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.
Latest posts
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Tapad, part of Experian, integrates with AcuityAds’ current offering will complement cross-channel capabilities for brands and agencies in the U.S. and Canada NEW YORK, Jan. 23, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, a global leader in digital identity resolution, has partnered with AcuityAds, a technology leader that provides targeted digital media solutions for advertisers to connect intelligently with audiences. The partnership will enhance AcuityAds’ existing cross-device solution, especially with respect to its cross-channel Connected TV offering. Tapad’s global, privacy-safe digital cross-device solution, The Tapad Graph, will compliment AcuityAds’ own cross-device data set for enhanced marketing capabilities across their Demand Side Platform (DSP). For AcuityAds, this provides customers with unduplicated reach across desktop, tablet, mobile and CTV devices – while augmenting their video offering. Tom Woods, Vice President of Products at AcuityAds commented, “With increasing marketing complexities, consumer device usage and new data regulations, our decision regarding the partnership was an important one. The Tapad Graph’s privacy-safe identifiers for consumer notice and choice, as well as the ability to opt-out at any point, were critical factors in our decision who to partner with.” To learn more about Tapad and our digital identity resolution capabilities, visit our identity 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, London, Oslo, Singapore, and Tokyo. About AcuityAds AcuityAds is a leading technology company that provides marketers a powerful and holistic solution for digital advertising across all ad formats and screens to amplify reach and Share of Attention® throughout the customer journey. Via its unique, data-driven insights, real-time analytics and industry-leading activation platform based on proprietary Artificial Intelligence technology, AcuityAds leverages an integrated ecosystem of partners for data, inventory, brand safety and fraud prevention, offering unparalleled, trusted solutions that the most demanding marketers require to be successful in the digital era. AcuityAds is headquartered in Toronto with offices throughout the U.S., Europe and Latin America. For more information, visit AcuityAds.com. Disclaimer in regards to Forward-looking Statements Certain statements included herein constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by management at this time, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, AcuityAds does not intend, and undertakes no obligation, to update any forward-looking statements to reflect, in particular, new information or future events. Contact us today
Tapad, a part of Experian and the future of cookies Earlier this week, Google announced plans to create “.. a path towards making third-party cookies obsolete”; which will result in the phasing out of support for third-party cookies in its Chrome browser within two years. While there has been much discussion and debate on the future of the third-party cookie, an announcement from Google has been anticipated for some time. As many have said this week, the use of cookies and other identifiers has and will continue to evolve. What will never change is the value exchange between publishers and consumers that is enabled by relevant advertising. Notably, the need for independent companies to develop solutions that enable this value exchange has never been greater to ensure that publishers, consumers, and advertisers derive the most value from their relationship. We are well-positioned for the future From the start, Tapad, a part of Experian has led with a consumer-first, privacy-centric approach to technology as the use and proliferation of devices and global privacy regulations continue to evolve. Over the past two years, Tapad, a part of Experian has gone through a technical overhaul. Calling on almost ten years of expertise in identity resolution, we have created a modern platform that is flexible in terms of identity input as well as output. Anticipated change in the identity landscape was the driver behind our architecture decisions and what enables us to be responsive to a dynamic market. Consumer behavior and device use continue to change, bringing additional digital IDs into the equation – namely across the mobile and CTV environments. Our technology, however, is not tied to any specific type of identifier, but rather is focused on associating disparate identifiers at the individual and household level. Where do we go from here? Google’s announcement has been characterized as a conversation starter, but we see it more as a call to action. With a timeline set, there is a need to converge on one or more solutions that can scale across the web. In a post cookie world, publishers and advertisers will continue to require ways to create fair marketplaces across platforms and devices. Further, the platforms that currently power the programmatic advertising ecosystem will need to be able to invest and differentiate to bring value to their customers. Scaled privacy-safe identity solutions will be needed not only for classic targeting, attribution, measurement, and frequency capping use cases but also to carry consumer preferences and consent. Tapad, a part of Experian will continue to play a leading role here. However, we are not going to do this alone. As solutions around Google’s Chrome browser evolve, we will continue to take a leadership position and will work with Google, key industry groups, partners and customers to meet current and future needs for an independent identity solution at scale. In the meantime, we will continue to support an independent ecosystem where consumers come first and privacy standards are a priority. It’s business as usual…for now. There will not be any changes to our graph products or services as a result of Google’s announcement in the near term. Any changes related to the Chrome third-party cookie will evolve and will no doubt be subject to significant industry participation and feed-back, indeed at the invitation of Google. We will proactively communicate any changes and product updates during this time period. We look forward to the opportunities resulting from these changes and ushering in a new era of identity resolution in digital advertising. Contact us today