At A Glance
Identity resolution unifies fragmented IDs into more complete customer profiles, helping you understand your audiences and deliver personalized, privacy-conscious experiences. With Experian’s AI-powered identity resolution solution, you gain the scale, accuracy, and responsible data foundation to compete while making your marketing more human.In this article…
Every marketer has seen it: a customer browses reviews on a laptop, adds items to a cart on mobile, then “disappears.” In reality, they likely switched devices or logged in with a different email. Identity resolution connects these scattered signals into a more complete profile to help you maintain a clear view of the customer journey.
That clearer view can help you deliver more seamless experiences, support increasing privacy expectations, turn first-party data into measurable results, and fuel better customer analytics.
What is identity resolution?
Identity resolution is the process of using privacy-protected methods to connect the different identifiers associated with a customer into a consistent profile. Without it, you’re left with an incomplete picture of the customer — like a cart tied to one email, an app login tied to another device, or a loyalty swipe that never links back to the same person.
Common identifiers include:
- Cookies: Browser-based identifiers used to recognize activity within a particular browser
- Emails: Plain-text or hashed identifiers that can support identity matching
- Device IDs: Mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) or app-based identifiers
- Loyalty IDs: Program numbers that tie online and offline activity
- Hashed PII: Personally identifiable information (PII) transformed into privacy-protected strings that can support matching without exposing the original values
Ultimately, identity resolution can help you recognize the same customer wherever they engage while protecting customer data.
Why is identity resolution critical in a privacy-first world?
Even as cookies linger, marketers have already shifted their strategies to rely on first-party data, where choice and transparency are the baseline expectation.
At Experian, our long history as a regulated data steward makes us a uniquely capable and trusted partner for managing modern compliance expectations. Our identity resolution solutions maximize the value of permission-based data while meeting consumer demand for privacy, personalization, and control.
Struggling with scattered customer data? We make identity resolution seamless.
How AI powers modern identity resolution
AI and machine learning strengthen identity resolution by analyzing billions of signals at scale, helping you improve match accuracy and connect recent activity to stable identities. Resolved identity can then provide a stronger foundation for predictive insights and more relevant marketing decisions.
Connect more fragmented identifiers
Deterministic matching connects records using exact identifiers, such as a login, hashed email, or loyalty ID. When those signals are unavailable, machine-learning models can evaluate probabilistic relationships across timestamps, IP addresses, user agents, cookies, and device IDs to determine which identifiers likely belong together.
Our Digital Graph applies advanced machine-learning clustering across more than 4.2 billion digital identifiers. Analyzing patterns at this scale can improve match accuracy and reduce the risk of false positives compared with static rules alone.
Incorporate more recent activity
Activity Feed captures digital events as they occur, resolves them to stable household and individual identities, and delivers event-level records hourly, making fresher resolved activity available for use across your marketing.
Turn resolved data into predictive insight
Identity resolution determines which signals are likely connected. Predictive modeling builds on that resolved identity foundation by analyzing behavioral patterns and other signals to anticipate likely interests or actions.
At Experian, our AI enhanced modeling surfaces combinations of signals associated with outcomes such as purchase, response, retention, or upsell. Our modeling teams review, test, and validate these signals before incorporating them into models. The resulting insights can help you prioritize audiences and inform more relevant messaging, offers, and experiences across personalization, connected TV (CTV), cross-channel targeting, activation, and measurement.
This identity foundation will become even more important as agentic media systems take on a larger role in campaign planning, activation, and optimization. These systems need accurate identity and trustworthy data context to interpret signals, make informed decisions, and act within defined parameters.
What changes for marketers when AI powers identity resolution?
The combination of AI and identity resolution changes how you work with customer data in three practical ways.
1. Respond to recent behavior
Delayed or incomplete customer views can make it harder to recognize changes in intent. With access to recently resolved activity, you can adjust targeting, optimization, and measurement based on newer signals rather than relying solely on periodic data snapshots.
2. Build more useful audiences
Resolved first-party data can be enriched with Experian Marketing Attributes and used alongside our syndicated audiences to help you:
- Understand consumers beyond their direct interactions with your brand
- Build more refined audience segments
- Reduce repetitive data preparation
- Activate audiences more efficiently across channels
3. Prioritize the right opportunities
Broad demographic criteria can show you who belongs to a category, but not necessarily who is more likely to support a particular campaign objective.
Our AI-enhanced modeling can build on resolved and enriched data to identify combinations of signals associated with a particular profile or action. These models can help infer consumer and household attributes when information is limited and identify consumers who may be more likely to act against a given objective.
That gives you a basis for deciding whom to reach, how to engage them, and where to invest while keeping marketing anchored in people.
How does identity resolution help brands?
These operational improvements can translate into broader business benefits, from expanding addressable reach to supporting more relevant customer experiences and more efficient media investment.
Creates a unified customer view
Connecting data from loyalty programs, point-of-sale (POS) systems, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, digital interactions, and offline sources gives you a clearer picture of each customer across touchpoints.
This can improve match rates, expand your addressable audience, and help you reach more of the right consumers across channels.
Enables more relevant AI-powered customer experiences
Customers constantly switch devices, update their information, and change preferences. A strong AI customer experience depends on recognizing those changes without treating each new interaction as a different person.
When paired with recent activity, a resolved identity foundation gives AI models more consistent context for interpreting changing signals and informing messaging, offers, and timing.
This can support more consistent cross-channel experiences, stronger engagement, and, over time, conversion and customer lifetime value (LTV) goals.
Drives better marketing ROI
A stronger identity foundation helps you direct your budget toward the audiences, channels, and opportunities most relevant to your campaign objectives. With better targeting and prioritization, you can reduce wasted impressions and make more informed investment decisions.
Over time, that efficiency can contribute to lower acquisition costs, stronger return on ad spend (ROAS), and higher overall marketing ROI.
Supports privacy-conscious data use
We apply rigorous data governance standards and provide consumer choice mechanisms such as opt-outs and data correction. This helps you use identity data responsibly while supporting personalization and protecting consumer trust.
See our identity resolution solution in action
What are some identity resolution use cases and examples?
Every industry faces its own unique identity challenges, but identity resolution is the common thread that turns scattered data into connected experiences. Let’s break down how companies in different verticals are putting it to work (and the kinds of results they’re seeing).
Audio
People use audio while commuting, working out, and even folding laundry. It can be one of the hardest channels to track because of how frequently listeners switch between apps, stations, and devices.
Our identity resolution partnerships with Audacy and DAX change the game:
- Audacy helps tie scattered listening into a single view, so you can follow audiences across devices and keep ads relevant in the moment.
- DAX pairs more than 3,500+ Experian syndicated audiences with its audio network, enabling you to target and launch impactful campaigns at scale.
These partnerships turn audio into an accurate channel where ads feel personal, privacy-safe, and measurable.
Financial services
In financial services, identity resolution creates a more consistent foundation for understanding customers across touchpoints and connecting them with relevant audience insights. This can help banks, insurers, and lenders tailor outreach for mortgages and refinancing, credit cards and deposits, personal loans, insurance, and wealth management, while supporting applicable regulatory requirements.
We offer approximately 400 financial audiences, including segments such as:
- In Market First Mortgage
- Refinancing Homeowners
- Credit Seeking Card Switcher
- Deposits Financial Personality
- Investment Financial Personality
- Investable Assets
Through our partnership with FMCG Direct, Consumer Financial Insights® and Financial Personalities® segments provide additional insight into behaviors such as credit card use, deposit balances, and investment habits without exposing sensitive personal details.
These insights help you engage consumers based on relevant financial behaviors, needs, and moments — from building credit and buying a home to managing investments and preparing for retirement.
Read more about how our financial audiences support privacy-safe personalization.
Gaming
Gamers don’t stick to one platform. Player data gets scattered across mobile, console, and PC, so it’s tough to keep track of individuals. We help stitch those signals together so you can finally see the whole picture, personalize gameplay, and keep players coming back.
With enriched profiles, you can deliver offers that resonate and earn fresh revenue by packaging high-value gaming audiences for advertisers outside the industry.
Unity, a leading gaming platform, is tapping into Experian’s syndicated audiences to gain player insights and help advertisers reach gamers across mobile, web, and CTV. For global publishers, unifying player data with Experian has driven higher engagement and stronger ad ROI.
Healthcare and pharma
You can’t afford slip-ups with HIPAA regulations. Identity resolution makes it possible to engage the right patients and providers with de-identified audiences rather than third-party cookies.
AI and machine learning have always been part of how we power identity resolution. In healthcare, that means using AI-enhanced modeling to connect de-identified clinical and claims data with lifestyle insights. The result is a more comprehensive picture of the patient journey that helps close care gaps, reduce wasted spending, and improve outcomes.
By working with partners like Komodo, PurpleLab, and Health Union, we make it possible to activate campaigns at scale that boost engagement and adherence while keeping patient privacy front and center:
- Komodo Health enriches our identity graph with insights from millions of de-identified patient journeys plus lifestyle data, giving you a fuller view of where care gaps exist and how to close them.
- PurpleLab connects clinical and claims data to our platform, letting you activate HIPAA-compliant audiences across CTV, mobile, and social with the ability to measure outcomes like prescription lift and provider engagement.
- Health Union contributes a data set built from 50 million+ patient IDs and 44 billion+ patient-reported data points. Combined with our identity and modeling capabilities, this improves match rates and delivers up to 76% net-new reach, so campaigns reach patients and caregivers in critical health moments.
These capabilities help you launch privacy-first, highly targeted campaigns and connect media exposure to meaningful outcomes.
Explore our pharma playbook to learn how to:
- Reduce governance risk
- Keep patient and healthcare provider identity workflows appropriately separated
- Sequence activation across channels
- Connect media exposure to outcomes
- Evaluate potential workflow partners
Media and TV
Viewers tend to hop around between linear TV, streaming apps, and social feeds. And without identity resolution, every screen looks like a different person. You can accurately plan, activate, and measure campaigns by unifying viewing behaviors into one ID with our AI-powered identity graph.
Optimum Media tackled its multiscreen challenge with our identity solutions. By layering our audience insights and AI-driven Digital Graph onto their subscriber data, they were able to connect the dots across channels, reach the right households, and measure results instead of just impressions. In the end, they finally got a clear view of what works across every screen.
Curious how identity resolution can power your customer analytics? We can walk you through it.
Retail and e-commerce
Shoppers move between websites, apps, carts, stores, and checkout lines, leaving fragmented signals along the way. In retail, identity resolution connects online and offline activity — such as digital engagement, loyalty transactions, and in-store purchases — to create a more complete view of the customer journey. This supports more relevant targeting, consistent experiences, and clearer measurement across channels.
Experian retail audiences add context based on how consumers engage, where they shop, and what they buy. You can activate and layer audiences to align channel selection, creative, and timing with demonstrated retail behaviors such as:
- Streaming First Cord-Cutter Households
- eCommerce Diehards
- Frequent In-Store Buyer Households
- Category-Specific High Spenders
Identity resolution is also increasingly important as commerce media evolves beyond traditional retail networks. Our 2026 State of advertising report explains how transactional data can give brands a clearer view of the purchase journey, support on-site and off-site activation, and connect upper-funnel investment to measurable outcomes across payment platforms, marketplaces, and merchant ecosystems.
Our 2026 Digital trends and predictions report examines this broader shift, including how commerce media is expanding beyond retail and why stronger connections among data, identity, activation, and measurement will be essential for turning media investment into business outcomes.
Travel and hospitality
Travelers move between devices and channels as they research destinations, compare options, and complete bookings. Identity resolution helps travel and hospitality brands connect loyalty, booking, and other digital and offline signals to create a more consistent view of guest preferences and intent. You can use that understanding to deliver relevant offers, reach high-intent audiences, and determine which marketing efforts drive bookings and repeat visits.
Windstar Cruises put this approach into action when we worked with MMGY to use our identity graph to connect digital media exposure with confirmed bookings. More than 6,500 bookings valued at over $20 million were attributed to MMGY-managed placements.
How should I evaluate identity resolution tools and providers?
When choosing identity resolution tools and providers, evaluate both their underlying identity data and the way they bring AI and identity resolution together. Look for:
- Data scale, quality, and sourcing: Identity resolution is only as reliable as its underlying data. Ask what online and offline sources the provider uses, whether its models are grounded in proprietary and verified data, and how it evaluates the accuracy, permissioning, and recency of outside sources. A broad data set is most valuable when its origins and quality are clearly understood.
- Match methodology, accuracy, and validation: Look for a provider that combines deterministic matching based on exact identifiers with AI-driven probabilistic (pattern-based) matching when exact signals are unavailable. This balance can preserve the accuracy of confirmed connections while extending reach across fragmented identifiers. Ask how the provider validates match quality, measures false positives, sets confidence thresholds, and refreshes identities as consumer signals change.
- AI governance and responsible use: Providers should be transparent about how their AI models are developed, tested, monitored, and governed. Ask whether qualified experts review and validate model outputs, how performance or bias concerns are addressed, and what safeguards support responsible use.
- Privacy and compliance readiness: Compliance can’t be an afterthought. Your identity partner should maintain strong data governance and provide tools that help support applicable privacy requirements, including consumer opt-outs, corrections, and deletions.
- Integration flexibility: A good provider fits into your world, not the other way around. Look for pre-built integrations with your customer data platform (CDP), demand-side platform (DSP), and broader marketing tech (MarTech) stack so you can get up and running without the heavy IT lift.
- Measurement capabilities: Ask how the provider connects resolved identities, media exposure, and customer outcomes. Strong measurement capabilities should help you evaluate campaign performance across channels and use those insights to improve future planning.
How Experian enables enterprise-grade identity resolution
Experian identity resolution solutions give you the scale, accuracy, and compliance support required for complex enterprise environments. Our solutions are:
- Built on trust: Backed by 40+ years as a regulated data steward, so you can act with confidence.
- Powered by our proprietary AI-enhanced identity graph: Combining breadth, accuracy, and recency across more than 4.2 billion identifiers, continuously refined by machine learning for maximum accuracy.
- Seamlessly connected: Pre-built data integration with leading CDPs, DSPs, and MarTech platforms for faster time to value.
- Always up to date: Frequent enrichment and near-real-time identity resolution through Experian Activity Feed for timely personalization and more responsive customer engagement.
- Privacy-first by design: Compliance with GLBA, FCRA, and emerging state regulations baked in at every step, supported by rigorous partner vetting.
Turn connected identities into measurable growth
Identity resolution turns fragmented signals into connected, measurable, and compliant experiences. From retail to gaming, brands using it see stronger personalization, engagement, and ROI.
At Experian, we bring AI and identity resolution together with the data, trust, and innovation needed to make those connections work across every channel. Our approach applies AI to connect fragmented identities at scale, while data enrichment and predictive modeling help you understand audiences, prioritize opportunities, and support more relevant personalization.
If you’re ready to turn fragmented data into growth, now’s the time to start.
See how we can support identity resolution at scale
Identity resolution FAQs
The difference between deterministic and probabilistic matching is how they connect identifiers. Deterministic matching uses exact identifiers to create high-confidence connections, while probabilistic matching uses signals and algorithms to identify likely relationships. Leading providers typically combine both methods.
Yes, AI helps identity resolution by connecting identifiers when exact deterministic matches aren’t available. Machine-learning models evaluate patterns across signals and predict which identifiers likely belong together. We apply machine-learning clustering across more than 4.2 billion digital identifiers to resolve fragmented activity at scale.
Identity resolution can improve ROI by creating more complete customer profiles that support better targeting and personalization. Higher match rates can expand addressable audiences, reduce wasted spend, and boost ROAS.
Yes, identity resolution can work without third-party cookies by using first-party data and privacy-protected identifiers, such as hashed email addresses, to support addressability and personalization.
We differ from a CDP in the scale and depth we can add to your existing data. While a CDP primarily unifies data you already own, we can complement it by connecting customer records to our identity graph and providing identity resolution and data enrichment capabilities.
Yes, Experian is GLBA/FCRA compliant, GDPR/CCPA ready, and supports consumer opt-outs and corrections to ensure responsible personalization.
When comparing identity resolution tools, look for a provider that combines deterministic and AI-driven probabilistic matching, uses high-quality data with clear sourcing, validates match quality, and governs its models responsibly. The right tool should also support applicable privacy requirements and integrate flexibly with your existing marketing technology.
Latest posts
With Tapad, part of Experian, technology, AdsWizz AudioMatic is the first Audio buying platform to offer cross-device identity resolution across the U.S. and EMEA NEW YORK and LONDON, July 17, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, part of Experian and a global leader in digital identity resolution, today announced a new joint capability with AdsWizz , the leading technology provider for digital audio advertising solutions. The partnership combines Tapad’s digital cross-device technology with AdsWizz’s AudioMatic buying platform, enabling the ability to connect audio ad experiences across screens. AudioMatic, AdsWizz’s audio-centric buying platform, supports programmatic audio buying and entirely new audio ad experiences for listeners. The integration of The Tapad Graph onto its platform enables new opportunities for marketers to reach, engage and measure each interaction with their desired consumers on digital radio and podcasts channels, and across devices. This partnership makes AdsWizz the first audio buying platform to offer this enhanced cross-device identity capability in the US and EMEA markets. “Marketers need privacy-safe digital identity resolution to reach their consumers,” says Tom Rolph, VP of EMEA at Tapad. “With audio becoming an increasingly powerful medium for engagement, it’s important that our technology extends to this channel, which is why we are excited to announce our integration with AdsWizz’s AudioMatic platform.” Digital audio is experiencing high growth, with 84% of advertisers and agencies saying it will play a bigger role in their media plans in the future. Today, 60% of digital audio is consumed via a mobile device.* The Tapad Graph is the largest digital identity resolution graph with differentiated global scale. The partnership enables audio advertisers to leverage The Tapad Graph for enhanced attribution, analytics, and targeting. Alexis van der Wyer, CEO at AdsWizz, added, “Digital audio is increasingly becoming ubiquitous in our media consumption and in our daily digital interactions, and because of that, audio advertising offers tremendous opportunity to personally interact with consumers in every moment of their daily lives. By integrating with Tapad, we enable our advertising partners to increase the effectiveness and the relevance of their marketing messages across audio channels.” To learn more about Tapad and our digital identity resolution products, visit our identity solutions page. *Digital Audio Exchange, “The Rise of Digital Audio Advertising,” https://thisisdax.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/DAX-Whitepaper.pdf 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 AdsWizz: AdsWizz has created the end-to-end technology platform that is powering the digital audio advertising ecosystem. AdsWizz powers well-known music platforms, podcasts and broadcasting groups worldwide with a comprehensive digital audio software suite of solutions that connect audio publishers to the advertising community. From dynamic ad insertion to advanced programmatic platforms to innovative new audio formats, AdsWizz efficiently connects buyers and sellers in digital audio. AdsWizz is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with an IT Development hub in Bucharest, Romania, and presence in 39 markets around the world. About AudioMatic: AdsWizz Demand Side, audio-centric DSP and audio buying platform, AudioMatic, enables programmatic audio buying and entirely new audio ad experiences that are proven to be more engaging and more effective, and have delivered measurable results for agencies and their brands all over the world. All the biggest ad agencies have used our programmatic trading platform, including Omnicom, GroupM, Havas, Publicis, Mobext, and more. Contact us today
Sixty-Nine Percent Organic Sales Growth Spurred by Expanded Business and Continued Investment in The Tapad Graph™ NEW YORK, May 7, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, a part of Experian, a global leader in digital identity resolution, today announced a record start to the year, following its highest earning year in the company’s history. Since January, Tapad has experienced a 69 percent organic increase in global revenue; with strategic investments in talent, continued high retention rates, and an expanded range of clients across global markets. Globally, Tapad increased its client base across multiple categories and verticals, catering to agencies, brands, telecoms, and data providers. The Tapad Graph™’s varied use cases and differentiated global scale have been instrumental to the company’s overall success to-date. With an ongoing investment in product, and expected feature releases slated for 2019, the company anticipates these accomplishments to continue. “Since the inception of our business, Tapad has heavily focused on enabling marketers to boost the performance of their campaigns with the help of our advanced digital identity resolution technologies,” said Sigvart Voss Eriksen, CEO at Tapad. “While we continue to grow, creating privacy-safe solutions that solve marketers evolving needs remains integral to our evolution. As pioneers in cross-device, we’re constantly innovating and pushing ourselves to be at the forefront of industry change. Our leadership in the space is recognized across the industry, as is evident by our current success.” In addition to partner expansions, Tapad also invested in new talent. In February, Tapad announced Ajit Thupil as the company’s first Senior Vice President of Identity, deepening the company’s commitment to creating ground-breaking digital identity resolution products for brands, agencies and platforms. Tapad’s investment in talent has been recognized by One World Identity’s 2019 Top 100 Influencers in Identity Award and by ClickZ’s 2019 Marketing Technology Awards. To learn more about Tapad and our digital identity resolution products, visit Experian.com Open job opportunities across the globe can be found on Tapad’s career page here: https://www.experian.com/careers/ About Tapad Tapad, Inc. is a global leader in digital identity resolution. The Tapad Graph™, and related solutions, provide a privacy-safe approach to connecting device identifiers to brand and marketer data, thereby allowing marketers around the world to maximize campaign effectiveness. Tapad is recognized across the industry for its innovation, growth and workplace culture, and has earned numerous awards, including the TMCnet Tech Culture Award. Based in New York, Tapad also has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telenor Group. Contact us today
The UK digital advertising market is worth £13.44bn, an increase year-on-year of 15%, reveals the 2018 IAB UK & PwC Digital Adspend Study. Report highlights The majority of all growth is coming from smartphone advertising, which has increased by £1.65bn (35%) from 2017. Smartphone advertising now represents 51% of all UK digital ad spend, up from 45% in 2017. Video is now the largest display format (£2307m), overtaking standard display banners (£1486m). Outstream/social in-feed has increased its majority in total video spend, now occupying a share of 57%, up from 52% in 2017. Social revenue now represents 23% of all digital ad spend. Growth is predicted to slow during 2019, with 5% estimated growth (+9% digital, +11% display, +9% search) compared to 15% in 2018. 2018 marks the tipping point towards a mobile-first ecosystem “For the past few years, industry commentators have been hailing the year of mobile. Each January the predictions come and the waiting commences for evidence to mark a tipping point, a shift to a mobile-first digital ad ecosystem. Well, drumroll… it was 2018! The latest Adspend report from IAB UK and PwC reveals that spend on smartphones outstripped spend on desktop for the first time last year. Brands spent 51% of total spend (which stands at £13.44 billion) on smartphones in 2018, up from 45% in 2017 – a significant milestone in the evolution of digital advertising. “This evidence shows that advertisers are increasingly thinking mobile-first. Growth in investment has historically lagged behind the amount of time spent on the device and we expect to see growth continue at a rapid pace to keep up with audience behaviour – two thirds of time spent online is now on mobile, according to UKOM. Other areas of growth highlighted by the report include video, which accounts for 44% of the total display market, while mobile video now makes up 51% of smartphone display. This is no doubt down to bigger mobile screens, better 4G and more readily available WiFi making video ads an increasingly attractive option. “Across the board, advertisers are investing in digital for longer-term brand building as well as short-term activation, with the direct-to-consumer market helping to drive this trend. What’s more, digital continues to be an accessible and popular route to market for businesses of all sizes, from leading advertisers to SMEs.” Tim Elkington, Chief Digital Officer, IAB UK Content & context crucial for attracting audiences “As people spend more and more of their time on mobile, it’s comes as no surprise that advertisers will follow where audiences are with their marketing spend. “Video has been the driving force in this growth, indicating that engaging visual content is still key in helping brands to achieve great results and to capture consumer attention in a vast sea of digital noise. “Video still has a way to go if it is to reach the level of effectiveness of traditional formats like cinema, but it will be interesting to see how the format develops over the next year or so. Ultimately, brilliant content and properly considered context are crucial for advertisers hoping to attract relevant audiences and build strong brands long term.” Kathryn Jacob OBE, CEO, Pearl & Dean Mobile-first approach driving investment in user experience “As a mobile-first approach has become the norm for many businesses, we’ve seen significant innovation and investment in the user experience that has fuelled the rise in mobile commerce. “Yet, for some years, limitations in the technology and formats available have meant that mobile advertising couldn’t always keep pace with changing consumer behaviours – delivering weaker performance when compared to desktop. “Fortunately, mobile has made huge strides in recent years. Mobile advertising affords great targeting opportunities for brands and a more interactive and immersive experience for consumers. “There is no reason to doubt this trend will continue as advertisers design their media, creative, and targeting strategy with mobile at the heart – optimising performance, enhancing the customer experience, and delivering the best results.” James Cragg, UK Managing Director, Tug New technologies to improve investment efficiency “The UK digital ad market has continued to grow despite the various challenges that the market has faced, including the current socioeconomic climate and general changes in the industry. As spend increases, it’s important to look at how media buying can be made as efficient as possible, minimising waste and maximising the return on investment. “Marketers will start to look to new technologies, like AI, to offer an impartial and more efficient approach to media buying, allowing marketers to measure effectiveness of campaigns and allocate spend accordingly.” Carl Erik Kjaersgaard, Chief Executive, Blackwood Seven Industry going from strength to strength “This significant growth in ad spend is great to see and shows that our industry is going from strength to strength. It’s especially good to see that as advertisers invest more and more in digital advertising, they’re becoming more considered in where they’re spending their money – with a large portion of the growth coming from companies that are part of IAB’s Gold Standard. “At The Trade Desk, we’ve long been ambassadors for the importance of transparency. These findings show that it isn’t just the right thing to do, but makes good business sense as advertisers increasingly choose partners who are demonstrating a commitment to best practice.” Anna Forbes, UK General Manager, The Trade Desk Advertisers embracing mobile “As consumers spend more of their time online, it’s no surprise that digital ad spend has continued its rise, up 15% to £13.4bn. With digital, in every sense, becoming further embedded in our daily lives, it is inevitable that this number is set to rise further next year. “Given the vast majority of people using their smartphone as their primary digital device, evident from site traffic stats we see across the board, the IAB report shows that advertisers have started to fully embrace this shift by following with ad spend. Over the last few years, a combination of faster wireless connectivity along with more capable devices has made it the go-to device for consumers to get online. This is set to continue over the next few years with 5G and even faster, more capable smartphones arriving (i.e. foldables) that will further cement ‘mobile’ as the main digital device to reach consumers.” Wajid Ali, Head of Paid Search, ForwardPMX Budgets must go to professionally produced content “In the IAB’s latest ‘Digital Adspend Study’ it is positive to see that outstream continues to dominate video spend, showing close to a 10% year-on-year increase. “Unsurprisingly, the study highlights that mobile is the most important distribution device (76% of all video spend is on the smartphone), and it’s great to see the format we invented dominating that space. “However, it’s now more pertinent than ever that clients and agencies invest their outstream budgets into professionally produced content and not social infeeds. Budgets must go where content is being produced, rather than aggregators and distributors, where the content is read rather than where a click happened. “We must remember how important local, national, and vertical press are to the global digital ecosystem. By unifying the best publishers at scale, delivering mobile-optimised creativity and outcome-orientated distribution, we are fighting to ensure publishers are getting their fair share of revenue in comparison to the social platforms.” Justin Taylor, UK MD, Teads UK market in robust health “The latest IAB digital ad spend report shows encouraging signs that the UK digital advertising market is in robust health, with mobile advertising continuing its upward trend. “The rise of up-and-coming ad formats like Shopping Ads, Google’s Responsive Search Ads, and Facebook Messenger Ads show that advertisers are looking for ways to capture consumer attention in the evolving digital landscape. As a result, the lines across search, social, and e-commerce are more blurred than ever with the introduction of features like Checkout for Instagram and Shopping ads on Google Images. Furthermore, with the rapid growth of Amazon’s ads business, e-commerce has quickly emerged as a third pillar of digital advertising, making it vital for marketers to have a complete view of the customer journey across channels and devices, if they hope to more accurately understand campaign performance and attribution.” Wesley MacLaggan, SVP of Marketing, Marin Software Digital identity resolution essential in understanding customer journey “Last year’s figures show that UK ad spend is starting to mirror the behaviour of consumers who, according to UKOM data, spend two-thirds of their time online on a smartphone. The fact that mobile ad spend now surpasses that of ad spend on desktop highlights marketers’ understanding that digital identity resolution is essential, not a nice-to-have. “Appreciating the cross-device behaviours of consumers allows brands to gain a better understanding of the customer journey and build stronger relationships with their audiences long term.” Tom Rolph, VP EMEA, Tapad, a part of Experian. Contact us today