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How to build a stronger identity framework in a multi-signal world

Published: January 9, 2026 by Henry Schenker, Group Product Manager

At A Glance

The challenge facing marketers today is not the decline of a single identifier, but the fragmentation of signals across browsers, devices, apps and platforms. A resilient identity framework unifies these signals into a consistent, privacy-safe view of the consumer, allowing marketers to reach, measure and optimize across environments that expose different identifiers.

Why an identity framework matters more than any single identifier

The challenge facing marketers today isn’t a single identifier on a deprecation timeline; it’s the increasing fragmentation of signals and identifiers across browsers, devices, apps, and platforms. This shift introduces complexity into how audiences are reached and measured, as signals behave differently in every environment, and it becomes more complex to piece together a complete view of the consumer.

An icon of a house in the center with icons around it that represent a TV, mobile phone, shopping cart, and car with a man on the bottom left-hand side.

Each environment contributes to its own set of visibility gaps, making identity less predictable and more uneven. The result is a patchwork of inconsistent identity signals rather than a single, predictable decline.

While you can’t control how platforms evolve, you can control how you respond to fragmentation. The future won’t be defined by the loss of any single identifier, but by your ability to unify, interpret, and activate the many signals that remain. Marketers who adopt a flexible, identity framework will be best positioned to create consistency in an otherwise fragmented landscape.

At Experian, we believe flexibility starts with intelligence. For decades, we’ve used AI and machine learning to help marketers understand people’s behavior more clearly, respect their privacy, and deliver messages that drive business outcomes. Our technology brings identity, insight, and intelligence together, so even as the number of signals grows and becomes more varied across environments, marketers can reach the right people with relevance, respect, and simplicity. This intelligence acts as the connective tissue across fragmented ecosystems, ensuring marketers can recognize and reach audiences consistently wherever they appear.

What forces are driving fragmentation in identity and signals?

Changes to traditional IDs

Since Apple introduced App Tracking Transparency (ATT), access to the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) has become inconsistent across apps and devices. Google’s evolving Android privacy roadmap adds another layer of variability, fragmenting mobile addressability. Safari and Firefox have long restricted third-party cookies, while Chrome continues to support them for now. This creates different signal availability across browsers, contributing to an uneven and increasingly fragmented identity landscape on the open web.

Shifts in signals

IPv4 to IPv6 migration introduces mismatched identity structures that complicate continuity across environments.

Platform-driven fragmentation

Closed ecosystems and uneven adoption of evolving RTB standards (like OpenRTB 2.6 updates designed to support new identifiers and consent signals) create differences in which identifiers and consent signals are shared in the bidstream. At the same time, the rise of alternative or “universal” IDs—often developed by individual platforms, publishers, or technology companies—means that multiple ID types can appear within the same auction, each with its own structure, rules, and level of support. These differences reduce interoperability across platforms and contribute to a more fragmented activation landscape.

Each change creates an identity silo. Together, they form an ecosystem defined by fragmentation rather than absence. Without an identity framework, these environments operate as disconnected identity islands.

A multi-ID world requires a unified identity framework

Alternative IDs play an important role, but they also expand the number of signals marketers must reconcile. Without a consistent identity layer, more IDs often mean more complexity—not more clarity. Common alternative IDs in use today:

  • UID2: The Trade Desk’s Unified I.D. 2.0, an iteration of their original Unified ID 1.0, which was still reliant on third-party cookies, creates persistent IDs with user-provided email addresses and phone numbers.
  • ID5: This independent identity provider builds an identity infrastructure that powers addressable advertising across channels. It can create an ID based on both deterministic and probabilistic data.
  • Hadron ID: Hadron ID is a unique, interoperable identity system (including first-party, audience-based, contextual, deterministic, and probabilistic) developed by Audigent, now part of Experian, to drive revenue for publishers by making their audience data and inventory actionable for media buyers.

Industry reports suggest roughly one-third to two-fifths of open-auction traffic carries alternative IDs, sometimes multiple per request. Among Experian clients, adoption of alternative IDs rose 50% year over year, with a 30% increase in IDs resolved to individuals via our Digital Graph.

Identity isn’t disappearing; it’s multiplying. A modern identity framework resolves these identifiers into a single, privacy-safe consumer view.

Why CTV makes an identity framework essential

Beyond alternative IDs, device-level identifiers also play a major role in today’s ecosystem and add to the fragmentation marketers must navigate. Connected TV (CTV) environments introduce additional fragmentation.

CTV IDs

A CTV ID is an identifier used to deliver, target, and measure ads on CTV devices, including smart TVs, streaming devices, gaming consoles, and more. Unlike MAIDs, which act as universal device identifiers across apps, CTV environments often generate multiple, platform-specific IDs for the same physical device. Different operating systems, publishers, or streaming platforms may each assign their own identifier—such as Roku ID for Advertisers, Amazon Fire Advertising ID, Samsung TIFA, or Apple IDFA for CTV. As a result, a single household or TV can appear under several distinct IDs, making cross-app or cross-platform recognition more complex and further reinforcing the need for a unified identity framework.

Experian’s identity framework is powered by predictive and generative intelligence that makes resolution faster and more human-centered. Our AI models fill gaps where data signals are missing, infer behaviors responsibly, and continuously optimize for accuracy, so marketers can personalize ads responsibly, even in a fragmented ecosystem. More importantly, our framework normalizes signals across disconnected environments, creating a consistent identity spine that follows the consumer through their fragmented digital journey.

An identity framework connects online and offline signals

Fragmentation extends beyond digital environments. Marketers manage offline data from in-store transactions, loyalty programs, household identifiers, and phone numbers that rarely align cleanly with digital signals.

An icon of a woman in the center with icons around her for TV, mobile phone, email, and home.

As consumers move between online and offline touch points, an identity framework connects these signals into a coherent view of the individual. This foundation allows marketers to recognize the same consumer across environments that expose different identifiers.

Four keys to future-proofing your media with an identity framework

1. Know your customer: Unify and enrich your first-party data

First-party data is a marketer’s most durable asset, but it’s often scattered and incomplete.

  • Unify it: Bring CRM records, site interactions, and loyalty data into a single platform to build a holistic customer view. Use Offline Identity Resolution to resolve your first-party offline personally identifiable information (PII) back to a consolidated consumer profile, removing duplication of users in your data set.
  • Enrich it: Append Experian Marketing Attributes to uncover demographics, lifestyle markers, and purchase behaviors you can’t see on your own, and use Offline Identity Append to fill in missing offline data points (such as name, address, phone, etc.) to create a more complete and actionable customer profile.
Experian's Offline Identity Resolution, Marketing Attributes, and Offline Identity Append

This gives you richer profiles that drive more personalized targeting and messaging. Fragmented ecosystems make unified first-party data even more essential. A connected view allows marketers to anchor identity against a stable, proprietary foundation. As identifiers vary across environments, marketers need flexible, privacy-first ways to understand where their audiences are and how to reach them.

2. Find your customer: Expand how you discover and reach audiences in a fragmented landscape

As identifiers vary across environments, marketers need flexible, privacy-first ways to understand where their audiences are and how to reach them.

  • Contextual signals: Experian’s Contextually-Indexed Audiences map content to consumer insights, so you can target intent-rich environments.
  • Geographic insights: Our Geo-Indexed Audiences help you find regions that over-index for specific traits and activate them across your preferred platforms.
  • Syndicated and Partner Audiences: Choose from 3,500+ prebuilt segments or 30+ partner data sources spanning health, retail, travel, and more.
  • Curation: As a full-service curation partner, we enable private marketplace (PMP) deals that are privacy-safe, identity-agnostic, and performance-optimized.
Icons that represent Experian's Contextually-Indexed Audiences, Geo-Indexed Audiences, Syndicated Audiences, Partner Audiences, and Curation.

Together, these approaches help you confidently reach your audiences – using multiple types of signals that complement your identity strategy and create a clearer picture across fragmented environments.

3. Reach your customer: Maximize scale through interoperability

As signals and identifiers proliferate across environments, interoperability is essential to maintain consistent reach. Experian’s Offline and Digital Graphs unify disparate signals (MAIDs, CTV IDs, alternative IDs, IP, and more) so marketers can recognize and engage audiences reliably across channels, devices, and platforms.

An icon of a woman in a center circle with different cirlces around her with icons for a desktop computer, email, mobile phone, TV, laptop, and cookie.

Interoperability matters because it turns a collection of disconnected identifiers into a coherent identity framework that can actually be activated. The following capabilities demonstrate how that comes to life.

  • Unified identity: Create a consistent view of your audience, even when different environments expose different identifiers. Experian’s identity framework connects these signals into a single, actionable identity spine.
  • Expanded reach: OpenX enriched its supply-side identity graph with Experian’s audiences, making our data available directly across OpenX supply and formats. By matching more of the starting audience and identifying more users in the bidstream, marketers see higher match and activation rates, extending reach in hard-to-address environments like Safari and mobile web.

Measure success: Optimize based on outcomes

If you can’t measure your marketing, you can’t improve it. Experian Outcomes, powered by our holistic understanding of the user across online and offline touch points, closes the loop by connecting media exposures to real-world actions (store visits, purchases, or site conversions).

An icon of a person with graphs and charts on their left and right sides.

With these insights, you can:

  • Prove ROI across digital and TV
  • Attribute success to the right channels and tactics
  • Continuously refine targeting, creative, and spend allocation

Outcome-based measurement makes your strategy adaptive, so dollars flow to what drives results.

As signals multiply across environments, connecting exposures to outcomes requires a unified identity foundation. Experian closes the loop by unifying exposures across disconnected touch points, enabling holistic attribution and optimization. Our AI-powered simplicity drives continuous improvement. From predictive modeling to agentic workflows that automate optimization, we’re investing in generative AI to help marketers spend less time on manual setup and more time on strategy and outcomes.

The Experian identity framework advantage

Experian connects fragmented signals into a single, actionable identity framework built for long-term resilience.

What our identity framework delivers

  • Interoperability: We support all major identifiers, including alternative IDs, IP address (v4 and v6), contextual signals, and both first- and third-party data.
  • Flexibility: Whether you’re activating syndicated audiences, tapping into partner audiences from 30+ data providers, or curating custom segments through Audigent, our solutions meet you where you are.
  • Scale: With four billion IDs resolved in our Digital Graph and 280 million telephones in our Offline Graph, we deliver unmatched reach across digital and offline environments.
  • AI that makes marketing more human: We bring together identity, insight, and automation through responsible AI, helping marketers see audiences clearly, act with intelligence, and optimize with respect for privacy.

Our approach is delivering results across a range of programmatic players. These outcomes demonstrate how a unified identity framework delivers performance in environments where signals, identifiers, and devices operate in silos.

Proven results powered by Experian’s identity framework

  • Sonobi increased programmatic addressability across the mobile web by 25% and delivered a 20% lift in impression value through our identity graph, driving stronger campaign connections and greater publisher returns.
  • One DSP used our Digital Graph to match more MAIDs, CTV IDs, and IP addresses to online conversions, enabling increased accuracy of their attribution and measurement. They achieved an 84% synced ID rate and a 9% increase in match rate.
  • For Cuebiq, we significantly increased match rates and resolved data from cookieless environments, such as Safari. By combining separate data streams and resolving 85% of total events to a household, Cuebiq expanded on the household IDs to identify MAIDs that are observed in-store, enabling accurate cross-channel measurement.
  • Our Digital Graph allowed MiQ and their clients to expand the reach of their seed audiences across devices by 51% and cookieless IDs by 64%. As a result, MiQ can provide marketers with future-proofed connected planning, advanced targeting, and precise measurement.

We’re your partner in building identity framework that lasts: resilient to change, adaptive to new signals, and focused on outcomes.

What comes next for signals and identity?

The future isn’t defined by any single identifier. It’s defined by the ability to unify and activate across a fragmented identity ecosystem. The winners will be those who adopt interoperable, outcome-driven identity frameworks today.

Those strategies will increasingly be powered by responsible AI, systems that simplify workflows, predict opportunity, and optimize in real time while keeping people at the center. At Experian, we see AI not as automation for its own sake, but as a way to make marketing more human, relevant, and respectful.

Your playbook for navigating fragmentation

Experian connects the fragmented identity ecosystem, unifying alternative IDs, IP signals, contextual data, and first- and third-party assets into a consistent, actionable identity foundation. With proven lift across partners like Sonobi and new offerings like Contextually-Indexed Audiences, we help you build campaigns that perform in a fragmented landscape.

Download our 2026 Digital trends and predictions report to explore how identity, interoperability, and measurement will define the future of advertising.


About the author

Henry Schenker, Group Product Manager, Experian

Henry Schenker

Group Product Manager, Experian

Henry has nearly 15 years of experience in Digital Advertising, Social Media Marketing, Data Licensing & Analytics, Front-End Engineering, Technical Architecture & Integrations, Profit & Loss Management, and Enterprise-Level Contract Negotiation across the U.S., EMEA, and Asia Pacific regions.

Prior to re-joining Experian, Henry held critical go-to-market and product roles at noted industry-disruptors Media.Monks and Attain. From 2018 – 2020, he served as the Vice President, APAC of Innovid (now publicly traded, NYSE:CTV), leading the company’s expansion into Japan, Singapore, and Australia. The preceding 4 years with Tapad (acquired by Experian), allowed Henry to become a seasoned Sales Engineer, grow and lead a global Technical Integrations team, and relocate to Singapore, leading sales and operations in the APAC region. Before beginning his career and learning front-end engineering on-the-job at Wyng (formerly Offerpop), Henry received a dual-major (BA/BS) in Sociology and Economics & Finance from Bard College in New York.


FAQs

Why is signal and identity fragmentation increasing across digital and offline channels?

Signal and identity fragmentation is increasing across digital and offline channels because consumers now engage across more devices, platforms, and environments. Each environment introduces its own identifiers and privacy rules. This growth creates more signals overall, which increases the need for unification rather than reliance on a single ID.

How should marketers think about alternative IDs in a multi-signal ecosystem?

Alternative IDs add reach and coverage when they connect through a common identity framework. They work best alongside first-party data, device identifiers, and contextual signals. Resolution turns multiple IDs into one consistent view of the consumer.

What role does unified identity play in CTV and cross-device media?

CTV environments often assign multiple platform-specific identifiers to the same household or device. A unified identity layer links those identifiers together. This approach supports consistent audience recognition across streaming apps, devices, and digital channels.

How does unified identity support accurate measurement and attribution?

Unified identity connects media exposure to outcomes across digital, TV, and offline touch points. It enables marketers to see how different channels contribute to real actions like visits or purchases. Measurement improves when identity remains consistent across the full journey.

Why does an identity strategy matter beyond digital advertising?

Identity extends into offline signals such as transactions, loyalty activity, and household data. A unified foundation aligns online and offline interactions into one coherent profile. This connection supports planning, activation, and measurement across the entire customer experience.


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Families with children, for example, are a significant market for summer travel, as parents are looking to create memories with their kids before they go back to school. Families with children have distinct needs and preferences when it comes to travel. For instance, they may need larger accommodation options, kid-friendly activities, and safe environments. On the other hand, married couples with no children or single travelers may have different preferences for their travel experiences. These groups may be looking for more adventurous or adult-oriented experiences, such as camping, hiking in national parks, or winery tours. By segmenting your audience based on family size and structure, you can provide more relevant and personalized recommendations to your target audience, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates. Here are just a few examples of the audience segments you can activate to target travelers based on their family size and structure as part of your travel advertising strategy: Demographics > Marital Status > Single: Consumers in this segment are likely to be single. Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Moms, Parents, Families > Married Mothers: Consumers in this segment are likely to be married females with at least one child under the age of 18 years old. Demographics > Presence of Children > Ages: 0-18: Consumers in this segment are likely to have children between the ages 0 to 18 years old in a household. Demographics > Presence of Children > Ages: 7-9: Consumers in this segment are likely to have children between the ages 7 to 9 years old in a household. We can help you reach summer travelers From seasonal spenders to luxury travelers, there are a host of audiences you should keep in mind as you build out your summer travel advertising strategy. Experian audiences can help you tap into the potential of your summer campaigns by enabling you to identify, reach, and engage with a variety of travelers in their preferred channels. Need a custom audience? Reach out to our audience team and we can help you build and activate an Experian audience on the platform of your choice. Additionally, work with Experian’s network of data providers to build audiences and send to an Audigent PMP for activation.  Contact us Latest posts

Jun 13,2023 by Hayley Schneider, Sr. Manager, Content Marketing

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