At A Glance
2026 marketing trends reveal that people will spend more intentionally, prioritize value and simplicity, and expect personalization that’s transparent and privacy-first. Omnichannel journeys and micro-moments will shape how they shop, with generational differences influencing trust and digital expectations. Experian helps marketers respond with privacy-first identity, high-quality audience intelligence, and omnichannel activation that drive relevant and measurable performance.In this article…
The 2026 consumer is reconsidering how they want to engage with businesses. Research from Nielsen anticipates that in 2026, people will spend more intentionally, think more critically, and expect more from the brands they invite into their lives. They want clear value, marketing experiences that make decisions easier, and personalization that respects their privacy and improves the moment they’re in.
This change has big implications for marketers. Winning in 2026 will require understanding the motivations, concerns, and trust drivers behind consumer behavior. This means embracing a privacy-first identity foundation, deep audience intelligence, high-quality and ethically sourced data, omnichannel activation, and measurement that closes the loop across channels.
Below, we break down consumer shifts shaping 2026 and how you can translate them into practical strategies for 2026.
How will consumer behavior change in 2026, and how should marketers respond?
Consumers are going into 2026 feeling deeply cautious. According to 2026 consumer outlook data, 32.8% of global shoppers say they’re financially worse off than last year, and 73% of those consumers cite rising cost-of-living pressures as the reason.
Ultimately, people are spending, but they’re directing most of their dollars toward core categories like food, health, and household care. That mix of caution and restraint is shaping what they want from brands: clear value, relevant personalization, and simple, low-effort experiences that make choices feel easier and worthwhile.
Want more details on how consumer caution shaped the peak buying season in 2025? Explore our 2025 Holiday spending trends and insights report for insights that can set the foundation for your 2026 strategy.
Here are the consumer trends we expect to shape decision-making most in 2026 and how Experian can help you adapt.
Economic stability will outweigh values
Consumers are prioritizing the realities of their household budgets going into 2026. Global consumer research shows that environmental concerns fell from the #4 global worry to #9 in 2025, while financial pressures and geopolitical issues moved to the top of the list.
People still care about brand values, but economic stability is becoming a stronger driver behind how they decide what to buy, where to shop, and which brands they trust. Consumers want brands to be responsible, fair, and transparent, but they also expect brand values to align with their financial reality.
| Insight | Data point |
| Consumers who feel financially worse off than last year | 32.8% |
| Of those, consumers citing cost-of-living pressures | 73% |
| Environmental concerns falling in priority (2024 to 2025) | #4 to #9 in top global worries |
Source: Consumer Outlook: Guide to 2026
For your marketing, this means shifting from broad value messaging to audience-specific offers tailored to each group’s financial situation, understanding:
- Who feels financially stretched
- Who still has spending flexibility
- Who is shifting habits subtly (frequency, basket size, channel choice)
How marketers should respond to this trend
Experian helps brands read financial signals with accuracy. Using generational segments, income bands, lifestyle indicators, and geo-indexed audiences, you can distinguish between:
- Value-seeking shoppers who prioritize stretch, savings, and reliability
- Higher-income households motivated by sustainability, wellness, or premium experiences
- Multigenerational families with diverse influencers and decision drivers
- Urban vs. suburban households with different price sensitivities and convenience factors
Paired with Experian’s privacy-first identity graph, your brand can activate audiences aligned with consumer insights across commerce media networks (CMNs), connected TV (CTV), social platforms, and programmatic channels using curated private marketplaces (PMPs). This ensures your messaging reflects the financial realities of consumers in 2026. Experian’s predictive insight capabilities also help forecast shifts in financial mindset, enabling you to anticipate change instead of reacting to it.
As financial caution shapes everyday choices, the next question becomes how to remove friction and deliver value in ways that feel simple, relevant, and worth the spend.
Consumers will prioritize value, simplicity, and relevance
With everyday expenses still weighing on households, people will likely simplify their shopping habits in 2026. They want brands to make decisions easier, save them time, and offer clear value without extra effort.
Instead of wading through endless choices or chasing promotions, shoppers are responding to experiences that feel straightforward and trustworthy, with:
- Transparent pricing
- Clear benefits
- Recommendations aligned to budget and needs
- Frictionless decision paths
For your brand, it’ll be essential to deliver carefully crafted and targeted messages at the right moment, rather than overwhelming consumers with excessive messaging. Experian helps you pinpoint what value looks like for different audiences and tailor relevant experiences.
How marketers should respond to this trend
To meet consumers’ demand for value and simplicity, you’ll need to understand what “easy” and “worth it” mean to each audience before you activate a campaign. Experian enables this by identifying the moments, motivations, and household realities that shape how people simplify decisions.
Using Experian’s lifestyle indicators, category affinities, geo-indexed spend patterns, and financial mindset segments, you can quickly pinpoint:
- Which audiences want streamlined choices (e.g., fewer SKUs, clearer value cues)
- Which shoppers expect premium quality without complexity
- Which households prioritize speed and convenience over price
- Which consumers prefer digital-first journeys vs. in-store simplicity
Then, through Experian’s privacy-first identity graph, you can reliably reach these audiences across CMNs, CTV, social, and digital environments with:
- Product recommendations that reduce decision fatigue
- Promotions tuned to value drivers
- Creative that matches each audience’s expectations for ease
- Consistent messaging that aligns across all channels
Experian’s AI-powered simplicity helps reduce manual effort in this process, enabling your team to uncover opportunities, streamline workflows, and focus more time on strategy and outcomes. And as Experian continues to explore agentic workflows, you’ll be able to move from manual audience setup to intelligent audience discovery — enabling strategies you may not have considered before.
Once you’ve simplified the experience, consumers will expect the next layer of relevance: helpful, respectful personalization grounded in the data they choose to share.
People want personalization on their terms
According to Qualtrics’ 2026 Consumer Experience Trends Report, consumers still want personalization going into 2026, but they expect it to happen on their terms:
| Insight | Data point |
| Prefer personalized experiences | 64% |
| Say benefits outweigh privacy trade-offs | 39% |
| Feel uncomfortable with many data-driven personalization tactics | 32% |
Source: 2026 Consumer Experience Trends Report
First-party data is now the foundation of meaningful, privacy-first engagement. Consumers are far more willing to share information when the value exchange is obvious and when they feel in control of how that data is used. They expect brands to:
- Use only necessary data
- Explain how personalization improves the experience
- Offer easy preference controls
- Demonstrate transparent, privacy-first data practices
As your brand lives up to these expectations, trust grows, and consumers become more willing to share the first-party data you need for impactful, privacy-centric personalization in 2026.
Experian helps you meet these needs with Audience Engine, a self-service activation tool that enables you to quickly and accurately view and activate your first-party data and partner segments across 200+ platforms without high operational overhead. And when you need deeper insight, it also connects 3,500+ syndicated audiences and 20+ trusted third-party providers, so you can enrich your first-party data with privacy-safe insights.
This includes Experian’s most recent 2025 Syndicated Audiences release, which adds 400+ updated segments — including 62 Auto Loyalists — giving you a more granular, privacy-safe view of shifting values, lifestyle preferences, and intent signals for 2026. These segments break out characteristics by generation, income, gender, and urbanicity, so your brand can analyze where demand is rising and how behaviors differ across audience groups.
For example:
- An automaker can target Auto Loyalists: Acura with model-specific offers
- A luxury brand can activate Auto Loyalists: Alfa Romeo and adjust messaging by income band, age, urbanicity, or lifestyle
Used together, first-party data and enriched syndicated audiences allow you to personalize responsibly, target more effectively, and respond to 2026 consumer expectations while respecting their privacy wishes.
How marketers should respond to this trend
The future of personalization in 2026 is first-party and zero-party data, supported by a trustworthy identity framework.
Experian enables this through:
- Identity resolution connected to 95% of U.S. households
- Privacy-first activation across digital, CTV, and CMNs
- Data modernization that maintains accuracy and compliance
- Responsible automation that delivers high-performance, human-centered personalization consumers want in 2026
- Mosaic® USA, our household-level consumer classification system that provides a privacy-safe view of lifestyles and preferences so you can apply personalization intelligently across channels
- Audience Engine, which lets you activate and enrich your first-party data for richer, permission-based insights
- Marketing Attributes, which gives you access to thousands of demographic, behavioral, lifestyle, financial, and interest characteristics
As soon as your brand earns permission to personalize, the next expectation is to apply that personalization across channels.
Omnichannel behavior and real-time micro-moments will define how people shop
Consumers don’t differentiate between channels anymore. They want a seamless, cohesive shopping journey. Consumer buying trends indicate that people are shopping more frequently but purchasing fewer items per trip. This suggests more small, mission-driven decisions, often triggered by digital or mobile discovery.
As shoppers move fluidly between mobile, in-store, CTV, and social platforms, they rely on time-saving cues, simple comparisons, and contextual recommendations instead of complex decision-making processes. CMNs now influence choices across the digital shelf, in-store screens, and publisher networks, blurring the lines between media and commerce. Speed also matters; anything longer than next-day delivery reduces the likelihood of a purchase.
These behaviors create more micro-moments: quick, intent-driven decisions shaped by life stage, financial mindset, household composition, real-time signals, and micro-behaviors like quick trips, small-basket missions, and mobile search checks. Meeting consumers in these moments requires contextual relevance, not broad targeting.
How marketers should respond to this trend
Experian helps you act on omnichannel and micro-moment behavior by unifying identity and audiences across:
- CMNs
- CTV
- Social platforms
- Programmatic partners
- Retail media publishers
- In-store digital environments
Meanwhile, our audience assets give you the contextual accuracy these moments demand with:
- Geo-indexed spenders to understand financial posture and neighborhood patterns
- Generational household segments to reflect digital comfort and shopping rhythms
- Lifestyle and interest indicators aligned to real-life needs
- In-market and behavioral signals to reach consumers at the moment intent appears
With privacy-first identity resolution anchoring it all, your brand can deliver consistent sequencing, informed personalization, and accurate measurement across channels. This is essential when omnichannel is the expectation and micro-moments decide who wins the sale.
As these real-time behaviors shift, generational differences will further shape how consumers navigate channels, interpret value, and decide which brands earn their loyalty.
What’s new with Experian Marketing Data?
Explore hundreds of new and updated segments now available — auto, income, lifestyle, spend, TV, and more.
How are generational shifts shaping 2026 consumer behavior?
Generational dynamics are also likely to play a significant role in how people discover, evaluate, and buy in 2026. While every age group is prioritizing value, simplicity, and trust, they express these priorities differently.
Experian’s Syndicated Audiences updated for November 2025 include 61 new demographic segments — broken out by generation, income band, gender, and urbanicity — to help you reach each group with accuracy. These segments are informed by decades of responsible automation and predictive modeling, giving you a clearer view of how each group behaves, even as signals shift.
For example, a retail brand can use the Gen X Dual-Income Households segment to reach value-driven, digitally engaged shoppers, while another brand might activate Millennial Urban Professionals to tailor offers based on lifestyle, income, or urbanicity.
Here’s how key generations will shape buying and the Experian segments that can help you act on these customer insights.
Gen Z expects transparency, authenticity, and digital ease
- Values: Transparency, authenticity, responsible data use
- Digital behavior: Always-on, mobile-first, social and creator-influenced
- Decision drivers: Trust, clarity, seamless digital experiences
- Relevant Experian segments: Gen Z Urban Households, Gen Z Renters
Millennials seek value alignment, financial flexibility, and reliability
- Values: Fair pricing, quality, reliability
- Digital behavior: Efficiency-focused omnichannel shoppers
- Decision drivers: Time savings, cost relief, trust
- Relevant Experian segments: Millennial Urban Professionals, Millennial Parents
Gen X is increasingly digital, highly value-conscious, and loyal
- Values: Reliability, clarity, long-term value
- Digital behavior: Digitally engaged but friction-averse
- Decision drivers: Practicality, stability, predictable service
- Relevant Experian segments: Gen X Dual-Income Households
As these generational differences shape how people discover, evaluate, and buy, one theme unites every age group: trust now determines whether a brand earns attention, data, and loyalty. With today’s consumers scrutinizing how their information is used, that trust might just be what helps you succeed in 2026.
Why is trust the new currency in data-driven marketing?
In 2026, trust will differentiate the brands that flourish. Consumers want:
- Clear data practices
- Transparent value exchanges
- Confidence that brands are honoring their preferences
And as signals decline, first-party data strategies supported by privacy-first identity resolution and responsible automation have become the reliable, transparent foundation for trust-driven marketing.
Experian’s long-standing focus on data accuracy, modernization, and compliance — from quarterly releases and updates to our twice-yearly attribute retirement process — ensures you activate with the most current, ethical, and regulation-aligned data available. These practices strengthen consumer trust and drive more accurate targeting, better match rates, and measurable performance across channels.
This focus on accuracy, governance, and transparency also underpins Experian’s approach to ethical AI, ensuring innovations serve people first while giving you confidence in every decision.
How can marketers apply 2026 consumer insights today?
As trust becomes the deciding factor in whether consumers engage, share data, or stay loyal, marketers need clear ways to operationalize that trust. Fortunately, the insights shaping 2026 translate directly into practical actions your team can take right now.
Here’s where you can start:
- Audit your first-party data strategy and CRM hygiene
- Invest in scalable, privacy-first identity resolution
- Tailor messaging to financial attitudes, not just demographics
- Use Experian’s audience segments to match consumer values, generational traits, and urbanicity
- Build journey-based activation across mobile, CTV, social, and CMNs
- Implement measurement and closed-loop analytics so every activation feeds intelligence back into planning
- Evaluate where predictive insight and responsible automation can reduce manual work and improve outcomes
With Experian, you can reach the right people with the right message at the right moment with accuracy they can trust. Teams gain the predictive insight and responsible automation needed to act on these shifts at scale.
Looking for more insights into the year ahead?
If you’re planning for 2026, consumer behavior is just the starting point. Experian’s 2026 Digital trends and predictions report takes you deeper into the forces reshaping marketing —from AI moving from hype to implementation and the evolution of commerce media beyond retail.
What role does Experian play in helping brands activate data-driven marketing?
As you put these 2026 consumer insights into practice, the challenge becomes turning strategy into scaled, privacy-safe execution. Experian’s data, identity, and activation infrastructure can make the difference:
- Identity as the foundation: Connect first-party data to 95% of U.S. households for a unified, privacy-first view.
- Privacy-first activation: Engage audiences safely across every channel with compliant targeting.
- Actionable data depth: Combine demographic, behavioral, contextual, and household-level attributes to enrich insights.
- Omnichannel reach: Activate at scale across CTV, CMNs, social, programmatic, and in-store environments.
- Closed-loop measurement: Tie exposure to outcomes across channels, enabling more effective optimization and continuous improvement.
These capabilities provide your brand with the clarity, confidence, and control necessary for future success — powered by Experian’s human-centered approach to AI, which combines privacy-first clarity, predictive insight, AI-powered simplicity, real-time intelligence, and transparent innovation to deliver trust, accuracy, and measurable performance in 2026.
Build your 2026 strategy with data you can trust
Those who win in 2026 will be the ones who turn shifting consumer behavior into actionable intelligence rooted in trusted identity, accurate data, and measurement that proves what works. With economic caution shaping decisions, rising privacy expectations, and omnichannel journeys becoming the norm, brands that invest now in a strong data and identity foundation will be the ones that stay visible, relevant, and resilient.
Experian gives you that foundation by unifying identity, high-quality data, activation, and closed-loop measurement through a human-centered approach to AI. With privacy-first clarity, predictive insight, AI-powered simplicity, real-time intelligence, and transparent innovation, Experian helps you understand your audiences deeply, reach them responsibly, and adapt in real time as the market evolves.
2026 is coming fast. Now’s the moment to build a high-performance strategy.
Connect with us
FAQs
The biggest consumer trends for 2026 revolve around intentional spending, value-conscious choices, low-effort experiences, and personalization that feels transparent and trustworthy. Consumers are cautiously optimistic but still managing tight budgets, prioritizing essentials, and gravitating toward brands that simplify decisions with clear value and relevant experiences that meet them across channels. Personalization remains a differentiator when it’s rooted in responsible data use and clear benefits.
You can use 2026 consumer insights to identify your highest-opportunity audiences, match your messaging and offers to their financial reality and values, and build journey-based activation across channels instead of working in silos. Experian’s identity graph and audiences help you connect online and offline behavior into a single, actionable view.
Experian’s identity graph helps marketers in 2026 by providing a privacy-first, unified view of consumers across channels, connecting first-party data to 95% of U.S. households. This allows you to recognize individuals and households accurately, enrich their data with reliable attributes, and activate personalized experiences across digital, CTV, and CMNs with confidence.
The result is better targeting, higher match rates, and more consistent, relevant engagement at every touchpoint. All of this is further strengthened by Experian’s human-centered approach to AI, which enhances clarity, accuracy, and real-time relevance.
Privacy-first marketing uses consumer data responsibly and transparently to improve the customer experience. In 2026, consumers still want personalization but are more selective about how their data is used.
With privacy-first marketing, you build trust by explaining why data is collected, giving people control, and personalizing only with consented, high-quality data. Experian supports this through our Responsible Data Practices, which prioritize fairness, accuracy, transparency, security, and inclusion.
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. Let’s transform the way you measure success on TV. Reach out to our TV experts Contact us Latest posts
Advertising today is more complex than ever. Consumers demand personalized, relevant experiences from brands, making it increasingly challenging to meet expectations without external support. Businesses must work with publishers, retailers, and platforms to thrive, using these partnerships for data insights that refine their strategies and fuel growth. We spoke with industry leaders from Ampersand, AppsFlyer, Audigent, Comcast Advertising, Fox, ID5, and Snowflake to gather insights on how strategic collaboration can expand audience reach, improve targeting precision, and drive measurable advertising success. 1. Expand your reach with strategic collaborations Gone are the days when brands relied solely on third-party data. By linking their first-party insights with equally valuable data from partners, brands develop a far more comprehensive understanding of their audiences. This collaborative approach creates richer audience profiles, improves targeting, and enhances campaign performance. Partnerships also create opportunities for operational efficiencies. For instance, brands that share data and expertise with collaborators can expand their audience reach without overhauling existing systems. These collaborations allow marketers to work smarter, turning shared knowledge into strategic wins. "Partnerships are everything. We can't fulfill our goals on the sale side, marketers can't fulfill their goals of finding their audience where they need to reach them and with the right level of outcomes without partnering together. Why? Because each of them has their own line of sight to the data that they have access to and the data that they know best."Justin Rosen, Ampersand 2. Identify the right partnership model Choosing the right partnership model is key to achieving your business objectives. For some, pairing first-party data with publishers' insights creates better targeting. For others, aligning with complementary brands allows them to engage shared audiences. For large-scale efforts, agencies can unify collaboration frameworks, making onboarding and activation seamless. Meanwhile, emerging categories like FinTech, hospitality, and commerce media provide brands new avenues for impactful partnerships. Evaluating these options thoroughly will ensure your collaboration aligns with long-term marketing goals. "With first-party data being really the central point of signal today, we see more and more of our advertisers identifying partnerships with maybe potentially historical competitors or partners they would've never considered."Tami Harrigan, AppsFlyer 3. Utilize the power of pooled insights Combining various data sources, like CRM records, browsing behavior, and shopping receipts, creates an in-depth view of your customers. By understanding what motivates consumers at every stage of their journey, brands can better tailor messaging and funnel marketing spend to where it matters most. This approach also enables data-driven agility. Real-time insights help brands make informed adjustments, whether it’s shifting strategies mid-campaign or identifying new growth opportunities. When brands share data responsibly, the results are campaigns that resonate and deliver measurable improvements. "A lot of advertisers have gotten smarter about their data than they were just two, three years ago. They’re now doing that segmentation on their side with their data and bringing that to Fox and saying, ‘Look, match this segment against your entire user base.’ In order to do that, we can work with providers like Experian, or with data clean rooms to really bring that data and do a direct match without going through a third party."Darren Sherriff, Fox 4. Adopt the right tools and technology The right tools empower a collaborative data ecosystem. Solutions like data clean rooms ensure privacy-first data matching and measurement. Identity frameworks, such as Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) or ID5, enable secure data alignment across platforms, simplifying audience targeting while safeguarding sensitive information. Shared dashboards are another crucial tool, providing all collaborators with clear, co-owned performance metrics. Yet, while technology is an enabler, success ultimately depends on how well tools align with each partner’s goals and build trust within the collaboration. “You have to make it accessible to non-technical personas and you have to have the ability to have it stood up and pay dividends in a short amount of time. The other thing is interoperability. We very much think as an industry we need to have interoperability with clean rooms, ones that operate on different frameworks.” David Wells, Snowflake 5. Overcome barriers to collaboration Collaboration often faces obstacles, like differing goals, fragmented data, or resource gaps. Brands can tackle these issues by aligning stakeholders on clear KPIs, standardizing data-sharing practices, and selecting tools that integrate smoothly with existing systems. Breaking down barriers early fosters fluid cooperation and improves outcomes for everyone involved. When goals, tools, and resources are in sync, these partnerships deliver lasting value and stronger results. “The key is to bring together data assets and work collaboratively to address fragmentation. The way to solve that is with more interoperability and connect the data in very privacy-safe ways, offering more opportunity to reach high fidelity audiences and incorporate better measurement methodologies.”Carmela Fournier, Comcast Advertising The path to growth through partnership Those who prioritize collaboration will outrun the competition and drive sustainable growth through smarter, more connected advertising. By choosing the right models, using powerful technology, and addressing potential obstacles, brands can co-create campaigns that resonate deeply with their audiences. Connect with our experts Latest posts
RampUp 2025 brought together some of the smartest minds in AdTech to talk about the future of our industry. I had the opportunity to ask attendees key questions about AI, data collaboration, and the challenges they wish they could solve instantly. Here’s what they had to say. Watch my interviews here AI is everywhere in ads—How is it changing things? AI’s influence on advertising is undeniable, and industry leaders at RampUp 2025 emphasized how it is transforming the way data is used across marketing workflows. The increasing presence of Generative AI like ChatGPT is making it easier to stitch together data from various sources and act on insights, helping marketers execute campaigns with more efficiency. AI is no longer just about automation; it is now deeply embedded in audience building, personalization, and measurement, enabling marketers to optimize every step of the customer journey. What’s the one AdTech headache you’d fix forever? AdTech leaders agreed that some industry challenges have lingered for too long. Many expressed frustrations with the ongoing conversation about unifying cross-screen targeting and measurement. While the technology exists, aligning business priorities remains a roadblock. Others highlighted issues like the complexity of billing and reporting, which still needs to be faster and more reliable. There was also a strong push to educate brand marketers on the continued impact of offline media, such as billboards, and how data-driven strategies can enhance the effectiveness of out-of-home advertising. Beyond these operational challenges, another recurring theme was the increasing importance of identity as the backbone of effective advertising. While brands are focused on collecting first-party data, the true challenge lies in activating that data at scale. Without a strong identity resolution strategy, first-party data alone is not enough to create meaningful audience connections across multiple platforms and devices. What's one AdTech tool or strategy you can’t live without? When it comes to must-have tools and strategies, data collaboration and clean rooms emerged as essential. These solutions help companies, agencies, and publishers work together seamlessly while maintaining security and efficiency. Another key strategy discussed was traffic shaping, which allows advertisers to push activation closer to publishers, reducing data leakage and improving overall performance. Both of these approaches are critical for advertisers aiming to scale. However, as brands continue to seek more flexibility and efficiency, the conversation at RampUp expanded beyond individual tools toward a broader industry transformation. Interoperability has become a top priority, with brands, platforms, and data providers focused on ensuring seamless connectivity across clean rooms, customer data platforms (CDPs), and activation partners. The days of being locked into a single walled garden are over—the future is about data portability. "RampUp made it clear that the industry is shifting toward curated, interoperable, and always-on identity solutions—and Experian is perfectly positioned to lead this next phase of growth."Suzanna Stevens, Sr. Enterprise Partnerships Manager This shift is also driving changes in how brands manage identity. Rather than relying on one-off data onboarding, companies are increasingly adopting subscription-based identity solutions that provide an always-on, continuously refreshed identity graph. This model ensures that brands have up-to-date customer profiles while reducing inefficiencies associated with batch processing. What privacy regulations should marketers be watching? Privacy remains one of the most pressing concerns in AdTech, and industry experts highlighted the need for a better approach to regulation. Consent management was identified as a major priority since it is fluid and directly impacts how marketers engage with consumers. There was also a strong sentiment that the current state-by-state approach to privacy regulation in the U.S. is unsustainable. Instead, the industry would benefit from a national framework that simplifies compliance and ensures more consistent data governance across all states. Final thoughts from RampUp 2025 RampUp 2025 showcased the rapid shifts happening in AdTech, from AI-driven efficiencies to the growing importance of data collaboration and privacy-first strategies. As the industry works to solve long-standing challenges, such as unification and regulatory fragmentation, innovation continues to drive new opportunities. Experian remains committed to helping advertisers and marketers navigate these changes by enabling smarter, more connected, and privacy-conscious advertising solutions. We’re excited to see how these themes evolve throughout the year and look forward to collaborating with our partners to shape the future of digital advertising. Follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our email newsletter for more insights on the latest industry trends and data-driven marketing strategies. Contact us Latest posts