At A Glance
Truthset’s latest analysis reaffirms Experian as the leader in third-party data accuracy. Advertisers and partners can rely on Experian’s validated, AI-powered solutions to reduce waste, improve personalization, and drive measurable marketing outcomes grounded in accuracy.Experian continues to lead in data accuracy according to Truthset’s latest analysis
Advertisers, technology partners, and agencies are all chasing accurate data to power their marketing strategies. But not all data is created equal. Truthset’s latest findings confirm Experian’s leadership in third-party data accuracy, giving brands and agencies confidence in every decision they make.
Accurate data is the foundation for predictive insight, real-time intelligence, and AI-powered personalization. Experian’s AI-driven solutions help marketers move from data to action, delivering more relevant messages with less waste.
Truthset’s independent study found that up to 51% of ad targeting data is inaccurate, with accuracy rates ranging between 32% and 69% across providers. This reinforces the importance of validated, trusted data from partners like Experian.
The data quality challenge
Inaccurate data can lead to:
Wasted ad spend
Without accurate data at the start, marketers can’t reach the right audiences, resulting in wasted impressions.
Privacy and compliance risks
In an increasingly privacy-centric world, advertisers need to be especially mindful of accurate targeting to avoid putting their brand reputation at risk.
Poor campaign performance
Low-quality data skews metrics and attribution models, making it difficult to measure campaign success and optimize spend.
Low-quality data can come in different forms, like inconsistent or outdated information – think demographics (age, gender) and interests (dog versus cat lover), or simply the wrong relationship can be made between data sets. Data records can be incomplete or duplicative, and data segments could be misclassified or inaccurate. For example, a kids’ snack food company may think they’re targeting a 35-year-old man, who lives in the suburbs with his young family, when in fact it’s a 65-year-old woman who moved to the city after her kids went to college. That’s wasted investment.
As data ecosystems grow more complex, that’s where Experian’s AI-powered simplicity comes in. We can clean, enrich, and infer missing signals, helping you act on incomplete or imperfect data with greater confidence.
Building a solid data foundation
Accurate data is essential for personalization and trust. According to eMarketer, more than 75% of internet users worldwide are willing to share their email address, brand interest, and name in exchange for personalized experiences. Without accurate data, marketers won’t be able to provide the level of personalization that consumers desire.
But personalization at scale requires more than just data, it needs intelligence. Experian’s AI-powered capabilities, including predictive models, transform clean, validated data into meaningful engagement strategies that balance performance with privacy. Independent validation from Truthset ensures that Experian’s data remains among the most accurate in the ecosystem.
“As cookies and mobile ad identifiers continue to phase out, consented, durable identifiers (hashed email, postal addresses) are going to serve as the foundation for identity solutions of the future. And the only way to ensure you are transacting on the highest quality identity and demography data is to actively validate the data you rely on with a third party.”
TruthsetChip Russo, President
Experian’s commitment to data accuracy
Since joining the Truthset Data Collective in 2023, Experian continues to be the industry leader in data accuracy. Truthset’s latest Q2 2025 analysis reaffirms our leadership in data accuracy:
- Experian is the #1 data provider of largest volume of high-accuracy hashed emails (HEMs)
- Experian ranks #1 in accuracy for eight marketing data attributes, including but not limited to Age, Geography, Presence of Children, and Education
- Experian ranks #1 or #2 for 22 of the 24 attributes, and #3 for the two others (out of 12 companies being analyzed)
- Experian consistently has the largest number of HEMs that are 90% or more likely to be accurate
“As a member of the Truthset Data Collective, Experian received top ranks across a variety of categories for its data. The entire digital advertising world runs on data, but focusing on data accuracy is going to drive the next phase of innovation for the industry, enhancing ROI for advertisers, CPMs for publishers, and relevant experiences for consumers.”
TruthsetChip Russo, President
As Truthset’s recent study highlights, the data matched between hashed emails and postal addresses is crucial, underpinning everything from targeted ads to TV audience measurement. Highly accurate HEMs linked to high-quality demographic data should be the foundation of any marketing plan. Advertisers are able to overcome the complexities of identity resolution by tying online and offline touchpoints together to deliver a consistent message across channels.
Real-time relevance, powered by ethical AI
Experian combines validated identity data with intelligent technology to deliver marketing that works for people and brands.
Companies are striving to eliminate marketing waste and provide consumers with personalized marketing and the advertising industry can have confidence that Experian’s marketing data has been externally validated as being highly accurate. The accuracy of our data will power better marketing initiatives, like insights, targeting, identity, and measurement.
Whether you’re optimizing for reach, relevance, or ROI, AI is changing how marketing works. Experian’s human-centered, privacy-first AI makes it easier to adapt, act faster, and connect with consumers in ways that are more meaningful.
Let’s start a conversation about how we can fully realize the potential of data-driven advertising together.
Contact us today
FAQs
Truthset is an independent data validation company that reviews and ranks data providers based on accuracy. Their ratings help advertisers understand which data sources they can trust. Experian ranks #1 in data accuracy according to Truthset.
Experian ranks #1 for accuracy in multiple categories, including Age, Geography, and Presence of Children, and holds the largest number of hashed emails that are 90% or more likely to be accurate.
Accurate data is important for marketers because it leads to more efficient targeting, reduced ad waste, and better campaign performance. It also reduces compliance risk by helping advertisers engage responsibly. Experian’s data is ranked #1 in data accuracy according to Truthset.
Experian’s privacy-first, AI-driven models clean, enrich, and validate data while respecting consent and ethical standards.
Connect with the Experian team to learn how our validated data and AI-powered solutions can strengthen your targeting, insights, and ROI.
Latest posts
Originally appeared on MarTech Series Marketing’s understanding of identity has evolved rapidly over the past decade, much like the shifting media landscape itself. From the early days of basic direct mail targeting to today's complex omnichannel environment, identity has become both more powerful and more fragmented. Each era has brought new tools, challenges, and opportunities, shaping how brands interact with their customers. We’ve moved from traditional media like mail, newspapers, and linear/network TV, to cable TV, the internet, mobile devices, and apps. Now, multiple streaming platforms dominate, creating a far more complex media landscape. As a result, understanding the customer journey and reaching consumers across these various touchpoints has become increasingly difficult. Managing frequency and ensuring effective communication across channels is now more challenging than ever. This development has led to a fragmented view of the consumer, making it harder for marketers to ensure that they are reaching the right audience at the right time while also avoiding oversaturation. Marketers must now navigate a fragmented customer journey across multiple channels, each with its own identity signals, to stitch together a cohesive view of the customer. Let’s break down this evolution, era by era, to understand how identity has progressed—and where it’s headed. 2010-2015: The rise of digital identity – Cookies and MAIDs Between 2010 and 2015, the digital era fundamentally changed how marketers approached identity. Mobile usage surged during this time, and programmatic advertising emerged as the dominant method for reaching consumers across the internet. The introduction of cookies and mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) became the foundation for tracking users across the web and mobile apps. With these identifiers, marketers gained new capabilities to deliver targeted, personalized messages and drive efficiency through programmatic advertising. This era gave birth to powerful tools for targeting. Marketers could now follow users’ digital footprints, regardless of whether they were browsing on desktop or mobile. This leap in precision allowed brands to optimize spend and performance at scale, but it came with its limitations. Identity was still tied to specific browsers or devices, leaving gaps when users switched platforms. The fragmentation across different devices and the reliance on cookies and MAIDs meant that a seamless, unified view of the customer was still out of reach. 2015-2020: The age of walled gardens From 2015 to 2020, the identity landscape grew more complex with the rise of walled gardens. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon created closed ecosystems of first-party data, offering rich, self-declared insights about consumers. These platforms built massive advertising businesses on the strength of their user data, giving marketers unprecedented targeting precision within their environments. However, the rise of walled gardens also marked the start of new challenges. While these platforms provided detailed identity solutions within their walls, they didn’t communicate with one another. Marketers could target users with pinpoint accuracy inside Facebook or Google, but they couldn’t connect those identities across different ecosystems. This siloed approach to identity left marketers with an incomplete picture of the customer journey, and brands struggled to piece together a cohesive understanding of their audience across platforms. The promise of detailed targeting was tempered by the fragmentation of the landscape. Marketers were dealing with disparate identity solutions, making it difficult to track users as they moved between these closed environments and the open web. 2020-2025: The multi-ID landscape – CTV, retail media, signal loss, and privacy By 2020, the identity landscape had splintered further, with the rise of connected TV (CTV) and retail media adding even more complexity to the mix. Consumers now engaged with brands across an increasing number of channels—CTV, mobile, desktop, and even in-store—and each of these channels had its own identifiers and systems for tracking. Simultaneously, privacy regulations are tightening the rules around data collection and usage. This, coupled with the planned deprecation of third-party cookies and MAIDs has thrown marketers into a state of flux. The tools they had relied on for years were disappearing, and new solutions had yet to fully emerge. The multi-ID landscape was born, where brands had to navigate multiple identity systems across different platforms, devices, and environments. Retail media networks became another significant player in the identity game. As large retailers like Amazon and Walmart built their own advertising ecosystems, they added yet another layer of first-party data to the mix. While these platforms offer robust insights into consumer behavior, they also operate within their own walled gardens, further fragmenting the identity landscape. With cookies and MAIDs being phased out, the industry began to experiment with alternatives like first-party data, contextual targeting, and new universal identity solutions. The challenge and opportunity for marketers lies in unifying these fragmented identity signals to create a consistent and actionable view of the customer. 2025: The omnichannel imperative Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, the identity landscape will continue to evolve, but the focus remains the same: activating and measuring across an increasingly fragmented and complex media environment. Consumers now expect seamless, personalized experiences across every channel—from CTV to digital to mobile—and marketers need to keep up. The future of identity lies in interoperability, scale, and availability. Marketers need solutions that can connect the dots across different platforms and devices, allowing them to follow their customers through every stage of the journey. Identity must be actionable in real-time, allowing for personalization and relevance across every touchpoint, so that media can be measurable and attributable. Brands that succeed in 2025 and beyond will be those that invest in scalable, omnichannel identity solutions. They’ll need to embrace privacy-friendly approaches like first-party data, while also ensuring their systems can adapt to an ever-changing landscape. Adapting to the future of identity The evolution of identity has been marked by increasing complexity, but also by growing opportunity. As marketers adapt to a world without third-party cookies and MAIDs, the need for unified identity solutions has never been more urgent. Brands that can navigate the multi-ID landscape will unlock new levels of efficiency and personalization, while those that fail to adapt risk falling behind. The path forward is clear: invest in identity solutions that bridge the gaps between devices, platforms, and channels, providing a full view of the customer. The future of marketing belongs to those who can manage identity in a fragmented world—and those who can’t will struggle to stay relevant. Explore our identity solutions Contact us Latest posts
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