All posts by Experian Marketing Services

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audience strategies But even the most compelling campaigns can fall flat if you're working with incomplete data, outdated segments, or generic targeting.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 Latest Posts

Back-to-school season remains one of the biggest retail moments of the year—and 2025 is expected to follow suit. Total spending is projected to reach $84.51 billion, with K–12 shoppers alone contributing nearly $50 billion—59% of the total. E-commerce will also play a major role, accounting for 37.4% of total back-to-school sales. However, 2025 shoppers may be facing even higher costs due to the incoming tariffs with everything from laptops and lunchboxes to kids' clothing and crayons becoming more expensive. In anticipation of these rising prices, shoppers might once again start early to score deals. Last year, 55% of back-to-school and college shoppers had already started buying items in July for the upcoming school year. This early start coincided with major July promotions like Amazon Prime Day, in which U.S. shoppers spent a record $14.2 billion online, where school-related purchases surged by over 200%. Whether you’re marketing school essentials or offering services to help students succeed, it’s easy to default to the same go-to audiences. This blog post highlights overlooked back-to-school segments to help you build personalized back-to-school strategies that resonate with students, parents, and educators. You can find the complete audience segment names in the appendix. School the competition: How Experian can help you connect with 2025 shoppers With summer just around the corner, back-to-school might not be top of mind, but there’s no better time to start planning. Whether you're reaching parents, students, or educators, Experian’s syndicated audiences can help ensure your marketing messages make the honor roll by landing with the right people at the right time. Experian’s 2,400+ syndicated audiences are available directly on over 30 leading television, social, programmatic advertising platforms, and directly within Audigent for activation within private marketplaces (PMPs). Reach consumers based on who they are, where they live, and their household makeup. Experian ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset for key back-to-school attributes such as Presence of Children. Access to unique audiences through Experian’s Partner Audiences available on Experian’s data marketplace, within Audigent for activation in PMPs, and directly on platforms like The Trade Desk, Magnite, DirectTV, Dish, and OpenAP. Meet your overlooked back-to-school audiences Back-to-school shoppers aren’t one-size-fits-all. From parents prepping supply lists to students outfitting dorms, reaching the right audience is key to making the grade with your campaign. Let's go beyond the basics. Here are four back-to-school audience categories you can target with Experian:  New year, new gear-ers Weeknight TV watchers Parenting personas School-season meal planners Let’s open our notebooks and break down the audience segments within each group. Whether your customers are buying backpacks, stocking the fridge, or searching for school essentials, these insights will help your campaign pass with flying colors. New year, new gear-er From teens picking out their first-day outfit to college students stocking up for dorm life, these audiences represent a wide range of priorities, needs, and spending behaviors. They’re also heavily influenced by trends, technology, and value-driven purchases. Don’t overlook these five high-potential audiences in your strategy: Big-Box Electronics Stores: High Spenders Amazon Frequent Spenders Department Store Deal Shoppers In Store Spenders Teen Apparel (Clothing): Online and In Store High Spenders Dell Computer and Apple Mac Purchaser  Weeknight TV watchers Back-to-school season is also back-to-routine season. Families are gathering for more shared TV time in the evenings—especially in August and September. This makes co-viewing households a prime audience for messaging tied to school-year prep. Rethink your back-to-school approach with these five overlooked segments: Co-Watchers  Co-Watchers with Children Cord Cutters: Recent Engagement Channel Preference: Streaming TV Digital Video Parenting personas Targeting by household structure helps tailor messaging to the right family dynamic—whether it’s parents with toddlers or households with college students. Four audiences you might be missing this back-to-school season: Digital Moms and Dads Sports Utility Families Colleges and Cafes Kids and Cabernet School-season meal planners Food and grocery shopping routines shift during the school season. These audiences are ideal for promotions tied to lunch prep, after-school snacks, and weeknight meals. Add these four under-the-radar audiences for back-to-school success: Online Grocery Delivery Services: High Spenders Grocery Stores: High Spenders Fast Food/QSR Frequent Spenders Fast Food/QSR Pizza Frequent Spenders Core back-to-school shoppers Of course, you’ll want to add traditional back-to-school audiences to your strategy. These audiences are highly engaged and often the decision-makers, making them ideal for marketers looking to drive purchase intent early and often. Here are four key back-to-school audiences you can target–all are available by life stage to reach PreK, elementary, middle, and high school households: Back to School Supplies Back to School Moderate Spend Back to School High Spend Back to School Apparel Make the grade with Experian this back-to-school season As marketers gear up for the back-to-school season, it’s the perfect time to sharpen your strategy and connect with back-to-school shoppers. Whether you’re building tried-and-true segments or exploring more unexpected, high-potential groups you might have not considered, Experian can help you reach the right audience. If you’re looking to create targeted segments for activation across digital and TV or gain insights to guide your campaign planning, Experian has you covered. Need a custom audience? Reach out to our audience team and we can help you build and activate an Experian audience on the platform of your choice. Additionally, work with Experian’s network of data providers to build audiences and send to an Audigent PMP for activation. Connect with our audience team You can activate our syndicated audiences on-the-shelf of most major platforms. For a full list of Experian’s syndicated audiences and activation destinations, download our syndicated audiences guide. Explore our other seasonal audiences that you can activate today. View now Contact us Latest posts Appendix New year, new gear-ers  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Shopping Behavior > Big-Box Electronics Stores: High Spenders Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Shopping Behavior > Big Box and Club Stores: Amazon Frequent Spenders Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Shopping Behavior > Department Store In Store Spenders Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Apparel > Teen Apparel (Clothing): Online High Spenders Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Apparel > Teen Apparel (Clothing): In Store High Spenders Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Technology > Dell Computer Model Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Technology > Apple Mac Purchaser Model Weeknight TV watchers Television (TV) > Household/Family Viewing > Co-Watchers Television (TV) > Household/Family Viewing > Co-Watchers with Children Experian > Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Entertainment > Streaming/Video/Audio/CTV/Cable TV: Cable/Broadcast TV: Cord Cutters: Recent TrueTouch: Communication Preference > Engagement Channel Preference > Streaming TV TrueTouch: Communication Preference > Engagement Channel Preference > Digital Video Parenting personas  Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Personas > Digital Moms Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Personas > Digital Dads Mosaic - Personas - Lifestyle and Interests > Group D: Suburban Style > D15 - Sports Utility Families Mosaic - Personas - Lifestyle and Interests > Group O: Singles and Starters > O53 - Colleges and Cafes Mosaic - Personas - Lifestyle and Interests > Group A: Power Elite > A03 - Kids and Cabernet School-season meal planners  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Grocery > Online Grocery Delivery Services: High Spenders Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Grocery > Grocery Stores: High Spenders Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Food and Drink > Restaurants: Fast Food/QSR QSR Frequent Spenders Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Food and Drink > Restaurants > Fast Food/QSR Pizza Frequent Spenders Core back-to-school shoppers Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Moderate Spend - PreK (Early Ed - PreK)  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Moderate Spend - Elementary School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Moderate Spend - Middle School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Moderate Spend - High School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School High Spend - PreK (Early Ed - PreK)  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School High Spend - Elementary School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School High Spend - Middle School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School High Spend - High School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Apparel - PreK (Early Ed - PreK)  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Apparel - Elementary School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Apparel - Middle School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Apparel - High School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Supplies - PreK (Early Ed - PreK)  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Supplies - Elementary School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Supplies - Middle School  Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Seasonal > Back to School Supplies - High School

For decades, television advertisers have faced a trade-off: Traditional linear TV: Delivers broad reach, utilizing the power of sight, sound, and motion on the big screen to capture more focused attention and foster immersive brand-building. However, it lacks the precise targeting modern marketers crave. Digital and addressable channels: Offer highly precise targeting and robust measurement capabilities but struggle to replicate linear TV’s unique combination of visual impact and viewer engagement on the big screen. Connected TV (CTV) bridges this gap by preserving television’s immersive, large-screen experience—where audiences are more attentive to the content—while offering the precise targeting capabilities long associated with digital and addressable channels. Yet, as the industry evolves, there’s a growing realization that lower-funnel performance marketing—which emphasizes quick wins from in-market shoppers—doesn’t fully support long-term brand growth. Leading brands have increasingly noted that relying solely on performance tactics can limit sustained demand and brand equity. Within CTV lies a powerful subset: Free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST). As consumers gravitate toward free streaming options, FAST has emerged as a key focal point for reaching immediate and future buyers. In this article, we’ll explore why focusing only on in-market shoppers risks missing the larger pool of “future-ready buyers” and how FAST platforms enable brands to engage them effectively. The challenge: Over-fixation on "in-market" shoppers One common marketing hurdle is "lower-funnel myopia"—focusing almost exclusively on in-market shoppers who are ready to buy immediately. While this can yield quick wins, it also means brands miss opportunities to improve in three critical areas: Competition and costs: By chasing the same immediate buyers, brands drive up media costs, especially as programmatic ad spending continues to climb each year. Missing out on future buyers: Most consumers aren’t looking to buy right now. In fact, only 5% of potential consumers are active ‘in-market,’ meaning the other 95% represent future-ready buyers open to purchasing soon. Over-focusing on in-market audiences overlooks people who could be primed to purchase soon. Inefficient spend on “sure bets”: Over-targeting likely buyers inflates costs for conversions you'd capture naturally. Shifting budget toward brand priming boosts incremental ROI. Expanding the funnel isn't just smart - it's necessary While many advertisers have prioritized short-term conversions, the data shows a growing imbalance—and a potential risk to long-term brand health. According to The CMO Survey (eMarketer, Nov 2024), CMOs allocated nearly 69% of their 2024 budgets to short-term brand performance, leaving just 31% for long-term brand building. If you’re only engaging consumers when they’re already in-market, you’re effectively joining the race at the final lap—and often paying a premium to do so. So where does that leave the vast majority who aren’t buying right now? That’s where future-ready buyers come in. The solution: "future-ready buyers" So, how can you broaden your reach without resorting to a “spray-and-pray” strategy? Enter category future-ready buyers—consumers who aren’t actively shopping right now but remain open to your product category. They’re not firmly opposed or “locked out” of it. For example, existing electric vehicle (EV) owners may not be in-market this very moment, but they could be ready to purchase another EV when their lease ends or a new model debuts, making them ideal future-ready buyers.  Why they matter: Cultivate future demand. Engage buyers early to stay top-of-mind when they’re ready.  Build a sustainable brand pipeline. Develop ongoing interest instead of repeatedly chasing immediate leads.  Expand your reach. Broaden targeting beyond active shoppers for long-term growth.  Use marketing data to avoid overspending on future buyers Identifying future-ready buyers is powerful—but how do you avoid wasting spend on unlikely buyers? Marketing data helps refine your targeting with real consumer insights, maximizing ROI and campaign efficiency.  Precisely define your segments: Use lifestyle, demographic, and psychographic data to target consumers who are open to your product, avoiding wasted impressions on uninterested audiences.  Prioritize privacy and compliance: Choose partners who prioritize data security and adhere to regulations, ensuring your campaigns stay both trustworthy and effective.  FAST: The strategic channel for reaching future ready buyers FAST ​services​, like ​Samsung TV Plus​, have evolved into a crucial medium for advertisers eager to strike a balance between scale and precision. Here’s why:  Engaged audience: Viewers access free, premium content in exchange for ads, making them receptive and attentive.  Advanced targeting: FAST offers precise segmentation beyond traditional TV, helping you reach Samsung consumers both in-market and future buyers effectively on the biggest screen in the household.  Positive viewer experience: Free content creates a relaxed viewing environment, increasing ad attention and recall.  Samsung TV Plus and Experian Marketing Services: Scale meets precision Samsung TV Plus offers expansive reach and contextual targeting aligned to viewer interests. Experian Marketing Services complements this by identifying consumers most likely to buy, leveraging demographic, lifestyle, and intent data—helping you effectively engage future-ready buyers.  Putting it into practice: A use case Scenario An electric vehicle (EV) brand, EVolution Auto, wants to reach eco-conscious consumers who aren’t shopping for a car right now but might consider one soon. They also want to track how ads influence brand consideration and sales over time. Approach Identify future-ready segmentsUsing Experian data, EVolution Auto focuses on “eco-conscious drivers”—people interested in sustainability who are likely to be open to an EV in the near future. Activate on Samsung TV PlusThe brand places targeted ads on channels with environmental or tech content. With millions of monthly users and a relaxed viewing experience, EVolution Auto’s spots get more visibility, boosting ad recall. Outcome By pairing Samsung TV Plus’s broad reach with Experian’s precise audience data, EVolution Auto achieves measurable lifts in brand consideration, website traffic, and dealership visits—effectively priming future EV buyers and driving long-term sales momentum. Building a future-proof strategy Exclusively targeting in-market consumers can limit your brand’s long-term potential. By focusing on those not currently shopping—but still open to your category—you widen your future buyer pool and keep your brand top of mind. FAST services like Samsung TV Plus, paired with Experian’s marketing data, offer a powerful way to balance scale with precision–delivering strong engagement today while priming your brand for long-term growth. By shifting your focus toward tomorrow’s buyers today, your brand doesn’t just stay relevant—it sets the stage for sustained market leadership and growth. Contact us Latest posts

As the days get longer and the weather warms up, spring’s revitalizing energy naturally leads to realignment. For marketers, it’s the perfect moment to reevaluate strategy, especially as consumer behavior changes ahead of summer and brings a renewed interest in travel, outdoor activities, and social events. Making seasonal adjustments to your marketing strategy helps you adapt to these shifting behaviors, capitalize on 2025 marketing trends, and keep your brand relevant year-round. When it comes to your marketing strategy, spring cleaning means clearing out outdated tactics, optimizing what works, and making room for smarter, more connected solutions. Take the time to ask yourself questions like: Are our audiences still relevant? Are we activating our data across the right channels? Are we collaborating with the right partners and using the right data clean room providers? If there’s room for improvement, now is the best time to audit, refine, and refresh your marketing strategy before the high-stakes summer and winter seasons. With identity resolution, data enrichment, data clean room collaboration, and omnichannel activation through Experian, you can clean up what’s outdated and prep your strategy for summer success! Rethink your data and identity resolution strategy Your data is foundational to your strategy and is a great place to start your marketing strategy spring cleanup. If your customer information is outdated, incomplete, or fragmented across systems, every campaign built on top of it risks underperforming. Before jumping into segmentation, activation, or partnerships, assess the health of your data and identity infrastructure. This is your deep clean and an essential first step in ensuring everything else works better.  With signals disappearing, buying channels proliferating, and customer journeys getting more complex, the key to maintaining addressability is investing in persistent identity, complete consumer data, and collaborative measurement strategies that can weather these changes. Here are some ways to rethink your marketing data management and identity strategies for the current environment. Set the data foundation A solid identity resolution strategy starts with high-quality, unified data. Consider a comprehensive refresh of your customer records by auditing and enhancing what you have for accuracy and depth.  As you’re thinking through spring marketing ideas, it’s an ideal time to enrich your first-party data by appending missing details, removing outdated records, and ensuring you enter summer with reliable, up-to-date profiles. Data enrichment Customer data naturally degrades, and eventually, you’ll need to dust it off by supplementing consumer records with current, high-quality insights and attributes. Experian data enrichment can help you seamlessly refresh records with updated demographic and behavioral data, giving detailed insights for precise targeting and relevant campaigns. With over 5,000 attributes available, covering everything from age and income to shopping habits and media preferences, you can maintain the deepest, most up-to-date view of your consumers through every season. Offline identity resolution and append Offline identifiers — like names, physical addresses, and phone numbers — are the most persistent identity markers as they rarely change compared to digital cookies and device IDs. They’re essential for a stable identity foundation, and you can use them to develop a consistent, unified view of each household and individual. Use this season to audit and tidy up your offline records. Are key identifiers missing? Are you relying on outdated addresses or duplicate names? Experian’s Offline Graph serves as the foundation to help unify those fragmented pieces, resolving identities across households and individuals to create a clean, consistent view of every customer. Think of this step as scrubbing baseboards or cleaning behind the fridge. It’s often overlooked but a prerequisite to a thorough spring refresh. You can also use Offline Identity Append to append missing identifiers to improve match rates, boost data accuracy, and ensure addressability so that when summer campaigns launch, you’re ready to confidently meet your audience where they are. Digital resolution via Digital Graph This next step is like replacing your air filter each spring. You won’t see it, but you’ll definitely feel the difference in performance. Digital resolution ensures persistent, accurate targeting across devices and channels in a fragmented omnichannel environment. Experian’s Digital Graph facilitates easy consumer identification and connection across the digital ecosystem. Our graph links digital identifiers like mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), connected TV IDs, and hashed emails to consumer profiles. So, when a customer interacts on a smartphone, a smart TV, and a laptop browser, those actions can all be tied back to the same individual or household in your database. Collaborate securely in data clean rooms to close gaps Matching partner data within your own secure space, a trusted third-party clean room, or Experian’s privacy-safe environment is an essential next step in your marketing spring cleaning strategy. But what is a data clean room? A data clean room is a privacy-first way to enhance marketing data in a secure environment that allows brands and partners to match and analyze data without exposing personally identifiable information. It’s almost like organizing a shared closet. You both bring what you have, sort it safely, and leave with something more valuable without mixing up or exposing what’s personal. Secure collaboration enriches your understanding of consumers, boosts match rates, and ensures the highest data security standards. Here are key data challenges you can tackle through data collaboration—whether in a clean room or across your broader data strategy. Lack of insights or usable data Without third-party cookies, marketers run the risk of losing valuable consumer insights. Collaborating with key partners lets brands enrich their first-party data and obtain a more comprehensive view of customer behaviors for informed decision-making. Let’s say, for example, that an advertiser with sales data but no exposure data struggles to attribute sales to specific campaigns. By collaborating securely with a measurement partner who provides exposure data, the advertiser can confidently link sales to ad exposure and optimize future campaigns with an understanding of who saw their ad and made a purchase. We anticipate that data collaboration will be a key marketing trend in 2025 alongside signal loss. Low or no match rates When businesses handle matching internally, discrepancies like name variations (e.g., John Doe vs. Jonathan Doe) or mismatched identifiers (hashed emails vs. MAIDs) often result in poor match rates. Experian’s identity resolution capabilities, meticulous hygiene processes, resolution logic, and comprehensive identity graphs significantly enhance these match rates. For example, if a data provider had physical addresses and a demand-side platform (DSP) had email addresses, they couldn’t collaborate with different identifiers. Using Experian Collaboration, however, their data could be resolved with offline identity data from our graph, enabling them to share their collaboration data and improve their marketing efforts. Data security When it comes to data collaboration, protecting your proprietary and customer information is non-negotiable. That’s why Experian operates with some of the industry's strictest data security, privacy, and compliance protocols. We support identity resolution and data collaboration within the most secure environments available — data clean rooms built to prevent sensitive customer data from ever being exposed. Instead of moving or sharing your raw data, we ensure all records are anonymized before any analysis occurs. Additionally, Experian’s clean room integrations with trusted partners give clients flexibility without compromising compliance. All solutions are designed to meet GDPR, CCPA, and industry-specific data governance standards, with full audit trails and customizable access controls. Connect and activate Once your data is clean, enriched, and resolved, the next step is to activate it efficiently across the channels where your audiences spend time. This step is like putting everything back in place after a deep clean so everything is functional, easy to access, and ready to deliver results. As you get ready to put your spring marketing ideas into motion, it’s time to streamline your activation approach and make sure your customer data is working hard for you. First-Party Onboarding With Experian First-Party Onboarding, you can ship data where needed using flexible data solutions for your activation strategy. This step is like labeling and organizing your freshly cleaned marketing closet, so each audience segment is ready to deploy wherever you need it. We make it easy to: Understand your customers on a deeper level Seamlessly onboard your customer data for use across programmatic, social, and advanced TV platforms Combine your first-party data with Experian syndicated audiences for enriched targeting Deliver those audiences to any destination that accepts Experian Audiences — whether a DSP, social platform, or publisher Increase match rates, extend reach, and lower activation costs Transact in the ecosystem with the Experian ID To aid in the activation process, Experian ID is a unified identifier that acts as a privacy-safe bridge between fragmented emails, device IDs, and addresses, helping you activate audiences across all media channels. Experian ID keeps your data protected and connected whether you send it to DSPs, social platforms, or data clean rooms. This allows for secure activation and performance tracking across the ecosystem without exposing personally identifiable information (PII). Like sealing and storing your seasonal belongings in airtight containers, Experian ID keeps your data clean, safe, and always ready for use. Use fresh audience insights to inform segmentation After deep-cleaning your data, enriching profiles, and resolving identities, you’ll want to ensure your segmentation reflects that renewed foundation. Just like clearing expired ingredients from your pantry, spring is an ideal time to toss outdated audience definitions and replace them with insights that are fresh, relevant, and ready to perform. With Experian’s modern audience tools, you can create smarter segments, power omnichannel strategies, and continue reaching high-value consumers even in cookieless environments. Our marketing data management tools make it easy to: Build detailed, personalized profiles using over 5,000+ behavioral and lifestyle marketing attributes that go far beyond basic demographics. Choose from 2,400+ pre-built syndicated segments or collaborate with Experian to create custom audiences tailored to your KPIs and campaign goals. Append fresh attributes to your CRM to keep profiles accurate, performance-ready, and reflective of current consumer behaviors and life stages. Together, these tools help sharpen your segmentation strategy and ensure up-to-date audience insights power every campaign. Let’s break down how smart combinations and contextual precision can further elevate your segmentation. Combine our identity graphs and Marketing Attributes for sharper targeting Combining Experian’s identity graphs with Marketing Attributes gives you both the who and the why behind your audience and helps you act on that insight with precision. It’s like giving your closet a total spring refresh — not just purging what doesn’t fit but also organizing what’s left into ready-to-wear outfits. Digital Graph + Marketing Attributes: Link real-time digital behavior (like CTV, mobile, or web activity) with rich consumer insights to create segments that perform across channels, from mobile to CTV to social. Offline Graph + Marketing Attributes: Tie persistent offline identifiers like name and address to behavioral and lifestyle data, making it easier to plan full-funnel strategies from direct mail to digital display. This approach gives you the clarity and flexibility to build richer personas, reach more qualified audiences, and target with confidence across any environment. Activate smarter with Contextually-Indexed Audiences Spring cleaning your strategy also means letting go of legacy tools, especially those relying on cookies or outdated tracking methods. With Experian’s Contextually-Indexed Audiences, you can reach consumers based on the content they’re engaging with, not their identifiers. We map millions of websites to real audience segments so you can target high-intent consumers in a privacy-safe, way. For example, an automotive brand looking to reach high-intent luxury EV shoppers can activate Experian’s “in-market for a luxury electric car” segment. With contextually-indexed targeting, that brand’s ads will appear on websites that over-index for visitors in that audience — such as premium car review sites or sustainability-focused blogs — without relying on user identifiers. This allows the brand to scale performance safely and efficiently in cookieless environments while achieving strong engagement metrics. Activate across channels with confidence After refreshing your data, segmentation, and partner strategies, the final step in your spring cleaning is putting all that prep work into action — efficiently and at scale. Think of this as your final sweep: optimizing where and how you activate your audience to ensure every touchpoint is aligned, accurate, and impactful. With your updated segments and sharpened identity framework in place, you can reach consumers across display, mobile, connected TV (CTV), and emerging digital channels. Experian provides the tools to activate seamlessly — backed by privacy-safe, high-quality data and flexible integration options. Third-Party Onboarding: Expand reach with external data sets Experian’s Third-Party Onboarding capabilities make it easy for brands to augment their first-party data strategies on their preferred activation platforms with easy access to high-quality, activation-ready third-party audiences. For you, this means you no longer have to manage the onboarding process yourself or worry about compatibility. Instead, you can: Enhance your first-party targeting with third-party data that’s already privacy-safe and activation-ready. Reach more qualified consumers by layering in external behavioral, lifestyle, or intent signals. Maximize scale across your preferred platforms using Experian’s established integrations and ecosystem support. With Experian as your trusted partner, your audience strategy becomes more flexible, more scalable, and more effective, giving you the power to engage the right consumers beyond your own CRM. Start preparing now for summer campaigns You’ve cleared out the clutter, restocked your toolkit, and optimized your data strategy, and now, you’re ready to get ahead of the summer rush. While summer is go-time for high-impact marketing campaigns, now is the time to clean, organize, and prepare. Another reason to start now? Tariffs, inflationary pressures, and changing consumer confidence are already impacting product demand, budget planning, and go-to-market strategies for the rest of the year. Brands need to be ready and agile in the face of economic turbulence. So, think of this as your final recap checklist before the season (and the economy) changes: a set of intentional steps that ensure all your prep work translates into real performance when it counts. Start now to: Cleanse and enrich your data: Make sure outdated records don’t weigh down your summer outreach. Refresh profiles with Experian’s latest attributes to stay aligned with consumer behavior. Solidify your identity resolution strategy: Transition to persistent, privacy-safe identifiers like Experian’s unified ID to maintain addressability across devices and channels. Collaborate with key partners: Run pilot campaigns with trusted collaborators to augment your data and maximize scale ahead of peak season. Refresh audience segments: Update personas and segments based on the latest data insights. Trial omnichannel strategies: Use spring to test messaging across display, CTV, social, and mobile so your summer creative hits with precision. Confirm measurement readiness: Double-check attribution and analytics tools so you can optimize in real time and prove ROI. Tailor creative to the season: From backyard barbecues to road trips, ensure your messaging taps into the themes and activities consumers care about most this summer. Spring is the warm-up. Summer is the performance. Start today to improve your marketing data management and overall strategy, and you’ll be ready to hit the ground running. Let’s plan your seasonal strategy together Whether you’re looking for more spring marketing ideas or want to launch a high-impact summer campaign, Experian is ready to help. From strategy to segmentation and data clean rooms to real-time activation, we partner with you to build a marketing engine that performs now and keeps growing through the seasons. Connect with us today, and let’s turn your seasonal refresh into long-term momentum. Get in touch Latest posts

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 Brian Mandelbaum, CEO and Co-Founder at Attain. About Attain Built for privacy — with visibility across all retailers, verticals and purchases — Attain provides solutions for the modern marketer. Its real-time measurement and optimization solutions coupled with high-fidelity audiences and proprietary insights enable marketers to drive valuable business outcomes. The power of transaction-based audiences Attain’s real-time transaction data provides a 360-degree view of consumer behavior. What makes this approach more effective than traditional demographic or behavioral targeting? Attain is the industry’s most trusted source of live purchase data, powered by a robust panel of 8 million fully permissioned consumers. Our platform delivers unmatched, real-time visibility into consumer purchase behavior across retailers, industries, and payment methods. Marketers gain deep insights — such as in-store vs. online purchases, payment methods, purchase frequency, cart contents, and average transaction value — enabling more precise audience targeting and media strategies. With Attain’s rich, transaction-based data, marketers can optimize campaigns with direct, actionable sales signals. Ensuring data accuracy and relevance Attain curates audiences using real-time transaction data, but advertisers often ask whether this data is deterministic or probabilistic. Can you clarify your methodology, and if probabilistic, how do you ensure accuracy and representation across the entire US population? Our transaction data comes directly from the largest live purchase data panel in the U.S. Covering over 10,000+ merchants and $600B in cumulative spend, our dataset offers a complete and dynamic view of real-world purchase behavior. Using advanced machine learning, we scale this data to represent the entire U.S. population with unmatched accuracy, ensuring a balanced and unbiased reflection of consumer spending patterns. Our rigorous methodology eliminates outliers, continuously optimizing for precision and stability, so marketers can trust our insights for better targeting, measurement, and optimization. Privacy-first data practices Attain is built on a privacy-first, consumer-permissioned model. There are many ways to capture purchase data—why did Attain choose a panel-based approach, and how does this method compare to other collection strategies in terms of accuracy, scale, and compliance? Attain’s panel-based approach is the foundation of our privacy-first, consumer-permissioned model. By capturing real-time transaction data directly from our opted-in consumer panel, we ensure unmatched accuracy and ethical data sourcing — paramount in today’s privacy-conscious world.   In exchange for sharing their data, consumers receive valuable benefits like early wages, savings tools, and shopping rewards, with no hidden fees. Unlike legacy third party data providers, our directly sourced transaction data provides deeper, more precise insights, enabling highly granular and actionable audience segments.   Our continuously growing panel reflects a broad cross-section of U.S. consumers while maintaining strict privacy and compliance standards. We fully adhere to regulations like CCPA and GDPR, giving both consumers and advertisers confidence in the responsible use of data. Attain’s approach delivers the ideal balance of accuracy, scale, and compliance—while prioritizing consumer trust. Cross-channel addressability With brands activating audiences across display, mobile, and CTV, how does Attain’s purchase data help advertisers refine their cross-channel strategies? Attain’s purchase data empowers advertisers to refine cross-channel strategies with smarter, data-driven insights. Our real-time transaction-based audiences enable scalable activation across display, social, online video, and addressable TV — ensuring campaigns reach high-intent buyers more likely to convert.   By applying purchase-based audiences across all channels, marketers are utilizing the strongest signals possible, which enables a more effective holistic strategy to drive to that ultimate sales outcome. Whether through social media, TV/CTV, mobile, or programmatic platforms, Attain helps brands connect with consumers at key moments in their buying journey, maximizing media impact with real behavioral insights instead of proxies.   With an expansive and growing network of media partners, Attain ensures brands reach their audiences wherever they are, delivering consistent, high-impact messaging. Whether optimizing for brand awareness or performance, our data helps marketers make smarter decisions to drive superior results. Proven performance with live purchase feedback Attain moves beyond traditional proxy metrics by providing live purchase data. How does this help advertisers optimize campaigns while they’re still running? What sets Attain’s audiences apart isn’t just the data fidelity and holistic coverage of consumer behavior, it's that they’re built and validated using live, privacy-safe purchase signals. Advertisers can execute campaigns confidently, knowing that they’re reaching real consumers based on recent, real-world transactions, not outdated models or inferred, probabilistic behaviors. Attain’s ability to measure sales lift across a wide range of inputs means that marketers can easily understand which audiences are driving actual sales outcomes during flight. This unlocks smarter mid-campaign optimizations, discovering new audiences, and fine-tuning targeting — to ensure audience performance continually improves against real revenue goals. Attain’s closed-loop approach gives advertisers a faster path from targeting to transaction, helping brands maximize the value of every impression. Industry-specific use cases Beyond CPG, Attain supports industries like QSR, retail, and financial services. Can you share a compelling example of how brands in these verticals are utilizing your audiences? Attain’s audiences provide a comprehensive view of the consumer, capturing all aspects of their purchase behaviors — from travel and dining to TV content consumption and shopping habits. This broad perspective offers brands a far richer set of buying signals than ever before, enabling them to make more informed decisions across the entire consumer journey. Quick service restaurants (QSR): With a comprehensive view across all transaction types (cash, credit, debit) – Attain enables QSRs to capture a full picture of customer spend at their nationwide locations. Ensuring these brands have holistic coverage across all sales channels, powered by a direct relationship with the consumer, Attain captures transactions both in-store, online, and through 3P delivery apps like UberEats and Grubhub. This powers Attain’s deep insights, which QSRs can use for intelligent, precise targeting- including frequent visitors, competitive share, products purchased, and more. QSRs can use this data to solve a variety of business objectives, like retention/growth, competitive conquesting, and more. Retail: In retail, Attain provides a wide range of audience segments, including loyalty shoppers, in-market buyers, competitive shoppers, and even adjacent buyers who may be interested in similar products. By combining these segments, retailers can optimize their campaigns to target real-time shoppers with the highest intent, rather than relying on outdated or generalized profiles that other providers might offer. Additionally, with our industry-leading refresh rate, brands benefit from the most up-to-date data, ensuring their campaigns are always aligned with the latest consumer behaviors. Financial services: In the financial services sector, Attain’s purchase data helps identify consumers who are actively considering financial products such as credit cards or loans. By understanding their purchasing behaviors, marketers can deliver highly personalized and relevant offers to those already displaying intent, leading to better conversion rates and more effective acquisition strategies. Integration with Experian's marketplace Attain is now available through the Experian marketplace. How does this integration make it easier for advertisers to activate and scale your audiences? Attain’s integration with Experian marketplace makes it easier than ever for advertisers to activate our purchase-based audiences across TV, social, and programmatic. This partnership makes Attain’s data even more accessible, supporting our mission to build the most comprehensive and trusted consumer data ecosystem.   With direct access to our real-time audiences within Experian’s marketplace, advertisers can more efficiently launch campaigns at scale and make more precise, data-driven decisions. As one of Experian’s inaugural partners, we’ve already seen strong adoption and demand, reinforcing the value of this partnership. The future of transaction-based targeting As the use of transaction data in advertising continues to grow, what changes do you anticipate in how brands will apply it for targeting and measurement? And how is Attain evolving its approach to support those shifts? As transaction data reshapes advertising, brands can shift from targeting probabilistic audiences to reaching high-intent consumers for greater ad relevance and conversions. Purchase data also unlocks highly accurate incrementality measurement, closing the loop and revealing which tactics and channels drive true incremental sales. Attain’s platform is built for outcomes-driven advertising, capturing data across the entire media cycle to continuously optimize performance. As we continue to make investments in AI and machine learning into our platform, our insights will become even more actionable and efficient — helping brands maximize impact, drive incrementality, and fuel long-term growth. Thanks for the interview. Any recommendations for our readers if they want to learn more? To explore our audience segments, visit the Attain website or contact your Experian account representative to schedule your free match test. Contact us About our expert Brian Mandelbaum, CEO and Co-Founder, Attain Brian Mandelbaum, a veteran entrepreneur and investor, is the co-founder and CEO of Attain, North America’s largest opt-in purchase platform. Prior to Attain, Brian founded Clearstream TV, a data-enabled video distribution platform acquired by Engine Group in 2015. He brings over 20 years of experience in data-driven digital media, collaborating with top agencies and major brands. Latest posts

As privacy regulations, signal loss, and consumer expectations change, marketers face growing challenges in creating meaningful connections. In our latest Ask the Expert segment, Tom Wolfe, SVP at Viant, and Ali Mack, VP of AdTech Sales at Experian explore how first- and third-party data strategies, advancements in connected TV (CTV), and AI tools empower marketers to build smarter campaigns tailored to modern demands.  Identity-driven advertising built on first-party data With the decline of traditional third-party signals and the rise of privacy-first advertising, first-party data is more important than ever. By collecting data directly from customers, marketers ensure they have accurate, user-consented data to fuel personalized advertising. Viant’s identity graph takes these first-party signals—such as email addresses, household locations, and phone numbers—and connects them with additional attributes in a privacy-safe way. This approach empowers marketers to build precise audience segments without relying on cookies, which Viant phased out over a decade ago.  Combining first-party data and privacy-first solutions to build trust By combining first-party data strategies with privacy-first solutions, marketers can build long-term success while earning consumer trust. The Viant Household ID eliminates reliance on cookies while enabling secure, compliant campaign management. Additionally, Viant's partnerships with cleanrooms further protect their clients' data integrity and ensure smooth collaboration between trusted parties. Beyond safeguarding consumer information, the Viant ecosystem allows their clients to integrate data seamlessly from audience segmentation to campaign activation and reporting.  How first and third party data work together While first-party data is crucial for precise, personalized advertising, it isn’t always sufficient—especially for smaller or emerging brands that haven’t yet amassed audience data. Third-party data plays a pivotal role in these scenarios by supplementing first-party insights, offering a broader view of consumer behavior, leading to new growth opportunities.  Viant collaborates with partners like Experian to help marketers seamlessly merge their customer information with additional consumer insights. Viant and their clients benefit from Experian's identity data to match various identifiers such as hashed emails, device IDs, or other platform-specific tags and map them back to a single consumer profile. With a unified view of the consumer, marketers can refine targeting, expand their reach, and maintain consistency across channels. By utilizing first- and third-party data solutions, marketers can build well-rounded, effective campaigns that resonate with diverse audiences. “Our clients have embraced the Viant Household ID because it powers a comprehensive, seamless flow from segment creation to targeting, activation, and measurement.” Tom Wolfe, SVP Business Development, Viant  CTV as a core marketing channel CTV is emerging as the core platform for immersive and effective advertising by merging the visual storytelling power of traditional TV with the precision of digital tools. Viant helps marketers optimize CTV capabilities by building connections between premium publishers and data, allowing marketers to personalize experiences. Whether it’s tailored ads for families watching a live sports event or pinpointing niche interests, CTV enables marketers to reach diverse audiences with meaningful ads. Beyond awareness, Viant drives results for their clients and monitors that performance across each stage of the funnel. Marketers can use the key insights to optimize their media buys on CTV and achieve even higher ROI.  Viant takes CTV performance a step further with its direct access programs. Stronger data matching via publisher partnerships improves accuracy, helping marketers connect with their ideal audience. Viant’s recent data shows that campaigns incorporating CTV achieve a conversion rate of 12.89%, outperforming campaigns lacking it by a wide margin. This dramatic improvement highlights the power of precise targeting combined with Viant’s advanced CTV tools. For marketers, this translates to impactful storytelling supported by tangible results.  “CTV drives high-level brand awareness via sight, sound, motion, and emotion, but it also powers activity through the funnel.” Tom Wolfe, SVP Business Development, Viant  AI is streamlining marketing from start to finish AI is transforming advertising by automating tasks like performance tracking and audience segmentation, allowing marketers to focus on strategy and creativity. At Viant, AI is part of the company’s DNA, helping marketers drive more efficient and effective campaigns.  With real-time data insights and streamlined processes, teams can quickly refine messaging and optimize budgets. This efficiency not only saves time but also empowers marketers to channel their energy into creating impactful strategies that resonate with their audiences. The integration of AI into Viant’s ecosystem also simplifies overall workflows, optimizing campaign execution from start to finish. With performance tracking made easier and segmentation automated, marketers can rely on data accuracy and actionable insights to make confident decisions.  How Experian and Viant work together Experian's syndicated audiences—demographic, auto, TV, FLA (Financial Fair Lending Act), and more—are available within Viant's platform. Experian's partnership with Viant enables the deployment of custom audiences specifically designed to meet distinct campaign objectives. Together, Experian and Viant provide solutions that support first-party data strategies, third-party data integration, CTV optimization, AI-driven insights, and identity resolution, creating a cohesive and privacy-forward marketing ecosystem.  “At Viant, we focus on the sensible, scalable, impactful opportunities.” Tom Wolfe, SVP Business Development, Viant  Watch the full Q&A Visit our Ask the Expert content hub to watch the full conversation with Tom and Ali and learn more about Viant’s scalable identity solutions.  About our expert Tom Wolfe, SVP Business Development, Viant  As SVP of Business Development at Viant, Tom and his team forge strategic business partnerships that fuel the company's growth and business strategy. He is a seasoned industry veteran with more than 25 years of expertise in content distribution, advertising, and technology, particularly in CTV. Throughout his career, Tom has played a pivotal role in establishing and managing multiple businesses at major companies such as Roku, TiVo, YuMe, and Comcast. Additionally, he has provided valuable advisory services to organizations including VIZIO, Vice Media, and many others across the ecosystem. Tom holds a B.A. in Political Science from Lehigh University and has shared his knowledge as a guest lecturer at both New York University and Drexel University.  Latest posts

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 Brian Chisholm, SVP of Strategic Partnerships at OpenX.   About OpenX OpenX is an independent omni-channel supply-side platform (SSP) and a global leader in supply-side curation, transparency, and sustainability. Through its 100% cloud-based tech stack, OpenX powers advertising across CTV, app, mobile web, and desktop, enabling publishers to deliver marketers with improved performance and dynamic future-proofed solutions. With a 17-year track record of programmatic innovation, OpenX is a direct and trusted partner of the world’s largest publishers, working with more than 130,000 premium publisher domains and over 100,000 advertisers. As the market leader in sustainability, OpenX was the first AdTech company to be certified as CarbonNeutral™ and third-party verified for achieving its SBTi Net-Zero targets. Learn more at www.openx.com.  Collaboration solves programmatic challenges Could you share the story behind the partnership between OpenX and Experian and how this collaboration differs from typical data-provider/DSP or SSP relationships in the market? What unique challenges in programmatic advertising does this partnership solve?   OpenX first partnered with Experian in 2019 when we were building the industry’s first data-driven supply-side curation platform. Being the only SSP with a proprietary people-based identity graph (further enriched by Experian) gives OpenX a unique set of capabilities that are only growing in value in the market. We are seeing retail media networks, large agency planning platforms, and indie and specialty shops lean into OpenX’s tools to match, activate, and measure people-based audiences through our robust curation platform and premium supply.   Enhancing campaigns with data enrichment How does combining Experian's marketing data with OpenX's technology create tangible benefits for advertisers, agencies, and publishers?    Last year, we expanded our partnership with Experian to enrich our digital IDs with Experian’s Digital Audiences, essentially making Experian data available directly to marketers across all OpenX supply and formats, including CTV. For marketers, this direct integration increases both match and activation rates. Meaning, not only do we match more of the starting audience universe to our system, we then provide more opportunities to identify and transact on those users in the bidstream. The result is greater reach for buyers even in previously unaddressable environments like Safari or mobile web – and publishers benefit from the increased addressability OpenX provides their supply.   Delivering impactful inventory solutions OpenX has been enhancing its curation offerings beyond just providing curated marketplaces. Could you describe the strategic shift you’re making in how you package and deliver inventory?    At OpenX, we have a broader and more dynamic view of curation. It’s not just about gathering data or bundling inventory; it’s about layering on identity-based precision, enabling the targeting of the right audiences with premium, brand-safe inventory for our clients.  We saw the value of curating inventory and audiences on the supply side early on.  We started by building capabilities for our own exchange and then found that our approach created tremendous value for data owners and marketers alike. Over the past five years, we’ve been continuously investing our curation platform capabilities to super serve those partners. As a result, we have what we think is by far the most robust and flexible platform in the market.  We can match and integrate with any kind of data, curate supply at a granular level, activate audiences and help measure outcomes in multiple ways. We also provide turnkey integrations to third-party platforms.  Balancing customization with scalability in deals There's often tension between customization and scalability when it comes to curated deals. How does OpenX strike the right balance to meet varied advertiser objectives while ensuring operational efficiency for publishers?   Truthfully, we’re not finding that scale suffers with curation. We currently have 237 million monthly active users in our exchange that we can match and activate curated deals against. That’s a unique claim for an SSP, and we back it up with our identity graph. This directly benefits our publishers who see a 20% increase in overall bid density and a 118%+ increase in win rate for curated deals vs. open market.    Data-driven curation done on the supply side offers efficiency and drives results for buyers, while publishers are able to activate their own first-party data programmatically, increase their monetization, and maximize the value of their inventory.  As the industry continues to adapt to a privacy-first, consent-based ecosystem, data-driven curation will play a key part in ensuring both sides of the marketplace continue to thrive.   Driving results with CTV curation Connected TV is arguably the most dynamic channel in programmatic right now. How do curation improvements accelerate more precise or outcome-based targeting in CTV environments?    I want to take this a step further and say that biddable is the future of CTV. Not only does biddable enable advertisers to purchase closer to campaign activation, it gives buyers the option to curate deals, flexibility, addressability and ease of transacting at will. No minimums, no commitments.    Our CTV strategy has been centered around combining flexibility, efficiency, and real-time optimization capabilities with access to premium, direct, glass-on-wall inventory. TV by OpenX, powers the direct activation of curated audiences at scale through data-driven, contextual, attention, and sustainability offerings.    What does this mean for buyers?  Advertisers can choose from any one of OpenX’s 250+ data partners, including Experian, to target an audience via CTV inventory using OpenX’s cross-platform identity graph. This setup allows buyers to increase scale and optimize toward their desired campaign outcomes via their preferred DSP. The focus on inventory quality and scale combined with advanced targeting curation provides a key driver of performance in CTV.  Identity resolution for better CTV measurement In a channel as fragmented as CTV, measuring performance can be complex. What role does identity resolution play in better measurement and attribution? How do Experian's identity capabilities integrate within your platform to drive measurable outcomes?   We talked about the value of audience targeting via curation above. Another critical driver is our ability to power true closed-loop measurement for advertisers or partners like retail media networks. OpenX is able to provide automated log-level reporting via BIDS, which includes exposed IDs from our proprietary ID graph back to our partners in near real time.    This closed-loop attribution enables partners to measure real-world outcomes like ROAS, conversion rates and incrementality. Insights and learnings from data can then be used to make optimizations mid-campaign, to further improve performance. Measurement starts with having a strong foundation to identity resolution – which Experian helps us achieve.   Tailoring audience strategies in the auto sector The automotive vertical demands highly specific audience insights—everything from in-market signals to lifestyle and aftermarket service and parts data. How does the Experian–OpenX partnership enhance audience strategies in auto?   Experian’s deterministic data, combined with the OpenX identity graph, empowers buyers with identity tools to create targeted audience segments of likely auto intenders. For verticals that have high customer acquisition costs like auto, these insights are particularly valuable, as buyers often struggle to identify their audiences at scale in environments that drive campaign performance.   Experian’s automotive data is one of our most requested audiences from buyers. We match Experian’s high-quality data directly to our platform, often leveraging Experian’s IDs, which leads to greater scale and fidelity. In addition, our platform can curate supply to a granular level to drive results for buyers.  Complying with evolving privacy regulations With data privacy regulations multiplying—like GDPR, CCPA, and others—how does OpenX’s direct connection with Experian ensure responsible data usage and compliance?    At OpenX, we don’t see privacy regulations as a challenge but rather an opportunity. Instead, it’s a key differentiator for us. We’ve had a strong focus on data and identity since 2017, and we believe that if you’re talking about these topics but not talking about privacy, you’re missing an important piece of the equation.   Regardless of the environment — CTV, mobile, app, or web — in today’s privacy-focused world, success in data and identity is inseparable from a commitment to privacy. We support this obligation with dedicated leadership that helps our partners navigate evolving global regulations, including critical areas like child-directed content under new laws from Australia to Maryland.  Thanks for the interview. Any recommendations for our readers if they want to learn more? To learn more about our solutions and partnership opportunities, visit the OpenX website or contact your Experian account representative to schedule your free match test.  Contact us About our expert Brian Chisholm, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, OpenX  Brian Chisholm is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at OpenX, where he spearheads the curation, data, and identity efforts. He and his team have been instrumental in building out OpenX’s industry-leading curation platform and partnerships.   With more than two decades of experience in digital media, Brian has developed partnerships that leverage and expand OpenX’s core technology assets and deliver material value for the company’s buyer, publisher, and platform partners. Before joining OpenX, Brian held senior roles at innovative startups and digital stalwarts, including Overture/Yahoo, SpotRunner, and Apptera.  Latest posts

Conventional TV advertising campaigns have historically relied on general audience metrics like impressions and ratings to measure outcomes. These metrics can help marketers understand how many people have seen an ad, but they don’t reveal its real-world impact, which leaves a gap between ad exposure and results.  Outcome-based TV measurement bridges this gap and helps marketers tie ad spending directly to their business goals. Instead of counting eyeballs alone, TV measurement zeroes in on what viewers do after seeing an ad — whether signing up for a service, visiting your website, or purchasing a product. TV ad measurement helps marketers adjust campaigns based on clear, trackable outcomes rather than guesswork. Let’s talk about how marketers can get started with outcome-based TV measurement and start experiencing tangible results. Why outcome-based TV measurement matters Outcome-based measurement indicates a massive shift in how marketers evaluate TV advertising success. As a principal analyst at Forrester explained, the industry is about to “move into a whole different world" where multiple metrics are tailored to advertisers’ unique goals, such as sales, store traffic, or web engagement. This shift is driven by improved tools for tracking TV outcomes, which help justify spending and clarify ROI. With TV measurement, you can see how your campaigns impact aspects of your marketing like sales and engagement. Aligning TV ad spend with business goals Every business has distinct objectives. Outcome-based measurement ties your marketing efforts to business goals and enables smarter decisions, campaign optimization, and ROI improvements. Whether you're a B2C brand wanting immediate sales or a B2B organization looking to drive website traffic, this method provides the insights needed for strategic decision-making. Marketers can deliver the most value by adjusting TV ad spending to maximize desired results: Sales goals: Identify which ads and platforms directly influence purchases to ensure TV ad spend contributes to revenue growth. Customer engagement: Link actions like website visits or app downloads to TV campaigns and refine messaging to deepen audience connections. Desired outcomes: Align ad spend with goals like consumer awareness or repeat purchases to allocate resources effectively for measurable success. Reducing wasted spend on ineffective channels Outcome-based TV measurement allows you to pinpoint which networks, times, or programs drive the most engagement and conversion. When you know your underperforming channels, you can reallocate budgets to those with a higher ROI and avoid waste. Core metrics in outcome-based TV measurement The effective implementation of outcome-based measurement requires advanced TV advertising analytics and tracking metrics that shed light on TV ad performance. Incremental lift This metric measures the increase in desired actions and business results — like purchases or site visits — that can be attributed directly to a TV campaign. Incremental lift quantifies your campaign’s impact and separates organic activity from the results your ads have driven.  Let’s say a meal kit service experiences a 20% lift in subscriptions within a single week of running TV ads compared to a week without ads. They’d want to be able to isolate the impact of their ad from their organic growth so they can determine if the growth is actually a result of the TV ads or another effort.  Attribution and conversions Attribution links TV ad exposure to specific customer actions, such as newsletter sign-ups and product purchases. Conversion data helps marketers understand the whole customer journey to optimize messaging, targeting, and channel mix to improve conversion rates. A retailer that knows 50% of TV ad viewers visit its e-commerce site within 36 hours of exposure could use that information to adjust the timing of its retargeting and align with site visit spikes.  Audience segmentation for targeted measurement Outcome-based measurement breaks down performance across target demographics and allows for granular audience segmentation so TV ads resonate with the right audiences. For example, if a luxury brand saw better TV ad performance with high-earning Millennials, they’d want to refine their campaign messaging based on this group’s habits and preferences. Customer journey tracking Knowing how viewers move from awareness to conversion is critical. Outcome-based TV measurement helps you track the customer journey by pinpointing touchpoints where engagement happens and tying these to your TV campaigns. If a fitness brand found that TV campaigns drive app downloads, it could combine app analytics and TV exposure data to find out when most of their conversions happen after ad exposure and create follow-up messaging for that window of time. Integrating these insights with other marketing channels allows you to fine-tune your messaging, channel mix, and audience targeting to drive better outcomes and deliver more personalized customer experiences. Lifetime value (LTV) Beyond immediate conversions, outcome-based TV ad measurement helps brands identify which TV campaigns attract high-value customers with long-term revenue potential. If a financial institution ran a TV ad campaign centered on its new credit card, for instance, it could use LTV to track new cardholders and determine whether ads occurring during financial news airtime produced customers with higher average annual spend compared to other segments. How outcome-based TV measurement works Outcome-based measurement is a data-driven process that involves collecting, analyzing, and applying insights to improve TV ad performance. 1. Collect data When someone sees your TV ad, they might take action, like downloading your app or buying something. Outcome-based TV measurement begins by tracking these actions and gathering data from various sources, such as: TV viewership  CRM Digital engagement  Purchase behavior Cross-platform interactions And more Data integration with digital platforms Combining TV data with insights from platforms like social media or website analytics creates a more unified view of campaign performance. This integration powers easier retargeting and better alignment between digital and TV advertising strategies. Some marketers enhance this integration further using artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline data coordination and ensure campaigns are optimized for effectiveness and ROI. 2. Connect the dots Next, marketers need to find out which actions were influenced by TV ads. It’s important to ask questions like these as you work to connect the dots: Did website traffic spike right after the ad aired? Did the ad viewers match the people who signed up for the service or made a purchase? You can link TV exposure to real-world behaviors with tools and identifiers like hashed emails,  device IDs, surveys, and privacy-safe data-matching techniques. 3. Analyze the data Then, the data needs to be analyzed for patterns like these: Which TV ads or time slots drove the most engagement? Did certain customer groups respond better than others? Was there a noticeable lift in sales or signups after the ad campaign? This step can help you uncover what’s working and what’s not. Role of advanced analytics and machine learning The data analysis required in this process can be overwhelming, time-consuming, and risky without the right tools. Fortunately, advanced analytics and fast, effective artificial intelligence tools can process large amounts of data from digital platforms, TV viewership, and customer interactions in less time to reveal accurate, actionable insights and patterns. They can also predict which audiences, messages, and channels will be most profitable so campaigns can adapt in real time, whether by reallocating spend to higher-performing channels or refining audience targeting. 4. Turn insights into action Once you have your data-derived insights, you can tweak your campaign in a number of ways, whether you decide to: Adjust your ads: If one message works better than another, lean into it. Refine your targeting: Focus on the audience segments most likely to act. Optimize your spend: Invest in channels or times that deliver the best return. For example, if you see that ads during prime time lead to more purchases than morning slots, you can shift your budget accordingly. This type of knowledge can be used to continuously improve your campaigns. Each time you run a new ad, you measure again, building on past insights to make your outcome-based TV advertising even smarter. Applications of outcome-based TV measurement Outcome-based TV measurement has wide-ranging applications across industries. Here’s how it’s helping businesses link TV ad exposure to real-world actions and optimize campaigns for better results. E-commerce and retail: Retailers can track how TV ads influence purchases and use those insights to refine their assets and target specific customer groups. A clothing retailer may track how well a TV ad boosts online traffic and in-store purchases. For instance, if a seasonal sale commercial correlates with a spike in website visits or mobile app downloads, the brand can refine its ad placement to focus on the most responsive demographics. Automotive: Automakers use outcome-based TV measurement insights to determine how ads drive dealership visits, test drives, or inquiries. A car manufacturer could analyze whether TV spots featuring a new vehicle increase traffic to its dealership locator or car configuration tool online. Healthcare: Pharmaceutical companies could assess whether TV spots lead to increased prescription fills, or a health provider could test how ads promoting flu shots result in appointment bookings through its website or app. If any messages resonate more with families, the provider can create similar campaigns for the future. How Experian enhances outcome-based TV measurement Experian has recently partnered with EDO, an outcomes-based measurement provider, to offer more granular TV measurement across platforms. Our identity resolution and matching capabilities enhance EDO’s IdentitySpine™ solution with rich consumer data, including age, gender, and household income, all in a privacy-centric way. Integrating these demographic attributes is helping advertisers achieve more precise audience insights and connect their first-party data to actionable outcomes. As a result of this collaboration, brands, agencies, and networks can optimize their TV campaigns by identifying which ads drive the most decisive engagement among specific audience segments. We’re improving accuracy, targeting, and more so advertisers can maximize the performance of their CTV strategies. Get in touch with Experian’s TV experts If you’re ready to take your data-driven TV advertising strategies to the next level, connect with our team. We combine advanced data and identity solutions as well as strong industry collaborations to help brands optimize their TV campaigns. Whether you're navigating traditional or advanced TV formats, our expertise ensures your efforts deliver maximum impact. Connect with us today to drive engagement, connect with audiences, and achieve better ROI. Let’s transform the way you measure success on TV. Reach out to our TV experts Latest posts

Advertising today is more complex than ever. Consumers demand personalized, relevant experiences from brands, making it increasingly challenging to meet expectations without external support. Businesses must work with publishers, retailers, and platforms to thrive, using these partnerships for data insights that refine their strategies and fuel growth. We spoke with industry leaders from Ampersand, AppsFlyer, Audigent, Comcast Advertising, Fox, ID5, and Snowflake to gather insights on how strategic collaboration can expand audience reach, improve targeting precision, and drive measurable advertising success. 1. Expand your reach with strategic collaborations Gone are the days when brands relied solely on third-party data. By linking their first-party insights with equally valuable data from partners, brands develop a far more comprehensive understanding of their audiences. This collaborative approach creates richer audience profiles, improves targeting, and enhances campaign performance. Partnerships also create opportunities for operational efficiencies. For instance, brands that share data and expertise with collaborators can expand their audience reach without overhauling existing systems. These collaborations allow marketers to work smarter, turning shared knowledge into strategic wins. "Partnerships are everything. We can't fulfill our goals on the sale side, marketers can't fulfill their goals of finding their audience where they need to reach them and with the right level of outcomes without partnering together. Why? Because each of them has their own line of sight to the data that they have access to and the data that they know best."Justin Rosen, Ampersand 2. Identify the right partnership model Choosing the right partnership model is key to achieving your business objectives. For some, pairing first-party data with publishers' insights creates better targeting. For others, aligning with complementary brands allows them to engage shared audiences. For large-scale efforts, agencies can unify collaboration frameworks, making onboarding and activation seamless. Meanwhile, emerging categories like FinTech, hospitality, and commerce media provide brands new avenues for impactful partnerships. Evaluating these options thoroughly will ensure your collaboration aligns with long-term marketing goals. "With first-party data being really the central point of signal today, we see more and more of our advertisers identifying partnerships with maybe potentially historical competitors or partners they would've never considered."Tami Harrigan, AppsFlyer 3. Utilize the power of pooled insights Combining various data sources, like CRM records, browsing behavior, and shopping receipts, creates an in-depth view of your customers. By understanding what motivates consumers at every stage of their journey, brands can better tailor messaging and funnel marketing spend to where it matters most. This approach also enables data-driven agility. Real-time insights help brands make informed adjustments, whether it’s shifting strategies mid-campaign or identifying new growth opportunities. When brands share data responsibly, the results are campaigns that resonate and deliver measurable improvements. "A lot of advertisers have gotten smarter about their data than they were just two, three years ago. They’re now doing that segmentation on their side with their data and bringing that to Fox and saying, ‘Look, match this segment against your entire user base.’ In order to do that, we can work with providers like Experian, or with data clean rooms to really bring that data and do a direct match without going through a third party."Darren Sherriff, Fox 4. Adopt the right tools and technology The right tools empower a collaborative data ecosystem. Solutions like data clean rooms ensure privacy-first data matching and measurement. Identity frameworks, such as Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) or ID5, enable secure data alignment across platforms, simplifying audience targeting while safeguarding sensitive information. Shared dashboards are another crucial tool, providing all collaborators with clear, co-owned performance metrics. Yet, while technology is an enabler, success ultimately depends on how well tools align with each partner’s goals and build trust within the collaboration. “You have to make it accessible to non-technical personas and you have to have the ability to have it stood up and pay dividends in a short amount of time. The other thing is interoperability. We very much think as an industry we need to have interoperability with clean rooms, ones that operate on different frameworks.” David Wells, Snowflake 5. Overcome barriers to collaboration Collaboration often faces obstacles, like differing goals, fragmented data, or resource gaps. Brands can tackle these issues by aligning stakeholders on clear KPIs, standardizing data-sharing practices, and selecting tools that integrate smoothly with existing systems. Breaking down barriers early fosters fluid cooperation and improves outcomes for everyone involved. When goals, tools, and resources are in sync, these partnerships deliver lasting value and stronger results. “The key is to bring together data assets and work collaboratively to address fragmentation. The way to solve that is with more interoperability and connect the data in very privacy-safe ways, offering more opportunity to reach high fidelity audiences and incorporate better measurement methodologies.”Carmela Fournier, Comcast Advertising The path to growth through partnership Those who prioritize collaboration will outrun the competition and drive sustainable growth through smarter, more connected advertising. By choosing the right models, using powerful technology, and addressing potential obstacles, brands can co-create campaigns that resonate deeply with their audiences. Connect with our experts Latest posts