Digital-first strategies have never been more relevant than they are right now. While consumers have fully embraced online engagement, marketers are even more focused on reaching high-value segments in the channels they utilize. By using an informed, data-driven strategy that includes preferred marketing communication channels and decision-making styles, engagement increases across those channels your target audience frequents the most. For example, are they heavy social media users? Do they prefer streaming TV? Or do they tend to rely on financial advice vs. performing their own research? To drive take rates, your audience must be exposed to a tailored message, in the right channel, and possibly multiple times. 2. Use messaging that resonates: As consumers refocus priorities, their expectations of brands with whom they do business are ever-increasing. Reflecting an understanding of the current needs and interests of your customers and prospects is an undertone that can only help strengthen their view of your brand. Consumer behavior has changed and is unlikely to revert to what was, so you want to be relevant, but you also do not want to be seen as ‘tone deaf’. As a result, consider revising your segmentation strategy to leverage predictive insights, such as household economic indicators, financial behaviors, lifestyle propensities and interests to help shape your message into one that truly makes an impact. 3. Prove the worth of your campaign: New consumer journeys are being formulated and showing ROI is imperative as your marketing budget is scrutinized. Having the right industry-relevant metrics and reports to analyze and share with leadership are key. Demonstrate that your campaigns are contributing to bottom-line success—and justify future campaigns—by using data-driven measurement insights collected across multiple reads and countless touchpoints. Marketing budgets are being scrutinized now more than ever, so showing ROI is critical. Having the right metrics and reports to analyze and share with leadership are key. 4. Follow government regulations—leverage Fair Lending-friendly audiences: Whether you’re cross-selling or prospecting, now is the time to identify the right audiences with rich data insights to not only execute impactful campaigns but adhere to government regulations that protect consumers and your organization. Trusting that the data you are activating follows Fair Lending Laws, including the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (“ECOA”) and the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) is crucial. The Federal ECOA prohibits creditors from discriminating against credit applicants on the basis of several prohibited factors. Developing people-based segments that are not derived using these factors positions you to follow these regulations. Check out our previous blog post about Fair Lending-friendly audiences here. As you transition to new operating models, access to current and accurate consumer data can provide confidence in campaign potential, help you avoid business risk, enable you to respond to market changes and make better decisions. Experian can help you implement these strategies and put your brand unique position for growth. From start to finish, we provide the marketing solutions you need to plan, build and execute successful, Fair Lending-friendly campaigns to cross-sell to existing customers and acquire new customers. *Experian Fair Lending-friendly audiences do not constitute legal advice or otherwise assure compliance with the FHA, ECOA, or any other applicable laws. It’s recommended to seek legal advice with respect to the use of data in connection with lending decisions or application and compliance with applicable laws. Contact us today
Tapad, part of Experian, and Reveal Mobile partner to launch new audience and attribution capabilities for ad buyers
FeaturedCross-device matching and pixel-based foot traffic attribution reporting empower digital marketers with greater control of location-based campaigns.RALEIGH, N.C. (PRWEB) AUGUST 04, 2020 Tapad, part of Experian a global leader in digital identity resolution, and Reveal Mobile, a leader in location-based marketing, today announced a collaboration that combines Tapad’s digital cross-device matching technology and pixel-based attribution features with Reveal Mobile’s VISIT Local, the software that hundreds of digital agencies and brands use for location-based analytics. The partnership is designed to drive improved performance by optimizing ad targeting and messaging for location-based campaigns. Powered by Tapad’s privacy-safe cross device matching, marketers using VISIT Local to power location-based campaigns can enhance how they reach shoppers. When one member of a household shops for groceries, clothes, household goods or any other consumer item, a conversation between multiple members of the household typically takes place beforehand. With cross device matching, marketers can reach everyone who has influence over what to buy and where to buy it. VISIT Local users can expand location-based services with a single click to include devices that share the same household, including targeting across multiple devices owned by the same user, allowing advertisers to maximize messaging and increase their share of wallet among consumers. “VISIT Local has always given our customers access to high-intent location-based audiences. With the addition of cross device matching from Tapad, advertisers can boost audience sizes up to 300 percent while maintaining full confidence in quality and relevance,” says Brian Handly, CEO of Reveal Mobile. “VISIT Local users can now apply multiple criteria and attributes to a single location-based audience, giving them the advanced control and transparency they need.” As reliable attribution becomes increasingly complex for marketers and ad buyers who need to prove value, the addition of Tapad’s pixel-based foot traffic attribution to VISIT Local enables the measurement of actual campaign effectiveness by tying ad views to in-store foot traffic. This new feature, which will be available in VISIT Local this fall, lets Reveal Mobile customers understand who visited a retail location as a result of being served an ad, providing a more accurate view into return on ad spend during and after advertising campaigns. “Tapad’s goal is to empower marketers with digital advertising efficiencies at scale across devices,” says Mark Connon, COO of Tapad. “With cross device matching and pixel-based foot traffic attribution, marketers using VISIT Local can better address the consumer’s preferences and habits, and deliver them consistently actionable information on user behavior. These capabilities advance location-based advertising in ways marketers need and want.” In addition to these new features, VISIT Local’s location-based audience builder now enables marketers to create custom audiences made up of people who have visited different places on different dates. This gives VISIT Local users the ability to segment and create the most highly targeted audiences possible. For example, a marketer who wants to advertise for a chain of restaurants can easily target visitors of different competitors in different cities. Or a marketer who wants to advertise vacation destinations can target people who have been to various resorts at different times of year. Or a marketer who wants to advertise the release of new music can target people who have been to concert venues in different cities on different dates. “Many of our customers need to create highly custom audiences so they can run experiments, test messaging, and run increasingly competitive campaigns,” says Handly. “Everyone who uses VISIT Local can now apply multiple criteria and attributes to a single location-based audience, giving them the advanced control and transparency they need.”To learn more about Tapad’s digital identity resolution products, visit our identity solution page. To learn more about Reveal Mobile’s location-based marketing offerings, visit http://www.revealmobile.com. About TapadTapad, Inc. is a global leader in digital identity resolution. The Tapad Graph, and its related solutions, provide a transparent, privacy-safe approach connecting brands to consumers through their devices globally. Our one-of-a-kind Graph Select offering enables marketers the flexibility and freedom of choice to correlate devices to varied objectives, driving campaign effectiveness and business results. Tapad is recognized across the industry for its product innovation, workplace culture and talent, and has earned numerous awards including One World Identity’s 2019 Top 100 Influencers in Identity Award. Headquartered in New York, Tapad also has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. About Reveal MobileReveal Mobile is a leader in location-based marketing, analytics, audiences, and attribution. Creator of VISIT Local, VISIT Match and VISIT Data, the company’s products help digital agencies, brands and retailers of any size leverage location data to understand and reach the right audiences. Reveal Mobile is CCPA compliant and a member of the Network Advertising Initiative, which conducts an annual privacy certification. The company is based in Raleigh, NC. For more information, visit https://revealmobile.com. Contact us today