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.
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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
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Strong Revenue Performance and Thriving Culture Contribute to Industry Recognition NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Tapad, the leader in cross-device marketing technology and now a part of Experian, was named a top company on Inc. Magazine’s list of the 5000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. In addition, Tapad won the TMCnet 2016 Tech Culture Award. The exclusive Inc. 5000 ranking highlights the fastest-growing privately-held* companies in America. These distinguished companies have achieved success in strategy, service and innovation. TMCnet recognizes talented tech professionals who are committed to building a culture that prioritizes employee growth, collaboration and engagement. Tapad continues to broaden their presence into new markets, having launched in APAC earlier this year, as well as continuing their European expansion. Tapad’s proprietary technology, The Device Graph™ is leveraged by more marketers and brands to understand digital engagement across devices. The company’s rapidly expanding client base includes numerous Fortune 500 company brands as well as all four major advertising holding companies in the U.S. “We have an exceptional team of innovative people who are all working very hard to achieve the kind of results these publications are recognizing,” said Tapad CEO and Founder, Are Traasdahl. “Given that, we have an even greater responsibility to our talent to create an environment that fosters innovation and nurtures open communication. Ultimately, this is how we will continue to reach our very ambitious goals of becoming the world’s leading unified marketing technology provider.” Tapad’s award-winning work culture is defined by its gold-standard benefits which include a six-month parental leave policy, unlimited vacation time, company-sponsored meals and office space designed to facilitate collaboration and open communication. Tapad’s highly talented team has also received multiple customer service awards in 2016. These awards include the iMedia ASPY awards for Best Customer Service and Best Mobile Partner as well as recognition from The Communicator Awards of Excellence in Interactive Media. *Prior to Tapad’s acquisition by Telenor in February 2016. Contact us today
The Tapad Device GraphTM Had Twice the Precision and Three Times the Scale as Next Competitor New York, September 14, 2016 – Just-released findings of a Hotels.com® study revealed that Tapad’s (part of Experian) cross-screen marketing technology achieved the highest levels of precision and scale among competitors. According to the leading online accommodation booking website, after a rigorous, three-and-a-half month vendor analysis, Tapad achieved twice the precision of the next highest-scoring cross-screen offering and three times greater scale. The two other companies evaluated were not named. Said Helene Cameron-Heslop, Senior Manager of Analytics of the Hotels.com brand, “Our team implemented an extremely rigorous vetting of open, cross-screen technology vendors. At the outset, we assumed we would have to compromise on either scale or accuracy – particularly given the importance to our brand of operating in a privacy-safe setting. We were surprised to find a complete package, but Tapad’s Device Graph won out on scale, accuracy and privacy; making our choice of partners very clear.” In another metric critical to the Hotels.com brand, The Tapad Device GraphTM was eight times more “unique” than the next closest offering, meaning Tapad’s graph was found to have a much greater number of connections not seen in any of the other graphs. In addition to precision, uniqueness and scale, the Tapad Device GraphTM was found to have: ● 100% higher recall● 47% more incremental matches● 53% higher North American market coverage● 101% higher F-Score* “A valuable cross-device solution should enable partners to get everything they’re looking for from a single vendor,” said Tapad Founder and CEO, Are Traasdahl. “We are deeply impressed with how thorough Hotels.com was in their vetting, and we confidently tackle the complex challenges of the martech industry thanks to our superior technology. Everyone loves a bake-off, and Tapad is no exception – delivering best-in-class results in areas that really count.” *F-score is a statistical measurement that takes precision and recall together. The calculation is 2*(precision*recall)/precision + recall). It gives you one number instead of two numbers to look at and judge performance. Contact us today