At A Glance
First-party data delivers its greatest value when marketers can activate it. Leading brands are moving beyond data collection by connecting, enriching, and activating their first-party data across channels. With identity as the foundation, first-party data activation improves relevance, efficiency, and measurement. Experian helps marketers turn static records into scalable audiences that perform across media.In this article…
What is first-party data?
First-party data is consented information a brand collects directly through interactions with customers and prospects across its owned touchpoints — unlike third-party data, which is licensed or aggregated from external providers. First-party data can include customer relationship management (CRM) records, purchase history, loyalty program activity, website and app behavior, email engagement, and other information generated through the brand’s relationship with its audience.
In the activation context, first-party data can help you build addressable audiences for paid and owned channels. Identity resolution connects fragmented records and identifiers, enabling more consistent audience creation, activation, and measurement across the media ecosystem. This is likely why, in 2026 and beyond:
- 70% of B2B marketers plan to increase their use of first-party data, more than any other data strategy.
- 67% of brands and 80% of publishers expect to grow their first-party data sets in the next year.
First-party data vs. zero-party, second-party, and third-party data
While it’s often the foundation of an activation strategy, first-party data isn’t the only useful data type. Depending on the campaign goal, other data sources can add declared preferences, extend reach beyond known customers, or provide helpful context for targeting and modeling.
- Zero-party data is information that customers intentionally and proactively share with a brand, such as interests, purchase intentions, or survey responses. It tends to be narrower in scale and coverage than first-party data, but it can still help you personalize messaging and experiences to customers’ stated needs.
- First-party data is what a brand collects through direct customer interactions and observed activity, such as account activity, responses to brand campaigns, customer service encounters, and so on. It helps you build known audiences, suppress existing customers, and support lifecycle and cross-channel campaigns.
- Second-party data is another organization’s first-party data shared through a direct partnership. It can extend audience reach beyond a brand’s known customer base or enrich existing profiles with complementary partner data, while maintaining a connection to the original data source.
- Third-party data comes from external providers and can add demographic, behavioral, lifestyle, and other insights. It helps you enrich first-party audience data, extend reach, support prospecting, and build modeled audiences at a greater scale.
First-party data tends to be the strongest starting point for activation since it provides a broader view of a brand’s direct customer relationships.
Why does activation expand the value of first-party data?
On its own, first-party data can reveal who customers are, how they behave, and what they value. It supports insight, personalization, and engagement through owned touchpoints. But in 2026, you can expand that value by activating first-party data across owned and paid media channels. Activation is how existing data investments scale beyond CRMs into broader audience strategies.
When you resolve fragmented records and create addressable audiences, you can put audience insights to work at a greater scale. However, the value you unlock through activation depends on the quality of the data beneath it. Incomplete, outdated, or duplicate records can weaken match rates, audience accuracy, and measurement.
Accurate data and persistent identity resolution, on the other hand, help you reach the right audiences, reduce waste, and connect activation to outcomes. Once you have a strong data and identity foundation, the next step is activating it across the ecosystem.
How are marketers shifting from data collection to data connection?
As signals fragment, marketers are shifting from data collection to data connection to make first-party data usable across channels. We support this shift by helping you onboard and resolve your data into a clean, connected foundation using our identity graphs.
Connecting offline and online interactions allows you to unify customer data across touchpoints to make it actionable. That connection enables a wider range of use cases, from audience activation and measurement to personalization and cross-channel optimization.
With our identity foundation in place, first-party data becomes more widely usable. You can enrich your first-party data with behavioral, demographic, and lifestyle insights from trusted partner data, then activate it across social, programmatic, and TV from a single environment.
Common challenges in first-party data activation
While building a connected foundation can make first-party data more broadly useful, several factors can also make that foundation difficult to build and maintain, determining how effectively you can activate first-party data across channels.
Disconnected data silos
First-party data often lives across CRM systems, point-of-sale platforms, email tools, websites, apps, and analytics environments. Without a shared identity foundation, those systems may treat the same customer as multiple people, which makes it challenging to create a consistent audience view or coordinate cross-channel activation. We help connect fragmented online and offline signals through identity resolution to give you a more unified data foundation for audience creation, activation, and measurement.
Incomplete or outdated records
Customer data changes over time. Email addresses become inactive, contact details change, and behavioral signals lose relevance. Without ongoing data maintenance and identity resolution, match rates can decline, reducing the accuracy of activated audiences and measurement.
Inconsistent identifiers across channels
Various platforms rely on different identifiers, so a customer recognized in one environment may not be recognized in another. Identity resolution helps connect fragmented signals, reduce duplicate profiles, and improve consistency throughout the activation process.
Limited reach and audience scale
A brand’s first-party data may not be extensive or detailed enough to support every campaign objective. Experian’s Enrichment can add demographic, behavioral, and lifestyle attributes to help you better understand known audiences and create more informed segments. When you need to reach beyond your existing customer base, our syndicated audiences can help extend prospecting reach with relevant, privacy-forward audience data.
Privacy and governance requirements
Activating first-party data requires you to account for permissions, opt-outs, data-use policies, and applicable privacy regulations. Building those considerations into the activation process from the start helps you maintain control of your data while supporting responsible use across partners and platforms.
Fragmented measurement
It can be difficult to connect media exposure and outcomes when audience identity varies across activation and measurement environments. A consistent identity foundation helps link the audiences you activate with the outcomes you measure, supporting more complete, cross-channel performance measurement.
The importance of first-party data in media planning
As media environments fragment, first-party data gives you a more durable foundation for planning audiences, personalizing campaigns, and measuring performance.
At the same time, first-party data isn’t the only input to an effective media strategy. You can combine it with trusted partner and syndicated data to enrich known audiences, extend reach, and fill gaps in your customer insights. We help make those data sources more usable across activation and measurement environments with a consistent identity foundation.
2026 Digital trends and predictions report
Our 2026 Digital trends and predictions report reveals five trends that will define 2026. From curation becoming the standard in programmatic to AI moving from hype to implementation, each trend reflects a shift toward more connected, data-driven marketing. The interplay between them will define how marketers will lead in 2026.
What business impact does first-party data activation deliver?
First-party data activation can improve campaign efficiency and performance by helping you reach more relevant audiences, reduce wasted media spend, and connect marketing activity to measurable business outcomes. It also helps you use existing customer relationships more strategically — for example, by suppressing current customers from acquisition campaigns, personalizing outreach, and prioritizing audiences that are more likely to respond.
That shift can have a meaningful business impact. Research suggests that activating first-party data can reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 50% and drive a 10–15% lift in revenue by helping you prioritize more relevant audiences and avoid spending against people you already know or are unlikely to convert.
Those outcomes depend on making first-party data usable beyond the CRM. When fragmented records are connected into more complete, addressable audiences, you can apply customer insights more consistently across planning, targeting, personalization, activation, and measurement.
Audience Engine helps you put this strategy into practice by bringing together first-party data, audience insights, and activation in a single workflow. You can build custom audiences, activate them across 200+ platforms, and use 3,500+ syndicated audiences and partner data to enrich your strategy or extend reach when needed.
Key channels and strategies for first-party data activation
To drive business impact, you need to activate addressable audiences in the places where you reach and engage customers. First-party data activation can support both paid media and owned experiences. The right mix depends on your audience, campaign objective, available identifiers, and the platforms you use to reach and measure customers.
Email and direct mail
Email and direct mail are core first-party activation channels for retention, loyalty, and lifecycle marketing. You can use customer data to tailor messages, suppress irrelevant outreach, and coordinate communications based on purchase history, engagement, or customer status.
Programmatic display
When you onboard first-party audiences to compatible programmatic platforms for targeting, suppression, and measurement, you can extend customer insights into paid media, reduce wasted spend on existing customers, and support more relevant prospecting strategies.
Connected TV
Identity-resolved first-party data can support audience activation across compatible connected TV (CTV) environments. This gives you another way to reach customers and high-value prospects with more relevant messaging while connecting household-level exposure to broader campaign measurement.
Social platforms
First-party audiences can be matched to supported social platforms for targeting, suppression, audience expansion, and measurement. Used alongside platform signals, first-party data gives you more control over who you reach and how campaigns align with existing customer relationships.
Modeled audiences and prospecting
Use high-value first-party segments, such as repeat purchasers or high-lifetime-value customers, as the foundation for modeled audiences. Partner and syndicated data can add scale and context, helping you identify new prospects who share characteristics with your best customers.
Owned websites and apps
Activation isn’t limited to paid media. First-party data can also inform personalized website and app experiences, product recommendations, offers, and messaging based on known customer behavior and preferences.
The best activation strategies connect these channels through a consistent identity foundation, helping you coordinate audiences, reduce duplication, and support more consistent measurement.
What should marketers plan for first-party data activation in 2026?
Once you know where first-party audiences can be activated, the next question is how to build an activation approach that can scale across those channels.
In 2026, it’s important to plan for first-party data to operate across onboarding, activation, and measurement as a connected workflow. Planning now centers on interoperability, scalable activation tools, and privacy-forward enrichment rather than isolated data use cases. Identity underpins each of these shifts.
1. First-party onboarding is table stakes
Onboard CRM and other first-party data into compatible programmatic and connected TV environments to make known audiences more usable across channels. You can then combine those audiences with trusted syndicated and partner data when additional scale is needed.
2. Unified activation tools accelerate execution
A unified activation tool like Audience Engine helps you bring first-party data and partner audiences into a single workflow, supporting first-party data activation across 200+ platforms, including display, connected TV, and social.
This reduces the operational friction of managing separate, platform-specific audience views. With identity-resolved data connected to activation, you can create more complete audiences and apply first-party data targeting more consistently across platforms.
For smaller teams, start with a focused onboarding and test use case, such as customer suppression, retargeting, or prospecting from a high-value customer segment. You can then expand activation as your data, measurement needs, and channel strategy mature.
3. AI-driven enrichment enhances performance
Machine learning can identify patterns, predict behavior, model lookalikes, and uncover actionable insights to increase reach and relevance, even as traditional signals fragment.
With our in-house modeling capabilities, you gain faster access to advanced machine learning and the ability to define your own model parameters. This gives you direct control over how audiences are built and optimized, allowing you to activate insights quickly, iterate as strategies evolve, and avoid the limitations of black-box third parties and long development cycles.
Best practices for getting started with first-party data activation
A successful activation strategy starts with a clear use case, reliable data, and a foundation that can scale over time. You don’t need to activate every record or channel at once. Starting with a focused audience and measurable objective makes it easier to test performance, refine the approach, and confidently expand.
Start with a clear business objective
Define what you want the activation effort to accomplish, whether that’s improving retention, reducing acquisition waste, reaching high-value prospects, or increasing cross-sell performance. Your objective should guide the data, audience, channels, and metrics you prioritize.
Prioritize high-value audiences
Begin with segments tied to a meaningful business outcome, such as repeat purchasers, high-lifetime-value customers, recent converters, or lapsed customers. Starting with a focused audience can produce clearer insights than deploying an entire customer database at once.
Build suppression into prospecting campaigns
Use first-party data to exclude existing customers from acquisition campaigns when appropriate. Suppression can reduce wasted spend, limit repetitive messaging, and protect the customer experience.
Test before expanding
Start with one or two activation destinations and establish benchmarks for reach, engagement, efficiency, or conversion. Use the results to refine audience definitions, messaging, and channel strategy before expanding across the broader media mix.
Refresh audiences regularly
First-party data changes as customer behavior, contact information, and preferences evolve. Review and refresh audiences regularly to keep activation relevant and accurate over time.
Choose a flexible activation approach
Look for partners and tools that can support your first-party data alongside partner and syndicated audiences across the platforms you already use. A flexible, interoperable approach makes it easier to add use cases, extend reach, and connect activation with measurement as your strategy matures.
Why first-party data activation matters to marketers in 2026
First-party data activation turns customer records into connected audiences you can use across the media ecosystem. Audience Engine enables you to onboard, enrich, and activate first-party data through a secure, interoperable platform that supports more relevant targeting and measurable outcomes.
To explore this trend and the others shaping marketing in 2026, download our 2026 Digital trends and predictions report.
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About the author
Doug McLennan
Sr. Director, Product Management, Experian
Doug McLennan is the Senior Director of Product Management at Experian Marketing Services where he is focused on product strategy for activation. His past work includes managing syndicated audiences at Oracle Data Cloud and building personalized video ad products at an agency. Doug lives in Colorado and skis as much as his family will allow.
Frequently asked questions about first-party data activation
First-party data is information collected directly from a brand’s own audience with consent, including purchase history, CRM records, and site or app behavior. Experian helps marketers resolve this data against our identity graphs for activation.
First-party data matters because it gives marketers a direct, controlled foundation for understanding and engaging their audiences as signals and media environments fragment. While it can support customer insights and personalization on its own, activation and identity resolution make that data usable at scale for audience targeting, suppression, cross-channel engagement, and measurement.
First-party data activation means using a brand’s own customer data to build addressable audiences across paid and owned channels. Our identity spine connects, enriches, and activates that first-party data consistently while preserving control and privacy.
First-party data needs identity to connect customer records across devices, platforms, and environments into a unified view. Experian identity resolution makes it possible to activate, measure, and manage frequency consistently across paid and owned media.
First-party data activation improves efficiency by reducing waste and increasing relevance. Marketers focus spend on known and modeled audiences, suppress existing customers in prospecting, and optimize toward outcomes rather than impressions.
We support first-party data activation by resolving, enriching, and activating customer data using identity as the foundation. Through Audience Engine, we enable onboarding, audience creation, cross-channel activation, and measurement within one environment.
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Tapad launches global privacy-safe solution to provide continuity in the absence of third-party cookies Switchboard, a module within The Tapad Graph, will connect emerging cookieless identifiers to traditional IDs, creating a more holistic view of the consumer and driving value exchange within the advertising ecosystem Tapad, part of Experian, a global leader in cross-device digital identity resolution, and a part of Experian, announced today the launch of Switchboard, a first-of-its-kind solution to help navigate the evolving cookieless landscape. Switchboard, a module within The Tapad Graph, will operate as a global, privacy-safe solution to provide continuity in the absence of third-party cookies by connecting new cookieless identifiers to traditional digital IDs for a comprehensive view of consumers and their digital touchpoints. Switchboard will enable interoperability across the growing number of these digital identifiers and the value exchange between publishers, content creators and consumers. Leading digital identity solutions partnering with Tapad, part of Experian at the launch of Switchboard include Unified ID 2.0, ID5, Lotame Panorama ID, BritePool, Retargetly IDx and Audigent Halo ID. Tapad, part of Experian plans to expand support to additional identity solutions on an ongoing basis. In addition to these identity solutions, early partners across the ecosystem include The Trade Desk, Amobee, Martin, ShareThis, Eyeota and Catalina. “This diverse group of launch partners and testing customers will prove that Switchboard is an important tenet for the future of identity resolution. We’re excited to be proactive in our approach to give marketers time to adapt new solutions and test their function in tandem with the third-party cookie, while continuing to give our customers flexibility and control,” said Mark Connon, General Manager of Tapad, part of Experian. “Facilitating access and usage of 1st party identifiers is crucial to help marketers prepare for the cookieless future. Thanks to Switchboard, ID5’s cookieless IDs will be available to a wider audience of brands and agencies and enable them to run effective, data-driven campaigns beyond the third-party cookie,” said Mathieu Roche Co-founder & CEO of ID5. Switchboard provides value across the marketing and advertising ecosystem as the need for the ability to support multiple cookieless ID’s across ad tech increases throughout 2021. With a decade of expertise creating digital identity resolution products, Tapad, part of Experian is poised to solve this challenge through innovation and quality, privacy-safe data-driven solutions. “Interoperability is paramount for brand marketers, agencies, publishers and platforms if we want to support an open and free Internet and break free of the stranglehold of walled gardens,” said Pierre Diennet, Global Partnerships at Lotame. ”Lotame Panorama ID’s participation in Switchboard reflects our steadfast commitment to collaborating across and within the industry and providing value to all of its players.” “As advertisers continue to contemplate the future of identity, Amobee is proud to partner with Tapad, part of Experian on this next-generation solution to provide a comprehensive view of consumers,” says Bryan Everett, Senior Vice President of Global Business Development at Amobee. “With the imminent loss of cookies, advertisers must think creatively in order to respectfully engage consumers in a privacy-compliant way and Switchboard can play an important role in addressing their respective identity needs.” Tapad, part of Experian is welcoming identity solutions and Tapad Graph customer participation in Switchboard throughout 2021. Stayed tuned for more updates and information on Switchboard in the coming months. Get in touch
Adapt with Tapad, a part of Experian Leading browsers have made public announcements and technical deployments to reduce the digital advertising accessibility of third-party cookies for data collection, storage, and sharing due to growing privacy concerns. As a result, there has been growing momentum to find an alternative via cookieless IDs, with the intent to create a replacement that helps ensure continuity across the ecosystem. At Tapad we’ve chosen to approach the market with a solution that provides agnostic interoperability for these cookieless identifiers, so that marketers can continue to work with the identity providers of their choice while maintaining the most holistic view of consumers across digital touchpoints. Introducing switchboard Switchboard is a module within The Tapad Graph that leverages our core capabilities across machine learning and identity management to provide a connection between traditional digital identifiers and the new wave of cookieless IDs that will be utilized in the future. Customers of Tapad can take advantage of its broad ecosystem of identifiers to drive targeting and frequency capping strategies and enable detailed measurement and attribution post-deprecation of the third-party cookie. Our goal is to accelerate the adoption, scale, and utility of cookieless IDs with the release of the Switchboard module within The Tapad Graph, while maintaining an agnostic approach to the market. Switchboard for identity solutions In the evolving landscape agencies and marketers will need to invest, test, and analyze the best combination of cookieless ID partners to meet their objectives. The Switchboard module will increase the utility and value of the cookieless ID space in conjunction with other addressable IDs, by providing a layer of connectivity that will be natively missing with the deprecation of third-party cookies. Identity solutions at launch: Switchboard for graph customers For existing Tapad customers who leverage the Switchboard module in The Tapad Graph, it will provide a seamless way to facilitate interoperability while resolving identity back to a Household or Individual. By providing this translation layer, Tapad will take on the responsibility of encryption and decryption protocols where applicable, which will deliver added functionality to our customers. Tapad + Experian partners at launch: Use cases Resolve existing first-party data with new cookieless solutions through The Tapad Graph to minimize data loss Frequency cap at the Individual and Household level via Cookieless and traditional ID Reach consumers at scale across all touchpoints and IDs Build a more inclusive and holistic view of the consumer journey Run accurate and scalable measurement before and after the formal deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome Map online data into offline activities Hear why industry leaders are adapting with Tapad + Experian As advertisers continue to contemplate the future of identity, Amobee is proud to partner with Tapad, a part of Experian, on this next-generation solution to provide a comprehensive view of consumers. With the imminent loss of cookies, advertisers must think creatively in order to respectfully engage consumers in a privacy-compliant way and Switchboard can play an important role in addressing their respective identity needs. — Bryan Everett | Senior Vice President of Global Business Development | Amobee Connecting offline and online shopper activity in a privacy-compliant way is fundamental to marketing effectiveness and determining return on ad-spend. That’s why we’re excited to be a launch partner for Tapad + Experian’s Switchboard offering; it provides a unified solution for supporting the variety of proprietary and anonymous user ID standards required by advertising demand-side platforms today. — Brian Dunphy | SVP Digital Business and Strategic Partnerships | Catalina As the industry evolves, Tapad + Experian’s Switchboard presents a privacy-safe solution that allows for the continued activation of data and an alternative to advertising within walled garden environments. We look forward to collaborating with Tapad and the industry as we collectively transition to support cookieless identity. — Don Lee |SVP of Global Platform Partnerships | Eyeota We are excited to participate in this proactive solution to the sunset of third-party cookies. Switchboard’s agnostic interoperability, with BritePool and other ID providers, will create high-value for marketers as they transition to the era of cookieless web advertising. — David J. Moore | CEO | BritePool Interoperability is paramount for brand marketers, agencies, publishers and platforms if we want to support an open and free Internet and break free of the stranglehold of walled gardens. Lotame Panorama ID’s participation in Switchboard reflects our steadfast commitment to collaborating across and within the industry and providing value to all of its players. — Pierre Diennet | Global Partnerships | Lotame At this pivotal moment in the industry, we are excited to be partnering with Tapad, a part of Experian on their cookieless initiative and making Retargetly IDx available into the Switchboard solution, providing global brands, platforms and publishers with a compliant, cookieless ID solution for the Latin American market; enabling them to target, reach and measure users at scale through the region. — Daniel Czaplinski | CEO and Co-Founder | Retargetly With Audigent’s Halo ID, we’re architecting a cookieless future where clients and partners have confidence in the actionability and interoperability of exclusive 1st party audiences, originated from some of the world’s leading publishers and creators. We see collaboration as being critical to a collective understanding of identity and Tapad, a part of Experian as a trusted partner with solutions such as Switchboard to support continuity for marketers’ addressability. — Drew Stein | CEO and Founder | Audigent Facilitating access and usage of 1st party identifiers is crucial to help marketers prepare for the cookieless future. Thanks to Switchboard, ID5’s cookie-less IDs will be available to a wider audience of brands and agencies and enable them to run effective, data-driven campaigns beyond the third-party cookie. — Mathieu Roche | CEO and Co-Founder | ID5 Addressing the current identity challenge requires transparency and collaboration. We are pleased to align ShareThis data with Tapad + Experian’s growing ecosystem. ShareThis data helps marketers evolve beyond the cookie to complete the picture. Tapad + Experian’s Switchboard offering will support ShareThis’s deep connections to clients and technology platforms, preserving and growing the accessibility of our data. — Michael Gorman | SVP Product and Business Development | ShareThis Get in touch
With the emergence of email addresses as a currency for brands to communicate with their consumers offline; attaching email data to in-store purchases lays the groundwork for future advertising strategies. However, this advantage in having an additional digital touchpoint also creates a new challenge for marketers. How do they connect what they know about their customers via offline data and PII, or personally identifiable information, with what they want to know about their online behaviors and interactions? Taken a step further, how can they create actionable strategies that connect these two streams of consumer insights in order to drive them to make more future purchases; and even become loyalists? At a time when the shift from traditional to online shopping feels more like a landslide; connecting online and offline data has never been more valuable or more urgent. The solution for these marketers lies in the framework of identity resolution; and a key capability called hashed email onboarding. Hashed email onboarding is a privacy-safe way to connect consumer email addresses to their related digital devices and other digital identifiers. The methodology prevents the consumers actual email address from being readable; while still providing marketers a connection between those emails and other touchpoints for an individual. Instead of understanding the customer journey in two distinct parts; how they interact with a brand or company offline and separately how they interact with a brand online; hashed email onboarding allows for the two parts to be woven together in a holistic view of that consumer. The power of connecting these data sets can be seen when combining offline and online attribution and measurement to improve frequency capping and look-alike modeling. It’s important to note that not all identity resolution vendors that onboard hashed emails function in the same way or provide the same level of data. Some connect only to desktop or only to mobile devices; while others don’t actually make direct linkages at all- they simply provide the hashed emails as a targetable digital audience for upload. While hashed email onboarding and the connection between offline and online data is a powerful strategy; it needs to be as structured as possible across the most data available to reveal truly efficient targeting and measurement strategies. Tapad, a part of Experian has built a hashed email product feature that works with the existing flexibility of The Tapad Graph to deliver the most holistic consumer view in the structure that works best for your business objectives. Get in touch