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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Tapad, now part of Experian, technology now powers Lifesight's real world intelligence platform with cross-device and reach expansion in the Asia Pacific Region SINGAPORE, Nov. 20, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, part of Experian and a global leader in digital identity resolution, today announced a new partnership with Lifesight, a leading provider of real world intelligence for advertisers in the Asia Pacific region (APAC). With the combined offering of The Tapad Graph, Tapad's global, privacy-safe digital cross-device solution, and Lifesight's real world intelligence platform, brands and agencies across APAC can benefit from better consumer targeting, expanded reach for targeted audiences and web-to-mobile footfall attribution. Through this multi-layered offering, Lifesight's brand and agency partners can access an omnichannel view of consumers' paths to purchase, thereby enabling them to increase the reach, measurability and ROI of their advertising campaigns. Rohit Maheswaran, Co-founder of Lifesight commented, "The consumer journey is getting increasingly more complex with ever changing digital and physical world behaviours, making it difficult for marketers to make strategic marketing spend decisions. That's why it's our mission at Lifesight to empower the brands and agencies within the APAC market to achieve better targeting and measurement capabilities, and our partnership with Tapad will help further this cause." Abhay Doshi, Head of APAC at Tapad added, "The Tapad Graph, which enables a unified view of consumers across their multiple digital devices, has a reach of 1 billion devices across the APAC market today. Paired with Lifesight's consumer insights of more than 500 million unique devices, this valuable partnership will offer the market extended consumer reach and prove beneficial to brands and advertisers across APAC who have historically struggled with resolving attribution." To learn more about Tapad and our digital identity resolution capabilities, visit www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync About Tapad Tapad, Inc. is a global leader in digital identity resolution. The Tapad Graph, and its related solutions, provide a transparent, privacy-safe approach connecting brands to consumers through their devices globally. Our one-of-a-kind Graph Select offering enables marketers the flexibility and freedom of choice to correlate devices to varied objectives, driving campaign effectiveness and business results. Tapad is recognized across the industry for its product innovation, workplace culture and talent, and has earned numerous awards including One World Identity's 2019 Top 100 Influencers in Identity Award. Headquartered in New York, Tapad also has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. About Lifesight Lifesight is Asia's leading real world intelligence company that helps marketers understand, target, and measure consumers based on their real world behaviour. Lifesight's robust platform and data solutions power business decisioning, audience activation, footfall measurement, and in-depth location analytics for leading brands and enterprises. The company is headquartered in Singapore with a rapidly expanding footprint in the Asia Pacific region operating in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. To learn more, visit https://www.lifesight.io/. Contact us today
NEW YORK, Oct. 24, 2019 /PRNewswire/ – Tapad, part of Experian and a global leader in digital identity resolution, today announced a new partnership with Retargetly, a leading independent full stack data company. The partnership combines Tapad's cross-device identity resolution technology with Retargetly's robust data toolset, allowing brands and agencies using Retargetly's platform to seamlessly access an expanded audience across devices, without compromising precision. In addition to reach expansion, Tapad's global, privacy-safe digital cross-device solution, The Tapad Graph, enables Retargetly's brand and agency clients a more holistic digital customer journey analysis, and efficient campaign capabilities like frequency capping and online attribution. At the same time, Tapad will be able to extend its presence into the LATAM region, tapping into Retargetly's existing regional footprint. "Combining The Tapad Graph's technology with Retargetly's platform will enable customers to make holistic, data-driven decisions that increase the ROI of their campaigns," said Chris Feo, SVP of Global Data Licensing and Strategic Partnerships at Tapad. "We can now offer advertisers the value of both technologies to optimize their marketing initiatives across the globe by creating seamless experiences across multiple devices and channels." Understanding a consumer's cross-device journey is a marketing necessity. A recent study showed that 75% of consumers expect a consistent experience from brands1. With the number of devices per individual rapidly increasing, digital identity resolution becomes essential to create that streamlined experience consumers crave. "Similarly to Tapad, our goal is to offer marketers a suite of products that can increase the ROI of their campaigns," said Juan Amuchastegui, Head of Product at Retargetly. "In order to achieve this, marketers need digital cross-device identity resolution to gain attribution, acquisition and reach expansion capabilities. We chose Tapad as our partner because The Tapad Graph has differentiated global scale, and privacy-safe measures, which we knew would benefit our clients' campaigns." Santi Darmandrail, Managing Director at Retargetly added, "Across the Americas our clients choose to work with us because of our scale, our precision, and our unique approach to what data can do to transform business outcomes. In that scenario, partnering with Tapad and integrating The Tapad Graph onto our platform was really a no-brainer and we are beyond excited to be making that available for our more than 700 clients across the region." To learn more about Tapad and our digital identity resolution products, visit our identity solutions page. About Tapad Tapad, Inc. is a global leader in digital identity resolution. The Tapad Graph, and its related solutions, provide a transparent, privacy-safe approach connecting brands to consumers through their devices globally. Tapad is recognized across the industry for its product innovation, workplace culture and talent, and has earned numerous awards including One World Identity's 2019 Top 100 Influencers in Identity Award. Headquartered in New York, Tapad also has offices in Chicago, Denver, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. About Retargetly: Retargetly is the leading independent data solution from Latam. Their proprietary platform processes over 25 billion data events a month and transforms them into actionable analytics that drive business results across the board. The recently launched Retargetly Audience Platform (RAM) is the number one data exchange in Latin America, with over 1000 active buyers and millions of dollars traded every year. Regargetly provides services across Latam and has offices in Buenos Aires, Mexico City, São Paulo and New York. For more information, visit www.retargetly.com. Contact us today
NEW YORK, Oct. 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ – Tapad, part of Experian and a global leader in digital identity resolution, and The Trade Desk, a global advertising technology leader, partnered to integrate The Trade Desk's unified ID solution in April 2019. The Trade Desk's unified ID solution's objective is to serve as a standardized cookie ID to help marketers reach more of their audience on the open internet. After an initial six month period, Tapad reports significant adoption rates and enhanced customer results since their joint integration in April. As a result of the partnership, client brands, agencies, DMPs/ DSPs, Data Providers, Mobile Networks and Measurement/Analytics Providers, saw increased match rates up to 38% and more global coverage without compromising precision. With this combined offering, Tapad's global, privacy-safe digital cross-device solution, The Tapad Graph, connects brands with consumers over 4 billion devices globally. "There is a need for digital identity solutions outside the walled gardens that can accommodate the need for both precision and scale," said Chris Feo, SVP of Strategy and Global Partnerships at Tapad. "Through our partnership with The Trade Desk, we are empowering companies to have a comparable digital identity resolution across the open web as compared to the walled garden environments." Over 25 companies who license The Tapad Graph, such as Annalect, Semasio, Retargetly, and ThinkCX, have also included The Trade Desk's unified ID solution as a key identifier in their graph output. "The vast improvement in scale that Tapad has seen illustrates the value digital identity resolution products can bring for brands," said Nate Gawel, General Manager of Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk. "We're looking forward to continuing work with Tapad to prove that the open internet can deliver the very same benefits many reserve for large platforms." Adoption of the unified ID solution allows all parties across the supply chain (SSPs, DSPs, DMPs and data providers) to utilize The Trade Desk's cookie footprint to increase their own cookie coverage across the global independent internet. For more information, please visit The Trade Desk's unified ID solution site, or https://www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync to learn more about Tapad's digital identity resolution products. About Tapad:Tapad, Inc. is a global leader in digital identity resolution. The Tapad Graph, and its related solutions, provide a transparent, privacy-safe approach connecting brands to consumers through their devices globally. Our one-of-a-kind Graph Select offering enables marketers the flexibility and freedom of choice to correlate devices to varied objectives, driving campaign effectiveness and business results. Tapad is recognized across the industry for its product innovation, workplace culture and talent, and has earned numerous awards including One World Identity's 2019 Top 100 Influencers in Identity Award. Headquartered in New York, Tapad also has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. About The Trade Desk:The Trade Desk™ is a technology company that empowers buyers of advertising. Through its self-service, cloud-based platform, ad buyers can create, manage, and optimize digital advertising campaigns across ad formats and devices. Integrations with major data, inventory, and publisher partners ensure maximum reach and decisioning capabilities, and enterprise APIs enable custom development on top of the platform. Headquartered in Ventura, CA, The Trade Desk has offices across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. To learn more, visit thetradedesk.com or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Contact us today