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
Overview Chartable leverages The Tapad Graph to improve cross-device attribution rates and remove non-addressable IPs for clients. Challenge Chartable needs to differentiate between consumer and potential business IP addresses to provide accurate household modeling and reduce excess data for their customers. Podcasting generally only has access to IP addresses as a form of digital ID which limits its ability to connect activity to individuals and extend it across all devices. The Tapad + Experian solution Using Tapad, now a part of Experian, Chartable is able to cut through the noise of IP data and discard any addresses deemed a shared IP or business. Then, Tapad + Experian connects individual users to their other digital IDs and users in their household; creating a richer attribution model for Chartable customers. Increase in podcast attribution rates Contact us today
With the growth of digital marketing and the targeting capabilities associated with online outreach, many predicted that this would mark the end of direct mail advertising. But if Millennials have anything to say about it, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Yes, believe it or not, Millennials are driving the resurgence of direct mail advertising, and many leading brands are now pivoting their omnichannel marketing plans to include direct mail. And with the USPS reporting more than 75.7 billion in marketing mail volume in 2019, this trend shows no sign of slowing down. Including direct mail in your plans may give your brand a better chance of reaching your audience. Why? 1. Millennials actually like getting mail.While most of us have decried “junk mail” as being environmentally unfriendly or just a pain to deal with, Millennials actually enjoy physical mail. Valassis recently cited research from USPS Customer & Market Insights stating that Millennials spend the most time sorting mail (about six minutes compared to the average, which is four minutes), plus they’re opening mail and reading it (at eight minutes versus the average of seven minutes). Valassis also conducted a study that showed that 68% of Millennials read print ads or inserts from retailers, and 64% prefer getting them through the mail. So, while digital outreach may be convenient, it hasn’t completely decimated the desire for that old-school, hands-on experience of opening and reading something that’s addressed to you. 2. Millennials respond to a multi-channel approach.Oftentimes, marketers think of omnichannel as being a combination of digital and TV, but when you add print into the mix, it can make an even bigger impact on Millennial audiences. Valassis found that 60% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase after seeing an ad when it’s presented across both offline and online channels, while 72% of Millennial parents say print ads encourage them to go online and make a purchase from that retailer. 3. Millennials think physical mail makes for a more personal approach.You’d think that e-mail would feel more personal, but with the influx of spam most people get, that’s just not the case. In fact, 67% of people see physical mail as being more personal than an e-mail, with seven out of 10 saying they prefer receiving actual mail over digital mail. And for marketers looking to make a one-to-one connection, this is music to their ears. With changing marketing plans, the mailbox has less competition than the inbox. Getting a catalog at their door with the perfect offer at the perfect time helps the marketer make the direct connection. 4. Direct mail lasts longer than digital mail.That may seem like an obvious statement, but there’s more to it than you think. When an e-mail arrives in someone’s inbox, it’s easy to ignore it, read the subject line and forget about it, or even just randomly delete it, if spam filters don’t take care of that on their own. But the average lifespan of a piece of direct mail is 17 days, which may account for how direct mail generates purchases five times larger than e-mail campaigns. It’s harder to ignore when it’s in your house and you have to physically handle it as opposed to just clicking a mouse to get rid of it. 5. Millennials trust direct mail.It’s true—research shows that 90% of Millennials think direct mail advertising is reliable. Plus, Millennials are 24% more likely to show mail to others, compared to 19% of non-Millennials… which means if they find a deal they like in the mail, they’re probably going to spread the word. Contact us today
Marketers are always looking for creative ways to get the most out of their digital marketing investments. While there may be different paths to optimization, reducing media spend and cutting costs without sacrificing ROI is ideal. We empower marketers to take back control of their budgets and reinvent their media strategies by leveraging the right data at the right time. And, given today’s challenging climate, there’s no better time. Every Business Has Different Deeds Whether you’re a direct-to-consumer brand building a loyal customer base or a financial service simply letting customers know you’re here for them during a challenging time– identity resolution is essential to connecting with your audience without breaking the bank. That’s why we have built solutions that provide flexibility and control when you need it most. Putting Data Into Action Experian's "Tapad Graph" is a global, privacy-safe cross device graph is one powerful file. Updated weekly, and containing customized device IDs and digital attributes, The Tapad Graph enables smarter targeting strategies and a reduction of wasted impressions. What that means is more marketing efficiency and a stronger ROI for your business. Saving resources and money sound good to you? This guide breaks down four ways you can implement cost savings measures without sacrificing performance or prohibiting KPIs. Frequency Capping and Suppression Clustering device IDs by the individual and household means you have access to more ways to reach consumers, but it doesn’t always mean you should be using all of them across every campaign. Hone in on the channels and devices where consumers make most of their lower funnel decisions and purchases – and cap brand-awareness level placements or aspirational media that requires more exposure to generate engagement. This doesn’t mean limiting the devices you target, but being more aware of how often you’re targeting the same person across those devices. If you’ve successfully begun, or heck, even completed the consumer journey with an individual, congratulations. Now, you may want to consider what to do with the rest of the digital devices and users in that same household. Sure, there’s a time for conquesting an entire home of purchasers, but that’s not always the most effective way to maximize your media. That’s why The Tapad Graph is built to be flexible, providing a holistic view of all individuals and their associated devices and digital IDs – so you can suppress them once you’ve conquested the household decision maker or achieved the desired lower funnel activity. Save those impressions for someone else and save money for yourself. The great thing is whether you’re uploading this data into a DMP or a DSP, you can segment your target audience with a frequency cap threshold or suppress them entirely. Not only can you apply these tactics across traditional digital media, but we can include Connected TVs for OTT targeting as well, making your media strategy as holistic as your identity resolution tactics. Cross-Device Targeting and Attribution Consumer behavior and device trends are changing these days, so shouldn’t your digital marketing change too? Desktop usage is now up as much as 22%* as more people are working and learning from home. And remember that old iPad? With more people at home, we’re dusting off more devices and tablet activity is increasing more than 30%*. Sure, people are still constantly on mobile– but it might be time to consider implementing cross-device targeting and optimization for those dayparts when their focus is elsewhere. Identity resolution should be a key element of customer journey mapping and attribution in order to truly give credit to the right channels and build a baseline for the right cost-per modelling. Coupling The Tapad Graph with raw events data can granularly attribute engagement, actions and conversions at the digital ID, device, and even user-level – thereby teaching you more about your customer’s preferences. Leverage these insights to create more tailored messaging and promotions on your owned and operated channels, to funnel impressions to specific screens and platforms, and to target users based on where they are in the purchase funnel. Data That Gives You Control If you’re already implementing cross-device, have you started suppressing the devices where engagement with your brand isn’t happening? That’s right, you can use The Tapad Graph after-the-fact as well. Weekly graph updates with 60-day look-backs enable weekly campaign optimizations. That gives you the flexibility and control to avoid devices and platforms where users aren’t as active. You can only make decisions based on the data you have in front of you, so make sure you're partnering with the right solutions for your business. Does identity resolution sound like something you need? Contact us and we can help you get started with all that The Tapad Graph has to offer. Contact us today