At A Glance
With Experian’s Digital Graph, a leading DSP resolved 84% of IDs and increased match rates across digital channels such as CTV and display. The result: stronger attribution, clearer ROI proof, and renewed client confidence.Demand-side platforms (DSPs) are more than just technology providers, they’re strategic partners, helping marketers answer the key question: “How should I spend my media budget?”
A leading DSP struggled to attribute consumer actions across digital channels such as connected TV (CTV) and display. Without connecting impressions to conversions, they risked losing client trust and ROI proof. With Experian’s Digital Graph, they resolved 84% of IDs and increased match rates, strengthening attribution and client confidence.
The challenge
A leading DSP had trouble showing which ads drove results across CTV, display, and digital. Without linking ad views to conversions, they couldn’t prove ROI.
The missing piece was attribution. They needed to show which channels drove conversions, but without strong identity resolution, it was hard to connect CTV ads to website activity.
What is Experian’s Digital Graph?
Built from trillions of real-time data points and updated weekly, Experian’s Digital Graph connects billions of identifiers across devices and households, such as cookies, mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), CTV IDs, IP addresses, universal IDs, and more. It gives DSPs a reliable foundation by linking these identifiers back to households and individuals, improving DSPs’ ability to offer attribution by better connecting impressions to conversions.
What makes the Digital Graph unique is its scale and freshness. It ingests trillions of signals in real time and delivers updates weekly. That consistency matters: it gives DSPs confidence that they’re working with the most accurate view of digital identity.
AI and machine learning (ML) are core to how we maintain that level of accuracy. Our models use sophisticated clustering algorithms to analyze device connections at both household and individual levels. By evaluating data points such as timestamps, IP addresses, user agents, cookie IDs, and device identifiers, these algorithms create precise device groupings that enhance targeting and measurement accuracy. The models are continuously refined, ensuring our clients can better understand consumer behaviors within households and activate more effective, personalized marketing.
Think of it like connecting puzzle pieces scattered across devices and channels. On their own, each piece doesn’t say much. Together, they reveal the full picture of who saw an ad, engaged, and converted, and which ads performed best.
The solution
By syncing its cookies with the Digital Graph, the DSP gained access to related identifiers, including:
- MAIDs
- CTV IDs
- IP addresses
- Experian cookies
This expanded identity universe gave the DSP a unified view of individuals and households, making it possible to connect impressions to conversions across devices and channels. With each weekly refresh, attribution models stayed accurate and up to date, turning fragmented signals into proof of performance.
Results
Within weeks, the DSP saw measurable improvements:
- 84% of IDs synced
- 9% increase in match rates
With a stronger foundation of digital identifiers, the DSP matched more MAIDs, CTV IDs, and IP addresses to conversions. This allowed them to show clients exactly which ads and channels drove ROI, transforming impression reports into actionable proof of performance and strengthening client trust.
Why attribution matters now
Attribution has never been more critical. With signals fading and marketing budgets under pressure, DSPs need reliable data to prove performance.
Experian’s Digital Graph takes a multi-ID, always-on approach, refreshed weekly with trillions of signals. This delivers consistency and accuracy that single-point, stale-ID solutions can’t match.
For this DSP, that meant transforming attribution from guesswork into clear proof, strengthening client trust, and proving ROI across channels.
Connect with us today to see how our Digital Graph can help you maximize advertiser trust and ROI.
Ready to strengthen your approach to attribution?
FAQs
Experian’s Digital Graph is a privacy-conscious identity resolution solution built from trillions of real-time data points, refreshed weekly, that links identifiers like cookies, MAIDs, CTV IDs, Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2), ID5 IDs and IP addresses to households and individuals.
Experian’s Digital Graph improves attribution by connecting impressions to conversions across devices and channels, giving DSPs a clearer view of which ads and channels drove results.
While many platforms rely on single, static IDs, Experian’s Digital Graph uses a multi-ID, always-on approach with weekly refreshed, ensuring accuracy even as signals shift.
When you use Experian’s Digital Graph, you can expect higher match rates, more synced IDs, clearer attribution models, and stronger proof of ROI for your clients. Because Experian’s Digital Graph serves as the backbone of the industry, it also helps DSPs maximize the scale and reach they can deliver to advertisers.
Yes. Experian’s Digital Graph is designed with privacy in mind, ensuring compliance while still delivering accurate attribution insights.
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. 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