Marketers are under more pressure than ever to deliver personalized, high-performing campaigns—while navigating tighter budgets, shifting privacy expectations, and fragmented tech stacks. Despite an explosion of tools and data sources, the fundamentals of marketing haven’t changed.
Every great campaign still starts with a simple question: Who are we trying to reach?
The answer depends on how well you understand your customers. Increasingly, that understanding is hampered by data silos, inconsistent identity signals, and disconnected workflows between planning, activation, and measurement. When those pieces don’t align, it leads to inefficient spending, incomplete insights, and missed opportunities.
To move forward, marketers need more than better tools—they need a more connected approach.
Start with a complete view of the customer
The foundation of effective marketing is understanding your audience—not just who they are, but what they care about and how to reach them across devices and platforms.
That starts with building a complete customer profile. For many marketers, this means linking persistent offline data—such as name and address—with fresh digital signals like device IDs and online behaviors. When combined, these elements provide a high-fidelity view of the customer that can be enriched with attributes like demographics, purchase behavior, and lifestyle interests.
This kind of profile doesn’t just help you understand people—it helps you build audience segments that actually perform. Whether you’re working with your own CRM data or third-party sources, the ability to create addressable segments that are both accurate and scalable is what separates good campaigns from great ones.
🛳️ That’s exactly what MMGY did for Windstar Cruises. By layering first-party data with behavioral and demographic insights, they built custom audiences that more than doubled campaign benchmarks.
🎮 Gaming platform Unity tapped into Experian audiences to understand player behaviors across web, mobile, and connected TV (CTV). These insights helped their advertisers reach gaming audiences more effectively—tailoring creative and delivery to real-world preferences, not assumptions.
Activate with precision, not just volume
Knowing your audience is only half the battle. The next challenge is reaching them—consistently and efficiently—across multiple channels.
This is where fragmentation can creep back in. All too often, marketers build audiences in one system, but activate in another, causing data loss and targeting mismatches. A more connected strategy uses the same identity and audience spine across planning and activation, reducing signal loss and improving accuracy.
👉 Curated private marketplaces (PMPs), for example, allow marketers to match high-quality audiences with premium inventory in a targeted, transparent, and efficient way. These deals let marketers align their spending with their goals—whether that’s lowering cost-per-acquisition or boosting reach in a key vertical.
Performance results are bearing this out:
When identity, audience, and inventory are aligned, everyone benefits—marketers, publishers, and consumers.
Measure what matters
Too often, measurement is treated as an afterthought. But in a connected campaign, it’s built in from the beginning.
By using consistent identity across planning, activation, and measurement, marketers can connect ad exposure to real-world outcomes—whether that’s an online conversion, an in-store visit, or a new customer relationship.
This kind of closed-loop measurement turns marketing into a learning engine. You don’t just see what happened—you understand why it happened and can use that information to improve the next campaign.
🛳️ In the case of Windstar Cruises, MMGY used Experian identity to precisely measure how digital ad exposures translated into bookings. That kind of visibility gives marketers more than a report card. It gives them the feedback they need to optimize smarter next time—and prove ROI every time.
The future is connected
To meet today’s demands, marketers need a new way of working—one that starts with a complete understanding of the customer, builds addressable audiences on a strong identity foundation, activates them precisely across channels, and measures impact in real time.
The marketers embracing this approach are already seeing results: stronger performance, more efficient spending, and deeper insights that power what comes next.
The future won’t be built on more tools—it will be built on more connection.
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Tapad expands linear TV analytics solution, enabling optimal reach and frequency across TV and digital platforms NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ – Tapad, now a part of Experian, has partnered with WideOrbit, the leading provider of advertising management software for media companies, to develop the industry's first programmatic TV-buying platform powered by a device graph. Tapad is the leading provider of unified, cross-screen marketing technology solutions and was first to market with a device graph, the Tapad Device Graph™. WideOrbit's robust supply platform and industry-leading footprint offers access to premium TV inventory on top networks, reaching more than 99 million households across local affiliates. The partnership pairs Tapad's demand-side technology with WideOrbit's supply-side inventory. As a result, marketers can leverage cross-device audiences in their TV buys for the first time. Additionally, integrating the Tapad Device Graph™ with digital feedback loops and audiences both accelerates optimization and enables precise audience discovery for TV marketers. "The integration of WideOrbit's quality TV supply takes orchestrated cross-screen media buys to the next level," said Marshall Wong, Tapad's SVP of TV market development. "Marketers can now optimize TV campaigns within days instead of weeks. This also untethers them from buying against generic demographics like age and gender. By allowing brands to employ their own CRM or third-party data, we can move them much closer to audiences who will take action." "Integrating Tapad's device graph with WideOrbit's programmatic marketplace delivers enormous value to marketers looking to add TV to cross-device campaigns," said Ian Ferreira, EVP of programmatic at WideOrbit. "Television still delivers the most efficient reach of any medium, and Tapad's platform now allows marketers to purchase premium broadcast inventory that extends the power of cross-screen campaigns to TV with a single, unified solution." "Our clients build lasting relationships with consumers through thoughtful and pioneering marketing," said Jeff Giacchetti, VP of digital at Mediavest Spark. "The strategic partnership of demand-side technology and supply-side inventory makes it easier for brands to find efficient, incremental reach and are critical in this endeavor." For more information about Tapad's cross-platform advertising solutions, please visit https://www.experian.com/marketing/consumer-sync. Contact us today
Global Engineering Team Staffing Up New Oslo Hub; Nordic Operational Team Also Slated for Q1'17 NEW YORK, Jan. 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ – Tapad, now a part of Experian, the leader in cross-device marketing technology, is opening an office in downtown Oslo, Norway, effective January 16, 2017. This development reflects Tapad's continued growth following its acquisition by the Telenor Group in early 2016. Tapad Oslo will be comprised of a globally-focused engineering team as well as an upcoming operational headquarters for the region. Jeff Olchovy, a senior Tapad developer and one of its earliest employees, will forge the company's Nordic engineering presence by supporting the build-out of the team. The initial hiring plan of more than 20 open positions includes roles such as Head of Engineering, Senior Software Engineers and Solution Engineers. Plans for Tapad's Nordic Region business line, including its leadership, will be announced within the first quarter of 2017. "Given the caliber of technical talent and our extensive network in the region, Oslowas the logical choice at this stage of our growth," says Dag Liodden, Tapad CTO and co-founder. "This enables us to continue building out our innovative team on a global scale in a region that is close to our hearts and minds." In collaboration with its New York-based developers, Tapad's Oslo-based engineers will continue to advance the company's renowned product portfolio, such as the Tapad Device Graph™. An early adopter of Scala and big data processing technologies, Tapad has long been an influencer in U.S. tech. "As the head of our platform group, which daily processes several petabytes of data and is the foundation for all of our real-time systems, Jeff is a highly respected engineer," said Pål Høye, Tapad's senior vice president of engineering. "Given his experience and skillset, he is ideally suited to find and lead an innovative team focused on building the industry-leading products we are known for." About TapadTapad Inc. is a marketing technology firm renowned for its breakthrough, unified, cross-device solutions. With 91.2% data accuracy confirmed by Nielsen, the company offers the largest in-market opportunity for marketers and technologies to address the ever-evolving reality of media consumption on smartphones, tablets, home computers and smart TVs. Deployed by agency trading desks, publishers and numerous Fortune 500 brands, Tapad provides an accurate, unified approach to connecting with consumers across screens. In 2015, Tapad began aggressively licensing its identity management solution, the Tapad Device Graph™, and swiftly became the established gold-standard throughout the ad tech ecosystem. Tapad is based in New York and has offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit,Frankfurt, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Toronto. Tapad's numerous awards include: EY Entrepreneur of The Year (East Coast) 2014, among Forbes' Most Promising Companies two year's running, Deloitte's Technology Fast 500, Crain's Fast 50, Entrepreneur 360, Digiday Signal Award, iMedia ASPY Award and a MarCom Gold Award. Contact us today
Are Traasdahl, CEO and founder of Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian, has been named Founder of the Year by the Global Startup Awards. The Global Startup Awards' Founder of the Year Award recognizes an individual that has pushed the boundaries of technology to empower new innovations and ideas. The Global Startup Awards places each year's regional category winners against each other to determine whose achievements stand out from the rest of the startup ecosystem through nomination, voting and jury evaluation. In May 2016, the Nordic Startup Awards named Traasdahl Founder of the Year. "Are is a force of nature and his creativity and passion know no boundaries, it seems," said George Tilesch, Global Startup Awards juror and U.S. managing partner of Innomine Group. "Extra kudos for the mentoring work and the Norwegian superfund plans. Are knows giving back is of the utmost importance." "Are is a superstar within the Norwegian startup ecosystem," said Kim Balle, founding partner and CEO of the Global Startup Awards. "From the jury feedback I could see that not only are his impressive achievements the reason for their rating, but also his focus and ability to give back to the startup scene played an important factor in him winning the category." "It is an enormous honor to be named Founder of the Year by the Global Startup Awards," said Traasdahl. "I am so committed to fostering entrepreneurship both at Tapad and throughout the startup space. This win is a remarkable bookend for a stellar year that began with our acquisition by the Telenor Group and continued with best-in-class product innovation, superior solutions for our clients and our Propeller Program that is so dear to my heart." Tapad's Propeller Program hosts five early-stage companies at Tapad's New York headquarters for one year to mentor them through global expansion. The participants of this inaugural program come from Traasdahl's native Norway. For more information on the Global Startup Awards, please visit: http://www.globalstartupawards.com/#gsa. Contact us today