At A Glance
Advertisers are embracing CTV, data collaboration, and AI to deliver more personalized, efficient, and impactful campaigns, transforming living rooms into interactive hubs, utilizing creator-led programming, and streamlining workflows. At Cannes Lions 2025, industry leaders highlighted how privacy-first data practices, supply path optimization, and AI-powered tools are reshaping the advertising ecosystem - areas where Experian plays a key role in enabling trusted, measurable, and innovative outcomes.As artificial intelligence (AI), connected TV (CTV), and data collaboration continue to advance, advertisers are discovering new ways to meet audiences where they are; on their terms and in their spaces. These innovations are creating opportunities to deliver more personalized, impactful campaigns that were unimaginable just a few years ago. At Cannes Lions 2025, we sat down with industry leaders from Butler Till, Comcast Advertising, Index Exchange, IQVIA Digital, Optable, PMG, Samsung Ads, and Sports Innovation Lab.
From reimagining the living room experience to using AI in practice for better outcomes, here’s what we learned about the trends driving advertising forward.
1. CTV turns living rooms into active spaces
CTV has turned the living room into a hub of interaction, discovery, and commerce. Younger audiences are using their TVs like mobile devices; streaming, learning, and even controlling their homes. This shift is creating new opportunities for advertisers to deliver relevant, personalized experiences where audiences are already engaged. With premium content and interactive tools, the living room is no longer just a passive space, it’s where attention meets action, and where brands can connect with audiences in meaningful ways.
How Experian helps
With Experian, advertisers can connect first-party data with CTV IDs, ensuring accurate and measurable targeting while maintaining a privacy-first approach. That means brands reach viewers with messages that feel personal, without losing trust.
“We surveyed 1,000 smart TV owners and found that younger audiences are using their TVs like mobile devices. Two-thirds use them for social media, 40% for self-improvement like Coursera or TED Talks, and 25% for interactivity; controlling appliances or home temperatures. Interactivity with connected TVs is skyrocketing.”
Samsung Ads Justin Evans
2. Creators build stronger connections with audiences
Creators are no longer limited to social media; they are now a driving force in CTV. Creator led programming is capturing attention and driving post view actions, offering advertisers a unique way to connect with passionate, engaged audiences. By thinking of creators as “micro networks” with built in communities, advertisers can meet fans where they already gather and deliver authentic, impactful messages that resonate.
How Experian helps
Experian helps advertisers tap into the creator economy by identifying topical audiences that align with influencer niches—like food, travel, gaming and entertainment—and activating them across the open web. Through Audigent’s integration with DV360, brands can pair Experian’s expansive audience targeting capabilities with Audigent’s Curated Deals to reach engaged viewers in creator-led environments. This approach ensures ads appear where audiences are most receptive, enhancing relevance and performance.
“The creator economy is moving into TV. It’s incredible to see social influencers, once dominant on platforms, now creating high quality content for streaming, networks, and more.”
Butler/TillGina Whelehan
3. Data collaboration that drives better results
Advertisers rely on data to reach the right audiences, but privacy concerns are reshaping how it’s collected, shared, and used. Data collaboration enables brands to combine multiple data sets (like first-party data and syndicated audiences) to improve planning, activation, and measurement. While privacy remains a priority, the focus is on creating actionable insights that drive better results and build trust with consumers. By focusing on consented, privacy safe identity solutions, advertisers can achieve better outcomes while respecting consumer privacy; a win-win for brands and audiences alike.
How Experian helps
Experian’s privacy-first approach ensures that all data activation occurs with compliance and consent. By maintaining high match rates, offering flexible collaboration options (including clean rooms, first-party data onboarding, and syndicated audiences) and adhering to transparent methodologies, Experian facilitates seamless collaboration between brands, publishers, and platforms. This helps build trust and strengthen long-term connections with audiences.
“The area we’re most excited about is identity resolution on the publisher side. Publishers can reinsert signal and create better results for advertisers. This wasn’t always well-articulated, but today we have case studies proving publishers can help improve outcomes.”
OptableVlad Stesin
4. Optimizing supply paths for better outcomes
Supply path optimization (SPO) helps advertisers improve campaign efficiency by increasing viewability and reducing waste. Supply-side decisioning builds on this by identifying the audiences advertisers want to reach, the content those audiences consume, and the publishers with the most relevant inventory. Together, these strategies create a more intelligent and efficient ecosystem, ensuring ads are delivered in the right context, to the right people, on the right platforms.
How Experian helps
Experian’s data solutions, including both Experian’s and Audigent’s contextual and identity capabilities, are available across sell-side (SSPs) and buy-side (DSPs) platforms, enabling smarter decision-making throughout the media supply chain. Audigent’s direct integrations with publishers provide an unfiltered view into available inventory, offering deeper insights that inform campaign optimization. These insights can be activated in real time and transacted within advertisers’ existing buying platforms.
By powering real-time intelligence across the ecosystem, from advertisers to DSPs, SSPs, and publishers, Experian and Audigent help drive better outcomes, more efficient media spend, and greater value for all participants.
“Sell-side decisioning activates the intelligence of the exchange, along with partners like Experian, to optimize auctions in real time. This helps pre-decision buys that flow to the DSPs, making the buying process smarter, more efficient, and ultimately driving better value for marketers and publishers.”
Index ExchangeMike McNeeley
5. AI that streamlines agency workflows
AI is a practical tool that agencies are using to streamline workflows and deliver better results. From planning and pacing to creative iteration, AI is helping teams move faster and smarter. In fact, 67% of global marketing and communications professionals now use AI for content creation frequently or all the time, underscoring its role in modern workflows. The key is to think of AI as a navigator, not a replacement. It handles repetitive tasks, freeing up teams to focus on strategy and creativity, while enabling faster tests, fewer dead ends, and better client clarity.
How Experian helps
Experian uses AI and machine learning to deliver highly personalized marketing solutions. In our Digital Graph, advanced clustering algorithms analyze household and individual device connections, improving targeting and measurement accuracy. We also use AI powered audience recommendations to create tailored audience solutions for clients. Our contextual data models, powered by Audigent’s contextual engine, further improve this process by analyzing bidstream traffic in real time, ensuring audiences are aligned with the most relevant inventory.
“We’ve extended our platform with Marketplace, which lets us integrate third-party partners, new tech, and data seamlessly into activation. Clients are asking for this level of innovation, especially with the speed at which AI is evolving and transforming what’s possible in marketing.”
PMGSam Bloom
Connecting the dots: Data, creativity, and outcomes
The common thread across these insights is how we connect with audiences, collaborate on data, and create meaningful outcomes. By reimagining the living room experience and utilizing AI and creator-led programming, brands are embracing innovation.
How Experian helps
Experian helps you build privacy-first identity foundations, collaborate seamlessly, optimize supply paths, streamline with AI, and connect through creators.
Let’s start a conversation
FAQs
CTV brings premium, interactive streaming to the largest screen at home, allowing brands to reach engaged viewers with measurable, personalized experiences.
It’s the consented, secure use of first-party and partner data (often via clean rooms) to improve planning, activation, and measurement without exposing raw consumer data.
SPO streamlines the path from advertiser to publisher, reducing waste and improving quality. Sell-side decisioning adds real-time intelligence to the exchange, delivering the proper context and audience more efficiently.
Creator-led programming functions like “micro networks” with built-in communities, helping brands show up where fans are already engaged and ready to act.
Viewers use TVs like mobile devices, discovering content, learning, shopping, and interacting; advertisers can meet their intent and drive post-view actions.
Latest posts
Tapad's integration with Knorex's XPO™ platform will complement cross-channel optimization capabilities for brands and agencies in the U.S. and APAC markets NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, Dec. 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, part of Experian and a global leader in digital identity resolution, has partnered with Knorex, a leading provider of digital performance marketing. Knorex's self-service online advertising platform, Knorex XPO™, enables marketers to advertise globally in real-time across different media channels, formats, platforms and devices. Tapad's global, privacy-safe digital cross-device solution, The Tapad Graph, will compliment Knorex XPO™'s own device data set for enhanced marketing capabilities. For Knorex, the integration enables their brand direct and agency customers to gain a more accurate understanding of consumers across devices to reduce campaign inefficiencies and duplication, and to effectively manage frequency capping and attribution. Abhishek Kumar, VP of Engineering at Knorex commented, "Today's digital consumer is raising the bar for marketers. With increasing marketing complexities and consumer device usage, this integration enables marketers to understand the consumer decision journey with heightened ease. Our combined offering will empower agencies in the APAC and US markets, providing an improved marketing solution that will help to streamline their efforts." Abhay Doshi, Head of APAC at Tapad added: "The Tapad Graph, when integrated with the Knorex XPO platform, should not only help U.S. and APAC marketers optimize campaign performance through cross device marketing – but also increase the opportunity for brands to reach out to their target customers within a desired time." To learn more about Tapad and our digital identity resolution capabilities, visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync. About TapadTapad, Inc. is a global leader in digital identity resolution. The Tapad Graph and its related solutions provide a transparent, privacy-safe approach connecting brands to consumers through their devices globally. Tapad is recognized across the industry for its product innovation, workplace culture, and talent, and has earned numerous awards including One World Identity's 2019 Top 100 Influencers in Identity Award. Headquartered in New York, Tapad also has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore, and Tokyo. About KnorexKnorex provides programmatic advertising products and technologies to advertising buyers worldwide. With its cloud-based online advertising platform, Knorex XPO™ enables ad buyers to self-serve and advertise real-time across the globe regardless of the media channels (social, search, OTT/CTV, video, web/mobile etc.), ad formats (display, native, search, social, video etc) and devices (desktop, laptop, smartphones and tablets) to deliver personalized marketing messages to the target audience in an automated way, powered by machine learning/AI. Underpinned by a multi-layered data-driven approach, XPO simplifies the execution and optimization of marketing campaigns, while delivering measurable and attributable performance. Contact us today
Tapad, now part of Experian, technology now powers Lifesight's real world intelligence platform with cross-device and reach expansion in the Asia Pacific Region SINGAPORE, Nov. 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, part of Experian and a global leader in digital identity resolution, today announced a new partnership with Lifesight, a leading provider of real world intelligence for advertisers in the Asia Pacific region (APAC). With the combined offering of The Tapad Graph, Tapad's global, privacy-safe digital cross-device solution, and Lifesight's real world intelligence platform, brands and agencies across APAC can benefit from better consumer targeting, expanded reach for targeted audiences and web-to-mobile footfall attribution. Through this multi-layered offering, Lifesight's brand and agency partners can access an omnichannel view of consumers' paths to purchase, thereby enabling them to increase the reach, measurability and ROI of their advertising campaigns. Rohit Maheswaran, Co-founder of Lifesight commented, "The consumer journey is getting increasingly more complex with ever changing digital and physical world behaviours, making it difficult for marketers to make strategic marketing spend decisions. That's why it's our mission at Lifesight to empower the brands and agencies within the APAC market to achieve better targeting and measurement capabilities, and our partnership with Tapad will help further this cause." Abhay Doshi, Head of APAC at Tapad added, "The Tapad Graph, which enables a unified view of consumers across their multiple digital devices, has a reach of 1 billion devices across the APAC market today. Paired with Lifesight's consumer insights of more than 500 million unique devices, this valuable partnership will offer the market extended consumer reach and prove beneficial to brands and advertisers across APAC who have historically struggled with resolving attribution." To learn more about Tapad and our digital identity resolution capabilities, visit www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync About Tapad Tapad, Inc. is a global leader in digital identity resolution. The Tapad Graph, and its related solutions, provide a transparent, privacy-safe approach connecting brands to consumers through their devices globally. Our one-of-a-kind Graph Select offering enables marketers the flexibility and freedom of choice to correlate devices to varied objectives, driving campaign effectiveness and business results. Tapad is recognized across the industry for its product innovation, workplace culture and talent, and has earned numerous awards including One World Identity's 2019 Top 100 Influencers in Identity Award. Headquartered in New York, Tapad also has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. About Lifesight Lifesight is Asia's leading real world intelligence company that helps marketers understand, target, and measure consumers based on their real world behaviour. Lifesight's robust platform and data solutions power business decisioning, audience activation, footfall measurement, and in-depth location analytics for leading brands and enterprises. The company is headquartered in Singapore with a rapidly expanding footprint in the Asia Pacific region operating in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. To learn more, visit https://www.lifesight.io/. Contact us today
NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2019 /PRNewswire/ – Tapad, part of Experian and a global leader in digital identity resolution, today announced a new partnership with Retargetly, a leading independent full stack data company. The partnership combines Tapad's cross-device identity resolution technology with Retargetly's robust data toolset, allowing brands and agencies using Retargetly's platform to seamlessly access an expanded audience across devices, without compromising precision. In addition to reach expansion, Tapad's global, privacy-safe digital cross-device solution, The Tapad Graph, enables Retargetly's brand and agency clients a more holistic digital customer journey analysis, and efficient campaign capabilities like frequency capping and online attribution. At the same time, Tapad will be able to extend its presence into the LATAM region, tapping into Retargetly's existing regional footprint. "Combining The Tapad Graph's technology with Retargetly's platform will enable customers to make holistic, data-driven decisions that increase the ROI of their campaigns," said Chris Feo, SVP of Global Data Licensing and Strategic Partnerships at Tapad. "We can now offer advertisers the value of both technologies to optimize their marketing initiatives across the globe by creating seamless experiences across multiple devices and channels." Understanding a consumer's cross-device journey is a marketing necessity. A recent study showed that 75% of consumers expect a consistent experience from brands1. With the number of devices per individual rapidly increasing, digital identity resolution becomes essential to create that streamlined experience consumers crave. "Similarly to Tapad, our goal is to offer marketers a suite of products that can increase the ROI of their campaigns," said Juan Amuchastegui, Head of Product at Retargetly. "In order to achieve this, marketers need digital cross-device identity resolution to gain attribution, acquisition and reach expansion capabilities. We chose Tapad as our partner because The Tapad Graph has differentiated global scale, and privacy-safe measures, which we knew would benefit our clients' campaigns." Santi Darmandrail, Managing Director at Retargetly added, "Across the Americas our clients choose to work with us because of our scale, our precision, and our unique approach to what data can do to transform business outcomes. In that scenario, partnering with Tapad and integrating The Tapad Graph onto our platform was really a no-brainer and we are beyond excited to be making that available for our more than 700 clients across the region." To learn more about Tapad and our digital identity resolution products, visit our identity solutions page. About Tapad Tapad, Inc. is a global leader in digital identity resolution. The Tapad Graph, and its related solutions, provide a transparent, privacy-safe approach connecting brands to consumers through their devices globally. Tapad is recognized across the industry for its product innovation, workplace culture and talent, and has earned numerous awards including One World Identity's 2019 Top 100 Influencers in Identity Award. Headquartered in New York, Tapad also has offices in Chicago, Denver, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. About Retargetly: Retargetly is the leading independent data solution from Latam. Their proprietary platform processes over 25 billion data events a month and transforms them into actionable analytics that drive business results across the board. The recently launched Retargetly Audience Platform (RAM) is the number one data exchange in Latin America, with over 1000 active buyers and millions of dollars traded every year. Regargetly provides services across Latam and has offices in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, São Paulo and New York. For more information, visit www.retargetly.com. Contact us today