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.In this article…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Latest posts
The Tapad Device Graph™ increases Throtle’s amplification by 475 percent. NEW YORK, Nov. 1, 2017 /PRNewswire/ – Tapad, now a part of Experian, the leader in cross-device marketing technology, today announced a partnership with Throtle, a leading data onboarding company. The Tapad Device Graph™ will enhance Throtle's best-in-class onboarding capabilities by providing accurate and privacy-safe cross-device reach as well as precise audiences at scale. In partnership with Tapad, Throtle will deterministically link its services to a corroborated individual with hundreds of targeting attributes. This linkage allows Throtle to offer true cross-device identity management and identity resolution services to accompany its robust onboarding capabilities. Throtle will also work with Tapad to validate its device graph, building larger, more comprehensive audience segments. To date, the Tapad Device Graph™ has connected 61 percent of Throtle IDs to related ones in the graph, with an average amplification rate of 475 percent for Throtle's IDs, or 4.8 new IDs per each of Throtle's. Throtle has also seen its overall match rates involving Tapad's identity insights rise an average of 15 percent since the inception of the partnership. More specifically, Tapad's mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) have increased Throtle's in-app identity inventory by 35 percent. "Tapad has proven to be a trusted source for cross-device matching and has a tremendous reputation in the advertising and marketing technology industries for delivering superior precision and scale with the utmost dedication to privacy," says Paul Chachko, CEO, Throtle. "Since we first began our test phase, and continuing through to this day, Tapad has met and exceeded our expectations for what a partner should be." With Tapad's strong commitment to precision and accuracy, Throtle was confident that this partnership would prove to be the right choice for the strategic expansion of its platform. Not only does Tapad deliver in-depth insights, parsing deterministic from probabilistic linkages, but its pool of device-level touchpoints enables Throtle to increase scale without seeing a decline in precision. "Accuracy and precision are core characteristics of our proprietary Device Graph," explains Chris Feo, SVP, Strategy & Global Partnerships, Tapad. "When Throtle approached our team, we knew we would be the right partner to assist their leading onboarding technology. We're excited to work with Throtle to achieve cross-device reach, audience scale and precise deterministic and probabilistic linkages for its clients." For more information about the Tapad Device Graph™, or to request a demo, visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync About TapadTapad Inc. is a marketing technology company renowned for its breakthrough, unified, cross-device solutions. The company's signature Tapad Device Graph™ connects millions of consumers across billions of devices. The world's largest brands and most effective marketers entrust Tapad to provide an accurate, privacy-conscious, and unified approach to connecting with consumers across screens. In 2015, Tapad began licensing the Tapad Device Graph™ and swiftly became the established gold-standard throughout the ad tech ecosystem. Tapad is based in New York and has offices in Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Oslo, San Francisco, Singapore, and Tokyo. Tapad's numerous awards include: Forbes' Most Promising Companies, Deloitte's Technology Fast 500, Crain's Fast 50, TMCnet Tech Culture Award, and Global Startup Award's "Startup Founder of the Year". In 2016, Tapad was acquired by the Telenor Group, one of the world's largest mobile operators. About ThrotleThrotle is a data onboarding company focused on deterministic matching and identity resolution, empowering brands with true individual-based marketing. Our data centric onboarding approach guarantees the highest level of accuracy, scale, and responsiveness for our clients. For more information on Throtle, please visit, throtle.io. Contact us today
Autotrader leverages The Tapad Device GraphTM to achieve higher performance and reach new audiences across all devices New York, NY – September 6, 2017 – Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian, today revealed findings from a campaign conducted with Autotrader which connects with more actual car buyers than any other third-party listing site.* Autotrader’s premium audience, combined with the Tapad Device GraphTM, delivered significant audience extension across desktop, mobile, and tablet to drive awareness and maximize both reach and delivery across screens. To help analyze shopping behaviors across multiple devices, the global automotive brand for this campaign turned to Autotrader and Tapad, who created a cross-device pre-roll video strategy with a focus on viewability, concentrating on potential customers already searching for vehicles. By using a one-to-one connection, instead of look-alike modeling, Tapad also ensured that the automotive brand discovered only new consumers across all of their devices. This approach discovered a new potential audience of more than 14 million consumers, eliminated communication waste and the risk of duplicates, increased overall performance, and ensured more of their campaign dollars reached meaningful audiences. Overall, this case study represents a leap forward in terms of audience-based targeting and the highly-sought after multi-touch attribution modeling. “We really enjoy working with the team at Tapad to help execute our Audience Extension campaigns”, said Lynne Green, product manager at Autotrader. “Their ability to meet the demands of an ever-changing industry, as well as their dependable customer service has allowed us to confidently deliver against our unique in-market automotive audience and provide our clients ongoing messaging opportunities to our audience beyond Autotrader.com.” “How identity relates to conversion behavior is a complex part of any advertising campaign,” said Jeff Kelosky, RVP and head of global automotive at Tapad. “After identifying auto consumer’s behavioral patterns and device usage while shopping for vehicles, we knew we could successfully help Autotrader and its automotive brand clients maximize campaign viewability and drive results.” To learn more about using Audience Extension with Autotrader, click here. For more about the Tapad Device GraphTM, or to request a demo, visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync Contact us today
With campaigns applied to seven major holding companies, Tapad continues to see healthy adoption with The Trade Desk clients NEW YORK, NY – August 23, 2017 - Tapad, now a part of Experian, the leader in cross-device marketing technology, today announced its ongoing momentum with The Trade Desk, Inc. (Nasdaq: TTD), a global technology platform for buyers of advertising. Tapad is providing cross-device segments from the groundbreaking Tapad Device GraphTM through The Trade Desk’s platform. Since 2015, Tapad has seen steady growth in the use of its cross-device data across The Trade Desk platform. This forward progress continues, as 1H2017 saw important milestones for Tapad. Seven major private and independent holding companies now apply Tapad’s data to their campaigns, in addition to more than 1,500 unique brands. Tapad’s proprietary Device GraphTM connects billions of devices, providing unified and insightful data for brands, agencies, and marketers across the globe. Several of these clients, representing varying industries from financial, to auto, CPG and retail, apply Tapad’s data across a number of key tactics and strategies, including: first party CRM extension, third party audience extension, cross-device retargeting, cross-device frequency management, and more. Clients in these verticals continue to rely on Tapad’s cross-device data, as Tapad saw the amount of usage by financial and retail clients grow by four times over the past year, and double for automotive and CPG clients. “We are pleased to offer our clients access to Tapad’s device graph”, said David Danziger, VP of Data Partnerships, The Trade Desk. “Their cross-device identification capabilities have been a powerful addition to our omnichannel platform.” “This integration is a shining example of the amplifying effect of two of the best platforms working together,” said Chris Feo, SVP of Global Partnerships at Tapad. "Clients leveraging Tapad's Device Graph in The Trade Desk platform have the potential to see higher returns and reach with access to substantial cross-device data, as well as a very effective media platform." Contact us today