At A Glance
Omnichannel marketing only works when a consumer’s journey across TV, social, and in-store moments builds one connected story instead of scattered impressions. In this conversation, Experian and MiQ discuss how marketers can use connected identity and richer audience data, including MiQ Sigma, to plan and activate campaigns that reach the right people across channels and markets.Key takeways
- MiQ Sigma uses Experian’s Digital Graph inside MiQ’s Identity Spine to resolve audiences consistently across devices, channels, and data feeds.
- Sigma’s Planning Agent turns a single brief into an omnichannel plan, with Experian Marketing Attributes enriching the demographic and behavioral signals behind its recommendations.
- Experian WorldView delivers a geographic unit smaller and more consistent than a postal code across more than 130 countries, helping marketers hold local relevance at global scale.
- Before the next plan, marketers should check whether it’s connected (not just everywhere), data led, built on portable first-party data, and consistent in signal depth across markets.
One consumer might see an ad on TV Sunday night, scroll past a social post on Monday, and buy in-store by Friday. Each moment happens on a different platform with its own identifiers and data, and together they form one continuous journey. Planning for that journey starts with connecting the signals behind it.
Lara Koenig, Global VP of Strategy and Partnerships at global programmatic media partner MiQ, joined us to discuss how a connected identity foundation and richer consumer attributes help marketers plan omnichannel campaigns with insight instead of assumptions and reach the right people across markets.
What makes a plan omnichannel, not just everywhere
A connected omnichannel plan carries one story across platforms. Each message builds on what a consumer has already seen, so reach adds up to a consistent experience across TV, social, digital, and in-store moments.
Connecting those moments takes work. First-party data varies in depth from brand to brand, platforms use different identifiers, and for global campaigns, the signals that explain behavior in one country often look different in the next.
Planning with data before the dollars move
MiQ uses data and artificial intelligence (AI) to give marketers a fuller view of their audiences, combining age and gender with the attributes and behaviors that shape intent. One consumer might be a parent, a retail shopper, and a sports fan at once, and each signal adds to the plan. That fuller picture helps MiQ plan around the moments when intent is highest.
To make that practical, MiQ built MiQ Sigma, a platform that puts data in marketers’ hands so they can explore it and find the audiences they hadn’t thought to look for.
Where Experian fits inside MiQ Sigma
MiQ integrated Experian’s Digital Graph into its Identity Spine, which connects dozens of data feeds and ID solutions. That gives MiQ cross-device and cross-channel resolution it can apply consistently, whatever the signal.
Sigma’s Planning Agent turns a single brief into an omnichannel plan with audience, channel, and tactical recommendations. Experian Marketing Attributes enrich the demographic and behavioral signals that feed the Planning Agent, adding TV viewing and purchase behavior to data marketers already trust, so its recommendations reflect what audiences watch and buy.
“We’ve built a platform called MiQ Sigma. Experian is a core element of the identity spine behind that which helps us enrich a lot of other data partners we license to tell a really connected universe story across the world.”
MiQLara Koenig, Global VP of Strategy and Partnerships
Identity is the foundation
A marketer’s first-party data is their richest asset, and it varies widely: deep email-based insight for some brands, a name and address for others, and very little for consumer-packaged goods (CPG) brands whose sales usually happen at the retailer. Identity resolution makes that data addressable. It works like a translation layer, connecting a marketer’s customer data to the identifiers media platforms accept, such as hashed emails (HEMS), and mobile ad IDs (MAIDS).
Experian keeps the foundation consistent while the inputs vary. Our identity foundation is signal-agnostic and platform-agnostic, so MiQ can plug in local retailer, broadcaster, and device data and still resolve it to the same person and household view. MiQ saw this in practice when it brought Experian’s Digital Graph into its Identity Spine, expanding reach and scale across screens.
Why scale and local relevance pull against each other
Scale and relevance can pull against each other when the data behind a plan change from one market to the next. Retailers, broadcasters, and TV manufacturers differ by country, and in some regions, privacy rules shape how identifiers like IP addresses and hashed emails can be used, which makes location a practical unit for planning. Experian WorldView provides demographic and location data in consistent 250-meter grids, a unit smaller than most postal codes, across global markets. That shared framework helps marketers compare markets and sharpen local planning in categories such as quick-service restaurants, CPG, and retail.
Beyond reach: Making the hard question simple
Reach is the starting point. From there, marketers need to understand audiences in the context of their goals, activate through privacy-forward, governed identity, measure what happened, and keep improving..
“There’s a lot of complex stitching that happens just to answer that basic question: who do you want to target and why, and how do you reach them? There are 30 different platforms, 60 different seats behind that, identity resolution partners, TV viewership partners. We want to make that question really simple to answer.”
MiQLara Koenig, Global VP of Strategy and Partnerships
Four questions to ask before your next omnichannel plan
Before you build your next omnichannel plan, start with four questions:
Together, MiQ and Experian help marketers connect identity, insight, activation, and measurement across channels and markets.
Ready to plan with more connected data? Contact us
Click here to view Experian’s U.S. Consumer Data Privacy Notice.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
About our expert
Lara Koenig
Global VP of Strategy and Partnerships, MiQ
Lara Koenig is Vice President of Global Strategy & Partnerships at MiQ, where she leads product strategy and partnership development for the company’s omnichannel advertising capabilities. Over her decade-long tenure at MiQ, Lara has led high-scale teams across Programmatic Trading and Product Development, managing departments of more than 50 people and helping deliver innovative advertising solutions and best-in-class service for global marketers.
Lara brings deep expertise across programmatic trading, product development, identity, data collaboration and the broader ad tech ecosystem. In her current role, she works with global and enterprise clients and partners to help turn fragmented consumer signals into more connected, actionable media strategies across channels and markets. Her perspective centers on giving marketers a clearer understanding of audiences, the data behind consumer behavior and the partnerships needed to plan, activate and measure more effectively.
A recognized voice in the industry, Lara also contributes to cross-industry working groups and advocates for publisher development, education and stronger standards around buy-side supply path optimization. She regularly speaks on omnichannel strategy, retail media, AI-enabled planning, identity and the evolution of advertising partnerships.
FAQs
MiQ Sigma is MiQ’s AI-powered platform that gives marketers direct access to audience data, so they can find audiences they hadn’t considered instead of relying on a single demographic persona. Experian’s Digital Graph sits inside MiQ’s Identity Spine, which powers Sigma’s cross-device and cross-channel resolution, and Experian Marketing Attributes enrich the signals behind Sigma’s Planning Agent.
Experian’s identity foundation is signal-agnostic and platform-agnostic, so MiQ can plug in local retailer, broadcaster, and device data and still resolve it to the same person and household view. Experian’s Digital Graph expanded MiQ’s reach and scale across screens, and Experian WorldView adds consistent socio-demographic and location data across more than 130 countries for markets where postcodes aren’t precise or available enough for activation.
A connected plan carries one cohesive story and accounts for what a consumer has already seen, so each message builds on the last. A plan that simply runs across many channels often repeats the same message in different places and calls that reach, without the identity and data work needed to link those channels together.
First-party data varies widely in depth, from deep email-based insight to just a name and address, and on its own it often can’t be used across every platform a marketer buys on. Identity resolution works like a translation layer, connecting that data to the identifiers platforms accept, such as a hashed email, mobile ad ID, or phone number, so marketers can activate consistently across channels.
Global omnichannel plans don’t need identical data in every country, but the data needs to resolve to a consistent, comparable view across markets, since retailers, broadcasters, and privacy rules differ by country. Experian WorldView addresses this by providing a geographic unit smaller and more consistent than a postal code across more than 130 countries, giving marketers a way to keep local targeting accurate without losing global scale.
Latest posts
Marketers are under more pressure than ever before to prove ROI and efficiency of marketing activities in relation to business performance. On top of that, there are new privacy regulations and uncertainty around what new technologies will have to be implemented in order to replace the granular level targeting and measurement the industry historically has used third-party cookies for. It’s clear marketers are going to need the right tech stack and partners to continue to prove their team’s efficacy. We recently partnered with Forrester Consulting to evaluate the current state of customer data-driven marketing and surveyed over 300 global marketing decision makers at the brand and agency levels. We found that marketing is facing increased demands today, insights from the study include:Consumers expect brands to deliver engaging experiences across highly fragmented journeys. Seventy-two percent of decision-makers reported that customers demand more relevant, personalized experiences at the time and place of their choosing. Marketing runs on data, but the rules governing customer data usage are changing quickly. More than 70% of study participants stated that consumer data is the lifeblood of their marketing strategies, fueling the personalized, omnichannel experiences customers demand. These demands paint a challenging picture. Just as marketers are poised (and tasked) with delivering greater value to their organizations and customers, the ground rules are changing and threatening their ability to deliver. Indeed, 62% of respondents said that the forces of data deprecation will have either a “Significant” (40%) or “Critical” (21%) impact on their marketing strategies over the next two years. Effective identity resolution can help brands prepare for data deprecation challenges Marketers face a daunting landscape, but they can leverage the data, technology, and processes that comprise identity resolution to address business objectives, combat ecosystem complexity, and future-proof customer engagement efforts. By utilizing identity resolution, marketers will be able to match and connect multiple identifiers across devices and touchpoints. This allows for a cohesive, omnichannel view that enables brands to continue to deliver personalized and contextually relevant messages throughout the customer journey and without the use of cookies. The identity graph is the underlying infrastructure that defines connections between the numerous, fluid, and disparate identifiers created during moments of consumer engagement, turning disparate signals into addressable and actionable steps. These connections enable brands to bolster their ability to gain deeper customer insights and power audience building, attribution, and connected measurement. Identity resolution encompasses a wide range of capabilities that support an equally diverse set of marketing use cases. These include the targeting, personalization, and measurement of both known and pseudonymous audiences in the offline and digital worlds, which enables marketers to improve customer data management, drive more effective personalization, and gain insights and efficiencies through measurement across touchpoints. By taking the time to vet the privacy procedures and data collection processes of identity solutions you can reduce your regulatory risk and maintain customer trust. In an open-ended survey response, a marketer shared, “We’ve found that users are willing to volunteer data when they understand what it’s being used for and are asked for clear consent.” Finding the right partners to help navigate the changes The scramble to find an alternative to third-party cookies has slowed down since Google announced they will be delaying their cookie removal until late 2023. However, this gives marketers a unique opportunity to take advantage of the additional time and feel more prepared and confident in their solutions. With the delay, marketers can now test ID solutions and compare apples to apples with data from the third-party cookie while it’s still active and addressable. Test and find a solution that works now, so there are no surprises once cookies have finally made their way out the door in 2023. At Tapad, a part of Experian, we’ve developed a solution that provides agnostic interoperability for the myriad of cookieless identifiers emerging in the market. As a new module in the Tapad Graph, Switchboard will connect traditional digital identifiers to cookieless IDs to support the entire ad ecosystem with privacy-safe future-proof identity resolution. Get in touch
Email hashing was originally intended to be used as an email security feature that has ended up being a very powerful marketing tool. A hashed email is a cryptographic function that changes an email address to a random code which can be used as an anonymous customer identifier. This code is privacy-safe and cannot be traced back to the customer’s email address. However, this hashed email can function like a digital passport that traces every behavior and action a customer takes when logged into an account that is authenticated with an email, making hashed emails a goldmine for customer data. Today emails are used across traditional publishers and within the CTV ecosystem; tying them to more consumer touch points than ever before. Why the emphasis now? Cookies are on their way out the door and have been the primary way that many marketers have tracked their existing and potential customers. In order to replace this granular level of data, marketers are likely going to need multiple solutions. With so many cookieless solutions and IDs appearing in the marketplace, the mapping of the customer journey is bound to be fragmented. Relying on first-party data, such as hashed email, is just one way to reduce that fragmentation; as it can serve as an authenticated starting point for cross-device identity resolution that can be leveraged for targeting, personalization and measurement. How can Tapad + Experian help? Tapad + Experian’s Hashed Email Onboarding is a privacy-safe way to connect consumer email addresses to their related digital devices and other digital identifiers through high precision probabilistic identity. By onboarding hashed emails and incorporating them within your Tapad Graph file you can: Build a more holistic view of individuals and households and their relationship to email addresses in your first-party data set Leverage these relationships for increased cross-device scale for targeting Employ personalization tactics at the household or individual level across devices Create new audience segments and look-alike models for cross-channel activation Design more inclusive measurement and attribution for customer journey mapping Tapad, a part of Experian has built a hashed email onboarding product feature that works with the existing flexibility of The Tapad Graph to deliver the most holistic consumer view, combined with the attributes you need, in the structure that works best for your business objectives. Get in touch
The result of epic shifts from traditional cable to streaming television, the CTV ecosystem is experiencing compounded fragmentation, making it challenging for marketers to leverage in the most effective way for both activation and measurement. Heralded as the hot new household level device for highly engaged viewers, CTV brings massive opportunities for brands to move users down the funnel and incorporate CTV into their attribution modeling post-campaign. Leveraging CTV IDs within a cross-device identity resolution strategy can yield big benefits if you know how to do it right. Check out our breakdown of today’s CTV landscape to help you better understand how and what you can leverage for activation and measurement in the streaming-verse today. Addressability and attribution Not all CTV devices and IDs are addressable; or have ad slots for biddable inventory for advertisers. For example, Apple TV devices and Apple TV + are not ad supported, but could still appear within an identity graph for measurement purposes; helping understand customer behavior and habits, which can inform marketing strategies. Having a household to individual view that’s as inclusive as possible can provide valuable insights. CTV identity strategy Whether or not CTV devices or apps are addressable for advertisers, they can bring immense value when leveraged as part of a holistic identity resolution strategy. As a household level device with user authentication it can provide marketers a top-down view; unlocking household:individual targeting opportunities and unification of IDs at both levels for frequency management and customer journey mapping Get started with us Tapad, part of Experian, offers CTV ID onboarding and extension to our CTV ID Universe as a part of The Tapad Graph suite of products.