At A Glance
Commerce media needs a neutral connective layer across shopper data, advertiser data, and the broader media ecosystem. Close to 90% of U.S. retail media spend goes to two platforms according to eMarketer, on-site inventory is reaching practical limits, and advertisers want proof that holds up across networks. Experian provides that layer through identity, data collaboration, audience intelligence, activation, and measurement.Key takeaways
- Nearly 90% of U.S. retail media spend goes to Amazon and Walmart, leaving every other network competing for proof, reach, and identity consistency.
- Experian’s identity foundation covers 250 million U.S. consumers and 126 million households, extended across more than 4.2 billion devices.
- A leading retail media network grew addressability by nearly 300% after anchoring shopper data to stable digital identifiers like mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), hashed emails (HEMs), and Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2).
- Experian’s Audience Engine and Experian Third-Party Onboarding let networks extend first-party audiences into off-site channels without losing match quality or control.
Commerce media spending keeps climbing, and most of it lands in a small number of places. U.S. advertisers are expected to spend roughly $71 billion on retail media in 2026 according to eMarketer, and close to 90% of it will go to Amazon and Walmart. Every other network competes for what’s left, usually by buying identity, enrichment, activation, and measurement from separate partners, on separate timelines, that were never built to work as one system.
That competition hinges on three problems a network can’t solve with owned data and owned inventory alone.
Each of these improves when the data a network already holds connects cleanly to the identity, consumer intelligence, activation, and measurement layers the rest of the ecosystem runs on. Experian brings those pieces together into a single, neutral infrastructure: not another point solution to add to the stack, but the connective layer underneath it, the same shopper data, advertiser data, identity resolution, audience intelligence, activation, and measurement capabilities that already support parts of the ecosystem today, now operating as one connected flow instead of a list of separate capabilities.
What advertisers now expect from a commerce media network
Advertisers evaluate a network on more than its on-site inventory. They’re asking:
- Can you reach my shoppers when they are away from your site?
- Can you describe those shoppers in a way that is useful for planning?
- Can you show that the media impacted sales?
Most networks answer the first question partially, the second in transaction terms, and the third in attributed return on ad spend (ROAS). That gap is where budget is won and lost. Advertisers are also spreading spend across more networks than before, with almost half now funding commerce media from two or three separate budgets, which makes consistency across partners a buying criterion in its own right.
We help networks answer all three questions using the customer data they already hold, connected to identity, consumer intelligence, and measurement that works across channels and partners.
The advertisers those networks sell to are asking themselves the same three questions, using their own first-party data. That’s exactly where the two sides of this connect.
How the flow works: From shopper and advertiser data to measurement
A network and the advertiser it sells to are asking the same three questions, using two different sets of first-party data: who are these shoppers, can I reach them, and can I prove this worked? Our connective layer runs in both directions, through five stages:
Every stage runs on the same identity foundation, which is what keeps the network’s view and the advertiser’s view of the same shopper in agreement, rather than two separate systems producing two different answers.
Where Experian sits in your existing stack
Almost no commerce media network runs on a single vendor. Most operate a mix of identity, onboarding, activation, clean room, and ad serving partners, assembled over several years and expensive to unwind. Which layer is limiting everything above it?
In most networks, that layer is the customer data itself. When loyalty, e-commerce, CRM, and transaction records don’t resolve to the same person or household, every downstream system carries the problem forward. Match rates come in lower than expected, audience counts shrink at the point of activation, and measurement inherits gaps it can’t correct for.
Experian works as the connective layer across that stack. We strengthen the data and identity foundation before it enters the workflows a network already runs, and we stay connected through audience creation, activation, curation, and measurement so match rates, audience scale, and results improve at every stage, not only at the start.
Networks that already work with an onboarding or identity provider keep those relationships. Networks that want a second activation path can add one without a migration.
None of this works unless Experian stays neutral. We are not a competing network, a walled garden, or an identity graph trying to own the record. That neutrality is what lets the same infrastructure sit underneath a network’s own systems and an advertiser’s first-party data at the same time, without either side worrying about who else can see their side of the deal.
This matters more as AI takes on more of the planning, activation, and optimization decisions inside commerce media. Those systems work from whatever view of the customer they are given, which is exactly where our approach to AI starts: AI should make commerce media more human, not less. Our privacy-first identity gives those systems a reliable view of the customer even when signals are missing. Predictive insight turns that view into next-best audience recommendations instead of static reporting delivered after the fact. Real-time intelligence lets activation and curation adjust to context and timing while a campaign is still running. Every one of our capabilities runs on the same transparent, governed foundation that makes the rest of our connective layer trustworthy, which is what keeps AI-driven decisions accurate and accountable, not just fast.
Experian is an independent identity and data partner. We work across the agencies, platforms, publishers, commerce media networks, and clean rooms a network already uses, which keeps identity strategy flexible as the ecosystem changes. Ownership, pricing, and partner priorities all move over time. A network with more than one path to identity and activation keeps its options open.
Case study: How our infrastructure enhanced addressability by 300% for a leading retail media network
A leading RMN has worked with Experian since 2021 to better understand its customers, organize first-party shopper data, and activate audiences across the digital ecosystem. Experian supported this RMN in reducing reliance on third-party cookies by anchoring shopper data to more stable digital identifiers, including mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), hashed emails (HEMs), CTV IDs, and Unified ID 2.0 (UID2). As a result, addressability across owned platforms and programmatic channels increased by nearly 300%. This improvement supported more consistent reach and measurement throughout the shopper journey.
How does Experian help commerce media networks grow media revenue?
Experian helps commerce media networks grow media revenue by:
- Knowing who its shoppers actually are
- Packaging that knowledge into audiences advertisers will pay for
- Activating those audiences at maximum scale beyond its own inventory
- Proving what the media did
Connect fragmented customer data to one identity
Every commerce media network captures authenticated first-party data, online or offline. On its own, that data covers only part of a customer or household’s addressable footprint, and it’s usually spread across loyalty, e-Commerce, CRM, and point-of-sale systems that were never designed to agree with each other. We resolve those records to a single persistent profile, then connect that identity to digital environments. Our identity foundation covers 250 million U.S. consumers and 126 million U.S. households, extended across more than 4.2 billion devices and trillions of digital signals.
Networks get fewer duplicate customers, more complete household views, and higher match rates in the platforms they already activate through. Every audience and measurement result downstream gets more reliable at the same time. Every CMN captures authenticated first-party data, whether collected online or offline. On its own, that data represents only a portion of a customer or household’s addressable footprint. By connecting to Experian’s identity graphs, CMNs gain a broader view of their customers across offline and digital environments, supported by coverage across 126 million households, 250 million individuals, and 4.2 billion digital IDs.
Work with more partners without renegotiating how data moves
Every step a network takes beyond its own environment raises the same question from legal and privacy teams. Where does the data go, who can see it, and what happens to it after the campaign.
Those questions are where commerce media programs stall. Loyalty and transaction data is the most valuable asset a network has and the most tightly governed, and raw customer records usually cannot move between a retailer, a brand, and an activation partner at all. Collaboration has to run on matched, permissioned outputs.
Experian supports that collaboration across the ecosystem. Networks can work with advertisers, agencies, publishers, and measurement partners through Experian’s environment, through crosswalks inside their own infrastructure, or through vetted clean room partners. Match happens on privacy-protected identifiers, so partners can measure overlap, build shared audiences, and evaluate outcomes while each side keeps its records.
Understand shoppers beyond what they bought
SKU-level purchase data shows what someone bought. Advertisers increasingly buy on the fuller picture: who that shopper is, what else they are in the market for, and what shapes the decision.
We add that real-world context. Networks can build customer profiles that go deeper than purchase behavior alone, incorporating demographics, lifestyle attributes, TrueTouchSM, Mosaic® USA, and more. These insights help networks identify high-value segments, understand the customer journeys behind their transaction data, and create differentiated audiences at scale. Audience insights also work as a pre-sales tool, giving sellers something specific to walk an advertiser through before a dollar is committed. That same context is what makes a network appeal to advertisers outside its core categories, which is where a growing share of commerce media revenue is coming from.
Build audiences advertisers will pay more for
Commerce media networks can enrich first-party data with Experian Marketing Data to build custom segments for advertisers. More than 5,000 Marketing Attributes are available, with an average of 250 attributes per consumer, spanning demographics, lifestyle, media preferences, and behavioral signals.
Teams can build, model, and expand those audiences in one place through Audience Engine, drawing on more than 3,500 syndicated audiences from 20+ third-party data providers and activating across more than 200 media platforms, and package first-party audiences alongside trusted third-party data sets through Partner Audiences. Both widen what a network can sell and who they can sell to, without expanding the technology they have to build.
Attract advertisers outside your categories
Endemic advertisers, the brands that sell their products through the network, are finite. The brands that sell through it will only fund so much, and competition for that spend is what compresses rates.
Non-endemic demand is the release valve. These are advertisers with nothing on the shelf: financial services, telecom, travel, and automotive brands that want access to verified shopper audiences and are bidding on different placements. A non-endemic buyer needs demographic, lifestyle, and behavioral context to recognize their customer inside a shopper audience described by one retailer’s categories.
Enrichment gives a network that vocabulary. The same audiences already serving endemic advertisers become legible and buyable to advertisers who have never sold a product in the store, which turns audience monetization into a second revenue line rather than a bigger share of the first.
Extend reach beyond owned inventory
On-site is the most profitable inventory a network owns. It’s also the inventory that runs out first. Off-site is where the next increment of revenue is, and off-site spending is currently growing at roughly twice the rate of on-site.
Off-site runs on different economics and different controls. Margins are thinner, typically 20% to 40% against 70% to 90% on-site, transparency takes more work to maintain, and audiences have to hold their quality once they leave the environment that created them. That’s what the activation layer solves for.
Networks can move audiences from owned platforms into programmatic, connected TV, and social, applying the same identity consistently across more than 200 social, programmatic, TV, curated media, clean room, and partner environments, including The Trade Desk and Magnite through Experian’s Third-Party Onboarding, supported by self-service tools, native integrations, and transparent pricing. Third-Party Onboarding offers data providers a 50% increase in programmatic addressability and a 73% increase in CTV addressability.
Curation brings a network’s audiences and premium off-site inventory together into private marketplace deals, so the audience and the supply travel as one package and advertisers get scale without giving up relevance. Experian can manage those deals through Curated Deals, and networks ready to build and price their own can self-serve through Deal Engine. Either way, the network’s first-party data stays at the center of the offer.
Turn measurement into a reason advertisers reinvest
Measurement decides where next quarter’s budget goes. Networks that help advertisers prove incremental business impact tend to keep and grow those budgets. When proof stops at attributed ROAS, the conversation moves to price.
The obstacle is structural. A network sees what happened inside its own environment. The comparison an advertiser needs also covers what those shoppers did everywhere else, which is how incremental sales get separated from sales that would have happened anyway. Commerce media measurement is still inconsistent across networks, and no single partner changes that. What a network controls is whether its measurement rests on one consistent identity foundation, which is what makes results comparable across channels and defensible to a buyer.
“Accurate data is the backbone of effective commerce media strategies, and Experian’s top-tier data solutions are critical for precise targeting and audience delivery. Experian’s advanced capabilities in data onboarding, customer audiences, and robust identity graphs allow advertisers to seamlessly reach the right audiences.”
NexChapter IncArt Sebastian, CEO
How can commerce media networks partner with Experian?
Experian can partner with CMNs regardless of the challenges they’re looking to solve. Some need identity quality before anything else works. Some have clean data and want a path off-site. Some can activate anywhere and want to prove incrementality to a buyer asking harder questions than last year.
Experian works across whichever of those layers is the constraint, alongside the partners a network already has. Tell us where your network is today and we’ll show you what changes first.
Connect with us
Click here to view Experian’s U.S. Consumer Data Privacy Notice.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
FAQs
A commerce media network is a retailer, marketplace, or publisher that sells advertising against its own first-party shopper or customer data, typically across on-site placements, off-site media, and connected TV. Commerce media networks compete for advertiser budgets by proving they can reach real shoppers and show how that media affected sales.
Experian helps commerce media networks increase revenue by resolving fragmented first-party data into one identity, turning that identity into audiences advertisers want to buy, activating those audiences beyond owned inventory, and proving the media’s impact on sales. This turns a network’s existing customer data into packaged, sellable, and measurable audiences across on-site and off-site inventory.
Working with Experian doesn’t mean replacing a network’s existing identity or activation partners. Experian strengthens the data and identity foundation underneath existing onboarding, activation, and clean room relationships, so networks keep what already works and add capability where it’s missing.
Experian stays neutral across the commerce media ecosystem instead of operating as a competing network, a walled garden, or an identity graph trying to own the record. That neutrality lets Experian’s infrastructure sit underneath a network’s own systems and an advertiser’s first-party data at the same time, without either side losing visibility into who can see their data.
Latest posts
Marketers Can Now Harness The Tapad Graph In Concert With Twine’s Vetted, Verified TrueData™ Identity Graph. Los Angeles and New York – August 2, 2018 – Tapad, now part of Experian, is reinventing personalization for the modern marketer, today announced that it is partnering with mobile data leader Twine Data (now TrueData) to bring Twine’s hundreds of millions of deterministic mobile identity connections to The Tapad Graph. Together, the two companies will create one of the largest portable identity graph & CRM onboarding services in the U.S., through the integration of Tapad’s best in class cross-device capability and Twine’s deterministic identity graph. At the core of one-to-one marketing and true personalization is identity resolution. For marketers, the ability to accurately and safely connect customer activity across desktop/laptop, mobile, CTV, tablets, as well as CRM and offline touchpoints is ultimately what enables informed and personalized future conversations with each customer. Tapad is known for the precision, accuracy, and scale of their cross device connections, setting them up as an ideal partner for Twine’s TrueData deterministic identity graph. “We believe that by combining Tapad’s renowned cross-device connectivity and our deterministic identity graph, marketers will finally be able to seamlessly segment users based on digital and offline behaviors as well as easily distribute those audiences to both DMP and DSP environments for personalized messaging,” said Elliott Easterling, CEO of Twine Data. With this partnership, Tapad will build a client’s cross-device graph off of identities onboarded by Twine from a client’s offline CRM. The resulting identity graph can either be delivered directly to brands looking to host their own identity graph, or can be leveraged in a managed fashion for marketers looking for simple connectivity of their offline CRM audiences to their DSPs. To date, Twine & Tapad have seen full connectivity rates* for CRM segments from advertisers at between 259 percent and 322 percent at major DSPs. *Full Connectivity Rate is defined as {total unique desktop, laptop, and mobile devices active at DSP} / {unique CRM users in original audience post cleansing}. It represents the final match rate of the clean audience in CRM format to onboarded audience at a client’s DSP instance. This metric encompasses Twine’s onboarding & linkage validation and Tapad’s cross-device amplification. About TapadTapad, Inc. is the marketing technology company reinventing personalization for the modern marketer through its identity-driven solutions. The company’s signature Tapad Graph connects millions of consumers across billions of devices. The world’s largest brands and most effective marketers entrust Tapad to provide an accurate, privacy-conscious and unified approach to connecting with consumers across screens. In 2018, Tapad introduced its Tapad Customer Data Platform (CDP), purpose-built to offer marketers a highly personalized and privacy-safe platform to convert first-, second- and third-party data into actionable, results-driven campaigns. Tapad is based in New York and has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. Tapad’s numerous awards include: Forbes’ Most Promising Companies, Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, Crain’s Fast 50, TMCnet Tech Culture Award and Global Startup Award’s “Startup Founder of the Year.” Tapad was acquired by the Telenor Group in 2016. Telenor Group is one of the world’s largest mobile operators across Scandinavia and Asia. About TwineTwine is a mobile data platform that believes true, honest, accurate data is the fuel that helps our partners grow their businesses efficiently and effectively; Twine’s TrueData is used by brands, agencies, and ad tech partners across the country and across the globe. Twine’s app publisher partners generate revenue while maintaining control over their data; their marketer partners get comprehensive, high quality mobile targeting and intelligence. To learn more about Twine, visit their website. Contact us today
Marketers Using Centro’s DSP Basis Can Leverage Tapad’s Technology for Extended Cross-device Reach Chicago – May 15, 2018 – Centro, a provider of enterprise-class software for digital advertising, today announced that its Basis programmatic ad platform has licensed cross-device marketing technology from Tapad, a part of Experian, the company reinventing personalization for the modern marketer. Media professionals using Basis can now drive better performance by identifying a person across the different devices he or she uses, serving ads in the most optimum environment, then analyzing performance to see what ad worked best based on creative, device, location and time of day. Today’s digital media ecosystem is fragmented. People consume content on their multiple devices from multiple locations. According to digital analytics firm GlobalWebIndex, a typical consumer owns three digital devices and has seven digital ID’s active in the last 60 days. Advertising technology that treats every device as a single user would not be able to guide customers down the marketing funnel according to how users jump from one device to the next. Furthermore, they wouldn’t see when conversions occur on a device different from that in which the ad was first shown to the user. The Tapad Graph identifies the point of conversion across all screens – smartphones, tablets, home computers, and smart TVs – so that marketers can better gauge the efficiency and return on ad spend. Centro’s Basis enables advertisers to plan, buy and analyze real-time bidding (RTB), direct, search and social campaigns in a single platform. It is the only platform that combines all of these elements with cross-device conversion attribution and advanced reporting features in a DSP. With the Tapad Graph integrated into Basis, marketers can now identify consumers across all of their devices during any point of the consumer journey. This can help marketers determine ad spend effectiveness for optimizing campaigns in real-time or for the future. Other cross-device marketing capabilities for Basis users include: Frequency Capping: Apply frequency caps at a unique person-level rather than at a device-level to prevent saturating users with ads and showing them more impressions than desired. Audience extension: Expand the reach of a campaign by learning what other devices a single user may have, then deliver ads to single users’ other devices. Reporting insights: Learn how users interact with ads across their devices. Gain insight about how consumers respond on devices to improve targeting parameters. Conversion attribution: Record conversions on devices different from that in which the ad was displayed to learn the true effectiveness of advertising efforts. “Cross-device analytics and optimization aligns with our vision that converging the different parts of digital media to create a holistic view of campaigns will drive performance,” said Katie Risch, EVP of customer experience, Centro. “Having Tapad’s powerful capability of personalized marketing gives our advertisers high-quality data to cultivate relationships with customers, wherever they are in digital channels.” About Tapad Tapad Inc. is the marketing technology company reinventing personalization for the modern marketer through its identity-driven solutions. The company’s signature Tapad Graph connects millions of consumers across billions of devices. The world’s largest brands and most effective marketers entrust Tapad to provide an accurate, privacy-conscious and unified approach to connecting with consumers across screens. In 2018, Tapad introduced its Tapad Customer Data Platform (CDP), purpose-built to offer marketers a highly personalized and privacy-safe platform to convert first and third-party data into actionable, results-driven campaigns. Tapad is based in New York and has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. Tapad’s numerous awards include: Forbes’ Most Promising Companies, Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, Crain’s Fast 50, TMCnet Tech Culture Award and Global Startup Award’s “Startup Founder of the Year.” Tapad was acquired by the Telenor Group in 2016. Telenor Group is one of the world’s largest mobile operators. About Centro Centro is a provider of enterprise-class software for digital advertising organizations. Its technology platform, Basis, is the first of its kind SaaS advertising solution unifying programmatic and direct media buying, along with workflow automation, cross-channel campaign planning, universal reporting and business intelligence. It boosts media, team and business performance by enabling advertisers to plan, buy and analyze real-time bidding (RTB), direct, search and social campaigns in a single platform. Contact us today
The concept of identity resolution has emerged over the years as a strategic imperative among marketers and technology vendors. A report by Forrester contends that accurately establishing and maintaining customer identity is one of the most perplexing challenges facing marketers today. Customers have footprints in the offline and online worlds and tend to seamlessly transition across various channels and devices – presenting a unique challenge to truly understand who they are. But the ability to stitch these disparate components of information together means marketers can make better decisions and have more meaningful interactions with their customers. And for customers, this means an experience with personalized advertising content more likely to resonate with them. Why should marketers prioritize identity? The ability to accurately identify customers is the most basic prerequisite for marketing analytics, orchestration and execution. As such, it is becoming increasingly important for brands and marketers planning to link together disparate systems of audience insights and engagement to foster a more seamless and personalized omnichannel customer experience. For example, if an advertiser can identify a customer’s interests, as well as how that person prefers to consume information, then the advertiser can create and deliver messaging that will resonate with the customer. However, like most competitive differentiators, the mission critical components to accurately determine an identity reside within the suite of identity management tools at the marketers’ disposal and the expertise required for proper execution – a struggle for most marketers. But when properly implemented, a comprehensive customer identity strategy can be among a brand or marketer’s most valuable and proprietary assets. Where to begin with identity resolution? With the convergence of CRM platform data, cross-channel online touchpoints, offline record linkage management, probabilistic cross-device graphs, and data onboarding—evolving from point solutions to unified platforms—marketers are faced with an increasingly complex set of challenges in addressing and solving for customer identity management. To properly implement from the get go, and to avoid having to bolt on disparate technologies down the road, emerging industry trends and success stories suggest marketers need a neutral technology service provider that can provide each of these solutions via a single, unified platform. A vendor that can build a solid identity management foundation comprised of omni-channel targeting and attribution, cross-device resolution, online-offline linkage management, and data onboarding form the nexus of a cohesive identity strategy, built to last. Experian helps connect consumer identity As a trusted name in data and information services for more than 40 years, we are committed to privacy by design and the responsible usage and security of data. Whether you’re a brand, agency, or publisher, Experian has the wide-ranging toolset to help you put people at the heart of your business and make better marketing decisions. By harnessing the power of the sum of these parts, fusing both offline and online identifiers and attributes, Experian has established a leadership position in identity management. If you’re ready to begin building your identity foundation, contact us and get started today! Learn more about why identity matters to marketers and consumers, here! Contact us today