At A Glance
AI learns what your data teaches in 2025, "good data" in AI means accurate, current, consented, and easy to connect, or your models lose relevance and your investments underperform. Experian is leading this next era of responsible data where trust, transparency, and innovation come together to make marketing more human, not less.What makes data “good” in the age of AI?
In AI-driven marketing, data quality now defines success. “Good data” in AI isn’t about volume; it’s about the balance of accuracy, freshness, consent, and interoperability. As algorithms guide decisions, they must learn from data that’s both accurate and ethical.
At Experian, we believe good data must meet four conditions:
1. Accurate
Verified and anchored in real human identity.
2. Fresh
Continuously updated to reflect today’s consumers.
3. Consented
Collected and governed transparently.
4. Interoperable
Easily integrated across platforms through a secure, signal-agnostic identity spine, enabling seamless data activation.
This is the data AI can trust and the data that keeps marketing relevant, predictive, and privacy-first.
Why does data accuracy matter more than ever?
AI models are only as intelligent as their inputs. Incomplete or inconsistent data leads to bad predictions and wasted spend. As the industry moves toward agentic advertising, where autonomous systems handle campaign buying and optimization, data accuracy becomes even more critical. If your ad server or audience data is flawed, these new AI agents will simply automate bad decisions faster.
Experian applies rigorous quality filters and conflict resolution rules to ensure our data is both deterministic and accurate. Deterministic signals alone don’t guarantee accuracy; they must be verified, deduplicated, and contextualized. Our identity resolution process anchors every attribute to real people, giving brands and platforms the confidence that every insight stems from truth, not noise.
Our data is ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset, giving our clients confidence that every decision they make is backed by the industry’s most reliable insights.
Just because it is deterministic, doesn’t mean it’s highly accurate. You still need to refine and validate your data to make sure it tells a consistent story. You need to anchor your data around real people.
Why does AI need fresh data?
Outdated data can’t predict tomorrow’s behavior. AI thrives on recency.
At Experian, our audiences are refreshed continuously to mirror real-world signals, from purchase intent to media habits, so every campaign reflects what’s happening now, not six months ago.
And we don’t just advocate for fresh data, we rely on it ourselves. Our own AI-powered models, used across our audience and identity platforms, are continuously retrained on the most current, consented signals. This allows us to see firsthand how freshness drives better accuracy, faster optimization cycles, and more relevant outcomes.
But freshness alone isn’t enough. With predictive insights, our models go beyond describing the past. They forecast behaviors, fill gaps with inferred attributes, and recommend next-best audiences, helping you anticipate opportunity before it happens.
Fresh and predictive data means you’re reaching people in the moment that matters and shaping what comes next. With AI, that’s what defines performance.
How do consent and governance build trust in AI?
Responsible AI starts with responsible data. With 20 U.S. states now enforcing privacy laws, data compliance isn’t optional, it’s operational.
At Experian, privacy and compliance are built in. Every data signal, attribute, audience, and partner goes through our rigorous review process to meet federal, state, and local consumer privacy laws. With decades of experience in highly regulated industries, we’ve built processes that emphasize risk mitigation, transparency, and accountability.
Governance isn’t just about regulation, it’s also about innovation done right. We drive transparent and responsible innovation through safe, modular experimentation, from generative applications to agentic workflows. By balancing bold ideas with ethical guardrails and staying ahead of evolving legislation, we ensure our innovations protect consumers, brands, and the broader ecosystem while moving the industry forward responsibly.
Compliance and governance aren’t just boxes to check; they’re the foundation that gives AI its license to operate.
How does interoperability enable AI’s full potential?
AI delivers its best insights when data connects seamlessly across fragmented environments. Our signal-agnostic identity spine allows data to move securely between platforms (connected TV, retail media networks, and demand-side platforms) without losing context or compliance.
Interoperability isn’t just about moving data between systems; it’s about connecting insights across them. When signals connect across environments, AI gains a more complete view of the customer journey revealing true behavior patterns, intent signals, and cross-channel impact that would otherwise remain hidden.
This unified perspective allows AI to connect insights in real time, improving predictions, performance, and personalization while protecting privacy.
Where do AI and human oversight meet?
AI can make marketing more predictive, but people make it meaningful. At Experian, our technology brings identity, insight, and generative intelligence together so brands, agencies, and platforms can reach the right people with relevance, respect, and simplicity.
Our AI-powered models surface connections, recommend audiences, and uncover insights that would take humans months to find. But our experts shape the process, crafting the right inputs, ensuring data quality, reviewing model outputs, and refining recommendations based on industry knowledge and client goals. It’s this partnership between advanced AI and experienced people that turns predictions into actionable, trustworthy solutions.
What “good data” looks like in action
“Good data” becomes most powerful when it’s put to work. At Experian, our marketing data and identity solutions help brands and their partners connect accurate, consented, and interoperable data across the ecosystem, turning insight into measurable outcomes.
When Windstar Cruises and their agency partner MMGY set out to connect digital media spend to real-world bookings, they turned to Experian’s marketing data and identity solutions to close the attribution loop. By deploying pixels across digital placements and using Experian’s identity graph to connect ad exposure data with reservation records, we created a closed-loop attribution system that revealed the full traveler journey, from impression to confirmed booking.
The results were clear: 6,500+ bookings directly tied to digital campaigns, representing more than $20 million in revenue, with a 13:1 ROAS and $236 average cost per booking. Attributed audiences booked $500 higher on average, and MMGY’s Terminal audience segments powered by Experian data achieved a 28:1 ROAS.
This collaboration shows that responsible, high-quality data and AI-driven insights don’t just tell a better story; they deliver measurable business performance.
Why the future of AI depends on “good” data
The next phase of AI-driven marketing won’t be defined by who has the most data, but by who has the best. Leaders will:
Operate with clear data principles grounded in transparency and truth
Build consent and compliance into every workflow
Keep data accurate, current, and interoperable
Pair automation with human oversight
AI success starts with good data. And good data starts with Experian, where accuracy, privacy, and purpose come together to make marketing more human, not less.
Partner with Experian for AI you can trust
About the author
Budi Tanzi, VP, Product, Experian
Budi Tanzi is the Vice President of Product at Experian Marketing Services, overseeing all identity products. Prior to joining Experian, Budi worked at various stakeholders of the AdTech ecosystem, such as Tapad, Sizmek, and StrikeAd. During his career, he held leadership roles in both Product Management and Solution Engineering. Budi has been living in New York for almost 11 years and enjoys being outdoors as well as sailing around NYC whenever possible.
FAQs
At Experian, we define “good data” as the balance of accuracy, consent, freshness, and interoperability. We apply rigorous governance, validation, and cleansing across every signal to ensure that AI systems learn from real-time behaviors, not assumptions. This approach turns data into a foundation for reliable, ethical, and high-performing intelligence.
Experian ensures AI-ready data accuracy through advanced cleansing, conflict resolution, and human anchoring. Experian ensures AI models rely on verified, high-quality inputs. Experian’s data is ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset.
Yes, Experian can help brands stay compliant with privacy laws. Experian’s privacy-first governance framework integrates ongoing audits, legal oversight, and consent management to ensure compliance with all federal, state, and global privacy laws. Compliance isn’t an afterthought; it’s embedded in every step of our data lifecycle.
Experian makes AI more human by pairing innovation with human oversight to ensure AI helps marketers understand people, not just profiles. At Experian, we believe the future of marketing is intelligent, respectful, and human-centered. AI has long been part of how we help brands connect identity, behavior, and context to deliver personalization that balances privacy with performance. Our AI-powered solutions combine predictive insight, real-time intelligence, and responsible automation to make every interaction more relevant and ethical.
Marketers can activate Experian’s high-quality data directly in Experian’s Audience Engine, or on-the-shelf of our platform partners where Experian Audiences are ready to activate. Built on trusted identity data and enhanced with partner insights, it’s where accuracy meets accessibility, helping brands power campaigns with confidence across every channel.
Latest posts
Everyone knows that it’s important for businesses to have a clearly defined brand. In the modern world, the personal brand has become just as important, and many professionals are trying to build up their public reputation, expertise and industry authority. In the digital age, there are many different methods and channels you can use to build your personal brand, but some are more efficient than others. According to Forbes Agency Council, here are some of the most effective ways to develop an authentic personal brand.1. Give More Than You Receive Whatever you do, always aim at giving more than you receive. When you build your network, try to bring value to each new person that you meet. When you get featured in some media, see what you can do for them in return. This is the best strategy because actions speak louder than words. People will remember you for what you are, not what your website is. - Solomon Thimothy, OneIMS 2. Define What You Stand For, Then Align Your Actions Define your mission. What is your purpose? What do you want to accomplish, and what is your key message? Once you have answers to those questions, use that mission as a guiding North Star to consistently reinforce your personal brand every day. This will come across in how you lead, how you interact with employees and peers, how you communicate, and how you give back to the community. - Preethy Vaidyanathan, Tapad 3. Develop A Creative Positioning Statement It’s all about positioning your company. You need to have creative positioning statements about who you are and what your company is doing to benefit its clients. Clients want resolutions to their problems, and that’s where you come to the rescue. It’s either sold or ignored. - Cagan Sean Yuksel, GRAFX CO. 4. Speak At An Event Becoming a keynote speaker gives you access to the things you need to elevate your brand: influencer status, large audiences and media profile. But access doesn’t equal attention. While speaking gives you the platform, you need to have something compelling to say. You’ll need a differentiated message, unique presentation style and a great agent to make this strategy successful. - Andrew Au, Intercept Group 5. Focus On A Specific Audience The most effective way to build your personal brand is to create content specifically for a very specific group of people. Create relevant content that details solutions to the unique needs of this audience so that it spreads quickly due to its hyper-relevance. This creates authority and credibility for your personal brand and helps you stand out as being the most relevant expert in your field. - Adam Guild, Placepull 6. Be Ruthlessly Consistent Developing a personal brand requires ruthless consistency in your subject matter and how you present yourself to the world. I go back to the early days of marketing blogs. In those days, some bloggers were all over the map with content. The ones who were consistent with their audience and their goals are the ones who had staying power. They became the authors, speakers and consultants. - Scott Baradell, Idea Grove 7. Follow Through Just like a traditional brand, the quality of your offering helps to build your brand. If you are clear on what you can and cannot deliver and always follow through on your word, your personal brand reputation will precede you and will be lifted by the recommendations of others. - Kieley Taylor, GroupM 8. Build A Solid Reputation “Personal brand” is just a new-age name for reputation. Doing your job exceptionally well, going above and beyond, treating people with respect and kindness, having a point of view—essentially any action that builds a solid professional reputation does the very same for your personal brand. - Jess Cook, TMV Group 9. Define Your Voice Establish your unique voice and personal point of view and stick to it in all you do and all you say. Personal brands must be consistent and have consistency in messaging, attitude and behavior. Express your personal brand through comments on articles, at significant events and important platforms where it can best showcase and support your personal point of view and brand persona. - Pat Fiore, FIORE 10. Create And Share Video Content Video is hard for many people. That’s why it can be your competitive advantage if you do it. Video allows you to be seen, heard and felt emotionally in a way that no other medium can. You may say, “That’s not for me” and that’s fine, but good luck competing with those who embrace it. Barriers to video are so low that building a personal brand without it seems as if you are hiding something. - A. Lee Judge, Content Monsta 11. Share Your Point of View In Everything You Do There are a finite number of topics that make for interesting discussion in our industry, so having a point of view and sharing it through crafted content is vital for building your personal brand. You don’t have to be controversial, necessarily, but considering themes and topics and providing honest commentary that demonstrates experience is the quickest way to build your reputation. - David Harrison, EVINS 12. Stay True To You The most effective way to build your personal brand is to be true to who you are. If you are wildly creative and outgoing, show that in your branding! Don’t hold back in your content; post that crazy Instagram picture that shows the world how you think. If you are conservative, then own that. This passion for who you really are—and what your company really is—authentically shines through. - Katy Boos, Remix Marketing Inc. Contact us today
OpenAudience™ will provide marketers the ability to easily plan and buy advertising for every digitally addressable consumer across the open web LOS ANGELES, May 2, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — For the past decade, the most effective way to advertise in digital media has been on Facebook and Google. Marketers in the U.S. now spend two-thirds of all digital ad spend on the "walled gardens", despite the fact that they receive less than 36 percent of total consumer time spent online. According to eMarketer, addressing this massive asymmetry in advertising – where tens of billions of dollars are over allocated to the walled gardens – is the top concern of marketers in 2019. While programmatic technology has become the primary monetization system for the open web, it has lacked the simplicity and efficacy of walled gardens. Today, OpenX is changing that paradigm by bringing true people-based marketing to the open web for the first time with the introduction of OpenAudience. OpenAudience will provide marketers and publishers with an unprecedented, unified level of knowledge about consumer audiences – through a platform built on privacy by design principles that brings the efficiency and efficacy of walled garden advertising to the open web. OpenAudience is powered by a comprehensive proprietary data asset and supplemented by integrated partnerships with recognized leaders in data and identity like LiveRamp, Tapad, a part of Experian, and more. For marketers, OpenAudience will provide the ability to plan and buy people-based marketing campaigns that combine the impact and ease of use of Facebook advertising with the scale of the open web. OpenAudience is currently in active partner testing with multiple marketers in the U.S., including Fortune 500 financial service and consumer personal care companies, along with one of America's largest online entertainment outlets, and will be generally available to the broader market in Q3 of 2019. For publishers, OpenAudience will deliver user-based knowledge that empowers them to value and sell advertising with unparalleled precision. With the ability to automatically place consumers into high-value audience segments drawn from the more than 240M U.S. Monthly Active Users OpenX reaches across the open web, OpenAudience allows publishers to maximize revenue like never before. "OpenAudience is a natural evolution of programmatic advertising, combining the unified knowledge of people-based audiences with the transactional power of programmatic to create a planning, buying and advertising experience that is unlike anything else in the market today," said Todd Parsons, chief product officer at OpenX. "No exchange in the market today has enabled a unified view of publisher audiences," said Travis Clinger, vice president of strategic initiatives, LiveRamp. "Now, OpenX is democratizing identity across all publishers on the open web, helping marketers to plan and buy audiences the way they do inside walled gardens. We are thrilled to be a key component of OpenAudience." "OpenAudience is an ambitious move into people-based marketing, offering marketers an unprecedented walled garden-like experience on the open web," said Chris Feo, senior vice president of global data licensing and strategic partnerships at Tapad. "As a fellow pioneer in the industry, Tapad is proud that OpenX chose to leverage The Tapad Graph™ to allow marketers and publishers in North America access to our leading digital identity resolution insights across devices." For more information, or to request a place in the private testing phase of OpenAudience, visit: http://www.openx.com, or contact your OpenX account representative today. About OpenX Nobody understands the open web better than OpenX. As the world's largest independent advertising exchange, OpenX makes the efficient people-based marketing buying experience of the walled gardens available to all marketers across the open web. OpenX works with more than 30,000 advertisers across every screen and device, reaching nearly one billion consumers – including a quarter billion unique consumers in the US – and processing more than one trillion transactions globally each day. To date, OpenX has helped deliver more than $3 billion in total monetization to publishers. That's the Power of Open™. Contact us today
Tom Rolph, VP EMEA at Tapad, part of Experian, says that ad-sponsored streaming services can be successful if they can deliver a higher quality viewer experience than other streaming services. Last week, Hulu, the streaming service acquired by Fox and now owned 60 per cent by Disney, announced it will be regularising its ad loads. The streaming service will be bringing ad breaks down to 90 seconds in an effort to deliver a better viewer experience. This is a positive move from Hulu and one which other ad-supported streaming services should follow in order to be successful in a competitive market. Previously ad breaks on Hulu could vary wildly, from 180 seconds to 240 seconds, due to existing deals with its three owners: Disney, Comcast and AT&T. Over in the UK, we haven’t suffered from quite as inconsistent an approach as in the US, but there is still viewer frustration with the ad experience on ITV Hub and All4, where the problem tends to be over exposure of the same ad. Therefore, this move to standardise ad break lengths for streaming platforms is one that should be embraced on both sides of the pond. An important shift in this space will be to limit the number of ads during each show, but have better ad targeting to minimise repetitive advertising and increase the ROI of ad spend. All of which can be accomplished by investing in identity resolution products that can support CTV devices. Last year Ofcom found that in the UK subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon and NOW TV have risen above those to traditional pay TV services. With Netflix and Amazon both ad-free and NOW TV only a limited ad funded model, it’s clear that there is a growing appetite for ad-free viewing models. A fact that is only further supported when you consider the role of the BBC and BBC iPlayer. But the picture isn’t entirely negative for ad-funded models. There is demand for great content on ad-funded services in the UK, with ITV Hub boasting over 1bn requests and 540m hours of TV watched. The ITV Hub mobile app has also been downloaded on over 27m devices across the country – with over 22m people now registered to ITV Hub database, including more than half of Britain’s 16-24 year olds. However, to continue to attract and retain younger viewers, the experience will have to improve. There are several areas where ad-supported streaming providers need to improve in order to remain top players in this space: Ad experienceAs explored above, both volume and repetition of ads can be a turn off for viewers, but with Brits already spending a total of £303.16m every month on TV streaming services, according to Finder.com, there is potential for free, ad-funded models to flourish as people hit a limit on what they are willing to spend. There are already signs of improvement with the ad experience, with ITV just signing a deal with Amobee to allow for addressable ads on ITV Hub, while Sky’s AdSmart technology remains best in class and has now crossed over the pond to be used by Comcast stablemate NBC. Server reliabilityA cursory search finds little evidence of ongoing reliability problems with Netflix, but much evidence of problems with ITV Hub and All4, which are both prone to crashing. To compete with bigger players with massive server farms, server capacity needs to be tackled. This is especially true when it comes to live events, where many people will recall ITV Hub’s famous fails during the World Cup. While even some of the larger players have had similar streaming issues (for example, Amazon’s move into live sports streaming when they had to pull UK streaming of the US Open Tennis due to user complaints), viewing experience should be prioritised as the space gets increasingly competitive. Getting the content rightAmazon and Netflix have huge content budgets, but UK broadcasters remain strong in this regard, Channel 4 has enjoyed viewing figures of 7.5m for the Great British Bake Off, while ITV pulled in 13.7m for I’m A Celebrity. By building on UK-specific content that speaks to UK audiences, ad-supported streaming services can continue to pull in more viewers. Mobile accessMore and more Brits are choosing to watch TV content on their smartphone or tablet, according to UKOM-approved comScore data. In fact, 6.5m adults visited the BBC iPlayer app to watch video on either a smartphone or tablet, edging out Netflix which attracted 5.8m Getting the experience right on mobile, with the option to download content so it can be viewed in areas of low or no signal, is key.If UK ad-supported TV stations can crack these key areas for their Connected TV offering then they will be set up to succeed and offer a true home-grown alternative to the US streaming giants. Full article here. Contact us today