At A Glance
AI can make marketing more human when it understands people in context. Experian’s technology interprets real-time contextual signals—from temporal to situational intent—to align every message with the moment. By connecting identity and context, marketers can create timely, relevant, and responsible engagement that builds trust and drives meaningful outcomes.Personalization without context misses the moment
Marketers have spent years perfecting personalization — but personalization alone often misses the mark. We’ve all seen it. You shop for a weekend getaway, then get served travel ads weeks later when you’re already home. The data was right. The timing wasn’t.
Personalization based only on identity and behavior knows who you are but not when or why you’re ready to act.
At Experian, we believe AI should make marketing feel more human. That means understanding people in context, recognizing their environment, mindset, and the moment, to create relevance that feels timely, not intrusive.
The context gap: Why identity and behavior aren’t enough
Identity and behavioral data can reveal the kind of consumer someone is and the kind of products they may want to buy. But they don’t explain what’s happening right now.
The missing layer is context: the dynamic, real-time signal that shows why this moment matters. Context bridges the gap between knowing something about a consumer and understanding their intent.
In an era of fragmented signals and stricter privacy rules, context is one of the most reliable ways to stay relevant without over-reliance on personal identifiers. It helps marketers adapt to shifting needs while keeping privacy intact.
How Experian interprets context in real-time
By context, we mean all the subtle, in-the-moment signals, like time of day, location, or what someone’s watching, that shape what people care about in real-time. At Experian, our technology interprets these in real-time:
Temporal signals
Time-based patterns such as daypart (morning vs. evening), recency (how fresh a signal is), seasonality (holidays, life events), and micro-moments (split-second intent-driven actions).
Environmental signals
The media or content environment; what type of program, article, or channel someone is engaging with when they see your ad.
Situational intent
Signals like browsing behavior or purchase patterns that hint at a person’s stage in the buying journey, from early research to final decision.
By layering these signals over verified identity and behavioral data, Experian’s AI-powered technology helps marketers predict not just who will act, but when they’re ready to act.
Experian’s approach: Turning context into relevance
Consumer behavior changes by the minute, and marketers need to adapt just as quickly. Our technology interprets live bidstream data, device activity, content, and timing to optimize in the moment, ensuring your campaigns deliver meaningful relevance, not just broader reach.
Our process combines:
Input
Clean, accurate identity and audience data anchored in our privacy-first framework.
Enrichment
Our models fuse household, device, and publisher context to reveal moment-based intent.
Activation
We’re investing in agentic workflows that help marketers plan and execute performance campaigns at scale, activated via our real-time technology that dynamically adjusts deals and surfaces contextually aligned opportunities.
Governance
Every signal and recommendation follows Experian’s principles of transparency, consent, and ethical oversight.
We call this AI-powered simplicity tools that help marketers work more efficiently, with intelligence that feels intuitive and human-centered.
How context changes the game for marketers
AI without real-time context can only react based on what it already knows. AI-powered by in-the-moment contextual data points enables marketers to anticipate, not just react.
A travel brand can shift creative from “dreaming” to “booking” mode when AI detects signals of active planning.
A retailer can align promotions with trending content or regional weather shifts in real time.
A CPG brand can trigger different product messages based on the context of recipes or household occasions.
Adjustments based on contextual signals compound into meaningful gains — higher engagement, better efficiency, and a consumer experience that feels natural rather than intrusive.
Context makes AI more human
Context introduces empathy into automation. It’s what keeps AI from overstepping, ensuring the message fits the moment. When marketers respect timing, environment, and intent, ads feel like service, not surveillance. Context transforms relevance into respect.
At Experian, our vision is to make every signal serve people, not profiles. Because the more our technology (including our AI tools and capabilities) understands context, the more human marketing becomes.
At Experian, responsible intelligence is built in
Every contextual model we deploy adheres to our standards for transparent and responsible innovation. We validate inputs, monitor model drift, and ensure no context-based variable introduces bias or privacy risk. This is what responsible automation looks like in practice: intelligent, explainable, and ethical.
From who to when: Context is the future of AI-driven marketing
Identity tells us who someone is. Context tells us when it matters.
The next wave of AI-driven marketing will unite privacy-first identity with contextual intelligence to deliver real-time relevance, responsibly. At Experian, we’re building that future now. Our AI-driven capabilities bring identity, insight, and generative intelligence together so brands, agencies, and platforms can reach the right people, at the right moment, with relevance and respect.
Get started now
About the author
Matthew Griffiths
SVP of Technology, Audigent, a part of Experian
Matthew Griffiths is a seasoned technology entrepreneur and a driving force in advertising technology, data technology, and AI. As the Co-Founder and former CTO (now SVP of Technology) at Audigent, a part of Experian, he plays a pivotal role in shaping the company’s cutting-edge solutions for data activation, curation, and identity management.
With years of executive experience across the U.S., Africa, and the U.K., Matthew has a proven track record of leadership in steering the adoption and use of cutting-edge technologies to drive business outcomes. His expertise spans from collaborating with top global corporations and governments to spearheading award-winning technology projects that deliver life-changing impacts in some of the world’s most underserved communities.
Matthew’s dynamic approach to solving complex business and technology challenges makes him a visionary leader in the AdTech space, consistently driving innovation and performance through technology.
FAQs
Context makes AI-driven marketing more effective because it helps marketers understand people in context, recognizing their environment, mindset, and the moment, to create relevance that feels timely, not intrusive. Context helps marketers understand not just who a person is, but when and why they’re ready to act. Experian’s AI-powered technology layers contextual signals over verified identity data to deliver relevance that feels intuitive, not invasive. This approach connects recognition with understanding, making every campaign more effective and more human.
Identity and behavioral data can reveal the kind of consumer someone is and the kind of products they may want to buy. But they don’t explain what’s happening right now. That’s the context gap—the missing link between knowing something about a consumer and understanding their intent. Context closes this gap by analyzing environmental, temporal, and situational signals that reveal intent—without using invasive identifiers.
Yes, at Experian, our technology interprets contextual signals, including temporal, environmental, and situational, in real-time. By layering these signals over Experian’s verified identity and behavioral data graph, marketers can predict when consumers are most receptive, turning data into real-time opportunity.
At Experian, every contextual model we deploy adheres to our standards for transparent and responsible innovation. We validate inputs, monitor model drift, and ensure no context-based variable introduces bias or privacy risk.
– Privacy-first clarity: We unify household, individual, device, demographic, behavioral, publisher first-party signals, and contextual data points to build a reliable view of consumers, even when certain signals are missing. This clarity helps marketers personalize, target, activate, and measure with confidence.
– Predictive insight: Our models go beyond describing the past. They forecast behaviors, fill gaps with inferred attributes, create lookalikes, and recommend next-best audiences so clients can anticipate opportunity.
– AI-powered simplicity: We’re investing in generative AI and exploring emerging agentic workflows to reimagine how marketers work. Our vision is to move beyond basic audience recommendations toward intelligent audience discovery and automated setup, helping teams uncover opportunities they may not have considered, while spending less time on manual work and more time on strategy and outcomes.
– Real-time intelligence: Consumer journeys never stand still. 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.
– Transparent and responsible innovation: We drive safe, modular experimentation, from generative applications to agentic workflows, always balancing bold ideas with ethical guardrails. We stay at the forefront of evolving legislation and regulation, ensuring our innovations protect consumers, brands, and the broader ecosystem while moving the industry forward responsibly.
Latest posts
At Experian, we power data-driven advertising through connectivity. Today, we're excited to introduce our newest offering, which helps drive that connectivity: Experian's Collaboration in clean rooms. This offering is now generally available in InfoSum, AWS Clean Rooms, and others. Experian can now facilitate successful data collaboration across multiple secure environments, such as at Experian, through crosswalks, and now in clean rooms. Whether you are a marketer or partner, introducing Experian’s signal-agnostic offline and digital identity graphs into your clean rooms lets you run identity resolution directly in the clean room. This means your data remains secure, while you and your partner experience higher match rates and you maximize your clean room investment, leading to: More resolved data More valuable insights and smarter activation More accurate and complete measurement A leap forward in data collaboration Backed by Experian’s Global Data Principles, Experian's deep roots in identity and data security offer the most effective and trusted ways to match data and protect consumer privacy. Our signal-agnostic approach means we can resolve all types of offline and digital identity signals, which is valuable now and will become even more valuable as third-party cookies go away. Additionally, data hygiene is built right into our collaboration offering, helping to improve match rates. The benefits of working with Experian’s rich identity data in a clean room environment are obvious so it is no surprise to see that 55% of data clean room users are using identity solutions in data clean rooms. What are data clean rooms? Data clean rooms are a tool typically used for data sharing, built on top of cloud providers such as AWS clean rooms. They protect data privacy while facilitating data collaboration among clients, marketers, businesses, and their partners. As the industry places greater emphasis on data security, clean rooms have emerged as secure environments that allow companies to: Enhance user privacy protection Minimize the impact of cookie deprecation Secure collaboration with data partners The industry has quickly realized that, for what clean rooms offer by way of privacy and security, they lack resolution capabilities, typically yielding subpar match rates. Benefits of Experian's Collaboration in clean rooms offering Built upon Experian’s rich offline and digital identity foundation, with support for various identifiers across platforms, Collaboration in clean rooms helps clients maximize the value of their data and meet the diverse needs of modern business. Through Experian's Collaboration in clean rooms offering, you can: Collaborate with partners for richer data insights Achieve higher match rates Improve audience building Produce more accurate and complete reports Ensure data privacy Regardless of the identifier type you are looking to collaborate on, Experian has the identity data to support you and your partner. This leads to higher match rates and more resolved data for you to use to benefit your media initiatives. Get started with Collaboration in clean rooms today Get the most out of your first-party data with Collaboration in clean rooms, which is essential for businesses that want to compete in a fast-paced market and connect with consumers in today’s data-driven world. We understand the importance of data collaboration and make seamless, secure data sharing possible between partners. Connect with us today to find out how Experian's Collaboration in clean rooms offering ensures privacy while allowing you to extract valuable data insights for smarter data-driven advertising. Start collaborating Latest posts
It’s been one week since the highly anticipated Cannes Lions 2024—the event of the year for advertising and creativity. We are excited to present our top five takeaways from the event, revealing the industry's priorities for the year ahead. Navigating the post-cookie era One of the pivotal discussions at Cannes Lions 2024 centered around signal loss and identity resolution. The industry is grappling with the impact of third-party cookie deprecation, driving a move toward alternative identifiers such as Unified I.D. 2.0 (UID2) and ID5, and contextual targeting. This shift aims to uphold accurate audience targeting while addressing privacy concerns through authenticated forms of identity. Brands and agencies are actively exploring these new strategies to replace traditional cookie-based methods with stable, privacy-compliant solutions. First-party data providers are also seeking data onboarding solutions to navigate this transition. They need streamlined integration processes, comprehensive ID-matching capabilities, and transparent pricing structures. Fortified by our roots in offline data and significant investments in our Graph, and our newest offering, Third-Party Onboarding, you can count on Experian's solutions to maintain strong signal coverage in a cookieless world so you can have uninterrupted, effective marketing. Unifying targeting across TV platforms Another focal point at Cannes Lions 2024 was the challenge of navigating TV fragmentation. Advertisers strive for unified targeting across diverse TV platforms, including connected TV (CTV) and traditional linear TV. They emphasize integrating data sources and ad servers to reach audiences across these platforms. CTV continues to stand out in conversations as a crucial and expanding area for advertising, offering new opportunities for targeted campaigns and broader audience engagement. We're fueling the expansion of CTV advertising through our signal-agnostic Graph, which seamlessly integrates CTV IDs, universal identifiers such as UID2, IP addresses, and mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) for targeted campaigns. Our newest offering, Third-Party Onboarding, also provides connectivity to more than 10 TV destinations. Transforming marketing with AI We would be remiss not to mention the hottest topic at Cannes Lions 2024, the transformative power of AI within data and identity. Discussions highlighted AI's pivotal role in revolutionizing marketing strategies by enhancing campaign planning, dynamic optimization, measurement, and analytics. AI is not just a tool; it enables marketers to work smarter and faster. With real-time data enrichment, AI will empower marketers to manage large-scale campaigns with unprecedented efficiency and precision. Marketers envision a future where AI seamlessly integrates into every aspect of their strategy, from understanding and predicting consumer behavior to automating personalized engagement. They see AI as the key to unlocking new levels of precision and efficiency, allowing them to adjust real-time campaigns based on consumer interactions and preferences. This vision includes using AI for deeper audience insights, ensuring that every marketing touchpoint is relevant and impactful. Striving for strategies for proven ROI Discussions on measurement at Cannes Lions 2024 focused on how measurement metrics are evolving to keep pace with industry changes. Cross-device, multi-touch attribution, and outcome-based metrics like consumer lifetime value and conversion rates are becoming more important. Accurate measurement is critical for demonstrating campaign impact and optimizing future marketing efforts. These developments reflect a shift toward more sophisticated measurement practices to optimize marketing strategies and prove tangible ROI. Through our Consumer Sync solutions, you can improve your attribution quality to understand the true path to conversion by linking all digital touchpoints to a single person. Creating integrated consumer experiences with retail media networks Retail media networks (RMNs) are becoming more integrated and connected. Their goal is to provide consumers with a unified online and physical store experience and create a comprehensive marketplace where retailers can work together and use shared data to better reach and engage with their audiences. "Throughout the conversations, it's been clear that there's a lot of demand and interest in building and growing retail media networks. What strikes me is that Experian products, both across identity and data, can be a big support to help grow and fill in these gaps."budi tanzi, vp, product Discussions at Cannes Lions 2024 emphasized how collaborations with technology providers and industry groups can help set measurement standards and ensure transparency. These partnerships can enable RMNs to expand their reach and compete with larger advertising platforms, driving industry growth and innovation. Experian offers comprehensive solutions for RMNs. Our Profile Insights and Enrichment tools offer valuable customer behavior insights, driving smarter inventory management. We enhance ad targeting beyond item-level purchases with accurate data and syndicated audiences, aligning with broader media strategies. Third-Party Onboarding enables expansion beyond owned and operated inventory, supported by our Graph for enhanced connectivity. "Data providers are excited to eliminate digital hops in their data flow using Experian Third-Party Onboarding. Third-Party Onboarding is uniquely set up to reduce friction for third-party data and the ecosystem in general."adam kobus, director of data partnerships Experian events at Cannes Lions 2024 This year, we hosted a kick-off happy hour, content studio, and members of our team joined various panels across the Croisette. Here’s a recap of our week at Cannes. Experian's kick-off event with Audigent and LG Ad Solutions To kick off the week, we co-hosted a happy hour with Audigent and LG Ad Solutions. At our sold-out event, attendees enjoyed a live performance from St. Lucia. Content studio We interviewed 27 thought leaders across the industry in our content studio. Our interviews covered topics like:• Signal loss• Connected and linear TV• Data collaboration• Future of addressability and personalization• Retail media networks• And more We'll be sharing more from our content studio over the coming months. Follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our email newsletter for the latest updates. Panel participation The Experian team participated in four panels throughout the week across the Croisette: Scott Kozub, VP, Product Management, joined the Brand Innovators panel, "Future of media,” where he discussed how media companies can adapt their content and distribution strategies to cater to changing consumption habits as media becomes more fragmented across devices and platforms. Kimberly Gilberti, Chief Product Officer, joined OpenX's panel, "Unlocking addressability: Navigating the post-cookie era,” to discuss the prevailing strategies for achieving addressability in a cookieless world. Budi Tanzi, VP, Product, participated in Audigent's panel, "Curation in regulated industries,” where they talked about why curation is effective in regulated markets like finance and health. Rachael Donnelly, Chief Marketing Officer, joined The Female Quotient in the Equality Lounge for their panel "Emotional agility: Leading beyond the double standard," where they explored the power of diverse storytelling and its impact on audience engagement, brand building, and the bottom line. Let's keep the momentum going As we wrap up another exciting week at Cannes Lions, the discussions have shown us the potential for innovation in signal loss, TV fragmentation, AI, measurement, and retail media networks. These topics pave the way for a more connected future in advertising. Which trends are you most excited about? Let’s continue the conversation! Reach out to us, and let's dive deeper into these topics together. Stay connected We understand that customers may be experiencing uncertainty with their marketing strategies with Oracle’s exit from advertising. Experian is one of Oracle’s primary data providers powering their audiences. We can help marketers easily make the switch from Oracle audiences to Experian audiences without changes in advertising effectiveness or efficiency. We have mapped Oracle audiences to Experian audiences to make it easy for you to switch your campaign targeting to Experian. Reach out to your account representative or our audiences team for information about audience mapping and finding the most relevant Experian audience for your campaigns. Connect with our audiences team Latest posts
Cuebiq’s mission, as an offline intelligence and measurement company, is to quantify how digital marketing impacts offline consumer behavior. This case study shows how Cuebiq partnered with Experian to continue delivering in-store lift analyses despite signal loss. To achieve this, Cuebiq used Experian’s Activity Feed to resolve digital ad exposures to mobile ad IDs, so that marketers could know the effectiveness of their media campaigns on in-store visits and purchases. Even as Google backs away from third-party cookie deprecation, the need for flexible, future-proof identity solutions remains. By working with Experian, Cuebiq could help their clients more accurately measure their campaigns and optimize their media. Challenge: Increasing match rates across digital platforms Cuebiq wanted to enhance how well they connect digital ad exposures, across web, mobile, and connected TV (CTV), to mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), of consumers who visited their clients’ stores. They needed a single technology partner who could collect data across these environments and improve these connections. With the ability to resolve exposures to households, individuals, and MAIDs to then facilitate attribution of digital exposures to offline store visitation, Cuebiq could continue to provide accurate reports on how digital ads impact offline consumer behavior. This clarity in data enables their clients to fine-tune their marketing strategies. Cuebiq’s key objectives included: Resolving digital exposures to MAIDs Increase overlap of offline and online data Improving the effectiveness of offline measurement offerings Activity Feed: The solution to increase match rates Experian’s Activity Feed pulls together fragmented digital event data from all digital channels, including browsers like Safari and Firefox that restrict traditional tracking methods. Activity Feed ingests and ties digital ad exposure and website activity data to household or individual profiles hourly, helping client's associate ad exposures to impact by a household or individual. Activity Feed plays a crucial role in overcoming fragmented data and helping marketers accurately measure their cross-channel marketing efforts. Cuebiq used Activity Feed to resolve exposure data from all environments, even cookieless ones, to a single household or individual and saw significantly higher match rates. Cuebiq received their clients’ ad exposure data resolved to mobile ad IDs (MAIDs) and correlated it to their clients’ in-store visitation and sales. To do so, Cuebiq implemented the Experian pixel, which they placed to track all their marketers’ impressions (mobile, CTV, web traffic, etc.). The Experian pixel collects information in real-time, such as: Timestamp Cookies Device ID (MAID/CTV) when available IP address User-Agent Impression ID “Before we started working with Experian, we couldn’t fully maximize ad views across the complex digital landscape. In just a few weeks, they were able to maximize the match rate across the fragmented digital inventory, solving a huge problem when it comes to cross-channel attribution.” Luca Bocchiardi, Director of Product, Cuebiq Results Activity Feed combines separate data streams and matches them back to a household. This enables Cuebiq to expand household IDs and accurately identify MAIDs that are seen in-store for cross-channel measurement. Over a 21-day period, Cuebiq passed ~1 billion events to Experian. Activity Feed resolved 85% of total events to a household, 91% of which were tied to MAIDs. By implementing Activity Feed, Cuebiq was successfully able to: Gain clearer insights into the success of their client‘s campaigns Match consumer engagements in a privacy-compliant manner Tell the story of the key performance indicators (KPIs) related to their marketing efforts A solution for measurement across cookied and cookieless environments Activity Feed is prepared for whatever the future of signal loss holds in store, capable of using third-party cookies and alternative IDs, like UID2.0s, ID5 IDs, hashed emails, and IPs for identity resolution. Experian remains fully committed to exploring a suite of next-generation solutions and prioritizing continued testing of different industry solutions to help customers maintain consumer visibility amidst signal loss. We’ve identified six viable alternatives to third-party cookies, how these alternatives fall short, and how Experian can help you navigate these alternatives. “Experian’s customer service is extremely efficient and collaborative. We trust them to keep putting our business first long-term.”Luca Bocchiardi, Director of Product, Cuebiq Download the full case study to discover how Cuebiq used Activity Feed to overcome their challenges. Your path to maximizing match rates and resolving data from cookieless environments starts here. Download the full case study Contact us About Cuebiq Cuebiq is transforming the way businesses interact with mobility data to providing a high-quality and transparent currency to map and measure offline behavior. They are at the forefront of all industry privacy standards, establishing an industry-leading data collection framework, and making it safe and easy for businesses to use location data for innovation and growth. To learn more, visit their website at www.cuebiq.com Latest posts