A few weeks ago, Experian and OpenX hosted a supply-side think tank at our New York City office. Over 70 industry leaders met to talk about targeting in a cookieless future and how we can reach consumers in intentional ways.
Publishers and supply-side partners shared what challenges they face, what solutions they’re considering, and what the future holds once the third-party cookie begins to deprecate in 2024. In this blog post, we’ll cover the top challenges, cookieless solutions, and actionable strategies we discussed at the event that can help publishers, their partners, and agencies make informed decisions about how to navigate tomorrow’s digital ecosystem.
Four main challenges
Four main challenges were discussed at the event:
First-party data monetization
Publishers possess a wealth of first-party data, but collecting and centralizing this information can be difficult for actionable insights. Streamlining data centralization and organizing first-party data is crucial for effective decision-making. Even with a wealth of first-party data, it’s important to be aware of any blind spots in your data and enrich those gaps with data partners rooted in offline connections.
“We appreciate the opportunity to participate in the supply-side think tank led by OpenX and Experian, two industry leaders in navigating a cookieless future. We’re excited to collaborate with them on testing privacy sandbox APIs, identity resolution products, and audience development tools to enhance creator monetization and support an open internet amidst rapid technological and regulatory shifts.”
Patrick McCann, SVP, Research, Raptive
Lack of authenticated data and persistent IDs
The deprecation of third-party cookies means there will be a shortage of authenticated user data and persistent identifiers. Without this information, targeting and personalization become more challenging. Participants discussed the need to find alternative ways to gather and use personal data responsibly. It’s time to start evaluating data partners who have accurate, multi-source compiled, privacy-compliant data with the dedication to reach and recency.
Fragmentation and scale with alternative IDs currently in the market
The multitude of alternative identifiers in the market poses a challenge for publishers. Each of these identifiers comes with its own set of rules and integration processes, leading to fragmentation and complexity. Publishers must find ways to navigate this landscape. Look to ID agnostic partners who provide a way to access multiple IDs at scale.
“The industry needs a more streamlined standard to integrate alternative IDs, given the ongoing challenges of third-party cookie deprecation, measurement, and clean rooms. This burden falls heavily on product and engineering teams, who must prioritize and address these issues one at a time.”
Ryan Boh, Head of Identity, Lockr
Time
Cookie deprecation is almost here. It is crucial to organize your legal, engineering, and product resources, and align internal go-to-market strategies. Establish partnerships that work with your team to follow these timelines and help build phased or cohesive strategies to prepare for a path to monetization. It is imperative to establish a sense of urgency and not wait for others to take the lead. Start testing now to determine if your infrastructure is ready and capable. Many partners who attended the think tank offered insights on how they’ve been tackling challenges to help their industry peers.
Solutions and action plans for a cookieless future
Participants discussed ways they are starting to prepare for a cookieless future and other approaches on their roadmaps:
Work with data partners heavily rooted in offline data across the ecosystem
Enriching your first-party data with partners who rely on offline IDs can help bridge gaps in your audience knowledge. This approach allows you to build a more complete audience profile while third-party cookies are still operational.
Experian is rooted in deterministic offline data and has decades of experience managing it safely. We have insights on over 250 million U.S. consumers and 126 million U.S. households. With our digital technology assets, we bring in 4 billion devices and 1 trillion device signals to definitively connect offline records to online identifiers. With Experian identity widespread adoption throughout the industry, we’re able to provide a common language for us all to collaborate. Experian identity organizes people into households, links their digital devices and IDs to them, enriches their identity with behavioral attributes, and then makes this data actionable in any environment, all while maintaining consumer privacy and data regulations.
“Experian’s supply-side think tank provided a platform for publishers and AdTech companies to discuss the challenges posed by cookie deprecation, privacy regulation updates, and identity restrictions. It highlighted the need for AdTech companies to assist publishers in addressing anonymous users without requiring a value exchange — fostering a mutually beneficial and privacy-compliant open web solution.”
Anthony Caccioppoli, Head of AdTech & Solutions, Insider
Develop your own persistent ID
Creating and maintaining a proprietary persistent ID can be a valuable cookieless solution. It provides control and independence in the new environment post cookie, giving publishers the ability to maintain a consistent user profile.
Use your data to expand contextual targeting opportunities
Contextual targeting involves placing ads based on the content of the web page rather than user data. In the absence of cookies, this strategy can prove effective in reaching relevant audiences.
“The masking or deprecation of IP addresses will eventually impact the availability of addressable IDs in non-authenticated web environments. In addition to ensuring maximum resiliency of our Graph and increasing support for authentication-based IDs, we are also investing in research and development around the use of other signals, such as contextual data, to maintain behavioral targeting inside non-authenticated environments. We will be sharing our findings and future plans in this space in the coming months.”
Budi Tanzi, VP, Product, Experian
Facilitate a knowledge exchange
Reach out to your network to find out what others are testing and what’s working. Start collaborating with agencies and brands across the buy-side to meet their needs.
“The collaborative spirit displayed by our partners constantly inspires me. Listening to the obstacles our industry faces allows this community to build strong relationships, create action plans, and deliver true value.”
Carly Allcorn, Account Executive, Publisher & Supply-Side Partnerships, Experian
Invest in an identity graph
Invest in an identity graph provider to sync first-party cookies and addressable IDs. This ensures that your data remains accessible and actionable in a cookieless world.
“Many participants at our think tank with Experian expressed the need to find an identity solution while also exploring other ways they can start to address cookie deprecation while maintaining business as usual.”
Callie Askenas, Director of Publisher Development, OpenX
How Experian and OpenX can help
Graph from Experian captures all available digital identifiers in real-time and resolves them back to individuals and households. We’re signal agnostic, continuously expand the IDs we support, and futureproof identity resolution through a combination of deterministic, probabilistic, and cookieless identifiers.
Experian is a key player in OpenX’s OpenAudience solution and helps to power many of their data segments as well as their identity graph. While OpenX collaborates with a variety of providers and operates a fully interoperable platform, Experian remains valuable to the core technology within OpenX’s supply-side platform (SSP).
Experian can help you prepare for the cookieless future
It’s clear that the cookieless future poses some unique challenges for publishers, but there are solutions. Publishers and their supply-side partners can come up with strategies to target consumers in intentional ways by continually testing multiple identifiers and cookieless solutions, developing their own persistent ID, creating velvet rope content, and returning to contextual targeting. Collectively, these actionable strategies can help ensure that publishers have a more successful transition into a cookieless future.
Experian has been preparing for signal loss for quite some time and we continue to make substantial investments to ensure our resiliency and the resiliency of our customers. We continue to diversify our signal creating profiles with more persistent identifiers which allows us to pair authentication-based universal identifiers such as UID2 into our Graph seamlessly.
Experian is ready and we are here to navigate the future of privacy together.
To find out more about how Experian can help you prepare for the cookieless future, get in touch with a member of our team today.
Get ready for the cookieless future with Experian
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Media is changing and the sell-side is stepping boldly into the identity jungle—a dense and complex environment where privacy regulations, evolving signals, and advertiser expectations make every step an adventure. It’s not about survival; it’s about navigation. Experian’s identity solutions offer sell-side players like connected TV (CTV) publishers, supply-side platforms (SSPs), and open web publishers a roadmap to deliver rich consumer insights and build addressable audiences. Here’s how different stakeholders are navigating the landscape—and why having the right sherpa makes all the difference. CTV publishers: Turning anonymous viewers into addressable audiences The surge in CTV viewing, fueled by the shift from linear TV to digital streaming, has made it a critical channel for marketers—but navigating the identity jungle isn’t the same for every platform. For major players like Netflix, Hulu, and Max, where users log in to access content, the challenge isn’t identifying viewers but enriching their profiles. By layering behavioral and purchase data onto these profiles, platforms can go far beyond insights on media habits to create highly attractive audience segments for marketers to target. For free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) platforms like Tubi, where logins aren’t required to watch content, the jungle is denser. These platforms have unknown viewers they can’t identify, which limits their ability to know who the customer is and reach them with relevant ads. By utilizing identity solutions, FAST platforms can turn unknown users into addressable audiences, resolving viewership at the household or individual level. This transformation allows for personalized, relevant ads that increase engagement, boost inventory value, and unlock new revenue opportunities. How Experian can help Imagine a CTV platform struggling with anonymous viewers on its FAST channels, where users tune in without logging in. Using Experian’s household-level data, the platform can convert these anonymous sessions into known, addressable audiences. This allows for personalized, precisely targeted ads that boost viewer engagement and significantly increase ad inventory value. For platforms with logged-in users, Experian takes it further by enriching profiles with behavioral and purchase data. This deeper understanding enables even more precise ad targeting, stronger advertiser demand, driving higher CPMs, and ultimately greater revenue growth. With Experian, CTV publishers turn anonymity into opportunity and build meaningful connections across their audience. SSPs: Delivering premium audiences across channels SSPs are under pressure to differentiate themselves in a competitive marketplace. The days of simply aggregating inventory are gone; today, SSPs must prove their worth by delivering premium value to advertisers and publishers. Addressability is a cornerstone of this strategy. By combining demographic and behavioral data with offline and digital identifiers, SSPs can build and deliver high-quality audiences across various channels. At the same time, supply path optimization (SPO) is taking center stage. SPO acts as a machete in the underbrush, clearing out unnecessary intermediaries and reducing costs while creating direct, transparent pathways to premium, brand-safe inventory. When paired with identity data, SSPs can offer buyers precisely targeted audiences, more premium inventory and a streamlined supply path. How Experian can help Imagine an SSP striving to stand out in a crowded market by delivering premium value to advertisers and publishers. Experian’s Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes empowers SSPs to enhance addressability and audience insights by combining digital identifiers with demographic and behavioral data. This enriched understanding of an audience leads to greater reach for the buy side and higher revenue for publishers. Additionally, these capabilities enable SSPs to form exclusive inventory partnerships, positioning them as go-to sources for high-value audiences. With Experian’s solutions, SSPs can differentiate themselves by delivering superior targeting, deeper audience understanding, and streamlined supply paths that drive measurable results for advertisers and publishers alike. Open web publishers: Promoting addressability and audience understanding For open web publishers, programmatic advertising has created opportunities—and challenges. Inventory commoditization makes it difficult to stand out and often leads to suppressed CPMs. To compete, publishers need data and identity solutions that enable them to differentiate their inventory and reveal the true value of their audience. Similar to FAST publishers, the jungle for open web publishers often starts with anonymous visitors. Recognizing and identifying all their users allows publishers to present advertisers with rich audience insights that lead to more efficiently targeted ads. Publishers are now equipped to fight commoditization and maximize revenue potential. How Experian can help Imagine an open web publisher striving to deliver more value to advertisers in a crowded programmatic landscape. Experian’s identity solutions help publishers turn anonymous traffic into addressable audiences, enabling them to understand their visitors and provide richer audience insights. This allows advertisers to target ads more effectively, increasing engagement and driving higher ad revenue. With the ability to recognize their visitors and offer actionable data, publishers can break free from commoditization. Experian empowers publishers to maximize their inventory’s value and help marketers drive results. Turning identity challenges into a strategic advantage The identity jungle can feel daunting, but for those willing to explore its opportunities, the rewards are immense. Sell-side players—CTV publishers, SSPs, and open web publishers—have the tools to not just navigate but thrive in this dense and dynamic ecosystem. By embracing data-driven strategies and identity solutions, they can uncover new paths to audience engagement, inventory value, and revenue growth. Get started today Read our companion article to learn how the buy-side is approaching data and identity challenges. Read now Contact us Latest posts
In a perfect world, we’d all have a single, go-to grocery store that carried everything on our shopping list – fresh produce, gourmet coffee beans, rare spices, and maybe even that special-grade olive oil, right alongside our wholesale bulk purchases at unbeatable prices. It would be convenient and efficient, and it’d save a lot of driving around town. The changing data marketplace: From one-stop shop to specialized selection For a long time, data buyers enjoyed something similar in their world: a small set of large-scale data marketplaces that offered a wide array of audiences, making it easy to load up on whatever you needed in one place. Not only are there fewer places to pick everything up, but new factors like privacy and signal deprecation are placing a spotlight on quality and addressability. Just as our dinner plans are growing more ambitious insofar as we want health, flavor, value, and convenience all in one place – so are our data strategies. Instead of a single steak-and-potatoes meal, today’s data marketplace operators might be cooking up a complex menu of campaigns. As a result, data buyers are beginning to shop around. Some still rely on large-scale marketplaces for familiar staples, but now they have reasons to explore other options. Some are turning to providers known for offering top-tier, transparently sourced segments. Others are focusing on specialty providers that excel in one area. A more selective approach to data buying In this environment, choosing where to “shop” for data is becoming more deliberate and selective. Data buyers aren’t just thinking about broad scale; they’re looking to prioritize quality, durability, data privacy, and differentiation. They need to place higher value on data marketplaces that can maintain audience addressability over time, despite signal loss. Sometimes, that means accepting a smaller assortment in exchange for tighter vetting and more reliable targeting. Other times it means mixing and matching – stopping by one marketplace for premium segments and another for cost-friendly, wide-reaching data sets. Either way, they can benefit from having more choices. Experian’s marketplace: A trusted source for high-quality data Experian’s vetted and curated blend of data partners and vertically-aligned audiences offers a trusted specialty store for data buyers. Experian’s marketplace, powered by identity graphs that include 126 million households, 250 million individuals, and 4 billion active digital IDs, enables partner audiences to be easily activated and maintain high addressability across display, mobile, and connected TV (CTV) channels. In particular, Experian’s marketplace provides: Enhanced addressability and match rates All audiences delivered from the marketplace benefit from our best-in-class offline and digital identity graphs, which ensure addressability across all channels like display, mobile, and CTV. Unlike other data marketplaces, Experian ensures all identifiers associated with an audience have been active and are targetable, improving the accuracy of audience planning. Audience diversity and scale Access a broad range of audiences across top verticals from our partner audiences, which can be combined with one another and with 2,400+ Experian Audiences. The ability to join audiences across data providers ensures that buyers can build the perfect audience for the campaign. Trusted compliance and oversight With decades of experience, Experian is a trusted expert in data compliance. Our rigorous data partner review ensures available audiences comply with all federal, state, and local consumer privacy regulations. The future of data marketplaces: Precision and flexibility matter The evolution of data marketplaces reflects the industry's shifting priorities. Data buyers seek specificity, reliability, and adaptability to align with their diverse campaign needs. The best data strategy, much like the best grocery run, isn’t about grabbing everything in one place – it’s about carefully selecting the right ingredients to create the perfect recipe for success. This shift underscores the importance of flexibility and precision as data buyers navigate a landscape shaped by privacy regulations, signal loss, and evolving consumer expectations. As data marketplaces adapt to meet these demands, they are redefining what it means to deliver value. Experian’s marketplace enables buyers to strike the perfect balance between reach and quality by offering enhanced match rates, precise audience planning, and seamless distribution. In this new era, data buyers have the tools and options to craft campaigns that are impactful and aligned with the increasingly selective and privacy-conscious digital landscape. The key is recognizing that today’s data strategy is about utilizing the strengths of many to create a cohesive and effective whole. If you're interested in learning more about Experian's marketplace or becoming an active buyer or seller in our marketplace, please contact us. Contact us Latest posts
Conventional TV advertising campaigns have historically relied on general audience metrics like impressions and ratings to measure outcomes. These metrics can help marketers understand how many people have seen an ad, but they don’t reveal its real-world impact, which leaves a gap between ad exposure and results. Outcome-based TV measurement bridges this gap and helps marketers tie ad spending directly to their business goals. Instead of counting eyeballs alone, TV measurement zeroes in on what viewers do after seeing an ad — whether signing up for a service, visiting your website, or purchasing a product. TV ad measurement helps marketers adjust campaigns based on clear, trackable outcomes rather than guesswork. Let’s talk about how marketers can get started with outcome-based TV measurement and start experiencing tangible results. Why outcome-based TV measurement matters Outcome-based measurement indicates a massive shift in how marketers evaluate TV advertising success. As a principal analyst at Forrester explained, the industry is about to “move into a whole different world" where multiple metrics are tailored to advertisers’ unique goals, such as sales, store traffic, or web engagement. This shift is driven by improved tools for tracking TV outcomes, which help justify spending and clarify ROI. With TV measurement, you can see how your campaigns impact aspects of your marketing like sales and engagement. Aligning TV ad spend with business goals Every business has distinct objectives. Outcome-based measurement ties your marketing efforts to business goals and enables smarter decisions, campaign optimization, and ROI improvements. Whether you're a B2C brand wanting immediate sales or a B2B organization looking to drive website traffic, this method provides the insights needed for strategic decision-making. Marketers can deliver the most value by adjusting TV ad spending to maximize desired results: Sales goals: Identify which ads and platforms directly influence purchases to ensure TV ad spend contributes to revenue growth. Customer engagement: Link actions like website visits or app downloads to TV campaigns and refine messaging to deepen audience connections. Desired outcomes: Align ad spend with goals like consumer awareness or repeat purchases to allocate resources effectively for measurable success. Reducing wasted spend on ineffective channels Outcome-based TV measurement allows you to pinpoint which networks, times, or programs drive the most engagement and conversion. When you know your underperforming channels, you can reallocate budgets to those with a higher ROI and avoid waste. Core metrics in outcome-based TV measurement The effective implementation of outcome-based measurement requires advanced TV advertising analytics and tracking metrics that shed light on TV ad performance. Incremental lift This metric measures the increase in desired actions and business results — like purchases or site visits — that can be attributed directly to a TV campaign. Incremental lift quantifies your campaign’s impact and separates organic activity from the results your ads have driven. Let’s say a meal kit service experiences a 20% lift in subscriptions within a single week of running TV ads compared to a week without ads. They’d want to be able to isolate the impact of their ad from their organic growth so they can determine if the growth is actually a result of the TV ads or another effort. Attribution and conversions Attribution links TV ad exposure to specific customer actions, such as newsletter sign-ups and product purchases. Conversion data helps marketers understand the whole customer journey to optimize messaging, targeting, and channel mix to improve conversion rates. A retailer that knows 50% of TV ad viewers visit its e-commerce site within 36 hours of exposure could use that information to adjust the timing of its retargeting and align with site visit spikes. Audience segmentation for targeted measurement Outcome-based measurement breaks down performance across target demographics and allows for granular audience segmentation so TV ads resonate with the right audiences. For example, if a luxury brand saw better TV ad performance with high-earning Millennials, they’d want to refine their campaign messaging based on this group’s habits and preferences. Customer journey tracking Knowing how viewers move from awareness to conversion is critical. Outcome-based TV measurement helps you track the customer journey by pinpointing touchpoints where engagement happens and tying these to your TV campaigns. If a fitness brand found that TV campaigns drive app downloads, it could combine app analytics and TV exposure data to find out when most of their conversions happen after ad exposure and create follow-up messaging for that window of time. Integrating these insights with other marketing channels allows you to fine-tune your messaging, channel mix, and audience targeting to drive better outcomes and deliver more personalized customer experiences. Lifetime value (LTV) Beyond immediate conversions, outcome-based TV ad measurement helps brands identify which TV campaigns attract high-value customers with long-term revenue potential. If a financial institution ran a TV ad campaign centered on its new credit card, for instance, it could use LTV to track new cardholders and determine whether ads occurring during financial news airtime produced customers with higher average annual spend compared to other segments. How outcome-based TV measurement works Outcome-based measurement is a data-driven process that involves collecting, analyzing, and applying insights to improve TV ad performance. 1. Collect data When someone sees your TV ad, they might take action, like downloading your app or buying something. Outcome-based TV measurement begins by tracking these actions and gathering data from various sources, such as: TV viewership CRM Digital engagement Purchase behavior Cross-platform interactions And more Data integration with digital platforms Combining TV data with insights from platforms like social media or website analytics creates a more unified view of campaign performance. This integration powers easier retargeting and better alignment between digital and TV advertising strategies. Some marketers enhance this integration further using artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline data coordination and ensure campaigns are optimized for effectiveness and ROI. 2. Connect the dots Next, marketers need to find out which actions were influenced by TV ads. It’s important to ask questions like these as you work to connect the dots: Did website traffic spike right after the ad aired? Did the ad viewers match the people who signed up for the service or made a purchase? You can link TV exposure to real-world behaviors with tools and identifiers like hashed emails, device IDs, surveys, and privacy-safe data-matching techniques. 3. Analyze the data Then, the data needs to be analyzed for patterns like these: Which TV ads or time slots drove the most engagement? Did certain customer groups respond better than others? Was there a noticeable lift in sales or signups after the ad campaign? This step can help you uncover what’s working and what’s not. Role of advanced analytics and machine learning The data analysis required in this process can be overwhelming, time-consuming, and risky without the right tools. Fortunately, advanced analytics and fast, effective artificial intelligence tools can process large amounts of data from digital platforms, TV viewership, and customer interactions in less time to reveal accurate, actionable insights and patterns. They can also predict which audiences, messages, and channels will be most profitable so campaigns can adapt in real time, whether by reallocating spend to higher-performing channels or refining audience targeting. 4. Turn insights into action Once you have your data-derived insights, you can tweak your campaign in a number of ways, whether you decide to: Adjust your ads: If one message works better than another, lean into it. Refine your targeting: Focus on the audience segments most likely to act. Optimize your spend: Invest in channels or times that deliver the best return. For example, if you see that ads during prime time lead to more purchases than morning slots, you can shift your budget accordingly. This type of knowledge can be used to continuously improve your campaigns. Each time you run a new ad, you measure again, building on past insights to make your outcome-based TV advertising even smarter. Applications of outcome-based TV measurement Outcome-based TV measurement has wide-ranging applications across industries. Here’s how it’s helping businesses link TV ad exposure to real-world actions and optimize campaigns for better results. E-commerce and retail: Retailers can track how TV ads influence purchases and use those insights to refine their assets and target specific customer groups. A clothing retailer may track how well a TV ad boosts online traffic and in-store purchases. For instance, if a seasonal sale commercial correlates with a spike in website visits or mobile app downloads, the brand can refine its ad placement to focus on the most responsive demographics. Automotive: Automakers use outcome-based TV measurement insights to determine how ads drive dealership visits, test drives, or inquiries. A car manufacturer could analyze whether TV spots featuring a new vehicle increase traffic to its dealership locator or car configuration tool online. Healthcare: Pharmaceutical companies could assess whether TV spots lead to increased prescription fills, or a health provider could test how ads promoting flu shots result in appointment bookings through its website or app. If any messages resonate more with families, the provider can create similar campaigns for the future. How Experian enhances outcome-based TV measurement Experian has recently partnered with EDO, an outcomes-based measurement provider, to offer more granular TV measurement across platforms. Our identity resolution and matching capabilities enhance EDO’s IdentitySpine™ solution with rich consumer data, including age, gender, and household income, all in a privacy-centric way. Integrating these demographic attributes is helping advertisers achieve more precise audience insights and connect their first-party data to actionable outcomes. As a result of this collaboration, brands, agencies, and networks can optimize their TV campaigns by identifying which ads drive the most decisive engagement among specific audience segments. We’re improving accuracy, targeting, and more so advertisers can maximize the performance of their CTV strategies. Get in touch with Experian’s TV experts If you’re ready to take your data-driven TV advertising strategies to the next level, connect with our team. We combine advanced data and identity solutions as well as strong industry collaborations to help brands optimize their TV campaigns. Whether you're navigating traditional or advanced TV formats, our expertise ensures your efforts deliver maximum impact. Connect with us today to drive engagement, connect with audiences, and achieve better ROI. 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