Ditch the cookie, not the data with the next evolution of contextual targeting
Today, we’re excited to announce Contextually-Indexed Audiences, a game-changer in contextual targeting. Experian’s new solution offers advertisers a powerful, privacy-safe solution that combines the precision of deterministic audience targeting with the flexibility of contextual targeting. Powered by real-time analysis from two million websites, access to 1,400 trusted audience segments, and easy activation through the top demand-side platform’s contextual marketplace or Audigent private marketplaces (PMPs), this solution offers advertisers a scalable way to reach their target consumers.
With this solution, advertisers can reach consumers on websites that over-index for visitors with the demographics, behaviors, or interests, they are looking to target. For example, an automotive brand can select Experian’s “Contextually-indexed in-market for a luxury electric car” audience segment and reach consumers when they are browsing websites that often attract that exact segment. Best of all, this is done in a privacy-safe way since it’s not reliant on cookies, mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) or other user identifiers.
How Contextually-Indexed Audiences work
Contextually-Indexed Audiences harness advanced machine learning technology to move beyond traditional keyword-based strategies. The solution works in three steps:
- First, it analyzes traffic from over two million websites and mobile apps to identify the types of frequent visitors to those platforms.
- Next, using Experian’s Digital Graph, it resolves the identities of those visitors and maps them to more than 1,400 of Experian’s Syndicated Audiences, determining which audiences are most overrepresented on each site.
- Finally, the relevant audiences are assigned to those sites, allowing advertisers to deliver ads to people in those audiences while they are actively browsing the websites — without relying on user identifiers.
Customer success story
A leading auto manufacturer was among the first clients to activate this new solution while we were in beta. The goal was to identify new contextual targeting solutions that focus on privacy while maintaining scale and performance. The client identified two key target audiences: first-time vehicle buyers and experienced buyers. The initial campaigns using this new solution were highly successful. Even as the campaign scaled to twice the original volume, it continued to deliver three times the targeted click-through rate (CTR) goal.
“Partnering with industry leaders like Experian, we’re pushing the boundaries of contextual targeting with innovative data strategies that offer buyers greater flexibility and improved performance. These advanced contextual solutions are exciting as they not only drive results but also have the same privacy safeguards as traditional contextual targeting.”
Matt Griffith, CTO & Co-Founder, Audigent
Benefits of Contextually-Indexed Audiences
- Accurate consumer reach: Real-time integrations with over two million websites and apps coupled with machine-learning indexing technology ensure audience segments are constantly refreshed, which means advertisers reach consumers based on their latest habits.
- Privacy-safe audience targeting: These audiences are not reliant on cookies or any other user identifiers for targeting.
- Audience customization: Create the right audience segment for your campaign by using a combination of over 1,400 audiences across 12 data categories like demographics, politics, health, travel, finance, and TV.
- Flexible activation: Activate these audiences instantly in the top demand-side platform’s contextual marketplace or utilize our partnership with Audigent to create a custom private marketplace (PMP), where they can be activated across any media buying platform. When using a PMP, advertisers benefit from additional performance optimization capabilities.
Experian’s Contextually-Indexed Audiences offer advertisers a powerful solution that combines the precision of audience targeting with the flexibility of contextual targeting. With real-time analysis of over two million sites and access to 1,400 trusted audience segments, advertisers can reach consumers based on their exact behaviors and interests. This is done in a privacy-safe, yet scalable way since it’s not reliant on cookies or other user identifiers. Whether activating instantly through the top demand-side platform or customizing through Audigent PMPs, this is the future of audience targeting.
Ditch the cookie, not the data, and elevate your strategy today.
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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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