Why connectivity is the key to smarter marketing in a fragmented digital world

In today’s fragmented digital landscape, marketers face a fundamental challenge: how to deliver relevant, measurable experiences across disconnected channels, devices and data sources.

 With U.S. digital advertising spend expected to reach nearly $400 billion in 2026, improving the effectiveness of that investment has become a top priority.

 “The way brands achieve impact is through connectivity,” says Kim Gilberti, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Marketing Services at Experian North America. “Consumers are inundated with content across many environments. Connecting that user wherever they go is key to optimizing advertising spend.”

“Consumers are inundated with content across many environments. Connecting that user wherever they go is key to optimizing advertising spend.”

—Kim Gilberti, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Marketing Services at Experian North America

For many organizations, the challenge is not a lack of data. It is a lack of connection between systems, platforms and signals. This fragmentation leads to inefficient targeting, wasted spend and missed opportunities to engage consumers effectively.

Experian addresses this by connecting data, identity and activation into a unified approach. This helps brands better understand their customers, reach them across channels and measure outcomes with greater accuracy.

At the center of this approach is identity.

Experian’s identity capabilities link a persistent offline data foundation with digital identifiers to create a high-fidelity and durable view of the consumer across devices and environments. This foundation, built on stable offline data, allows marketers to maintain a consistent understanding of the consumer even as digital signals change.

“We help unify the profile of a consumer from website to website, app to app, device to device,” Gilberti explains.

This unified view enables more consistent cross-channel engagement. It ensures that the same consumer reached on one platform can be recognized and engaged on another. It also enables brands to use the same data and identity foundation across planning, activation and measurement, reducing signal loss and improving accuracy throughout the campaign lifecycle.

Beyond understanding audiences, marketers need to act on those insights in real time.

By combining data, audiences and identity with direct integrations across platforms, Experian enables activation across programmatic, social and connected TV environments. This includes curated marketplace capabilities that bring together data and inventory, helping improve efficiency, transparency and performance. Just as important is the ability to measure what works.

In a recent engagement with a travel brand, Experian connected ad exposure data with identity and booking information to demonstrate clear campaign impact.

“What they found was that consumers exposed to the ad campaign ultimately spent more on their travel than those who were not,” Gilberti says.

By linking exposure to real-world outcomes across both digital and offline activity, marketers can reduce guesswork and optimize performance with greater confidence.

As advertising becomes more dynamic, delivering relevant and timely messages is increasingly critical. “Personalization becomes really critical,” Gilberti notes, pointing to the role of identity in enabling more precise engagement. With a more unified view of the consumer in place, marketers are better positioned to act on those insights in real time.

Artificial intelligence is accelerating this shift by helping marketers analyze large volumes of connected data and activate insights faster and at greater scale.

“AI makes it easier and faster to deliver the right message,” she says. At the same time, maintaining consumer trust remains essential. “You always have to remember that the consumer is first,” Gilberti says.

Experian’s privacy-first approach is grounded in governance, compliance and responsible data use. This helps organizations navigate evolving regulations while continuing to deliver personalized experiences.

As the industry evolves, marketers are increasingly looking for solutions that can connect the entire lifecycle, from understanding audiences to activating campaigns and measuring outcomes.

By combining a deep foundation of offline and digital data with identity, activation and measurement, Experian provides a more consistent and accurate view of the consumer across the entire marketing lifecycle. This allows brands to reduce fragmentation, improve targeting precision and measure true business outcomes, helping ensure that every marketing dollar is more effective and accountable.

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