Marketers aren’t thinking in channels anymore: they’re thinking in audiences.
As consumer media habits have scattered across devices, platforms and formats, brands have shifted their focus from managing one channel at a time to delivering a connected experience. That’s the core of omnichannel marketing: meeting people where they are and making each touchpoint feel like part of a larger narrative.
However, most brands still encounter the same roadblocks: siloed data, fragmented planning and tools that don’t integrate. And while the industry talks a great deal about omnichannel marketing, few are actually doing it well. The brands that figure it out won’t just reach more people; they’ll improve brand perception while improving the customer journey, achieving better outcomes, and optimizing their media spend more efficiently.
Learn more about this trend in our 2025 Digital trends and predictions report.
Why omnichannel is no longer optional
Omnichannel marketing has long been a goal, but recent shifts in media and technology now make it a necessity. According to Forrester, 21% of global B2C business and tech professionals identified enhancing omnichannel or cross-channel customer experiences as a top priority for their organization today.
Connected TV (CTV) and commerce media networks are emerging as dominant channels, necessitating the coordination of messaging across an expanding ecosystem of streaming, programmatic display, and commerce-driven environments in addition to the multitude of other addressable (and non-addressable) channels. Fortunately, identity solutions continue to evolve, enabling marketers to maintain audience addressability in digital channels even as traditional signals decline and privacy regulations intensify.
Consumers expect this kind of cohesion. They don’t see “channels” – they just see a brand. A member of your loyalty program might browse a product online, see the exact item later on their socials, and then receive an email offer. If those messages feel disconnected or out of sync, this will not be a good customer experience, and a brand risks wasting impressions and losing conversions.
Omnichannel isn’t about showing up in more places. It’s about showing up with a consistent message.
The opportunities inherent in true omnichannel execution
Despite the industry’s movement toward omnichannel marketing strategies, there are a few untapped opportunities brands would benefit from pursuing.
Break down planning silos to optimize performance
Many marketers still plan and measure media in silos: programmatic display, CTV, commerce media, search, social, email, SMS, and each might have their own budgets, strategies, and KPIs. This disjointed approach leads to inconsistent messaging, inefficient spend, and overexposure or underexposure to key audiences.
The opportunity? Shift toward integrated media planning and measurement. By aligning teams and KPIs across channels, marketers can optimize frequency, coordinate creative sequencing, and better attribute business outcomes. Breaking down internal silos improves the customer experience and drives more effective performance. With two-thirds of North American CMOs naming siloed data as their biggest obstacle, those who solve it stand to gain a clear advantage.
Encourage interoperability to activate audiences consistently
Omnichannel success depends on defining an audience once and reaching them everywhere. But in today’s ecosystem, where walled gardens control inventory and many tools remain disjointed, this is easier said than done. Just under a third of marketers say the tools they use don’t work well together.
The opportunity? Invest in interoperable systems that give you control over your data and privacy-safe solutions like clean rooms or universal IDs that enable consistent audience activation across platforms.
Advocate for a unified identity framework
Audience data remains fragmented: commerce media networks control shopper data, TV platforms hold viewership data, and walled gardens provide limited data transparency and determine which data they will share, making it difficult to recognize, reach, and follow the customer journey across digital touchpoints. Without a unified view, campaigns remain disconnected and cross-channel attribution is difficult.
The opportunity? Advocate for a centralized, privacy-conscious identity framework that bridges fragmented data sources. This would allow marketers to recognize consumers across platforms and deliver cohesive messaging.
Marketers need solutions that enable connected audience activation while respecting privacy requirements and platform-specific constraints. Without this, omnichannel remains an aspiration rather than a reality.
Data and identity: The tools you need in your toolkit to make omnichannel work
Implementing omnichannel right starts with establishing identity. Brands need a foundation that lets them connect the dots: across data, platforms and channels. Here’s how:
Build a unified identity foundation
“A single view of the customer is the foundation of a successful omnichannel program,” says Forrester in a December 2023 report on omnichannel. This begins by connecting disparate data sources, including persistent offline information, such as addresses, emails, names, and phone numbers, with digital signals, in a privacy compliant way. And this, in turn, creates a strong identity foundation. Solutions that integrate hashed email addresses (HEMs), mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), IP addresses, CTV IDs, and universal IDs enable brands to resolve customer identities across different platforms, ensuring that campaigns remain addressable as users transition between channels.
Activate audiences everywhere, without the hassle
Brands should be able to define an audience once and activate it across all addressable channels without unnecessary complexity. Interoperability between demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), clean rooms, and private marketplaces (PMPs) ensures that high-quality audiences are matched with premium inventory in a targeted, transparent, and efficient manner. This connectivity helps maintain consistent audience targeting—even as consumers engage in different environments. By working with a partner that seamlessly integrates with major platforms, marketers ensure that data quality and identity resolution remain intact throughout campaigns, avoiding data loss that occurs when data is transferred between different, disparate platforms.
Measure across channels, and the customer journey
Effective omnichannel marketing isn’t just about reaching audiences—it’s about understanding how different touchpoints contribute to conversions. Advanced attribution models, incrementality testing, and cross-platform frequency management enable brands to use consistent identity across campaign planning, activation and measurement so they connect ad exposures to real-world outcomes. Achieving this requires a strong identity resolution partner—one that can unify audience data across environments and power accurate, privacy-compliant measurement at scale.
The future of omnichannel marketing
Omnichannel is becoming the baseline expectation for modern marketing. The brands that figure out how to connect the dots across the increasingly disparate media landscape will drive better performance and build stronger customer relationships.
By working with a partner that can offer you an end-to-end data and identity solution focused on consumers, not channels, you can better understand your best customers (and your next customers), reach them across channels, and measure cross-channel campaigns more effectively, making true omnichannel execution more achievable.
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Ongoing signal loss is driving marketers, agencies, and platforms to turn to supply-side advertising. By using first-party data from publishers and platforms, supply-side advertising has the potential to deliver high-quality audience and context for more effective ad targeting. The supply-side refers to the publishers and platforms that sell advertising inventory. These companies have access to first-party data about their users, which can be used to target ads more effectively. By tapping into supply-side advertising, you can overcome the challenges of signal loss and target ads more effectively. To shed light on this topic, we hosted a panel discussion at Cannes, featuring industry leaders from Audigent, Captify, Newsweek, Pubmatic, Truthset, and Experian. In this blog post, we'll explore how partnerships between supply-side channels and publishers are working to enhance advertising opportunities while balancing the need for transparency and control in programmatic ad buying. Shift toward supply-side advertising Traditionally, the demand-side dominated the programmatic media buying chain due to an abundance of supply. However, with the emergence of finite data and its interpretation, collaboration between supply-side technology companies and publishers is required to redefine these economics. It's no longer sufficient for the demand-side to blindly negotiate prices based on limited knowledge. Marketers can still define their target audience, but effective communication is key. This presents an opportunity for premium journalistic outlets to guide the industry's understanding of how data from the supply-side impacts media buying economics in the future. "Supply-side technology partnerships with publishers are now in a position to shape the economics of programmatic media buying as there is a finite amount of data. It’s crucial for supply-side technology companies to collaborate with publishers to shape these new economics. This presents an opportunity for premium journalistic outlets to provide guidance on how data from the supply-side can affect the future of media buying." matthew papa, svp, business & corporate development, captify Democratizing data from the supply-side Cookies haven't brought significant benefits to premium publishers. They mainly serve to retarget users from sites like The Wall Street Journal to advertising sites. This approach primarily serves the purpose of generating revenue. The elimination of third-party cookies presents an opportunity for premium publishers to shift this dynamic. By using their knowledge of first-party audiences, and using identifiers like Experian's LUID, publishers can own and understand their audience data, which can then be modeled. Here’s how publishers can win Establishing a connection with consumers and emphasizing the value exchange is essential to building trust. Determining what incentives and benefits consumers find meaningful will be crucial in gaining their opt-in. With consumers The Apple tracking transparency initiative, specifically the deprecation of IDFA signals, had significant implications for mobile app developers. Overnight, opt-in rates plummeted, causing a drastic decline in iOS ad monetization. To combat this, developers focused on demonstrating the value exchange to consumers—better ad experiences and personalized content. By articulating the benefits over a couple of years, opt-in rates increased from 10-15% to 30-40%. The key takeaway is the need to effectively communicate the value exchange to consumers. With partners Trust plays a crucial role in planning your first-party data strategy. Publishers, advertisers, and data partners highly value their proprietary data. However, there are concerns about how it's used, mishandled, or leaked in the ecosystem. Building trust between partners is essential. It's important to work with trustworthy partners who are agnostic, committed to innovative solutions, and globally oriented. These partners can help navigate the complexities of laws and regulations. Choosing the right partners is crucial in a world where first-party data is a key asset. "Power is shifting toward brands that have strong relationships with customers and possess first-party data. As the ownership of customer data becomes more important, it is crucial to establish a first-party data strategy to better serve customers and adapt to changing market dynamics."chip russo, president, truthset Balance probabilistic and deterministic data Focus on building trust with consumers and collaborating with reliable companies to share data. However, it's important to remember that achieving a 100% opt-in rate is unlikely. The cookie, which has become omnipresent, requires us to shift our strategic thinking. We need to consider both deterministic and probabilistic approaches instead of viewing them as mutually exclusive. The landscape will be fragmented, with some consumers opting in and others not. "Probabilistic and predictive audience data holds immense potential. With the power of AI, we can expect enhanced performance and efficacy in media campaigns. At Audigent, we firmly believe that this data will outperform deterministic data, making it an integral part of our strategy." drew stein, ceo, audigent Premium content Trust plays a crucial role in leading to premium content. By placing trust in the best media brands, data, and technology partners, we can expect to see improvements in media, journalism, and advertising. This shift may have a direct impact on the long tail of free natural resources, making it more challenging for them to thrive. However, this change is ultimately beneficial since it promotes higher-quality media experiences overall. "The homepage surface is making a comeback in the publishing industry, proving its value in establishing a direct connection with readers. While we acknowledge the importance of technology partnerships for addressability and identity, our core competency as a publisher remains outstanding journalism that captures and engages great audiences." kevin gentzel, cco, newsweek Watch our Cannes panel for more on supply-side advertising We hosted a panel in Cannes that covered supply-side advertising. Check out the full recording below to hear what leaders from Audigent, Captify, Newsweek, Pubmatic, Truthset, and Experian had to say. Watch now Check out more Cannes content: Our key takeaways from Cannes Lions 2023 Insights from a first-time attendee Four new marketing strategies for 2023 Exploring the opportunities in streaming TV advertising The future of identity in cookieless advertising Follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our email newsletter for more informative content on the latest industry insights and data-driven marketing. Contact us today Latest posts
The digital advertising landscape has undergone a seismic shift in recent years. Privacy-conscious consumers, transformative regulations, and emerging technologies are converging to redefine how addressability — the ability to accurately reach a specific audience — functions in this new era. Addressability is a cornerstone of digital advertising, and its evolution presents both challenges and opportunities for publishers and advertisers alike. The need for enhancing addressability is driven by a complex set of factors. More consumers are opting out of data sharing or disabling cookie-tracking, leading to a drastic reduction in the reach of traditional programmatic advertising. Nearly 70 percent of consumers are now unreachable through these conventional methods, creating an 'addressability gap' that publishers and advertisers are eager to bridge. The landscape is further complicated by privacy regulations such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which mandate solutions that balance user privacy with advertisers' needs. Contributing to this intricate mix is the growing shift toward video and connected TV (CTV). These platforms have long operated in a cookie-less environment and are witnessing rising demand due to their engaging nature and broad reach. However, the attractiveness of these mediums to advertisers hinges on effective addressability, highlighting the urgent need for innovative audience identification and targeting methods. The emergence of data enablers and collaborative initiatives Data enablers like Experian are stepping up to meet this need. These companies are providing robust, privacy-compliant data resources to improve addressability. Experian's unique approach to identification, the Living Unit ID (LUID), is a key tool in bridging the current gap in reach. How Experian and Microsoft Advertising are redefining addressability We recently expanded our collaboration with Microsoft, to make our extensive data resources available through Microsoft Advertising’s data marketplace. This collaborative initiative represents a significant move, offering a compelling model of how data enablers and buy-side and sell-side platforms can work together to redefine addressability. The benefits of this arrangement extend to all stakeholders in the ecosystem. Advertisers using Microsoft Invest can now access Experian's audience data. This not only enhances the granularity of their audience targeting but also broadens the reach of their campaigns. Experian's identity spine also serves as a robust framework to extend the value and reach of advertisers' first-party data. For publishers, the accessibility of Experian data on Microsoft Advertising’s data marketplace opens the door to greater addressability in their inventory, enabling them to offer advertisers more addressable impressions. This then amplifies the value of their inventory, potentially increasing their overall yield. For advertisers, this integration facilitates access to highly relevant audiences while simplifying campaign setup and respecting user privacy. We can help you carve a new path toward addressability In the ever-evolving landscape of digital advertising, such collaborative efforts are becoming critical to ensure that advertising remains effective for brands, profitable for publishers, and respectful of consumer privacy. This model of cooperation and innovation is essential to navigate the challenges of a privacy-centric, cookie-less world and unlock the true potential of every media channel. With collaborative initiatives and innovative solutions, the industry is set to transform these challenges into opportunities, carving a new path toward addressability that respects privacy and delivers value for all stakeholders. Connect with us to learn more about how you can access our data in Microsoft Advertising’s data marketplace. To learn more about our partner Microsoft Advertising, visit their website. Contact us Latest posts
The cookieless future is here, and it's time to start thinking about how you will adapt your strategies to this new reality. In a cookieless world, you will need to find new ways to identify and track users across devices. This will require reliance on first-party data, contextual advertising, and alternative identifiers that respect user privacy. To shed light on this topic, we hosted a panel discussion at Cannes, featuring industry leaders from Cint, Direct Digital Holdings, the IAB, MiQ, Tatari, and Experian. In this blog post, we'll explore the future of identity in cookieless advertising. We'll discuss the challenges and opportunities that this new era presents, and we'll offer our tips for how to stay ahead of the curve. How cookieless advertising is evolving Programmatic advertising is experiencing multiple changes. Let's dive into three key things you should know. Cookie deprecation One significant change is cookie deprecation, which has implications for tracking and targeting. Additionally, understanding the concept of Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) is becoming increasingly crucial. The demand and supply-side are coming closer together Demand-side platforms (DSPs) and supply-side platforms (SSPs) have traditionally been seen as two separate entities. DSPs are used by advertisers to buy ad space, while SSPs are used by publishers to sell ad space. However, in recent years, there has been a trend toward the two sides coming closer together. This is due to three key factors: The rise of header bidding Header bidding is a process where publishers sell their ad space to multiple buyers in a single auction. This allows publishers to get the best possible price for their ad space, and it also allows advertisers to target their ads more effectively. 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Don't solely focus on devices and behaviors in your cookieless advertising strategy and remember the true value of people and their identities. What’s next for cookieless advertising? The deprecation of third-party cookies is a major challenge for the digital advertising industry. Advertisers will need to find new ways to track users and target their ads. Here are three specific trends that we can expect to see in cookieless advertising. First-party data is moving in-house Many major media companies, equipped with valuable identifier and first-party data, are choosing to bring it in-house. They are focused on using their data internally rather than sharing it externally. "Many larger media companies are opting to bring their identifier and first-party data in-house, creating more walled gardens. It seems that companies are prioritizing data control within their own walls instead of sharing it externally."laura manning, svp, measurement, cint Fragmentation will continue The number of identifiers used to track people online is growing rapidly. In an average household, over a 60-day period, there are 22 different identifiers present. This number is only going to increase as we move away from cookies and toward other identifiers. This fragmentation makes it difficult to track people accurately and deliver targeted advertising. This means that we need new identity solutions that can help make sense of these new identifiers and provide a more accurate view of people. A portfolio of solutions will address signal loss Advertisers are taking a variety of approaches to cookieless advertising. A few of the solutions include: Working with alternative IDs. This refers to using alternative identifiers to cookies, such as mobile device IDs or email addresses. These identifiers can be used to track people across different websites and devices, even without cookies. Working with data index at a geo level. This refers to using data from a third-party provider to get a better understanding of people's location. This information can be used to target ads more effectively. Working with publisher first-party data that's been aggregated to a cohort level. This refers to using data that is collected directly from publishers, such as website traffic data or purchase history. This data can be used to create more personalized ads. Working with contextual solutions. This refers to using contextual data, such as the content of a website or the weather, to target ads. This can help to ensure that ads are relevant to the user's interests. "Cookie deprecation is often exaggerated, and alternate solutions are already emerging. As data moves closer to publishers and first-party data gains prominence, the industry will adapt to the changes."mark walker, ceo, direct digital holdings There is no one-size-fits-all solution for cookies, and you will need to be flexible and adopt a variety of different approaches. How will these solutions work together? You can take a waterfall approach to cookieless advertising. A waterfall approach is a process where advertisers bid on ad impressions in sequential order. The first advertiser to meet the minimum bid price wins the impression. In the context of cookieless advertising, a waterfall approach can be used to prioritize different targeting signals. For example, you might start by bidding on impressions that have a Ramp ID, then move on to impressions that have a geo-contextual signal, and finally bid on impressions that have no signal at all. This is a flexible approach that can be adapted to different needs and budgets. Watch our Cannes panel for more on cookieless advertising We hosted a panel in Cannes that covered the future of identity in cookieless advertising. Check out the full recording below to hear what leaders from Cint, Direct Digital Holdings, the IAB, MiQ, Tatari, and Experian had to say. Watch now Check out more Cannes content: Our key takeaways from Cannes Lions 2023 Insights from a first-time attendee Four new marketing strategies for 2023 Exploring the opportunities in streaming TV advertising Maximize ad targeting with supply-side advertising Follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our email newsletter for more informative content on the latest industry insights and data-driven marketing. Get in touch Latest posts