Key takeaways
- Commerce media networks (CMNs) hit a growth ceiling when on-site inventory caps out and first-party data only reaches known shoppers.
- Building identity infrastructure in-house can take a year or more before a network has a new audience product to sell.
- Three tests reveal real neutrality in a data partner: revenue source, representation on both sides of a deal, and identifier portability.
- Experian’s neutral infrastructure layer connects identity, activation, and measurement for commerce media networks without competing for advertiser spend.
Most conversations I have with commerce media network leaders open the same way. The advertiser demand is there, the first-party data is there, and a shortlist of three vendors all describe what they do in language that sounds interchangeable. Choosing between them is harder than it should be.
A constraint sits under that shortlist. On-site inventory runs out, first-party data reaches known shoppers and stops there, and advertisers keep asking for proof of incremental outcomes. Growing past all three takes capabilities the network doesn’t own, which makes the partner decision one of the more consequential calls these teams will make this year.
Most networks get sold a construction project
The pitches converge on roughly the same ideas. A network licenses an identity graph, adopts a platform, or takes delivery of components its own engineers assemble into something advertisers want to buy, sometime over the next several quarters. A few of the largest networks have the engineering team and patience for that.
Most do not. Commerce media operations already stretch across e-commerce, merchandising, analytics, legal, and privacy, with audience definitions that drift between teams and workflows that break at the handoffs. The networks taking on these build projects have the least resources and bandwidth to absorb them. I’ve watched networks buy an identity capability and go a full year before they had a single new audience product to sell.
What a network needs on day one is their customer data enriched, identities unified, the activation paths connected, and the measurement loop closed.
Your identity layer shouldn’t become someone else’s ecosystem
The second challenge is control. A media network’s customer data is its one unique asset, and the identity infrastructure decides how far that asset travels. A commerce media network should own its customer intelligence and use identity infrastructure that expands where that intelligence can go.
Identity should make that intelligence more useful and not make you dependent on someone else’s ecosystem. That means retaining control of customer data and choosing infrastructure that can connect it across partners, platforms, activation environments, and measurement providers.
For commerce media networks, independence is commercial infrastructure. Your identity layer should expand your options, not limit them.
Three tests separate structural neutrality from the claim
Independence costs nothing to assert. These three are harder to fake:
Experian clears all three because of how our business is built. We sell no media, own no supply, and represent no buyer, so the incentive to steer a media network’s spend never exists in the first place.
What Experian’s infrastructure layer delivers for commerce media networks
Many clients own their onboarding, data platforms, and clean room relationships, and our work improves the data entering those workflows. Match rates rise, addressable audiences expand, and the existing investment gets more productive.
Choose the infrastructure layer with no stake in your outcome
Run the three tests on every partner currently holding your identity, activation, or measurement. The answers will tell you how much of your business you’ve already made visible to someone who can act on it.
Experian serves as the neutral infrastructure layer for commerce media networks, connecting first-party data, identity, activation, and measurement while competing for none of your advertiser revenue. Bring us your current stack, your match rates, and the advertiser demand you turn away today, and we’ll map which layers close the gap and what that growth is worth.
Watch the conversation
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
Tapad’s technology enhances Bidtellect clients frequency capping and audience extension capabilities cross device. NEW YORK, Feb. 28, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, part of Experian, is a global marketing technology company and leader in digital identity resolution solutions, today announced a new partnership with Bidtellect (now Simpli.fi), a leading native Demand-Side Platform (DSP). Bidtellect’s paid content distribution platform will leverage The Tapad Graph™ as its first cross-device partner. The integration will offer Bidtellect’s clients in the U.S. and Canada cross-device frequency capping and enhanced audience extension capabilities. The combination of Tapad’s leading cross-device technology, with Bidtellect’s unparalleled scale and optimization capabilities, will allow content marketers within brands and agencies to develop even more strategic, effective content marketing campaigns. The Tapad Graph™ will allow content marketers to gain greater reach and create more relevant, unified messaging with targeted delivery, when used in conjunction with Bidtellect’s technology. Marketers can expect to benefit from amplified reach, and enhanced, privacy-safe engagement with desired audiences as a result of this partnership. “Partnering with Tapad, the leaders in cross-device data, provides Bidtellect with a complete solution that leverages both probabilistic and deterministic mapping strategies,” said Mike Conway, Chief Technology Officer at Bidtellect. “The Tapad relationship expands our audience size by providing the opportunity to reach the same user across multiple devices and, when used in conjunction with our frequency capping functionality, ensures increased reach, reduced ad saturation, and elimination of wasted ad spend.” As the partnership progresses, Tapad will also work with Bidtellect to provide advanced attribution for conversions and engagement metrics including connectivity and amplification. These advanced insights will help brands and agencies develop a more holistic approach to content marketing, so they can build audiences and influence bidding algorithms that directly impact their business. Contact us today
The Tapad Graph Now Offered in Adobe Audience Manager, part of Adobe Analytics Cloud New York, NY — August 7, 2018 — Tapad, now part of Experian, is advancing personalization for the modern marketer, announced today that its proprietary Tapad Graph is now integrated with Adobe Audience Manager, part of Adobe Analytics Cloud, helping marketers expand their view of consumers and boost results through Tapad’s probabilistic solution. Tapad has been working closely with the Adobe Audience Manager team on this integration. With the Tapad Graph integration, customers based in the U.S. and Canada can use the Tapad Device Graph to expand the reach of audiences defined and activated in Adobe Audience Manager to extend first- and third-party data and deliver personalization across paid, earned and owned channels, publisher sites, programmatic, and more. Tapad worked closely with Adobe to develop the integration, allowing marketers to enable first-party data that has been previously tied to cookies and mobile. This offering has been beta-tested by leading organizations across retail, financial services, telecom providers, and more. Tapad has repeatedly proven its ability to provide marketers with a unified view of the customer across channels and screens. With the Tapad Graph, a global identity graph that currently supports more than 100 enterprise customers and 200 integration partners, marketers can extend their reach and customize messages based on user and household-level data. Contact us today
Marketers Can Now Harness The Tapad Graph In Concert With Twine’s Vetted, Verified TrueData™ Identity Graph. Los Angeles and New York – August 2, 2018 – Tapad, now part of Experian, is reinventing personalization for the modern marketer, today announced that it is partnering with mobile data leader Twine Data (now TrueData) to bring Twine’s hundreds of millions of deterministic mobile identity connections to The Tapad Graph. Together, the two companies will create one of the largest portable identity graph & CRM onboarding services in the U.S., through the integration of Tapad’s best in class cross-device capability and Twine’s deterministic identity graph. At the core of one-to-one marketing and true personalization is identity resolution. For marketers, the ability to accurately and safely connect customer activity across desktop/laptop, mobile, CTV, tablets, as well as CRM and offline touchpoints is ultimately what enables informed and personalized future conversations with each customer. Tapad is known for the precision, accuracy, and scale of their cross device connections, setting them up as an ideal partner for Twine’s TrueData deterministic identity graph. “We believe that by combining Tapad’s renowned cross-device connectivity and our deterministic identity graph, marketers will finally be able to seamlessly segment users based on digital and offline behaviors as well as easily distribute those audiences to both DMP and DSP environments for personalized messaging,” said Elliott Easterling, CEO of Twine Data. With this partnership, Tapad will build a client’s cross-device graph off of identities onboarded by Twine from a client’s offline CRM. The resulting identity graph can either be delivered directly to brands looking to host their own identity graph, or can be leveraged in a managed fashion for marketers looking for simple connectivity of their offline CRM audiences to their DSPs. To date, Twine & Tapad have seen full connectivity rates* for CRM segments from advertisers at between 259 percent and 322 percent at major DSPs. *Full Connectivity Rate is defined as {total unique desktop, laptop, and mobile devices active at DSP} / {unique CRM users in original audience post cleansing}. It represents the final match rate of the clean audience in CRM format to onboarded audience at a client’s DSP instance. This metric encompasses Twine’s onboarding & linkage validation and Tapad’s cross-device amplification. About TapadTapad, Inc. is the marketing technology company reinventing personalization for the modern marketer through its identity-driven solutions. The company’s signature Tapad Graph connects millions of consumers across billions of devices. The world’s largest brands and most effective marketers entrust Tapad to provide an accurate, privacy-conscious and unified approach to connecting with consumers across screens. In 2018, Tapad introduced its Tapad Customer Data Platform (CDP), purpose-built to offer marketers a highly personalized and privacy-safe platform to convert first-, second- and third-party data into actionable, results-driven campaigns. Tapad is based in New York and has offices in Chicago, London, Oslo, Singapore and Tokyo. Tapad’s numerous awards include: Forbes’ Most Promising Companies, Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500, Crain’s Fast 50, TMCnet Tech Culture Award and Global Startup Award’s “Startup Founder of the Year.” Tapad was acquired by the Telenor Group in 2016. Telenor Group is one of the world’s largest mobile operators across Scandinavia and Asia. About TwineTwine is a mobile data platform that believes true, honest, accurate data is the fuel that helps our partners grow their businesses efficiently and effectively; Twine’s TrueData is used by brands, agencies, and ad tech partners across the country and across the globe. Twine’s app publisher partners generate revenue while maintaining control over their data; their marketer partners get comprehensive, high quality mobile targeting and intelligence. To learn more about Twine, visit their website. Contact us today