I’ve officially been at Experian Marketing Services for one month. That’s long enough to get past the onboarding checklists, meet an incredible number of people, and start connecting the dots between what I believed from the outside and what I now see clearly from the inside.
What’s surprised me most is not the scale of Experian’s assets. Everyone knows Experian operates at massive scale. It’s the uniqueness of how those assets come together. Identity. Activation. Curation. Optimization. Measurement. And a culture that understands the responsibility that comes with being the identity and data backbone for the AdTech ecosystem. There’s real energy here around not just what’s possible, but how to do it the right way.
Very early on, this felt like the right move. The people confirmed it immediately. The leadership team reinforced it just as quickly. There’s alignment around how we go to market, how we think about identity, and how seriously we take client trust. That matters, especially in a moment when marketers are being asked to do more with less, prove everything, and still protect the consumer at every turn.
The reality marketers are facing right now
I’ve spent my career working with brands and agencies navigating change. What’s different right now is the level of fragmentation. Signals are everywhere. They’re coming from transactions, media exposure, location, content consumption, commerce, and increasingly from AI-driven interactions that don’t follow traditional linear paths. The challenge is no longer access to data. It’s coherence.
If I’m a marketer today, my core question is simple: How do I tie a durable identity structure to constantly evolving consumer signals, and feed that intelligence into the right places at the right time? Especially as I start interacting with AI buying agents that will make decisions on my behalf. If the signals those systems receive are noisy, incomplete, or misaligned with my brand, I lose control fast.
Identity has to be the foundation
That’s where identity stops being a background capability and becomes foundational. Without a strong, continuously refreshed identity framework, everything downstream breaks. Planning becomes guesswork. Activation becomes inefficient. Measurement becomes misleading. I see too many brands treating identity as a one-time project. Build a graph. Do some householding. Declare victory. But people change. Households change. Signals multiply. Identity has to evolve just as fast.
One of the biggest misconceptions I walked into was how narrowly Experian is often viewed. Many marketers still think of us as a place to buy attributes. Full stop. What I see now is a connected system that supports the full marketing lifecycle:
- Audience creation
- Activation
- Curation
- Optimization
- Measurement
All grounded in identity and executed in a way that’s measurable and privacy-forward.
Audigent + Experian’s data marketplace. This is where things click.
This becomes even more powerful when you layer in Audigent. Audigent was foundational in defining curation, the idea that it’s not just about having data or inventory, but about intentionally pairing the right audience signals with the right supply to drive outcomes. When you combine Audigent’s curation expertise with Experian’s identity, data, and marketplace capabilities, something meaningful happens.
That same philosophy extends directly into our data marketplace. It’s not just about accessing unique data sets. It’s about safely combining Experian data with partner data, or even multiple partner data sets together, to create audiences that simply don’t exist anywhere else. Then tying those audiences to real-world exposure and conversion across online and offline environments.
This matters across industries, but especially in two places:
- Regulated verticals like healthcare and financial services, where accuracy and privacy are non-negotiable.
- Industries sitting on valuable first-party data like retail, travel, and automotive.
No single company has all the signals they need. The opportunity is in collaboration. Partnering data in a trusted environment to create better outcomes and, in many cases, entirely new revenue streams.
Looking ahead
As AI continues to reshape how media is planned and bought, signals will become the currency. Not just any signals. The right ones. Curated, contextual, and connected to identity in a way that reflects real consumer behavior. Marketers who win will be the ones who control that signal flow, rather than reacting to it.
After one month, what excites me most is that Experian is built for this moment. Years of investment in identity. A data marketplace designed for collaboration. And teams who understand that our job is not just to help marketers reach people, but to help them do it responsibly, efficiently, and in a way that actually drives outcomes.
We’re just getting started.
About the author
Kevin Dunn
Chief Revenue Officer, Experian
Kevin Dunn joins Experian Marketing Services with more than 20 years of leadership experience across marketing and advertising technology, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Brands and Agencies at LiveRamp. In that role, he led growth across retail, CPG, travel, hospitality, financial services, and healthcare, overseeing new business, account expansion, and channel partnerships.
Kevin is known for building cohesive, accountable teams and leading with optimism, clarity, and a strong sense of shared purpose. His leadership philosophy centers on empowering people, driving positive outcomes for clients and fostering a culture where teams can grow, take smart risks, and succeed together.
Latest posts
It is time for us to polish off our crystal ball and give our predictions straight from consumers’ fingertips for the hot products of the 2012 holiday season. Gadgets will reign across many ages Tablets including LeapPads, Tabeos, iPads, Kindles and others will continue to be a popular gift this year, with more choices than ever. On the list of top product-related search terms driving traffic to the Retail 500 category of sites, Kindle Fire HD and Windows 8 top the list as new products. Additionally, Meep!, a child friendly tablet appeared in the top fifteen. Accessories for both phones and tablets will also be popular, especially as the variety grows for iPhone 5 and iPad Mini. A reoccurring favorite gift for the holidays is UGGs which shows a decrease year over year. However, another brand with a similar product is Bearpaw, which is in the top ten searches and has seen big growth year over year.Source: Experian Hitwise Dolls, video games and Furbys, oh my! To identify the popular toys for gifts this year, we researched product-related search terms driving traffic to ToysRUs.com compared to last year’s holiday season. We uncovered trends in the doll category, Doc McStuffins as number one on the list, along with the classic Barbie, which saw a growth in searches year over year. The Furby is making a strong comeback at the number two spot with a reboot and new features. Another trend here is tablets, from branded searches like LeapPad and Kurio there is also the generic term ‘tablets for kids’. In the video game category, the new Wii U that is debuting just in time for Black Friday and should be a big gift this year, along with searches for PS3 games and the Nintendo 3ds xl are all in the top 20 searches.Source: Experian Hitwise Keywords of the consumer to identify demand Beyond product names, it is important to understand the actual way people search, using key phrases and questions. Last year, for example, there was a lot of activity around ‘in-stock’ products, such as the LeapPad explorer, which was hugely popular and quickly sold out in many stores. Retailers and marketers should monitor this throughout the season and make sure to optimize for in stock if there is a popular product that they have available.Source: Experian Hitwise Consumers also focus on what is the ‘best’ – so we see search activity around ‘best place to buy’, particularly around electronics. Questions such as ‘where to buy a’ specific product are also common, such as ‘where to buy a kindle’. These phrases offer opportunities to boost search campaigns by considering how consumers phrase their questions to ensure to capture these searches.Source: Experian Hitwise Quick tip: In the retail category there will tend to be a lot of retail branded store terms but to keep up with holiday search behavior and help make analysis quick, create portfolios of branded terms to easily exclude those from a certain category. When you strip out all the variations of that term you are able to gain insight into product searches that are most popular to a certain site or category. For more insight on the hot product trends for this year from our Hitwise trend-spotters, watch our webcast. Contact us today
My Experian Marketing Services’ colleagues and resident data experts Bill Tancer and Marcus Tewskbury answered the above question for marketers during our recent 2012 Holiday Planning Webinar. The webinar recapped key 2011 holiday marketing results, plus featured trends, benchmarks and recommendations for a successful and profitable 2012 holiday shopping season. Here are a few cool facts: For the first time, last year’s Cyber Monday beat Thanksgiving Day as the busiest online shopping day of the year Facebook and Pinterest were the top traffic sources to the Experian Marketing Services Retail 500 Pinterest visitors most often went to etsy.com and amazon.com from the pinterest.com site Dynamic content in emails can drive up to a 70% lift in open rates Tying web, email and in-store promotions together enhances the shopping experience and improves sales The bottom line is that marketers need to understand where there customers are, when they are there, and what they are doing. Armed with that knowledge, you can deliver personalized and targeted holiday messages that are sure to make this shopping season merry and bright (and profitable!). View the webinar to learn more. Contact us today
The NCAA basketball tournament tipped off this week much to the delight of fans across the United States. Supporters who have truly caught March Madness often follow more than one game at a time, especially during the first week of the tournament play. Thanks to simulcast streaming of games online and via mobile apps, die-hards are better equipped to keep track of multiple games at once. Those who stream games online live in every corner of the country, but some locales are more likely to log on for their March Madness fix than others. According to Experian Simmons, you are most likely to be streaming the game online if you live in one of these markets: Contact us today