Marketing trends

In our last few blog posts, we’ve talked about customer segmentation and different ways to segment your target audience into smaller chunks like demographic and psychographic segmentation to connect with the right people. Customer segmentation enables marketers to focus their marketing efforts on their target customers, improving their marketing targeting strategy. But what if there was a subset of users that had an even bigger impact when targeted? Enter Super Users - the strategic players who can give your ROI numbers a major boost! It may take some trial-and-error testing to pinpoint these super segments accurately, but knowing how these key individuals interact is essential for any successful marketing targeting strategy. What is a Super User? As technology progresses and media consumption grows, a unique group is rising to the top. Activate Consulting's Technology & Media Outlook 2023 found that Super Users are powering the digital world, with a strong presence across all major media and technology verticals. This select crowd is made up of young, educated individuals who lead affluent lifestyles – spending more time and money than any other user group! Why should you add Super Users to your marketing targeting strategy? Super Users are a highly influential audience with the potential to drive major business growth. They stand out from other users in their commitment and dedication across four key areas: Time spent with media Spend Technology and media adoption Emerging eCommerce behaviors “Over the next years, the imperative for technology and media companies will be to identify, reach, and super-serve Super Users – the single group of power users whose time and spend far surpass those of other users.”Activate consulting's technology & media outlook 2023 You can use Super Users as a subset of your marketing targeting strategy. While you may need to reach beyond Super Users to achieve your goals, it’s worthwhile to consider: Targeting them separately Spending more on media Reaching them at a higher frequency Time spent with media Super Users make a powerful impact, despite comprising only 22% of the U.S. population. They are incredibly influential in terms of media consumption and engagement – spending more than double the amount of time interacting with content compared to other users. Inclined to multitask Super Users take multitasking to the next level. Not only do they spend more time with electronics, but they excel in the art of juggling multiple activities. While watching videos and playing video games on one device, Super Users might also be busy engaging with social media on another. This makes them an unstoppable force when it comes to getting the most out of their digital experiences! High share of dollar spend Super Users are big spenders when it comes to media, particularly in gaming and music. Compared with all other users, Super Users' average video spend is close to triple the amount ($76 vs $27). However, their biggest increases come from gaming and music; they're collectively spending 12x more on games and shelling out 21x as much for tunes! With 60% of eCommerce spend coming from Super Users, they are driving the industry forward with their enthusiasm and willingness to test out cutting-edge shopping trends like buying through social media, live streaming purchases, and trying on products virtually. Super Users are setting the tone for this dynamic industry. Technology and media adoption Most Super Users are brand advocates. They’re trendsetting individuals who stay ahead of the curve on media and technology. They eagerly take advantage of new products, services, and data-sharing opportunities to receive tailored ads that fit their lifestyle. Crypto & NFTs Super Users blaze the trail for cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)! This group is five times more likely to explore, engage with, and embrace new digital-monetary technologies. Pioneers of the Metaverse As Metaverse usage continues to rise, Super Users are leading the way. Over 80% of these trailblazers have embraced these digital spaces within just the last year. We’re seeing accelerated interest from them as they seek out new opportunities for creativity, connections, and transactions within their favorite Metaverses. Many express interest in Metaverse experiences such as purchasing physical items to creating virtual havens. In fact, they’re 5x more interested in all things meta-related! How Experian can help you identify and target Super Users So how can you find your Super Users and include them in your marketing targeting strategy? Whether you want to build or acquire highly addressable audiences, we can help you precisely reach the right individuals and households in any channel you desire with Consumer View. Consumer View It all starts with data. Delivering the right message in the right place at the right time means truly knowing your prospects and customers as individuals - their lifestyles, behaviors, and shopping preferences. Consumer View data can provide a deeper understanding of your customers. Consumer View is the world’s largest consumer database that contains over 3,900 attributes for 250 million adult consumers in the U.S. with coverage of 126 million (98%) of U.S. households. Consumer View can help you find out: What do your customers look like? What do your customers do? How and when should you reach your customers? What motivates your customers? Modeled and syndicated audiences We have over 2,500 pre-built audiences that are privacy-safe and built using advanced data science and the most comprehensive consumer data available. These digital audiences are readily available via major publishers, data management platforms (DMPs), advanced TV operators, and demand-side platforms (DSPs). Our pre-built audiences can be used consistently across multiple distribution partners – making sure you can quickly find the right audience for the right campaign without having to build your own consumer personas. In addition to being available as digital audiences, our segmentation products are also available to use across all consumer touchpoints to enable consistent omnichannel campaign targeting. There are infinite data combinations and selections we can help you with for optimal audience targeting. Using our comprehensive inventory of data, we can find even the most unusual of audiences to help you connect with new prospects. From demographics to behavioral and psychographic information, we draw on a massive base of knowledge accumulated during five decades in business. Mosaic® USA Experian’s Mosaic® USA is a household-based consumer lifestyle segmentation system that classifies all U.S. households and neighborhoods into 71 unique types and 19 overarching groups, providing a 360-degree view of consumers’ choices, preferences, and habits. Using Mosaic lifestyle segmentation, you can anticipate the behavior, attitudes, and preferences of your best customers and reach them in the most effective traditional and digital channels with the right message in the right place at the right time. Tailored Segmentation uses a sophisticated data-driven clustering system that leverages the 71 Mosaic types that match to first-party data like yours. Tailored Segmentation allows you to regroup Mosaic types based on the attributes you weigh as more impactful to your business. Have you designed your own segments in-house? You can apply Tailored Segmentation to those segments for deeper insights through a tailored analysis. Are you still looking for a way to segment your market even though you understand your typical best customer? Tailored Segmentation can weigh these attributes and develop a custom clustering and analysis of your market. We can help you find your Super Users Super Users are an important segment of any market. Marketers need to be able to identify them quickly and act upon their insights. Our marketing solutions provide the necessary data and analytical capabilities to easily find and target your potential Super Users for an effective marketing targeting strategy. With Experian, you can deliver messages that are more in line with what matters to this influential group of customers. We understand how challenging it can be to find these customers and ensure they get the tailored, personalized messaging they deserve - so let us help you do just that! We can provide deep insights beyond the generic customer persona that allows marketers to look into the effectiveness of their marketing strategies from multiple angles. We want to help you gain an edge over your competitors by helping you identify, target, and engage Super Users for increased revenue growth. Ready to find your Super Users? Get in touch Enhance your marketing targeting strategy today! Sources Activate Technology & Media Outlook 2023. Activate Consulting. Latest posts

Contextual ad targeting paves the way for new opportunities Advertisers and marketers are always looking for ways to remain competitive in the current digital landscape. The challenge of signal loss continues to prompt marketers to rethink their current and future strategies. With many major browsers phasing out support for third-party cookies due to privacy and data security concerns, marketers will need to find new ways to identify and reach their target audience. Contextual ad targeting offers an innovative solution; a way to combine contextual signals with machine learning to engage with your consumers more deeply through highly targeted accuracy. Contextual advertising can help you reach your desired audiences amidst signal loss - but what exactly is contextual advertising, and how can it help optimize digital ad success? In a Q&A with our experts, Jason Andersen, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partner Solutions with Experian, and Alex Johnston, Principal Product Manager with Yieldmo, they explore: The challenges causing marketers to rethink their current strategies How contextual advertising addresses signal loss Why addressability is more important than ever Why good creative is still integral in digital marketing Tips for digital ad success By understanding what contextual advertising can offer, you’ll be on the path toward creating powerful, effective campaigns that will engage your target audiences.  Check out Jason and Alex’s full conversation from our webinar, “Making the Most of Your Digital Ad Budget With Contextual Advertising and Audience Insights” by reading below. Or watch the full webinar recording now! Watch now  Macro impacts affecting marketers How important is it for digital marketers to stay informed about the changes coming to third-party cookies, and what challenges do you see signal loss creating? Jason: Marketers must stay informed to succeed as the digital marketing landscape continuously evolves. Third-party cookies have already been eliminated from Firefox, Safari, and other browsers, while Chrome has held out. It's just a matter of time before Chrome eliminates them too. Being proactive now by predicting potential impacts will be essential for maintaining growth when the third-party cookie finally disappears. Alex: Jason, I think you nailed it. Third-party cookie loss is already a reality. As regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) take effect, more than 50% of exchange traffic lacks associated identifiers. This means that marketers have to think differently about how they reach their audiences in an environment with fewer data points available for targeting purposes. It's no longer something to consider at some point down the line - it's here now! Also, as third-party cookies become more limited, reaching users online is becoming increasingly complex and competitive. Without access to as much data, the CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) that advertisers must pay are skyrocketing because everyone is trying to bid on those same valuable consumers. It's essential for businesses desiring success in digital advertising now more than ever before. Contextual ad targeting: A solution for signal loss How does contextual ad targeting help digital marketers find new ways to reach and engage with consumers? What can you share about some new strategies that have modernized marketing, such as machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Jason: We're taking contextual marketing to the next level with advanced machine learning. We are unlocking new insights from data beyond what a single page can tell us about users. As third-party cookies go away, alternative identifiers are coming to market, like RampID and UID2. These are going to be particularly important for marketers to be able to utilize.  As cookie syncing becomes outdated, marketers will have to look for alternative methods to reach their target audiences. It's essential to look beyond cookie-reliant solutions and use other options available regarding advertising.  Alex: I think, as Jason alluded to, there's a renaissance in contextual advertising over the last couple of years. If I were to break this down, there are three core drivers: The loss of identity signals. It's forcing us to change, and we must look elsewhere and figure out how to reach our audiences differently. There have been considerable advances in our ability to store and operate across a set of contextual signals far more extensive than anything we've ever worked with in the past and in far more granular ways. That's a huge deal because when it comes to machine learning, the power and the impact of those machine learning models are entirely based on how extensive and granular the data set is that you can collect. Machine learning can pull together critical contextual signals and figure out which constellations, or which combinations of those signals, are most predictive and valuable to a given advertiser. We can tailor machine learning models to individual advertisers using all those signals and find patterns across those in ways that were previously impractical or unfeasible. The transformation is occurring because of our ability to capture much more granular data, operate across it, and then build models that work for advertisers. Addressability: Connect your campaigns to consumers How does advanced contextual targeting help marketers reach non-addressable audiences? Jason: Advanced contextual targeting allows us to take a set of known data (identity) and draw inferences from it with all the other signals we see across the bitstream. It's taking that small seed set of either, customers that transacted with you before that you have an identity for, or customers that match whom you're looking for. We can use that as a seed set to train these new contextual models. We can now look at making the unknown known or the unaddressable addressable. So, it's not addressable in an identity sense, it is addressable in a contextual or an advanced contextual sense that's made available to us, and we can derive great insight from it. One of the terms I like to use is contextual indexing. This is where we take a set of users we know something about. So, I may know the identity of a particular group of households, and I can look at how those households index against any of the rich data sets available to us in any data marketplace, for example, the data Yieldmo has. We can look at how that data indexes to those known users to find patterns in that data and then extrapolate from that. Now we can go out and find users surfing on any of the other sites that traditionally don't have that identifier for that user or don't at that moment in time and start to be able to advertise to them based on the contextually indexed data. Historically, we've done some contextual ad targeting based on geo-contextual, and this is when people wanted to do one to one marketing, and geo-contextual outperformed the one to one. But marketers weren't ready for alternatives to one to one yet. We want marketers to start testing these solutions. Advertisers must start trying them, learning how they work, and learn how to optimize them because they are based on a feedback loop, and they're only going to get better with feedback. Alex: Jason, you described that perfectly. I think the exciting opportunity for many people in the industry is figuring out how to reach your known audience in a non-addressable space, that is based on environmental and non-identity based signals, that helps your campaign perform. Your known audience are people that are already converting - those who like your products and services and are engaged with your ads. Machine learning advancements allow you to take your small sample audience and uncover those patterns in the non-addressable space. It's also worth noting that in this world in which we are using seed audiences, or you are using your performing audiences to build non-addressable counterpart targeting campaigns, having high-quality, privacy-resilient data sets becomes incredibly important. In many cases, companies like Experian, who have high quality, deep rich training data, are well positioned to support advertisers in building those extension audiences. As we see the industry evolve, we're going to see some significant changes in terms of the types of, and ways in which, companies offer data, and make that available to advertisers for training their models or supporting validation and measurement of those models. Jason: Addressable users, the new identity-based users, are critical to marketers' performance initiatives. They're essential to training the models we're building with contextual advertising. Together, addressable users and contextual advertising are a powerful combination. It's not just one in isolation. It's not just using advanced contextual, and it's not just using the new identifiers. It's using a combination to meet your performance needs. It's imperative to start thinking about how you can begin building your seed audiences. What can you start learning from, and how do you put contextual into play today? You are looking to build off a known set and build a more advanced model. These can be specialized models based on your data. You can hone in and create a customized model for your customer type, their profile, and how they transact. It's a greenfield opportunity, and we're super excited about the future of advanced contextual targeting. Turn great creative into measurable data points Why does good creative still play an integral part in digital advertising success? Jason: Good creative has always been meaningful. It's vital in getting people to click on your ad and transact. But it's becoming increasingly important in this new world that we're talking about, this advanced contextual world. The more signal that we can get coming into these models, the better. Good creative in the proper ad format that you can test and learn from is paramount. It comes back to that feedback loop. We can use that as another signal in this equation to develop and refine the right set of audiences for your targeting needs. Alex: If you imagine within the broader context of identity and signal loss, creative and ad format becomes incredibly powerful signals in understanding how different audiences interact with and engage with different creative. In the case of the formats that serve on the Yieldmo exchange, we're collecting data every 200 milliseconds around how individual users are engaging with those ads. Interaction data like the user scrolling back or the number of pixel seconds they stay on the screen, fills this critical gap between video completes and clicks. Clicks are sparse and down the funnel, and views and completes are up the funnel. All those attention and creative engagement type metrics occupy the sweet spot where they're super prevalent, and you can collect them and understand how different audiences engage with your ads. That data lets you build powerful models because they predict all kinds of other downstream actions. Throughout my career, I learned that designing or tailoring your creative to different audience groups is one of the best ways to improve performance. We ran many lift studies with analysis to understand how you can tailor creative customized for individual audiences. That capability and the ability to do that on an identity basis is starting to deteriorate. The ability to do that using a sample of data or using a smaller set of users, either where you're inferring characteristics or you're looking at the identity that does exist in a smaller group, becomes powerful for being able to customize your creative to tell the right story to the right audience. When you layer together all the interaction data collected at the creative level on top of all the contextual and environmental signals, you can build powerful models. Whether those are driving proxy metrics, or downstream outcomes, puts us in a powerful position to respond to the broader loss of identity that we've relied on for so many years. Our recommendations for marketers for 2023 and beyond Do you have recommendations for marketers building out their yearly strategies or a campaign strategy? Jason: Be proactive and start testing and learning these new solutions. I mentioned addressability and being in the right place at the right time. That's easier in today's third-party cookie world. But as traditional identity is further constricted, you will have these first-party solutions that will not be at scale, so you're less likely to find your user at the scale you want. It would be best if you thought about how to reach that user at the right place at the right time. They may not be seen from an identity basis. They might not be at the right place at the right time when you were delivering or trying to deliver an ad. But you increase your chance of reaching them by building these advanced contextual targeting audiences using this privacy-safe seed 'opted-in' user set; this is a way to cast that wider net and achieve targeted scale. Alex: Build your seed lists, test your formats with different audiences, and understand what's resonating with whom. Take advantage of some of the pretty remarkable advances in machine learning that are allowing us, really, for the first time to fully uncork the potential and the opportunity with contextual in a way that we've never done before. Jason: At the end of the day, it's making the unaddressable addressable. So, it's a complementary strategy; having that addressable piece will feed the models. But also, that addressable piece still needs to be identity-based, addressable still needs to be part of your overall marketing strategy, and you need to complement it with other strategies like advanced contextual targeting. The two of them together are super complimentary. They learn from each other, and it's a cyclical loop. Now is the time to take advantage and start testing and understanding how these solutions work. We can help you get started with contextual ad targeting Contextual advertising can help you stay ahead of the curve, identify your target audience, and continue to drive conversions despite signal loss. We've partnered with Yieldmo to help make sure that your marketing campaigns are reaching the right target audiences on the platforms that are most relevant. To get started with contextual ad targeting to reach the right audience at the right time and drive conversions, contact our marketing professionals. Let's get to work, together. Contact us today Find the right marketing mix in 2023 Check out our webinar, "Find the right marketing mix with rising consumer expectations." Guest speaker, Nikhil Lai, Senior Analyst from Forrester Research, joins Experian experts Erin Haselkorn, and Eden Wilbur. We discuss: New data on the complexity and uncertainty facing marketers Consumer trends for 2023 Recommendations on finding the right channel mix and the right consumers Watch now Get in touch About our experts Jason Andersen, Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives and Partner Solutions, ExperianJason Andersen heads Strategic Initiatives and Partner Enablement for Experian Marketing Services. He focuses on addressability and activation in digital marketing and working with partners to solve signal loss. Jason has worked in digital advertising for 15+ years, spanning roles from operations and product to strategy and partnerships. Alex Johnston, Principal Product Manager, YieldmoAlex Johnston is the Principal Product Manager at Yieldmo, overseeing the Machine Learning and Optimization products. Before joining Yieldmo, Alex spent 13 years at Google, where he led the Reach & Audience Planning and Measurement products, overseeing a 10X increase in revenue. During his time, he launched numerous ad products, including YouTube's Google Preferred offering. To learn more about Yieldmo, visit www.Yieldmo.com. Latest posts

In 2022, Google began changing the availability of the information available in User-Agent strings across their Chromium browsers. The change is to use the set of HTTP request header fields called Client Hints. Through this process, a server can request, and if approved by the client, receive information that would have been previously freely available in the User-Agent string. This change is likely to have an impact on publishers across the open web that may use User-Agent information today. To explain what this change means, how it will impact the AdTech industry, and what you can do to prepare, we spoke with Nate West, our Director of Product. What is the difference between User-Agents and Client Hints? A User-Agent (UA) is a string, or line of text, that identifies information about a web server’s browser and operating system. For example, it can indicate if a device is on Safari on a Mac or Chrome on Windows. Here is an example UA string from a Mac laptop running Chrome: To limit the passive fingerprinting of users, Google is reducing components of the UA strings in their Chromium browsers and introducing Client Hints. When there is a trusted relationship between first-party domain owners and third-party servers, Client Hints can be used to share the same data. This transition began in early 2022 with bigger expected changes beginning in February 2023. You can see in the above example, Chrome/109.0.0.0, where browser version information is already no longer available from the UA string on this desktop Chrome browser. How can you use User-Agent device attributes today? UA string information can be used for a variety of reasons. It is a component in web servers that has been available for decades. In the AdTech space, it can be used in various ad targeting use cases. It can be used by publishers to better understand their audience. The shift to limit access and information shared is to prevent nefarious usage of the data. What are the benefits of Client Hints? By using Client Hints, a domain owner, or publisher, can manage access to data activity that occurs on their web properties. Having that control may be advantageous. The format of the information shared is also cleaner than parsing a string from User-Agents. Although, given that Client Hints are not the norm across all browsers, a long-term solution may be needed to manage UA strings and Client Hints. An advantage of capturing and sharing Client Hint information is to be prepared and understand if there is any impact to your systems and processes. This will help with the currently planned transition by Google, but also should the full UA string become further restricted. Who will be impacted by this change? Publishers across the open web should lean in to understand this change and any potential impact to them. The programmatic ecosystem supporting real-time bidding (RTB) needs to continue pushing for adoption of OpenRTB 2.6, which supports the passing of client hint information in place of data from UA strings. What is Google’s timeline for implementing Client Hints? Source: Google Do businesses have to implement Client Hints? What happens if they don’t? Not capturing and sharing with trusted partners can impact capabilities in place today. Given Chromium browsers account for a sizable portion of web traffic, the impact will vary for each publisher and tech company in the ecosystem. I would assess how UA strings are in use today, where you may have security concerns or not, and look to get more information on how to maintain data sharing with trusted partners. We can help you adopt Client Hints Reach out to our Customer Success team at tapadcustomersuccess@experian.com to explore the best options to handle the User-Agent changes and implement Client Hints. As leaders in the AdTech space, we’re here to help you successfully make this transition. Together we can review the options available to put you and your team on the best path forward. Get in touch About our expert Nate West, Director of Product Nate West joined Experian in 2022 as the Director of Product for our identity graph. Nate focuses on making sure our partners maintain and grow identity resolution solutions today in an ever-changing future state. He has over a decade of experience working for media organizations and AdTech platforms. Latest posts

Experian kicks off the AdTech year at CES  What better way to jump-start start 2023 than a trip to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Our team was thrilled to participate in this annual kick-off with the AdTech community. The uniqueness of what CES has become for our industry can be defined as the intersection between technology brands, digital, television, and AdTech. CES creates the space necessary for marketing and advertising leaders to collaborate to drive rewarding outcomes for the year ahead.  Our goal in attending CES was to connect with our partners, clients, and industry leaders to build relationships, form strategic plans, and listen. The opportunity to learn about our industry’s challenges and goals enables us to develop initiatives, drive success, and support our clients and partners.  Keep reading for our 2023 CES AdTech recap. “I have been to CES too many times to mention the number; this year was as energetic, collaborative, engaged, and effective as I can ever recall. Our presence was first-class and meticulously organized, which made our interactions as robust as possible. It's a team effort, and we appreciate all the work that goes into this event. “ - Greg Koerner, Vice President of Digital Advertising Sales Our CES AdTech recap  Supporting publishers and advertisers is top of mind for us. Many of our conversations focused on the technologies we deliver or collaborate with our partners to provide.   Clean rooms and activation were two common themes throughout our discussions.  Clean rooms  Consumer privacy, regulatory requirements, and data deprecation are driving the AdTech industry to talk about and explore clean rooms. There’s a need to address data collection, storage, analysis, and sharing. Clean rooms are a potential solution that can standardize data and address interoperability issues.  Activation  In 2023, we predict that digital activation will increase. We continue to see increased demand for environments where alternative identifiers are being transacted (like demand side platforms and video). Social platforms will continue to experience volatility and advertisers will shift their focus to demand-side, video, and supply-side platforms. Download our 2023 Digital audience trends and predictions report to learn where you should activate your audiences in 2023. We can help plan your 2023 digital activation strategy.  How we support clean rooms and activation  Our Consumer Sync and Consumer View products support these areas and can help you understand people better--so you and your customers can connect with confidence.  What is Consumer Sync?  Consumer Sync, our consumer identity product, enables signal agnostic collaboration across marketers and technologies, bringing together digital devices, IDs, households, and attributes. Consumer Sync’s Resolution and Collaboration solutions can help you gain a better understanding of your consumers and make identities actionable in any environment.   What is Consumer View?  Consumer View, our data discovery product, offers marketers a robust, privacy-first understanding of their customers and prospects. Grounded in consumer identity, Consumer View provides the data foundation to engage consumers where, when, and how they want. Consumer View’s Audience and Attribution solutions provide expansive coverage so that you can fill in the gaps to better understand your prospects.  Additionally, our collaborative efforts with strong partnerships across the clean room ecosystem and with our activation partners help our clients serve the best ads, at the best times, to the right audience.     “CES is back and was a great way to kick off the new year! We were able to meet with a high volume of clients to eagerly talk about building new solutions for the TV space. We are excited to see where these conversations lead in the next few months.” - Ali Mack, Senior Director of TV Advertising Sales  Let’s navigate what’s new in our industry, together  We can help you connect with your consumers in innovative, impactful ways. Contact us to continue the conversation and learn more about our Consumer Sync and Consumer View products. We can help you take advantage of the opportunities on the horizon.  Get in touch

2022 was a year of adjustment. Consumers adjusted to a post-pandemic world and returned to pre-pandemic shopping behaviors. Consumers adjusted their budgets as the price of goods skyrocketed, as a result of high inflation. To combat inflation, the U.S. Federal Reserve adjusted interest rates. This further restricted consumer buying power. The AdTech ecosystem also experienced adjustments. Google adjusted the date of cookie deprecation. Federal legislation forced technology companies to adjust their consumer privacy practices. Marketers and advertisers adjusted how they address interoperability issues by investing in clean room solutions. This year of adjustment makes it harder to predict where consumers will spend and how marketers should plan their digital audience strategies.   What will 2023 bring to AdTech? Download our 2023 AdTech trends and predictions report to access our forecast to help you plan for 2023. Our report will answer:    How has digital activation changed over the last four years?    What are the top advertising platforms?    Which digital audiences are advertisers buying?   Do digital audience strategies vary by vertical?   Our AdTech trends forecast    In 2023, digital activation will increase. Digital audience activation continues to grow at a significant rate despite market shocks like the pandemic, inflation, and higher interest rates.   Given the current economic uncertainty, we predict that marketers will look toward tried and true channels where they are confident they will have quality audiences, inventory, and be able to drive ROI.  What will digital activation look like in 2023?   Between 2018-2021, digital audience activation increased annually by 46%. Using projected 2022 results, between 2018-2022, it will increase annually by 34%. We anticipate continued growth in 2023.  Top advertising platforms in 2023   2023 will see increased digital activation, but which platforms will advertisers use to serve their ads?   Advertisers will shift their focus to demand-side, video, and supply-side platforms.  Social media platforms will continue to experience volatility.   Advertisers will place bigger bets on the combination of addressable and CTV.  Our report will also reveal which platforms are creating a path toward a post-cookie future and where data-sharing relationships will become the strongest.  The most popular advertiser audiences trending now in AdTech   Which digital audiences are advertisers buying?   Demographics    Modeled Lifestyles   Behavioral  Custom Audiences   Traditional targeting methods like Demographics and Modeled Lifestyles are the baseline of many marketing strategies. We predict that we will continue to see marketers activate against these data sets.  Digital audience strategies by vertical  Digital audience strategies vary by vertical. Download our report to uncover the digital audiences purchased by advertisers in the following industries:   Financial Services   Health   Retail & CPG   Technology & Communication   Download our new 2025 Digital trends and predictions report Marketers, agencies, and platforms are facing new challenges as privacy regulations evolve, AI technology advances, and consumer behaviors shift. Our latest report highlights actionable strategies for navigating these changes and improving how you connect with audiences, measure impact, and deliver results. What you’ll learn Navigating signal loss: Explore the rise of alternative IDs and contextual targeting as privacy regulations and signal loss reshape data-driven advertising.  Connected TV (CTV): Understand the growth of connected TV (CTV), the importance of frequency capping, and strategies for effective audience activation.  Omnichannel campaigns: Learn how marketers are moving from channel-specific strategies to audience-led omnichannel campaigns that tell a more cohesive story. Retail media networks: Learn how retail media networks (RMNs) are capitalizing on enriched first-party data to learn more about their customers and reach them across on-site and off-site inventory.  Curation: Examine how curation is transforming programmatic campaigns by combining audience, contextual, and supply chain signals to deliver premium inventory packages that maximize addressability, efficiency, and performance. Download now Get in touch

Next up in our Ask the Expert series, we hear from Sarah Ilie and Lauren Portell. Sarah and Lauren talk about the internet’s value exchange - what we gain and lose when it’s so easy to share our information. Is convenience hurting or helping us?  The age of connectivity  Today, it’s almost unimaginable to think about how your day-to-day life would look without the convenience of the internet, smartphones, apps, and fitness trackers; the list goes on and on. We live in the age of connectivity. We have the convenience to buy products delivered to our homes on the same day. We can consume content across thousands of platforms. We also have watches or apps that track our health with more granularity than ever before.   The internet's value exchange In exchange for this convenience and information, we must share various kinds of data for these transactions and activities to take place. Websites and apps give you the option to “opt in” and share your data. They also often let you know that they are collecting your data. This can feel like an uncomfortable proposition and an invasion of privacy to many people. What does it mean to opt-in to a website or app’s tracking cookies?  What value do we exchange?  What opting in means for you  Opting in to cookies means that you are allowing the app or website to track your online activity and collect anonymous data that is aggregated for marketing analytics. The data provides valuable information to understand users better to create better online experiences or offer more useful products and content.    Granting access to “tracking” offers several benefits to users such as a customized, more personal user experience or advertising that is more likely to be relevant. For example, let’s imagine you have recently been using an app or website to plan a camping trip. By sharing your data, the website or app has visibility into what is interesting or useful to you which can lead to related content suggestions (best campsites) or relevant advertising and product recommendations (tents and camping equipment).     It’s important to know that the marketing data collected when you opt in is extremely valuable. The revenue that advertising generates is often very important to websites and apps because this is how they make money to continue providing content and services to consumers.     Data privacy practices  Privacy concerns regarding how companies and developers use tracking information have risen over the last couple of years and have resulted in additional protection for consumers’ privacy while still allowing companies to improve their products and advertising. One big step in this direction has been simply making people aware that their data is being collected, why it’s being collected, and providing users with the option to share this data for marketing analytics through opting-in or not.     Other important steps to maintain online privacy include formal legal legislation and self-regulation. The right to privacy is protected by more than 600 laws between individual states and federal legislation and the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce recently voted to pass the American Data Privacy and Protection Act.  Additionally, marketing organizations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Association of National Advertisers regulate themselves with codes of conduct and standards given there is so much attention on privacy issues.    Is the internet's value exchange worth it?  The data that we choose to share by opting in has a lot of benefits for us as consumers. There are laws in place to protect our data and privacy. Of course, it’s important to be aware that data is collected and used for marketing purposes, but it’s also reasonable to share a certain amount of data that translates into benefits for you as well.  The best data unlocks the best marketing. Contact us to tap into the power of the world’s largest consumer database. Learn how you can use Experian Marketing Services' powerful consumer data to learn more about your customers, drive new business, and deliver intelligent interactions across all channels.  Meet the Experts:  Lauren Portell, Account Executive, Advanced TV, Experian Marketing Services  Sarah Ilie, Strategic Partner Manager, Experian Marketing Services  Get in touch

While the weather outside is frightfully hot this summer, it’s never too soon to start thinking about the holidays – and consumers are more likely to start their holiday shopping early this year. To get you ready for the 2022 holiday shopping season, we looked back at consumer shopping trends from 2019-2021. What did we learn and what trends do we expect to see this year? Let’s look back. A look back Over the last three years, average consumer spending has increased. Record 2021 holiday sales came amidst a wave of COVID-19 cases, rising inflation, labor shortages, and supply chain problems. Despite these challenges, consumers continued to let it snow when it came to spending during the holiday season.  2022 has been a year with its own economic roadblocks – the war in Ukraine, rising gas prices, and recession concerns. Yet 2021 was a banner year for holiday sales despite its obstacles, and we predict similar trends in the 2022 holiday shopping season. What trends do we expect to see for the most wonderful time of the year?  2022 predictions While consumer spending remains strong, changing economic conditions continue to shape shopper behavior. To develop our predictions for 2022 holiday shopper behavior, we focused on four key areas: When consumers shop Where consumers shop What consumers purchase Consumer media preferences Now, let's make our holiday campaign planning checklist and check it twice. When consumers shop Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Jack Frost nipping at your nose. Those aren’t the only ways to know when the holiday season has begun. Shoppers tend to spread out their holiday purchases across multiple months and were more likely to start shopping earlier. To understand holiday retail sales trends from 2019-2021, we identified four shopper segments:  Early Shoppers Traditional Shoppers Late Shoppers Random Shoppers What differences did we see between our four shopper segments? Early shoppers made almost half of their holiday purchases in October Random shoppers spread out their holiday purchases evenly across multiple months Late shoppers made almost half of their holiday purchases in December Traditional shoppers made almost half of their holiday purchases in November While December continues to dominate holiday sales, October has started to gain traction over the last three years, and November remains a core shopping month. Everybody knows a turkey and a mistletoe help to make the season bright but knowing when your consumers are most likely to shop will help deck your campaign planning halls. Jingle bell rock your way to holiday sales that shine bright with our tips to prepare for earlier shoppers:  Offer targeted promotions earlier in the shopping season Target your ads based on the shopping habits of your customers throughout the season Where consumers shop There’s no place like home for the holidays but most consumers aren’t shopping from home. Despite the rise in online shopping, brick and mortar locations continue to dominate holiday sales. October is the most popular month to take a one-horse open sleigh to a store, and consumers gather around the fire to online shop in November and December.     With most shoppers preferring to shop in-store, and e-commerce popularity growing, it’s critical to think about bridging the gap between your online and offline presence for the consumer. Are you offering multiple paths to purchase with solutions such as BOPIS (Buy Online, Pickup In-Store)?  Go down in history like Rudolph with our tips to prepare for more in-store shopping:  Focus on in-store shopping experience technology (self-checkout, VR, QR codes, scan to pay, etc.) Offer multiple paths to purchase to connect your online and physical presence through methods such as BOPIS (Buy Online, Pickup In-Store), BORIS (Buy Online, Return In-Store), and ROPO (Research Online, Purchase Offline), etc. What consumers purchase When it comes to holiday gifts, for some, only a hippopotamus will do. Compared to pre-pandemic, shoppers are spending more at apparel stores and mass retailers. Spending at specialty retailers, warehouse clubs, and on office, electronic, and games is almost the same across holiday and non-holiday shopping months. Time for toys and time for cheer may be year-round, but are there any correlations between where consumers shop (online vs. in-store) and what they purchase? Our data found that shoppers who bought from mass retailers were more likely to shop online, while shopping for apparel and warehouse clubs was done at a physical store location.     Put this insight to the test by thinking through how you can target your consumer based on where they shop in-store and online. You just might find that hippopotamus at a brick and mortar mass retailer location!  Consumer media preferences Do you see what I see? While we are seeing a shift to digital media channel preference, consumers still engage with traditional media channels like direct mail and the traditional newspaper. Successfully connecting with your customers involves capturing their attention through the right channel. We found that our four shopping groups prefer a mix of traditional and digital media channels. What does your media channel mix look like?  Hark! The herald angels sing of ways to adapt to the change in holiday spend and media preferences:  Align your activation efforts to digital, but don't forget about traditional channels Expand your targeting and activation focus beyond in-store vs. online Download our new 2024 report For a deeper dive into our predictions and actionable insights you can use to take your holiday campaign planning home for the holidays, download our new 2024 report. Experian data can help you refine your content and creative strategy to achieve maximum ROI for each campaign across all your channels. Download now Get in touch

Fluctuation in consumers' behaviors and preferences during the pandemic has prompted a shift in the practices and patterns that we are accustomed to. Powerful market forces are emerging as society builds a new normal, forcing marketers to rethink their strategy, activation, and measurement.   It is important for marketers to understand the forces that influence the industry, and to learn about alternative approaches that can be applied to help reach their goals.   In our recent webinar, ‘How to Adjust to the New World of Advertising,’ Experian’s Chris Feo and guest speaker Tina Moffett, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, lead an in-depth discussion of the market dynamics and developments guiding us to this new era of advertising. They talked about:  The pandemic changing consumer behavior  Emerging media channels   Data deprecation    The pandemic and increased media consumption The pandemic caused seismic shifts in consumer behaviors and business operations. Work from home became the norm, consumers made drastic changes in their routines, and businesses had to adjust to new operating models as local economies shrank and supply chains strained. As stay-at-home orders were put into effect, consumers increased their media consumption drastically as more time was spent at home in front of their devices. According to Forrester, by June 2020, 48% of US online adults subscribed to at least one streaming service, while 34% had signed up for multiple.  Forrester contends that:  Social and online video/OTT will grow fastest among other categories of ad spend   Connected TV outpaces other video advertising channels  55% of consumers plan to continue watching movies at home rather than in theatres after the pandemic    Data deprecation   The ways that marketers can personalize content and measure the effectiveness of campaigns is changing with data deprecation. Consumer preferences, regulations, and technology providers are evolving the way advertisers understand consumers, causing changes to existing identity-based marketing strategies. According to Forrester, 66% of marketers are investing in first-party data collection strategies to adapt to these market forces.    Marketers need to adjust   Demand for a new advertising approach    Changes in consumer behavior, evolving media consumption patterns, and data deprecation have marketers looking at new approaches to targeting and measurement. However, with the future uncertain in many of these areas, marketers need to test and experiment to determine which approach is best for them in particular use cases.     Shifting to a new world of experimentation   Advertisers need to start by assessing their current environment to determine where they have exposure today, which methods of identification they are using, and how those channels may be impacted by the market forces outlined earlier. From there, they need to start asking themselves how they can assess identity in the future or if there is another way to approach advertising in that specific channel.   There are specific areas where marketers can look to make investments in terms of experimentation:  Adoption of cleanrooms to support analytics and audience targeting Investment in first-party data to overcome the issue of data deprecation Shifting to a value-based, omni-channel advertising mindset to address customers’ needs Investment in data-savvy resources to manage media insights Adoption of consistent cross-platform advertising metrics and currencies to inform better planning If you missed our recent webinar ‘How to Adjust to the New World of Advertising,’ you can listen to the full discussion here.  Get in touch

Hashed Email is a privacy-safe digital identifier that can further enrich and expand the functionality and utility of The Tapad Graph with access to Tapad + Experian’s universe of email data. This provides maximum coverage for targeting and measurement when combined with household and individual IDs such as Cookies, MAIDs, CTV IDs, and IP Addresses. Gain back a clearer view Recent data from DMA shows that 51% of people have held the same email address for over 10 years. Email address data by its nature is authenticated and reliable due to its longevity. When leveraging Hashed Email as an extended functionality of The Tapad Graph, we are able to link on average 5 email addresses to each individual, reaching up to 90% of households across the US. Hashed Email expands the customer view by adding new email address identifiers into The Tapad Graph that associate with traditional digital IDs and cookie-less IDs emerging in the marketplace. Reduce fragmentation; and instead of viewing the emails as multiple customers, with Hashed Email they can be viewed as one user profile. When enabled, clients who wouldn’t traditionally have access to first-party customer emails are able to associate and link privacy-safe emails to individuals and their households. Brands and retailers can use Hashed Email to extend these linkages across offline purchases associated with each email; connecting traditional digital identifiers between walled gardens, activation in programmatic media buys, and addressable TV. With the holiday season quickly approaching, access to Hashed Emails will instantly increase scale, connectivity and improve measurement when efficiency, personalization and holistic attribution are pivotal to marketing strategies. Let’s visualize how quickly the customer journey can become fragmented when email addresses that belong to the same person are not associated. Mary has 3 email addresses that she frequently uses. One for social media accounts Email ID 1, one for shopping accounts Email ID 2, and another for work Email ID 3.  Mary is a brand loyalist to a top national retailer and whenever there is a new season, there is a high likelihood that she will purchase the latest seasonal decor from that store. She recently did some holiday shopping in-store where she purchased nearly the whole holiday line. Email ID 2 was used to send her a receipt. However, Mary annoyingly receives the store's ads on Facebook for holiday decor that she had already purchased. This is because the retailer has not yet identified that Email ID 1 and Email ID 2 belong to the same consumer. If the retailer were to leverage Hashed Email, they would be able to identify that both email addresses used belong to Mary. This association connects her multiple email addresses together, enables her offline purchases to sync with her online activity, and helps to determine the most accurate ROAS. Hashed Email is a cookie-free added view into consumer behavior for control over messaging and for measurement. When leveraging it’s possible to report back across all channels and devices in a universal format to know when and how conversions are taking place. Don't leave valuable data on the table Hashed Email has use cases beyond reducing wasted media impressions. Hashed Email’s full capabilities extend to campaign measurement and attribution modeling. When utilizing The Tapad Graph combined with Hashed Email, know from the first touchpoint to the last where your customers are engaging. But more importantly, know where households and the individuals inside of those households are converting across all of their digital devices, by using traditional digital IDs, cookie-less IDs, and Hashed Email to associate, measure, and correlate online and offline purchases. Imagine what your campaigns could look like this holiday season if you expanded your graph with up to 5 additional IDs per household. This impact could be a game-changer to scale this holiday season. Hashed Email is a reliable cookie-less digital identifier that expands your customer universe that connects online and offline activity while improving the customer experience and reducing wasted media spend. Enabling Hashed Email for the holiday season is not an opportunity that should be passed on. Where do you sign up, you ask? Get in touch