Traditional audience signals are fading, and the industry is facing a new reality: identity is no longer just about connectivity, it’s about outcomes. At Cannes Lions 2025, leaders from AdRoll, LG Ad Solutions, Magnite, MiQ, OpenAP, PubMatic, Stirista, Tatari shared how innovative identity approaches are cutting through the noise, improving performance, and delivering real ROI. Their insights reveal a clear path forward for those ready to turn identity into a performance driver.
Here’s how you can apply the same principles to drive performance.
1. Make identity a performance engine
Treating identity as a performance driver leads to measurable results by creating a clear connection between marketing efforts and outcomes. Identity resolution enables the effective retargeting of audiences, accurate performance attribution across connected TV (CTV), and personalized campaigns across multiple channels. By building household-level graphs and incorporating alternative identifiers, marketers can maintain accuracy as traditional signals change. Activating first-party data across both digital and offline channels ensures that every interaction, whether on-screen or in-store, can be tied back to specific actions, helping optimize campaigns, and improve ROI.
How Experian helps
Experian’s Consumer Sync solutions create a clean foundation and persistent identity spine by resolving and expanding your first-party data across digital and offline IDs (hashed emails, mobile ad IDs, CTV IDs). This enables activation across omnichannel campaigns, from CTV to social, and connects data to outcomes.
“Identity resolution is very important to our overall strategy today. Without that identity linkage, we couldn’t speak the same language as our clients. For example, a client might want to target people who engaged with their brand’s website four days ago via CRM data. Without identity resolution, that’s not possible. But with it, we’re changing the narrative – making TV a hospitable place for deploying first-party data and driving outcomes.”
LG Ad SolutionsMike Brooks
2. Build trust through responsible data practices
Consumer trust begins with responsible data practices that prioritize transparency and privacy. Deterministic match rates ensure accuracy by connecting data points with confidence, while clear methodologies provide visibility into how data is used. These practices improve overall campaign performance and protect consumer privacy by ensuring that every interaction is respectful.
How Experian helps
Experian’s privacy-first approach ensures that all data activation occurs with compliance and consent. By maintaining high match rates and adhering to transparent methodologies, Experian helps build trust and strengthen long-term connections with audiences.
“If people don’t take any precautions and they don’t actually care about data in the public, they probably don’t care about it in private. Experian cares about data privacy and compliance, and that made it a no-brainer for us to work with them. When we combined our focus on privacy with Experian’s expertise, we knew we had to do it right – and we did.”
StiristaHenry Olawoye
3. Expand reach while maintaining high match rates
Having more data points to identify individuals leads to higher match rates and broader reach. Enriching records with additional identifiers, like hashed emails, MAIDs, and CTV IDs, makes it easier to connect data across channels and create a unified view of each person. This approach ensures that campaigns can scale effectively while maintaining the accuracy needed to deliver personalized experiences.
How Experian helps
With a database of over 5,000 attributes spanning 15 verticals and categories, Experian provides a comprehensive view of consumers through a single provider. By sourcing data from over 200 sources (including public records, consumer surveys, and purchase records), Experian enables the creation of detailed audience profiles. This enriched data focuses on identity, creating a unified view of individuals that helps pinpoint the best opportunities to engage effectively across channels and deliver measurable outcomes tailored to specific audience needs.
“We’ve been able to extend our IDs by an average of 6.5 different identifiers, with a 70% match rate. That extension is huge – it underpins a lot of the connectivity in our platform and allows us to bring 300 data feeds together to make the most of them.”
MiQGeorgiana Haig
4. Create unified campaigns with interoperability
Fragmented data often leads to fragmented results. Interoperability ensures that data from different platforms and systems can work together, creating a unified view that makes measurement and attribution more actionable.
How Experian helps
Experian simplifies interoperability by ensuring consistent data usage from activation and measurement. By connecting data from various sources, Experian enables a cohesive strategy where insights can be shared across publishers, measurement providers, and ad servers, ensuring campaigns remain aligned and effective at every stage.
“The ecosystem benefits from optimized interoperability. We’re focused on allowing advertisers to work seamlessly across IDs and identity solutions – from activation to resolution – so the same data set is used consistently across publishers, measurement providers, currencies, programmatic ecosystems, and ad servers.”
OpenAPChris LoRusso
5. Use AI to amplify, not replace, strategy
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how campaigns are optimized, but its success depends on clean, consented identity foundations. AI can analyze vast amounts of data to refine targeting, manage frequency, and uncover new efficiencies, but only when built on a strong identity framework.
How Experian helps
Experian uses AI and machine learning to deliver highly personalized marketing solutions. Advanced clustering algorithms in Experian’s Digital Graph analyze and create household and individual device connections, improving targeting and measurement accuracy, while machine learning models improve consumer insights by inferring household composition where data is limited. These innovations enable AI tools to quickly generate tailored audience solutions, analyze contextual signals in real time, and identify opportunities that improve results while maintaining a human centered approach to decision making.
“AI is a copilot to your marketing initiatives. For it to perform, it needs insights and information to learn from. That’s why having a strong foundational data asset rooted in deterministic data is so important.”
PubMaticHoward Luks
Five moves to turn identity into profit
Here are five steps to get started:
1. Audit your data health
Make sure your audience data is accurate, up-to-date, and complete so you’re starting from a strong foundation.
2. Layer in more context
Enrich your records with details, like lifestyle, interests, or buying behaviors, that help you speak your audience’s language.
3. Unify touchpoints across channels
Link your data so you can see the same person or household whether they’re engaging on CTV, mobile, desktop, in-store, or through other touchpoints.
4. Activate AI for stronger campaigns
Use AI tools to fine-tune targeting, control ad frequency, and find hidden opportunities once your foundation is solid.
5. Align data across systems
Ensure interoperability so data from different platforms and systems can work together, creating a unified view for actionable insights.
The common thread across these insights is connection: connecting data, teams, and outcomes. Marketers who act on these imperatives will be ready for whatever new channel, format, or privacy rule comes next.
Let’s start a conversation about how Experian can help you turn identity into ROI
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Originally appeared on MarTech Series Marketing’s understanding of identity has evolved rapidly over the past decade, much like the shifting media landscape itself. From the early days of basic direct mail targeting to today's complex omnichannel environment, identity has become both more powerful and more fragmented. Each era has brought new tools, challenges, and opportunities, shaping how brands interact with their customers. We’ve moved from traditional media like mail, newspapers, and linear/network TV, to cable TV, the internet, mobile devices, and apps. Now, multiple streaming platforms dominate, creating a far more complex media landscape. As a result, understanding the customer journey and reaching consumers across these various touchpoints has become increasingly difficult. Managing frequency and ensuring effective communication across channels is now more challenging than ever. This development has led to a fragmented view of the consumer, making it harder for marketers to ensure that they are reaching the right audience at the right time while also avoiding oversaturation. Marketers must now navigate a fragmented customer journey across multiple channels, each with its own identity signals, to stitch together a cohesive view of the customer. Let’s break down this evolution, era by era, to understand how identity has progressed—and where it’s headed. 2010-2015: The rise of digital identity – Cookies and MAIDs Between 2010 and 2015, the digital era fundamentally changed how marketers approached identity. Mobile usage surged during this time, and programmatic advertising emerged as the dominant method for reaching consumers across the internet. The introduction of cookies and mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) became the foundation for tracking users across the web and mobile apps. With these identifiers, marketers gained new capabilities to deliver targeted, personalized messages and drive efficiency through programmatic advertising. This era gave birth to powerful tools for targeting. Marketers could now follow users’ digital footprints, regardless of whether they were browsing on desktop or mobile. This leap in precision allowed brands to optimize spend and performance at scale, but it came with its limitations. Identity was still tied to specific browsers or devices, leaving gaps when users switched platforms. The fragmentation across different devices and the reliance on cookies and MAIDs meant that a seamless, unified view of the customer was still out of reach. 2015-2020: The age of walled gardens From 2015 to 2020, the identity landscape grew more complex with the rise of walled gardens. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon created closed ecosystems of first-party data, offering rich, self-declared insights about consumers. These platforms built massive advertising businesses on the strength of their user data, giving marketers unprecedented targeting precision within their environments. However, the rise of walled gardens also marked the start of new challenges. While these platforms provided detailed identity solutions within their walls, they didn’t communicate with one another. Marketers could target users with pinpoint accuracy inside Facebook or Google, but they couldn’t connect those identities across different ecosystems. This siloed approach to identity left marketers with an incomplete picture of the customer journey, and brands struggled to piece together a cohesive understanding of their audience across platforms. The promise of detailed targeting was tempered by the fragmentation of the landscape. Marketers were dealing with disparate identity solutions, making it difficult to track users as they moved between these closed environments and the open web. 2020-2025: The multi-ID landscape – CTV, retail media, signal loss, and privacy By 2020, the identity landscape had splintered further, with the rise of connected TV (CTV) and retail media adding even more complexity to the mix. Consumers now engaged with brands across an increasing number of channels—CTV, mobile, desktop, and even in-store—and each of these channels had its own identifiers and systems for tracking. Simultaneously, privacy regulations are tightening the rules around data collection and usage. This, coupled with the planned deprecation of third-party cookies and MAIDs has thrown marketers into a state of flux. The tools they had relied on for years were disappearing, and new solutions had yet to fully emerge. The multi-ID landscape was born, where brands had to navigate multiple identity systems across different platforms, devices, and environments. Retail media networks became another significant player in the identity game. As large retailers like Amazon and Walmart built their own advertising ecosystems, they added yet another layer of first-party data to the mix. While these platforms offer robust insights into consumer behavior, they also operate within their own walled gardens, further fragmenting the identity landscape. With cookies and MAIDs being phased out, the industry began to experiment with alternatives like first-party data, contextual targeting, and new universal identity solutions. The challenge and opportunity for marketers lies in unifying these fragmented identity signals to create a consistent and actionable view of the customer. 2025: The omnichannel imperative Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, the identity landscape will continue to evolve, but the focus remains the same: activating and measuring across an increasingly fragmented and complex media environment. Consumers now expect seamless, personalized experiences across every channel—from CTV to digital to mobile—and marketers need to keep up. The future of identity lies in interoperability, scale, and availability. Marketers need solutions that can connect the dots across different platforms and devices, allowing them to follow their customers through every stage of the journey. Identity must be actionable in real-time, allowing for personalization and relevance across every touchpoint, so that media can be measurable and attributable. Brands that succeed in 2025 and beyond will be those that invest in scalable, omnichannel identity solutions. They’ll need to embrace privacy-friendly approaches like first-party data, while also ensuring their systems can adapt to an ever-changing landscape. Adapting to the future of identity The evolution of identity has been marked by increasing complexity, but also by growing opportunity. As marketers adapt to a world without third-party cookies and MAIDs, the need for unified identity solutions has never been more urgent. Brands that can navigate the multi-ID landscape will unlock new levels of efficiency and personalization, while those that fail to adapt risk falling behind. The path forward is clear: invest in identity solutions that bridge the gaps between devices, platforms, and channels, providing a full view of the customer. The future of marketing belongs to those who can manage identity in a fragmented world—and those who can’t will struggle to stay relevant. 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