At A Glance
Your audience strategy works like a story. First-party data sets the outline, but scale and relevance come from connecting additional signals such as contextual, geographic, and behavioral data. Experian helps CMOs unify these inputs through identity, enabling consistent activation, privacy-forward targeting, and measurable outcomes as marketing strategies evolve in 2026.How should CMOs think about data as part of their audience strategy?
The best digital marketers possess excellent storytelling capabilities—and they fuel the plot with data.
When you think about it, your audience strategy is the whole story, and the type of data you use helps create each chapter. Just as any good book incorporates numerous literary devices, you must use more than one type of data to develop a dynamic, relevant, and timely narrative that captures your target users’ attention.
In 2026, marketers should prioritize and invest in data and targeting strategies beyond just first-party to drive growth, improve efficiency, and strengthen customer relationships.
Our 2026 Digital trends and predictions report is available now and reveals five trends that will define 2026. From curation becoming the standard in programmatic to AI moving from hype to implementation, each trend reflects a shift toward more connected, data-driven marketing. The interplay between them will define how marketers will lead in 2026.
Why is first-party data not sufficient on its own?
First-party data provides a strong foundation for targeting and measurement. It reflects information consumers have shared directly through brand interactions. That makes it reliable and central to audience strategy.
That foundation alone does not tell the full story. First-party data defines known customers, but limits reach and frequency. Growth depends on expanding beyond existing relationships.
Think of first-party data as a way to create an outline, not the whole story, about your target audiences—the main characters in your marketing. To flesh out the entire narrative about them, you must source, connect, and activate additional data.
The ability to unify different data sources with accuracy, scale, and privacy at the forefront sits at the core of Experian’s business. We unify household, individual, device, demographic, behavioral, and first-party signals, along with contextual and geographic data points, to build a reliable view of consumers, even when specific signals are missing. This clarity helps you personalize, target, activate, and measure with confidence.
By layering third-party data, contextual data, and geolocation data onto your first-party data foundation, your advertising strategies become stronger than if you used any of these sources as standalone solutions.
How do different types of third-party data add depth to audience profiles?
Third-party data expands understanding beyond known customers. If first-party data is the outline, third-party data helps with “character development”—a.k.a., addingdetailto your audience profiles. Good third-party marketing data complements first-party insights with demographic, behavioral, and transactional context, providing the missing puzzle pieces to complete the full customer profile. Filling in gaps in customer understanding helps youidentify, reach, and engage current and new customers more effectively. Third-party data allows brands to build loyalty with consumers by speaking to their interests and intent behind purchases.
Third-party data opens up new targeting tactics for advertisers, such as:
In addition to targeting, third-party data also remains critical to AI models, which must train on both structured and unstructured data. At Experian, our AI-powered technology interprets live bidstream data, device activity, content, and timing to optimize in the moment, ensuring campaigns deliver meaningful relevance, not just broader reach.
How are contextual and geographic approaches reshaping audience targeting?
Contextual and geographic approaches to targeting focus on environment and behavior rather than identifiers. Regulatory scrutiny, stricter and more fragmented compliance standards, and rising consumer expectations are transforming how marketers approach third-party data targeting. Evolving privacy laws and inconsistent identifiers across environments require new approaches that balance performance and privacy.
Contextual and geographic targeting help marketers reach relevant audiences while maintaining privacy.
What is data-informed contextual targeting?
Contextual targeting connects audience attributes to the content environments people choose. It helps determine the setting of your story—where your characters spend their time.
Solutions like Experian’s Contextually-Indexed Audiences harness advanced machine learning technology to combine contextual signals (a tried–and-true targeting tactic) with third-party targeting to ensure marketers reach their target audiences on the content they tend to consume, regardless of environment or location. What’s excellent about data-informed contextual targeting is that it moves beyond traditional keyword-based strategies to reach consumers on websites that over-index for visitors with the demographics, behaviors, or interests they are looking to target.
What is data-informed geotargeting?
Geotargeting uses shared location patterns to support relevance at scale. Geotargeting is another possibility for further developing the scene of your story.
People with similar behaviors and interests tend to live in similar areas, which is why so much effort goes into location planning for brick-and-mortar stores. Data-informed geotargeting combines geos with third-party data to make more informed media buys based on common behaviors within a geographic location.
We launched our Geo-Indexed audiences, which use advanced indexing technology to identify and reach consumers based on their geographic attributes. These audiences help marketers discover, segment, and craft messaging for consumers without relying on sensitive personal information, enabling them to reach target audiences while maintaining data privacy confidently.
What role does AI play in third-party data targeting?
AI acts like an automated editor of your book, refining and finding new ways to put valuable third-party audiences and data to work without relying on segments linked to known or disparate identifiers.
We’ve used AI and machine learning at Experian for decades to bring identity, insight, and generative intelligence together so brands and agencies can reach the right people, with relevance, respect, and simplicity.
Why does a balanced, integrated approach that combines first-party, third-party, contextual, and geo-targeting data matter?
The combined effects of integrating third-party, contextual, and geotargeting data (and the marketing tactics it underpins) with first-party data will drive your success.
Think of how any good author crafts a story. Regardless of whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, they draw on both first-person experience and external research and sources to develop their plot. No single data source tells the full story. Integration allows marketers to understand audiences more completely and act with confidence.
Pooling these inputs together moves you closer to your goal of understanding the whole story about your target customers. In fact, an almost even number of marketers plan to use contextual targeting (41%) and first-party data (40%) as their main targeting strategies, amid privacy laws and the loss of persistent advertisers.
| Primary data strategy | Percent of marketers that plan to use this data strategy |
| Contextual targeting | 41% |
| First-party data | 40% |
A brand with strong first-party insights can extend reach by layering in additional signals. For example, a nutrition brand that knows who purchases protein supplements can expand prospecting by combining:
By connecting these inputs, the brand can identify new health-conscious audiences with similar interests and behaviors. This approach supports privacy-safe targeting while improving engagement and performance.
How can marketers build an integrated data strategy in 2026?
An integrated data strategy reduces friction and supports scale. The right data partner offers a unified solution that helps unify data, activate audiences, and adapt as the ecosystem evolves. Here’s how:
Marketers who want to create and activate campaigns more efficiently and effectively in 2026 need an integrated approach that combines first-party, third-party, contextual, and geotargeting data. Streamlining data integration and activation positions brands and agencies for sustainable growth and stronger consumer relationships in a privacy-conscious marketplace.
Build your next chapter on a connected data foundation
As audience strategies evolve, connection and interoperability matter more than ever. Connect with our team to learn how Experian helps marketers unify data, identity, and activation across channels.
About the author
Scott Kozub
VP, Product Management, Experian
Scott Kozub is the Vice President of the Product Management team at Experian Marketing Services working across the entire product portfolio. He has over 20 years of product experience in the marketing and advertising space. He’s been with a few startups and spent many years at FICO and Oracle Data Cloud heavily focused on loyalty marketing and advertising technology.
FAQs
In 2026, CMOs should prioritize and invest in data and targeting strategies that combine first-party, third-party, contextual, and geographic data to drive growth, improve efficiency, and strengthen customer relationships.
First-party data is not sufficient on its own because first-party data defines known customers but limits reach and frequency. Growth depends on expanding beyond existing relationships. The ability to unify different data sources with accuracy, scale, and privacy at the forefront sits at the core of Experian’s business. We unify household, individual, device, demographic, behavioral, and first-party signals, along with contextual and geographic data points, to build a reliable view of consumers, even when specific signals are missing. This clarity helps you personalize, target, activate, and measure with confidence.
Third-party data expands understanding beyond known customers. Third-party data opens up new targeting tactics for advertisers, such as:
– Location: Where people live, work, or spend large amounts of time
– Health: A combination of demographics, behaviors, and health needs
– Purchases: Using previous purchase behavior to identify the right audiences
– Behavioral: How people engage with brands or how they use social media
– Interest: Delivering ads based on interests, hobbies, or online activities
– Psychographics: Shared characteristics like attitudes, lifestyles, and interests
– Demographic: Age, gender, education, income, and religion
In addition to targeting, third-party data also remains critical to AI models, which must train on both structured and unstructured data. At Experian, our AI-powered technology interprets live bidstream data, device activity, content, and timing to optimize in the moment, ensuring campaigns deliver meaningful relevance, not just broader reach.
Data-informed contextual targeting connects audience attributes to the content environments people choose. It helps determine the setting of your story—where your characters spend their time. Experian’s Contextually-Indexed Audiences harness advanced machine learning technology to combine contextual signals (a tried–and-true targeting tactic) with third-party targeting to ensure marketers reach their target audiences on the content they tend to consume, regardless of environment or location.
Data-informed geotargeting uses shared location patterns to support relevance at scale. Experian launched our Geo-Indexed audiences, which use advanced indexing technology to identify and reach consumers based on their geographic attributes. These audiences help marketers discover, segment, and craft messaging for consumers without relying on sensitive personal information, enabling them to reach target audiences while maintaining data privacy confidently.
In third-party data targeting, AI refines and finds new ways to put valuable third-party audiences and data to work without relying on segments linked to known or disparate identifiers. We’ve used AI and machine learning at Experian for decades to bring identity, insight, and generative intelligence together so brands and agencies can reach the right people, with relevance, respect, and simplicity.
Latest posts
In 2022, Google began changing the availability of the information available in User-Agent strings across their Chromium browsers. The change is to use the set of HTTP request header fields called Client Hints. Through this process, a server can request, and if approved by the client, receive information that would have been previously freely available in the User-Agent string. This change is likely to have an impact on publishers across the open web that may use User-Agent information today. To explain what this change means, how it will impact the AdTech industry, and what you can do to prepare, we spoke with Nate West, our Director of Product. What is the difference between User-Agents and Client Hints? A User-Agent (UA) is a string, or line of text, that identifies information about a web server’s browser and operating system. For example, it can indicate if a device is on Safari on a Mac or Chrome on Windows. Here is an example UA string from a Mac laptop running Chrome: To limit the passive fingerprinting of users, Google is reducing components of the UA strings in their Chromium browsers and introducing Client Hints. When there is a trusted relationship between first-party domain owners and third-party servers, Client Hints can be used to share the same data. This transition began in early 2022 with bigger expected changes beginning in February 2023. You can see in the above example, Chrome/109.0.0.0, where browser version information is already no longer available from the UA string on this desktop Chrome browser. How can you use User-Agent device attributes today? UA string information can be used for a variety of reasons. It is a component in web servers that has been available for decades. In the AdTech space, it can be used in various ad targeting use cases. It can be used by publishers to better understand their audience. The shift to limit access and information shared is to prevent nefarious usage of the data. What are the benefits of Client Hints? By using Client Hints, a domain owner, or publisher, can manage access to data activity that occurs on their web properties. Having that control may be advantageous. The format of the information shared is also cleaner than parsing a string from User-Agents. Although, given that Client Hints are not the norm across all browsers, a long-term solution may be needed to manage UA strings and Client Hints. An advantage of capturing and sharing Client Hint information is to be prepared and understand if there is any impact to your systems and processes. This will help with the currently planned transition by Google, but also should the full UA string become further restricted. Who will be impacted by this change? Publishers across the open web should lean in to understand this change and any potential impact to them. The programmatic ecosystem supporting real-time bidding (RTB) needs to continue pushing for adoption of OpenRTB 2.6, which supports the passing of client hint information in place of data from UA strings. What is Google’s timeline for implementing Client Hints? Source: Google Do businesses have to implement Client Hints? What happens if they don’t? Not capturing and sharing with trusted partners can impact capabilities in place today. Given Chromium browsers account for a sizable portion of web traffic, the impact will vary for each publisher and tech company in the ecosystem. I would assess how UA strings are in use today, where you may have security concerns or not, and look to get more information on how to maintain data sharing with trusted partners. We can help you adopt Client Hints Reach out to our Customer Success team at tapadcustomersuccess@experian.com to explore the best options to handle the User-Agent changes and implement Client Hints. As leaders in the AdTech space, we’re here to help you successfully make this transition. Together we can review the options available to put you and your team on the best path forward. Get in touch About our expert Nate West, Director of Product Nate West joined Experian in 2022 as the Director of Product for our identity graph. Nate focuses on making sure our partners maintain and grow identity resolution solutions today in an ever-changing future state. He has over a decade of experience working for media organizations and AdTech platforms. Latest posts
Up next in our Ask the Expert series, Ben Rothke, Senior Information Security Manager, reviews two certifications that should be part of your information security strategy: Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type 2 and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001. Tapad, a part of Experian, is 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 compliant. Two information security certifications you can trust Seals from Good Housekeeping and Underwriters Laboratories give consumers confidence that they can trust the product that they’re buying. For IT solutions or service providers, what, or who can you turn to for that seal of approval? There are many equivalent third-party attestations you can use. But which should you trust? The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) System and Organization Controls (SOC) International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001 is an international standard for information security from the ISO. ISO 27001 is globally acknowledged and sets requirements for controls, maintenance, and certification of an information security management system (ISMS). This international standard provides organizations with a framework to identify, manage and reduce risks related to the security of information System and Organization Controls (SOC) The SOC, as defined by the AICPA, is a set of audit reports. SOC reports, like 27001 certificates, are used by service organizations to give their customers the confidence they have adequate information security controls in place to protect the data that they handle. SOC 2 is an assessment of controls at a service organization regarding security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. The purpose of the report is to provide extensive information and assurance to a broad range of users about the controls at a service organization that are relevant to the security, availability, and processing integrity of the systems that process user data, as well as the confidentiality and privacy of the information processed by these systems. Why ISO 27001 and SOC 2 are important The value of these third-party attestations is two-fold: Organizations can show they have passed an independent external audit Third-party attestations save organizations the time of having to do their own audits In addition to 27001 and SOC 2 Type 2 compliance, we are also certified with ISO 27017 and 27018, which are add-ons to 27001 that are specific to cloud computing. We take the security and privacy of our customers’ data as seriously as they do. Every cloud service provider (CSP) has a responsibility matrix that details what security and privacy tasks they are responsible for and which ones the customer is responsible for. Any cloud customer that needs to be made aware of what their security tasks are is putting themselves at risk. So, when you want to engage a CSP, ask them for their attestations. They worked hard for them and will be proud to share their compliance. We’re powered by decades of setting standards in marketing services At Experian, we’re a privacy-first business. We’re highly focused on respecting people, their data, and their privacy. We continue to show our dedication to information security by completing these security audits every year. The constant changes to data compliance regulations can be challenging to navigate, but you don’t have to do it alone. Contact us today. We will be your guide so you can ethically and confidently reach your customers. Contact us today Contact us today About our expert Ben Rothke, Senior Information Security Manager Ben Rothke, CISSP, CISA, is a Senior Information Security Manager at Tapad, a part of Experian. He has over 25 years of industry experience in information systems security and privacy. His areas of expertise are in risk management and mitigation, security and privacy regulatory issues, cryptography, and security policy development. Ben is the author of Computer Security – 20 Things Every Employee Should Know (McGraw-Hill), and writes security and privacy book reviews for the RSA Conference Blog and Security Management magazine. Latest posts
Experian kicks off the AdTech year at CES What better way to jump-start start 2023 than a trip to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Our team was thrilled to participate in this annual kick-off with the AdTech community. The uniqueness of what CES has become for our industry can be defined as the intersection between technology brands, digital, television, and AdTech. CES creates the space necessary for marketing and advertising leaders to collaborate to drive rewarding outcomes for the year ahead. Our goal in attending CES was to connect with our partners, clients, and industry leaders to build relationships, form strategic plans, and listen. The opportunity to learn about our industry’s challenges and goals enables us to develop initiatives, drive success, and support our clients and partners. Keep reading for our 2023 CES AdTech recap. “I have been to CES too many times to mention the number; this year was as energetic, collaborative, engaged, and effective as I can ever recall. Our presence was first-class and meticulously organized, which made our interactions as robust as possible. It's a team effort, and we appreciate all the work that goes into this event. “ – Greg Koerner, Vice President of Digital Advertising Sales Our CES AdTech recap Supporting publishers and advertisers is top of mind for us. Many of our conversations focused on the technologies we deliver or collaborate with our partners to provide. Clean rooms and activation were two common themes throughout our discussions. Clean rooms Consumer privacy, regulatory requirements, and data deprecation are driving the AdTech industry to talk about and explore clean rooms. There’s a need to address data collection, storage, analysis, and sharing. Clean rooms are a potential solution that can standardize data and address interoperability issues. Activation In 2023, we predict that digital activation will increase. We continue to see increased demand for environments where alternative identifiers are being transacted (like demand side platforms and video). Social platforms will continue to experience volatility and advertisers will shift their focus to demand-side, video, and supply-side platforms. Download our 2023 Digital audience trends and predictions report to learn where you should activate your audiences in 2023. We can help plan your 2023 digital activation strategy. How we support clean rooms and activation Our Consumer Sync and Consumer View products support these areas and can help you understand people better–so you and your customers can connect with confidence. What is Consumer Sync? Consumer Sync, our consumer identity product, enables signal agnostic collaboration across marketers and technologies, bringing together digital devices, IDs, households, and attributes. Consumer Sync’s Resolution and Collaboration solutions can help you gain a better understanding of your consumers and make identities actionable in any environment. What is Consumer View? Consumer View, our data discovery product, offers marketers a robust, privacy-first understanding of their customers and prospects. Grounded in consumer identity, Consumer View provides the data foundation to engage consumers where, when, and how they want. Consumer View’s Audience and Attribution solutions provide expansive coverage so that you can fill in the gaps to better understand your prospects. Additionally, our collaborative efforts with strong partnerships across the clean room ecosystem and with our activation partners help our clients serve the best ads, at the best times, to the right audience. “CES is back and was a great way to kick off the new year! We were able to meet with a high volume of clients to eagerly talk about building new solutions for the TV space. We are excited to see where these conversations lead in the next few months.” – Ali Mack, Senior Director of TV Advertising Sales Let’s navigate what’s new in our industry, together We can help you connect with your consumers in innovative, impactful ways. Contact us to continue the conversation and learn more about our Consumer Sync and Consumer View products. We can help you take advantage of the opportunities on the horizon. Get in touch