At A Glance
First-party data for commerce media networks (CMNs) provides a direct connection to shopper behavior that advertisers value. But logged-in users and loyalty members only tell part of the story. Connecting fragmented identities and adding context beyond the observed behaviors can help CMNs turn more of the data they already own into consumer intelligence that works across media channels, while keeping their customer relationships at the center.Key takeaways
- First-party data can leave coverage gaps between the shoppers a CMN knows and the audiences it can consistently recognize and reach.
- Experian’s identity resolution and enrichment solutions help commerce media networks connect fragmented signals and add context beyond the direct customer relationship.
- CMNs can focus on closing their first-party data gaps and building a more complete view of their consumers. Our neutral approach helps them activate and measure campaigns across platforms without building separate integrations for every partner, while giving them the flexibility to work with their preferred technology and media partners.
Owning first-party data gives CMNs a strong foundation. The next step is connecting shopper data across customer relationship management (CRM), digital, and TV. Identity resolution helps CMNs link interactions across channels so they can recognize and reach consumers more consistently.
Media networks know what people browse and buy, loyalty programs create direct customer relationships, and transaction data gives advertisers a valuable connection between media and commerce. But logged-in and loyalty data rarely represent every shopper interaction. CMNs need to connect these signals to build a more complete view of their consumers and put that insight into action.
A shopper might research a product anonymously on mobile, buy it in-store without using a loyalty account, and then return using a different email address. By connecting these interactions, CMNs can build a more complete view of their consumers and better understand how shoppers engage across channels.
Multiply that across millions of interactions, and the challenge grows. Guest transactions can sit outside loyalty profiles, identifiers change, and shoppers move between stores, websites, apps, and devices. A CMN may have plenty of first-party data and still see only part of its audience.
The addressability gap starts inside the data
CMNs face an addressability gap when disconnected shopper data limits their ability to recognize and reach consumers beyond their own properties. Connecting loyalty profiles, transactions, and digital identifiers helps CMNs extend their reach across connected TV (CTV), social, and programmatic media.
Market concentration makes that challenge more pressing. Amazon and Walmart will capture more than 89% of incremental U.S. retail media spending in 2026. Their large logged-in audiences and extensive commerce data give them an advantage. Other CMNs can compete by making better use of the shopper data they already have.
Identity resolution helps CMNs close the addressability gap by connecting logins, devices, email addresses, and transactions to consistent consumer and household identities. This helps CMNs recognize shoppers across channels and reach more of their audience.
Our neutral infrastructure helps CMNs use that identity foundation across their preferred technology and media partners. They can build on existing investments, strengthen cross-platform addressability, and maintain flexibility without relying on a single provider.
A transaction tells you what happened, not the whole story
CMNs can build more valuable audiences for advertisers by enriching their first-party shopper data with deeper consumer insights. This helps them improve audience segmentation, strengthen their advertising offerings, and create more opportunities to generate revenue.
Purchase data reveals what shoppers buy, but it doesn’t always explain who they are or what else matters to them. A retailer may know that someone buys organic groceries every week or recently purchased paint and power tools. Two shoppers who bought the same product may represent very different audiences for advertisers.
Experian’s Enrichment capabilities help CMNs look beyond transactions by appending demographic and behavioral attributes from Experian Marketing Data to their first-party shopper data. These additional insights help CMNs refine segmentation, inform modeling, and create more relevant audiences for advertisers. With richer consumer insights, CMNs can turn transaction data into more valuable advertising offerings, helping them create new revenue opportunities while maintaining their direct shopper relationships.
Keep first-party data connected across media
CMNs can get more value from their first-party data by keeping consumer identities and audience definitions consistent across media channels. Connecting shopper signals and adding consumer context helps them build audiences they can activate, collaborate with advertisers, and measure across platforms.
Keeping audiences consistent across media channels can be challenging as CMNs move between platforms and partners. Audiences can lose scale when they reach another environment, and differences in how partners recognize consumers can create gaps in activation and measurement.
Our neutral infrastructure helps CMNs keep their first-party data connected across their preferred technology and media partners. They can maintain control over their data and identity, build on existing investments, and avoid relying on a single provider.
Experian helps CMNs strengthen their first-party data foundation for use across existing systems and media channels. With our identity resolution and offline identity append capabilities, CMNs can share first-party data with us to connect disparate records to individuals and households and add missing offline identifiers. We then return the data so CMNs can use it across their existing systems and preferred partners.
By keeping first-party data connected across media, CMNs can extend the value of their shopper relationships, support advertiser campaigns, and make better use of their existing technology investments.
More addressable data creates more places to grow
Connecting shopper data across media helps CMNs expand their addressable audiences and create more advertising opportunities.
A more complete, addressable audience can give advertisers more ways to use first-party data that makes a CMN distinct. It can help networks extend those audiences beyond owned-and-operated properties into CTV, social, programmatic, and other environments where shoppers spend their time.
CMNs can build on their existing technology investments by improving the quality and consistency of their first-party data. With a stronger identity foundation, they can better understand their customers, activate audiences across channels, and measure campaign outcomes.
CMNs can strengthen their advertising offerings by turning more of their existing shopper data into audiences advertisers can reach across channels. By recognizing more consumers across channels and building more relevant audiences, they can create additional media opportunities for advertisers while keeping their first-party data at the center of their business.
Our neutral infrastructure helps CMNs extend the value of their first-party data across media environments while maintaining control over their customer relationships, technology investments, and partner choices.
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About the author
Colleen Dawe
VP, Advertiser Partnerships
Colleen Dawe is VP, Advertiser Partnerships at Experian Marketing Services, where she oversees revenue growth and client success, helping advertisers harness data and identity to fuel marketing strategies. With over 15 years of experience spanning TV and digital media, she brings deep expertise in data, identity, activation, and measurement to help her clients connect innovation with business outcomes.
FAQs
The first-party data gap for CMNs is the difference between the shopper data a CMN owns and the first-party data it can consistently connect and use. Anonymous interactions, disconnected identifiers, and incomplete customer records can leave part of the shopper relationship outside a CMN’s addressable audience.
CMNs can use identity resolution to connect fragmented shopper signals and enrichment to add relevant context beyond the direct customer relationship. Neutral infrastructure helps them put that consumer intelligence to work across activation and measurement, using their existing technology and preferred partners to extend reach and improve outcomes.
Neutral infrastructure gives CMNs greater control over how they use their customer data and identity across platforms, partners, and channels. Neutral infrastructure that integrates with existing workflows can help a network expand addressability, preserve choice, and adapt its media strategy without rebuilding its customer data foundation whenever its needs change.
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Commerce media networks have had a strong start. Growth has been fast, demand has been strong, and brands have made it clear they want closer access to commerce-driven audiences. But as more networks mature and enter the space, many are starting to feel the same pressure point: scale. Most commerce media networks were built as managed service businesses. That model works well early on. High-touch, white-glove partnerships make sense when you’re working with a handful of strategic brands. But there’s a ceiling. There are only so many teams, only so much inventory, and only so many advertisers that model can realistically support. It’s one thing for a large retailer to build custom programs for a P&G. It’s another to do that at scale for hundreds or thousands of brands. At some point, growth slows, not because demand disappears, but because the model can’t stretch any further. The scale problem no one likes to talk about That’s where many commerce media leaders find themselves today. Pausing to assess what comes next. For a long time, growth has been measured almost entirely through media dollars. That mindset is understandable. Media is familiar, it’s easy to quantify. It shows up clearly in negotiations and revenue reports. But viewing commerce media networks purely as media sales engines creates long-term risk. It can strain brand relationships, limit innovation, and distract from what commerce media networks actually do better than almost anyone else: understand consumers deeply. Signals are the real asset Commerce platforms sit close to decision-making. They see what people search for, what they consider, what they buy, and when those behaviors change. Those signals are incredibly powerful. And yet, most networks only activate them inside their own walled environments. That’s a missed opportunity. Curation represents the next area of growth for commerce media networks, and it doesn’t require replacing or diminishing existing media revenue. In fact, it complements it. No single commerce media network has all the data needed to give advertisers the scale and reach they’re looking for. And no advertiser wants to recreate the same audience in dozens of disconnected platforms. That friction creates inefficiency and slows decision-making. Why collaboration supports sustainable growth The opportunity is to look beyond first-party data alone and start thinking about collaboration. Second-party data. Data partnerships. Signal sharing done responsibly and transparently. Imagine an advertiser defining an audience once and being able to understand and reach that audience across multiple commerce environments. Not through a series of disconnected buys, but through a more consistent approach built on shared understanding leading to increased reach and more impactful campaigns. That’s easier for advertisers to manage, and it creates an additional revenue stream for commerce media networks that complements media sales rather than competing with them. Curation strengthens media, it doesn’t replace it Media will always play an important role. There is clear value in custom experiences tied directly to a commerce environment. Think buyouts, sponsored experiences, custom creative integrations. Those are situations where brands want to work closely with the network itself. But the signals commerce media networks hold don’t need to be limited to those moments. Those signals can be monetized independently through data products, co-ops, and partnerships that extend their value into other channels. That’s how curation adds value without undercutting existing revenue. A practical path forward for commerce media leaders For commerce media leaders thinking about their next phase of growth, the focus should be on sustainability. Building a massive media operation takes time and investment. Data-driven revenue streams can be introduced more quickly, require fewer internal resources, and provide steadier margins. It’s a practical approach. Use signal-based revenue to fund growth. Let that revenue support investment in tooling, talent, and media innovation over time. Bootstrapping, in the truest sense. Why transparency matters early There’s also a broader responsibility here. In many advertising channels, transparency followed growth, often after pressure from the market. Commerce media networks have an opportunity to do this differently. To lead with transparency from the start. To be clear with brands and consumers about how data is used, how signals are created, and how value flows through the ecosystem. Because the reality is this: commerce media networks are holding some of the most valuable intent signals in the market today. But those signals don’t retain their value in isolation. If they aren’t enhanced, combined, and made accessible in the right ways, someone else will step in to do it. And when that happens, control shifts away from the source. The bottom line The next chapter of commerce media isn’t just about selling more media alone. It’s about recognizing the value of the signals already in hand, working together to make them more useful, and building additional revenue streams that support long-term growth. That’s how commerce media networks grow without eating their own lunch. About the author Kevin Dunn Chief Revenue Officer, Experian Kevin Dunn joins Experian Marketing Services with more than 20 years of leadership experience across marketing and advertising technology, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Brands and Agencies at LiveRamp. In that role, he led growth across retail, CPG, travel, hospitality, financial services, and healthcare, overseeing new business, account expansion, and channel partnerships. Kevin is known for building cohesive, accountable teams and leading with optimism, clarity, and a strong sense of shared purpose. His leadership philosophy centers on empowering people, driving positive outcomes for clients and fostering a culture where teams can grow, take smart risks, and succeed together. Latest posts