Key takeaways
- U.S. retail media ad spend is on track to reach $71.09 billion in 2026, creating more opportunities for CMNs to grow beyond the on-site inventory they own.
- Off-site social and connected TV (CTV) spend are outpacing on-site growth, proving the market is strong for CMNs that extend their first-party data across channels they don’t own.
- CMNs can extend the value of their shopper relationships beyond owned-and-operated (O&O) inventory by strengthening first-party data, building scalable audiences, expanding off-site activation, and connecting data with media through curation.
Amazon and Walmart command much of the market, but billions in retail media spend remain available to other networks. While the other 277 CMNs operating globally may not compete on scale, the playing field is level for using their data off-site.
The opportunity isn’t tied to any one capability. CMNs need infrastructure that connects first-party data and identity to activation and measurement, so they can extend the value of their shopper relationships beyond the data and inventory they own.
What CMNs need to know about moving off-site
O&O placements still offer stronger margins. On-site ad margins can reach 70-90%, compared with 20-40% off-site. But CMNs can sell only so much media across the properties they own. Moving off-site gives them another way to create media opportunities from their first-party shopper data.
Off-site commerce media uses a CMN’s first-party audience data to reach shoppers beyond the network’s O&O properties. That can include social, programmatic, CTV, and other media environments. Commerce media powered social ad spend is projected to reach $7.76 billion in the U.S. in 2026, with CTV close behind at $6.10 billion. For CMNs, that means the value of their shopper relationships doesn’t have to stop at the edge of their owned inventory.
Off-site media can bring those opportunities closer to the physical point of sale, too. Digital screens in places such as gas stations and convenience stores give CMNs another way to connect with shoppers near moments of purchase. Some of this inventory can be available programmatically, connecting these physical environments with a CMN’s broader off-site media strategy.
The infrastructure question: What off-site actually requires
When CMNs make their data available across the open web, CTV, or social media, their first-party signals need to connect with the identifiers used across those environments. Without that connection, less of a CMN’s audience may be available for off-site activation.
The financial stakes continue to grow. U.S. CTV ad spend is expected to reach roughly $38 billion in 2026, with most of it trading programmatically. A substantial share of open CTV programmatic spend currently goes to inaccurate identity data. Advertisers can improve the efficacy of their CTV campaigns by working with CMNs that have a strong identity infrastructure and relevant data.
Identity resolution helps connect a CMN’s first-party signals to additional addressable identifiers, making more of its audience reachable across environments. A consistent identity layer can then connect that audience to activation across channels and tie campaign exposure back to measurable outcomes.
CMNs don’t need to build that infrastructure themselves. Some may develop identity capabilities in-house, and others can work with a neutral infrastructure partner. A neutral infrastructure layer can connect first-party data, identity, activation, and measurement without competing for the CMN’s media or representing the buyers on the other side. That gives CMNs a consistent foundation across media environments without requiring separate data integrations for each partner.
How CMNs can take first-party data off-site
Early off-site activation has shown how CMNs can take their first-party data beyond O&O properties to help brands reach more shoppers across more media environments. To do that, CMNs need a way to connect their audiences to the platforms and media where brands want to reach them. The approach can vary based on how much technology, campaign execution, and media control the CMN wants to manage directly.
Four operating models have emerged:
The operating model may differ, but the underlying requirement is the same: CMNs need to connect first-party data with addressable identifiers so brands can reach those audiences beyond the CMN’s O&O properties. A segment that can’t match to addressable IDs may have limited off-site reach, and lower match rates can reduce the share of a CMN’s audience that a brand can reach across CTV or the open web.
Expanding beyond O&O: Onboarding and the addressability challenge
CMNs looking to extend the value of their data beyond O&O inventory should focus on two connected areas: strengthening their identity foundation, then onboarding and activating their audiences across more environments.
1. Strengthen your identity foundation
Before CMNs can activate audiences off-site, they need accurate, complete first-party data. Experian’s Offline Identity Resolution helps CMNs resolve first-party data to a consolidated consumer profile, reducing duplication and improving the accuracy of their audience data. Offline Identity Append adds additional information such as name, phone, and address to first-party data, helping CMNs build more complete audience profiles.
Together, these capabilities give CMNs a stronger data foundation for audience creation and activation.
2. Onboard, model, and activate audiences
CMNs may have limited direct integrations with the platforms where brands want to activate their audiences, which can restrict where their first-party data can go off-site. Onboarding connects C
CMN audiences to more activation destinations so advertisers can use those audiences across the open web, connected TV (CTV), social media, and other channels. Experian Onboarding connects first-party data directly to more than 70 programmatic, social, and TV platforms instead of routing through intermediaries. It runs on our identity graph with 4.2 billion active digital IDs refreshed weekly.
For smaller CMNs, audience modeling can help address another challenge: audience size. Modeling can expand a CMN’s existing segments to reach more people with similar characteristics, giving advertisers more scale while staying grounded in the CMN’s first-party data.
For CMNs, stronger identity data and broader activation can make more of an onboarded audience reachable, creating more opportunities for advertisers to build awareness, drive sales, and achieve other desired outcomes.
CMNs can pair onboarding with curation to bring data and inventory together, giving them more control over inventory quality and campaign execution. Experian Curated Deals supports this support this approach by helping marketers, platforms, and publishers create media opportunities that combine data and inventory in one place.
This combination gives CMNs a path from stronger first-party data to larger, more addressable audiences and broader activation opportunities.
A playbook for CMNs still building off-site
Networks developing an off-site strategy should focus on four priorities:
Across each of these priorities, the goal is connection. Experian provides the neutral infrastructure layer that connects a CMN’s first-party data and identity with activation and measurement across the media environments where advertisers want to reach shoppers. This approach helps CMNs expand their options while keeping their data and business relationships at the center.
For CMNs that can’t compete on owned inventory alone, off-site activation creates another path to growth. Stronger first-party data, scalable audiences, broader activation, and curated media opportunities can help CMNs make more of the shopper relationships they already have.
Grow your commerce media network off-site with us
About the author
Doug McLennan
Sr. Director, Product Management
Doug McLennan is the Sr. Director of Product Management at Experian Marketing Services where he oversees audience and activation products. His past work includes managing syndicated audiences at Oracle Data Cloud and building personalized video ad products at an agency. Doug lives in Colorado and skis as much as his family will allow.
FAQs
Off-site commerce media uses a CMN’s first-party audience data to reach shoppers beyond the network’s owned sites and apps. That can include CTV, social, and programmatic.
CMNs are investing in off-site advertising because O&O inventory has a natural limit. Off-site activation gives CMNs more opportunities to offer advertisers greater reach by extending their shopper data across channels, helping brands connect with audiences beyond the CMN’s owned properties.
Identity resolution gives CMNs a foundation for connecting first-party data to the addressable identifiers used across off-site media. Experian builds on that foundation as a neutral infrastructure layer, connecting first-party data and identity to activation and measurement without competing for the CMN’s media. This gives CMNs more flexibility in how and where they reach audiences across CTV, social, and programmatic channels.
Audience onboarding connects addressable audience segments to advertising platforms for activation. For CMNs with limited direct platform integrations, Experian Onboarding connects their first-party audiences to more programmatic, social, and TV platforms, giving brands more ways to reach those audiences through off-site campaigns.
A consistent identity foundation and regular audience refreshes can help CMNs maintain addressability as identifiers and household signals change. Experian is the neutral infrastructure layer that connects first-party data and identity to activation and measurement, helping CMNs extend their audiences across off-site channels while keeping their data and business relationships at the center.
CMNs can measure off-site campaigns by connecting media exposure across environments such as CTV and programmatic display to subsequent outcomes. Experian’s consistent identity foundation connects activation to measurement, helping CMNs tie ad exposure to actions such as online purchases, store visits, or other measurable actions and understand what’s driving campaign performance.
Latest posts
Experian Marketing Services and Data Quality President Genevieve Juillard recently sat down with Zach Rodgers, host of the AdExchanger Talks podcast to discuss the future of identity, the importance of data transparency and privacy, and our recent acquisition of Tapad. Genevieve focused on the opportunity for our industry to reimagine an advertising ecosystem that is resilient and adaptable; one that takes advantage of emerging data and prioritizes data transparency and consumer privacy. She also discussed the importance of advertising strategies that put consumers at the heart of every decision and give them more control over their data. Genevieve shared with AdExchanger that Experian’s acquisition of Tapad, a global leader in digital identity resolution, was a natural fit for our company. Tapad’s approach and role in the ecosystem is very much aligned with Experian’s, which is to develop solutions that are resilient to industry and consumer changes. The combination of our capabilities supports interoperability across all types of identifiers, both online and offline, and will position us to help our clients navigate the post-third-party cookie world. To learn more about Experian’s plans to support an effective advertising ecosystem that will evolve with our dynamic industry, listen to the full podcast Embracing ‘Healthy Fragmentation’ In Ad Tech, With Genevieve Juillard. Get in touch
It’s been over a year since Google announced they’d be deprecating the third-party cookie and in that time there’s been a major focus on two types of cookieless identity solutions. Identity vendors and marketers are strategizing which of these two future solutions best fits their needs so they can achieve privacy-safe scale once third-party cookies are no longer available for use on Chrome. Let’s break down these solutions and the considerations marketers need to take into account when deciding what partners to move forward with in the future of identity resolution. Authenticated Traffic Solutions Authenticated traffic solutions (ATS) are a type of digital identification that asks the end-user to identify themselves via personal information, most commonly email address. Often, you’ll see self-authentication at the point of entry to a website that asks you to create an account or login immediately to access the content you are seeking. E-commerce sites use authentication to keep track of consumer purchases and inform advertising decisions for that customer; and publishers use it to tailor featured content, or, more importantly for this discussion, leverage it within the ad ecosystem for targeting. While authentication can provide very valuable user data for audience segmenting and targeting, it can be limited in scale for a single publisher to leverage and monetize on their own. That’s why some identity vendors have worked to integrate themselves within as many publisher authentication modules as possible, so that they can create an aggregate of scale for the ad ecosystem to tap into. But, even this isn’t going to deliver the reach marketers truly thirst for. Alternatively, Facebook has the scale for authenticated traffic, but they keep their data inside a walled garden, so the utility of those authenticated users is only valuable within the Facebook ecosystem. So how can authenticated traffic solutions increase scale to broaden the scope of identifiers they can collect and leverage? Hint: a few of the biggest players have already figured it out. It’s the single sign-on. Google is probably the largest purveyor of a single-sign on solution that can directly impact advertising capabilities. Can you think of a site you visit that doesn’t offer a sign-in with your existing Google account? It’s a short list. Google has integrated themselves into so many applications and publishers that “Login with Gmail” is just second nature (you pictured the Gmail logo when you read that, didn’t you?). Now, if you’re about to purchase something you found off an Instagram ad, or perhaps a retailer you buy from regularly, you’ve probably noticed options to proceed with your checkout via “Amazon pay” or “Apple pay”. These are also single-sign ons. You’re authenticating yourself through Amazon or Apple to that retailer in exchange for A- the safety and security that Amazon or Apple provide for your financial information and B- skipping the annoying process of manually entering personal information over and over again at point of sale. It’s starting to sound like there’s a lot of authenticated data out there isn’t it? Well, that’s true, but again, Amazon and Apple are walled gardens. Amazon is working diligently to build out their own ecosystem to leverage their content and retail channel data for a holistic offering. And Apple keeps user data very close to the chest, constantly limiting its utility for themselves and advertisers. So what is identity resolution doing about it? The Trade Desk announced their solution; Unified ID 2.0, which promises to leverage email authenticated identity for a truly scaled solution for publishers via Javascript through Prebid. By handing over UID2.0 to an independent unbiased organization like Prebid, The Trade Desk is creating instant scale and trust in their solution. Unauthenticated Traffic Solutions Unlike ATS, unauthenticated traffic solutions do not rely on a log-in to identify a user, but they also don’t rely on third-party cookies. Instead, unauthenticated solutions (UATS) leverage their existing streams of real-time data through Javascript on publisher sites or an SDK (software development kit used by apps). The type of information UATS solutions can collect via Javascript or SDK vary, but it can include IP address, user agent and device level info. But being able to read this information at the point of entry to a website does not make a quality identifier. The best unauthenticated solutions will have the ability to set or ingest this information into a unique ID through an infrastructure with incredibly fast speed that can process trillions of anonymous data signals across multiple channels and devices. And even more so, be able to interpret those signals into a profile using machine learning– all at the moment a user enters a domain. It sounds complicated because it is, but it also has a lot of potential. The identity space cannot rest solely on authenticated traffic solutions, because, as you can see, it could limit ownership and operability to just a few power players/walled gardens. This doesn’t help the larger ecosystem monetize and personalize ad inventory. The right unauthenticated solution, however, can unify cross-device individuals and households at scale, because they’re integrated on the broadest number of publishers/SDKs across platforms, have the best algorithms to build confident connections between identifiers, and are universally transactable across the most common sell and demand side platforms. Think of it as the perfect partner- speaking a common language that everyone in the ecosystem understands and acts on. Today more than twenty cookieless identifiers are available in market for the ad ecosystem, and Google hasn’t even announced a date of deprecation. It’s important to be on the lookout for differentiators like scale and precision. Most importantly, choosing a truly cross-device partner will be key, especially as more digital devices and IDs grow in adoption, like CTV has this past year. Taking advantage of both What we will come to find, once the third-party cookie is obsolete, is that choosing just one of these solution types, or partners, will be a disadvantage. The more the industry comes together to collaborate on solutions, the more apparent it is that both of them have value, and thus employing both solutions will give marketers the best opportunities. Tapad, now part of Experian, recently announced the launch of Switchboard; a module within our identity solution; The Tapad Graph, to create this agnostic interoperability for identifiers of all types, and choice and control for the ad tech vendors and marketers who want them. By instantly creating the ability to partner with multiple solutions, Tapad + Experian is ensuring that all use cases for the third-party cookie live on in our cookieless future. Get in touch
Tapad launches global privacy-safe solution to provide continuity in the absence of third-party cookies Switchboard, a module within The Tapad Graph, will connect emerging cookieless identifiers to traditional IDs, creating a more holistic view of the consumer and driving value exchange within the advertising ecosystem Tapad, part of Experian, a global leader in cross-device digital identity resolution, and a part of Experian, announced today the launch of Switchboard, a first-of-its-kind solution to help navigate the evolving cookieless landscape. Switchboard, a module within The Tapad Graph, will operate as a global, privacy-safe solution to provide continuity in the absence of third-party cookies by connecting new cookieless identifiers to traditional digital IDs for a comprehensive view of consumers and their digital touchpoints. Switchboard will enable interoperability across the growing number of these digital identifiers and the value exchange between publishers, content creators and consumers. Leading digital identity solutions partnering with Tapad, part of Experian at the launch of Switchboard include Unified ID 2.0, ID5, Lotame Panorama ID, BritePool, Retargetly IDx and Audigent Halo ID. Tapad, part of Experian plans to expand support to additional identity solutions on an ongoing basis. In addition to these identity solutions, early partners across the ecosystem include The Trade Desk, Amobee, Martin, ShareThis, Eyeota and Catalina. “This diverse group of launch partners and testing customers will prove that Switchboard is an important tenet for the future of identity resolution. We’re excited to be proactive in our approach to give marketers time to adapt new solutions and test their function in tandem with the third-party cookie, while continuing to give our customers flexibility and control,” said Mark Connon, General Manager of Tapad, part of Experian. “Facilitating access and usage of 1st party identifiers is crucial to help marketers prepare for the cookieless future. Thanks to Switchboard, ID5’s cookieless IDs will be available to a wider audience of brands and agencies and enable them to run effective, data-driven campaigns beyond the third-party cookie,” said Mathieu Roche Co-founder & CEO of ID5. Switchboard provides value across the marketing and advertising ecosystem as the need for the ability to support multiple cookieless ID’s across ad tech increases throughout 2021. With a decade of expertise creating digital identity resolution products, Tapad, part of Experian is poised to solve this challenge through innovation and quality, privacy-safe data-driven solutions. “Interoperability is paramount for brand marketers, agencies, publishers and platforms if we want to support an open and free Internet and break free of the stranglehold of walled gardens,” said Pierre Diennet, Global Partnerships at Lotame. ”Lotame Panorama ID’s participation in Switchboard reflects our steadfast commitment to collaborating across and within the industry and providing value to all of its players.” “As advertisers continue to contemplate the future of identity, Amobee is proud to partner with Tapad, part of Experian on this next-generation solution to provide a comprehensive view of consumers,” says Bryan Everett, Senior Vice President of Global Business Development at Amobee. “With the imminent loss of cookies, advertisers must think creatively in order to respectfully engage consumers in a privacy-compliant way and Switchboard can play an important role in addressing their respective identity needs.” Tapad, part of Experian is welcoming identity solutions and Tapad Graph customer participation in Switchboard throughout 2021. Stayed tuned for more updates and information on Switchboard in the coming months. Get in touch