Media is changing and the sell-side is stepping boldly into the identity jungle—a dense and complex environment where privacy regulations, evolving signals, and advertiser expectations make every step an adventure. It’s not about survival; it’s about navigation. Experian’s identity solutions offer sell-side players like connected TV (CTV) publishers, supply-side platforms (SSPs), and open web publishers a roadmap to deliver rich consumer insights and build addressable audiences.
Here’s how different stakeholders are navigating the landscape—and why having the right sherpa makes all the difference.
CTV publishers: Turning anonymous viewers into addressable audiences
The surge in CTV viewing, fueled by the shift from linear TV to digital streaming, has made it a critical channel for marketers—but navigating the identity jungle isn’t the same for every platform.
For major players like Netflix, Hulu, and Max, where users log in to access content, the challenge isn’t identifying viewers but enriching their profiles. By layering behavioral and purchase data onto these profiles, platforms can go far beyond insights on media habits to create highly attractive audience segments for marketers to target.
For free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) platforms like Tubi, where logins aren’t required to watch content, the jungle is denser. These platforms have unknown viewers they can’t identify, which limits their ability to know who the customer is and reach them with relevant ads. By utilizing identity solutions, FAST platforms can turn unknown users into addressable audiences, resolving viewership at the household or individual level. This transformation allows for personalized, relevant ads that increase engagement, boost inventory value, and unlock new revenue opportunities.
How Experian can help
Imagine a CTV platform struggling with anonymous viewers on its FAST channels, where users tune in without logging in. Using Experian’s household-level data, the platform can convert these anonymous sessions into known, addressable audiences. This allows for personalized, precisely targeted ads that boost viewer engagement and significantly increase ad inventory value.
For platforms with logged-in users, Experian takes it further by enriching profiles with behavioral and purchase data. This deeper understanding enables even more precise ad targeting, stronger advertiser demand, driving higher CPMs, and ultimately greater revenue growth. With Experian, CTV publishers turn anonymity into opportunity and build meaningful connections across their audience.
SSPs: Delivering premium audiences across channels
SSPs are under pressure to differentiate themselves in a competitive marketplace. The days of simply aggregating inventory are gone; today, SSPs must prove their worth by delivering premium value to advertisers and publishers.
Addressability is a cornerstone of this strategy. By combining demographic and behavioral data with offline and digital identifiers, SSPs can build and deliver high-quality audiences across various channels.
At the same time, supply path optimization (SPO) is taking center stage. SPO acts as a machete in the underbrush, clearing out unnecessary intermediaries and reducing costs while creating direct, transparent pathways to premium, brand-safe inventory. When paired with identity data, SSPs can offer buyers precisely targeted audiences, more premium inventory and a streamlined supply path.
How Experian can help
Imagine an SSP striving to stand out in a crowded market by delivering premium value to advertisers and publishers. Experian’s Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes empowers SSPs to enhance addressability and audience insights by combining digital identifiers with demographic and behavioral data. This enriched understanding of an audience leads to greater reach for the buy side and higher revenue for publishers.
Additionally, these capabilities enable SSPs to form exclusive inventory partnerships, positioning them as go-to sources for high-value audiences. With Experian’s solutions, SSPs can differentiate themselves by delivering superior targeting, deeper audience understanding, and streamlined supply paths that drive measurable results for advertisers and publishers alike.
Open web publishers: Promoting addressability and audience understanding
For open web publishers, programmatic advertising has created opportunities—and challenges. Inventory commoditization makes it difficult to stand out and often leads to suppressed CPMs. To compete, publishers need data and identity solutions that enable them to differentiate their inventory and reveal the true value of their audience.
Similar to FAST publishers, the jungle for open web publishers often starts with anonymous visitors. Recognizing and identifying all their users allows publishers to present advertisers with rich audience insights that lead to more efficiently targeted ads. Publishers are now equipped to fight commoditization and maximize revenue potential.
How Experian can help
Imagine an open web publisher striving to deliver more value to advertisers in a crowded programmatic landscape. Experian’s identity solutions help publishers turn anonymous traffic into addressable audiences, enabling them to understand their visitors and provide richer audience insights. This allows advertisers to target ads more effectively, increasing engagement and driving higher ad revenue.
With the ability to recognize their visitors and offer actionable data, publishers can break free from commoditization. Experian empowers publishers to maximize their inventory’s value and help marketers drive results.
Turning identity challenges into a strategic advantage
The identity jungle can feel daunting, but for those willing to explore its opportunities, the rewards are immense. Sell-side players—CTV publishers, SSPs, and open web publishers—have the tools to not just navigate but thrive in this dense and dynamic ecosystem. By embracing data-driven strategies and identity solutions, they can uncover new paths to audience engagement, inventory value, and revenue growth.
Read our companion article to learn how the buy-side is approaching data and identity challenges.
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Cookies are leaving us, but that doesn’t have to mean performance has to. That’s why Experian is taking the steps needed to future-proof identity in our Graph, including adding Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) from The Trade Desk. Experian currently supports UID2 in our Graph outputs for demand-side platforms (DSPs). UID2 support in our Graph outputs will be available to all approved partners by December 2023. In this blog post, we talk about why cookieless IDs, like UID2, that are coming to market because of cookie deprecation, are important, and how incorporating cookieless IDs into an identity graph can help you prepare for a cookieless future. What are cookieless IDs? Like cookies, cookieless IDs provide you with a comprehensive view of a consumer’s digital activity. Unlike cookies, identity providers produce cookieless IDs, using user-consented data and deterministic and probabilistic data signals (like hashed emails or mobile ad IDs). Cookieless IDs are a newer identifier that allows the advertising industry to maintain our understanding of consumers’ digital actions, helping to ensure we continue to generate smart, data-driven insights, targets, activation strategies, personalized experiences, and measurement and attribution. Why should you incorporate cookieless IDs into an identity graph? Adding cookieless IDs to an identity graph allows for licensees of the graph to: Resolve the universal ID to a consolidated consumer profile and know which other digital IDs tie to the cookieless ID Establish a unified view of the consumer with a privacy-compliant ID Produce data-driven and informed advertising strategies that still drive results, without the use of cookies Experian’s Graph Experian’s Graph is one of the most robust and signal agnostic identity graphs in the market. Experian’s Graph supports most digital IDs, including cookieless IDs, such as ID5, UID2, and Hadron ID. When you license Experian’s Graph, you increase your ability to better understand the different digital IDs that tie to a household or individual. Additionally, with our cookieless ID support, you can continue to understand your consumer and their digital IDs in the cookieless world. Why is it crucial to include UID2 support in Experian's Graph outputs? The Trade Desk is the largest, independent demand-side platform. They’ve created a cookieless ID, UID2, that they hope can power the advertising world to come across the open web. UID2 is an alternative solution to third-party cookies that when utilized in an identity graph, can offer a clearer picture of your consumer, enabling frequency controls and better management, across both digital and connected TV (CTV). Approved DSPs can add UID2s to their Experian Graph, giving them access to one of the more trusted and prominent cookieless IDs in the market today. Additionally, DSPs can use this identifier to decide whether to bid on certain inventory or not, on behalf of their advertiser partner. And, if we hedge our bets, it will only grow in prominence and use. While only available to approved DSPs today for use in the Experian Graph, the forthcoming encrypted UID2 token will provide this capability to the entire ecosystem, which allows us all to speak the same language and operate as efficiently as possible. "We are excited to support UID2, one of the premier IDs to support the future of addressability across the open internet, in the Experian Graph. We continue to see the adoption of UID2 across the demand-side ecosystem, increasing addressability across growing channels like CTV and beyond. I am personally excited to see how this momentum continues to increase over the remainder of 2023 and into 2024."chris feo, svp, sales & partnerships, experian Future-proof your identity strategy with Experian Graph and UID2 We’ve seen the impact that cookies have had on digital advertising and marketing. With the impending third-party cookie deprecation, you will need to adopt alternative cookieless ID solutions such as Unified ID 2.0. Experian is well-positioned to help you navigate this change, offering UID2 support in our Graph outputs for all approved partners by December 2023. Take the right steps now to future-proof your identity strategy and discover lasting success even without cookies. Alongside Experian’s Graph solution, you can achieve resilience in an ever-changing world of digital marketing and advertising. Now is the time to get ready for a cookieless future. Connect with an Experian team member to learn more about our Graph capabilities today. Learn more about Experian's Graph today Latest posts
In this article…How data collaboration is evolving from 2023 to 2024How to create efficient data collaboration strategies We live in a data-driven world, and businesses need effective data collaboration strategies to remain successful. Before you determine your 2023 and 2024 data collaboration options, it’s essential to understand what data collaboration is. In short, it involves sharing and combining data from multiple sources to better understand a customer base and make informed marketing decisions. Read on to learn more about our three-step plan to create new data collaboration strategies, how it’s evolving, and what we do to ensure our solutions help maintain your company’s data privacy. How data collaboration is evolving from 2023 to 2024 Data collaboration strategies continually evolve thanks to changing industry dynamics and new technologies. As we move from 2023 to 2024, we’ll likely see collaboration extending outside businesses, meaning data can be shared with external partnerships in the form of a data ecosystem. A data ecosystem is a platform that combines numerous information points, including packages, algorithms, and cloud-computing services, to allow businesses to store, analyze, and use the data they’ve collected. To ensure you’re ready for 2024 data collaboration, you’ll need to take a forward-thinking approach toward new data strategies. How to create efficient data collaboration strategies Here are our three steps for efficient collaboration to make the most of 2023 data collaboration and prepare for 2024. Identify your collaboration goal What are you hoping to gain from data collaboration? Do you understand the audience you’re trying to target and what you want regarding outcomes? To measure your success, you should set short- and long-term goals surrounding data collaboration in 2023 and 2024. Maximize the value of your data One of the most important reasons to gather data is to discover in-depth insights into your audience and the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. You’ll be able to identify hidden patterns and pinpoint trends you may not have noticed before. With this information, you can make more strategic marketing decisions to stay competitive in your industry. Resolve digital identities Collaborating on data with trusted partners can help you gain a more complete view of your customers by building comprehensive digital profiles. Resolving digital identities can provide greater insight into online and offline behavior of individual consumers, allowing you to better connect with your target audience and boost brand loyalty. Find an alternative to third-party cookies Digital privacy regulations are getting more strict, which is why it’s so important to find more secure alternatives to third-party cookies. By collaborating on data, you can gather essential insights without relying on cookies. This means you’ll still get the information you want while complying with privacy regulations. Choose the right collaboration partner Before you choose a data collaboration partner, it’s essential to ensure their privacy standards align with yours. How do they collect data and use it ethically and responsibly? At Experian, we are dedicated to protecting consumers and delivering responsible and transparent data practices. We focus on five Global Data Principles — security, accuracy, fairness, transparency, and inclusion — to ensure we treat data carefully and respectfully while boosting economic growth and resilience in the marketing environment. When you partner with us for data collaboration, you can trust that your data is protected in a system built for 2023 data collaboration needs — both known and unknown — while still evolving for 2024 and beyond. Choose a secure environment for collaboration Data collaboration security is vital to safeguard your business and consumers’ information. You can make sure your new data collaboration options are protected in several ways. We’ve outlined three options below. Collaboration in clean rooms Clean rooms are secure, private environments where data is shared and analyzed without exposing the underlying raw data. This ensures that sensitive information remains protected and insights are discovered securely. Experian has vetted clean room partners if this is an option you prefer while still getting industry-leading identity resolution. Collaboration directly Collaborating directly with your partner can be a good option if you have robust security measures. Encryption, access controls, and regular audits are essential to maintain data security in direct collaborations. Collaboration with Experian We excel at meeting our clients where they are and accommodating their technical capabilities and how they manage their data. We offer a secure and compliant environment for data collaboration. Our data collaboration solutions are designed to protect your data while enabling deeper insights. At Experian, we understand the importance of data privacy, and our platform reflects our commitment to safeguarding your information. Enable deeper insights and activation with Experian’s data collaboration solution Data collaboration is crucial in today’s business world, and Experian’s solutions are designed to help you bring together your 2023 and 2024 data collaboration strategies securely and efficiently. With Experian, you can unlock deeper insights, resolve digital identities, and confidently navigate the evolving data privacy landscape. If you’re looking for the right partner to enhance data collaboration to drive growth and innovation in your business, you’ll find a secure environment and the right partner with Experian. Contact us today to get started. Contact us Latest posts
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