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.
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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.
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Study reveals that brands with more mature identity programs were significantly more likely to be successful in achieving their key objectives Tapad, a part of Experian, a global leader in cross-device digital identity resolution and a part of Experian, has commissioned Forrester Consulting, part of a leading research and advisory firm, to conduct a new study that evaluates the current state of customer data-driven marketing and explores how marketers can use identity solutions to deliver privacy safe and engaging experiences, in an evolving data landscape. The study highlights the changing ground rules for digital marketing and the threat that poses to marketers’ ability to deliver against long standing KPIs and campaign goals. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of respondents said that the forces of data deprecation will have a significant (40%) or critical (21%) impact on their marketing strategies over the next two years. Among those surveyed, identity resolution strategies have surfaced as an opportunity to create more powerful customer experiences, with 66% aiming to have it help improve customer trust and implement more ethical data collection and use practices, while nearly 60% believe it will point the way to more effective personalization and data management practices. Although organizations are eager to implement identity resolution strategies, a complex web of solutions and partners makes execution a challenge. For example, respondents report using at least eight identity solutions on average, across nearly six vendor partners, and they expect that fragmentation to persist in the ‘cookieless’ future. Additionally, brands’ identity resolution technologies typically represent a patchwork of homegrown and commercial solutions. Eighty-one percent of respondents use both in-house and commercial identity resolution tools today, and 47% use a near-equal blend of the two. Despite the challenges, many brands have the foundation for a strong identity resolution strategy in place, and they are thriving as a result. Specifically, more mature brands were 79% more successful at improving privacy safeguards to reduce regulatory and compliance risk, 247% more successful at improving marketing ROI, and over four times more effective at improving customer trust compared to their low-maturity peers. Additional insights include: Marketers Are Increasingly Playing a Key Strategic Role Within the Organization, But There is a Mandate to Demonstrate Value. Nearly three-quarters of respondents in our study agree the marketing function is more strategically important to their organization than it used to be, while almost two-thirds agree there’s more pressure than ever to prove the ROI or business performance of their activities. Consumers Expect Brands to Deliver Engaging Experiences Across Highly Fragmented Journeys: Tapad, a part of Experian found that 72% of respondents agree that customers demand more relevant, personalized experiences at the time and place of their choosing. At the same time, 67% of respondents recognize that customer purchase journeys take place over more touchpoints and channels than ever, and 59% of respondents agree that those journeys are less predictable and linear than they once were. Marketing Runs on Data, But the Rules Governing Customer Data Usage are Ever-Evolving: According to the study, 70% of decision-makers agree that consumer data is the lifeblood of their marketing strategies – fueling the personalized, omnichannel experiences customers demand. At the same time, 69% of respondents recognize that customers are increasingly aware of how their data is being used. At least two-thirds agree that data deprecation, including tighter restrictions on data use (66%), as well as operating system and browser changes impacting third-party cookies (68%) means that legacy marketing strategies are unlikely to remain viable in the long-term.“ Our latest survey findings give us a better understanding of how our customers and other companies around the world are trying to master the relationship between people, their data and their devices,” said Mark Connon, General Manager at Tapad, a part of Experian. “This research shows why it’s fundamental for the industry to continuously work to develop solutions that are agnostic. Tapad, a part of Experian has worked tirelessly to deliver on this with our Tapad Graph, and by introducing solutions like Switchboard to help the evolving ecosystem and in turn helping customers reap the benefits of better identity in both short and long-term.” The study is founded on an online survey of over 300 decision-makers at global brands and agencies, which was fielded from March to April, 2021. Data deprecation and identity are fast-developing, moving targets, so this study delivers targeted insights and recommendations for how to prepare for coming shifts in customer data strategies – whether they manifest tomorrow or a year from now. Get in touch
With the recent announcement of delaying third-party cookie deprecation to 2024, the industry has more time to rethink how to identify and communicate with consumers.