Bridging disparate data in a fragmented world
In today’s world, consumers engage with brands across multiple platforms, including social media, online marketplaces, in-store experiences, and customer service touchpoints. However, the main challenge for marketers and advertisers is the fragmentation of customer data across these different channels. Each platform generates its own set of data, which is stored in different databases and formats. Integrating these various data sources to create a unified view of the customer is a complex task involving technology and understanding customer behavior across different digital and physical channels.
Businesses must link these data fragments to avoid creating a disconnected customer experience. For example, a person may browse products on a mobile app, ask questions through a customer service chat, and eventually purchase in an online marketplace. Traditional data analysis methods often need to recognize these activities as those of a single customer, which can result in missed opportunities to deliver personalized customer experiences across the customer journey.
Identity resolution: The key to a unified customer experience
Connecting online interactions across various platforms is a challenge for brands. Identity resolution enables enterprises to overcome this challenge by stitching together disparate signals and records to orchestrate experiences and analyze outcomes more effectively. By pairing Experian’s identity capabilities with AWS Clean Rooms, enterprises can securely collaborate with their partners to derive deeper insights without exposing sensitive underlying data sets.
This partnership between AWS and Experian enables effective matching between disparate data sets, bolstering privacy-enhanced media planning, insights, data enrichment, media activation, and measurement use cases. Depending on their distinct needs and existing identifiers, customers can use two specific offerings of Experian’s identity resolution solutions paired with AWS Clean Rooms.
Experian’s identity resolution products ensure a frictionless brand experience across various channels, enhancing the customer journey from start to finish. Brands can employ our adaptable identity resolution solutions to forge connections between contextual, behavioral, lifestyle, and purchase-based data sources, assembling comprehensive customer profiles. Use dependable digital data to make informed decisions and elevate consumer engagement. Advanced deterministic and probabilistic features, combined with data science and cutting-edge technology, work hand in hand to mitigate risk and uphold data privacy.
Such recognition enables a more comprehensive understanding of your clientele, fostering trust and amplifying campaign effectiveness by utilizing securely managed, standardized customer data. With this strategic approach, businesses can achieve their objectives regulatory-compliant.
The consumer perspective: Why consistency matters
Data fragmentation can lead to inconsistent experiences for consumers, which can be frustrating and erode brand trust. For instance, imagine receiving a promotional email for a product you already purchased through an app or being targeted for a product you decided against.
Consumers are increasingly tech-savvy and demand a seamless, integrated experience regardless of how they interact with a brand. They want to feel valued and recognized at every touchpoint and don’t care about the complexities of data analytics. As a result, brands face significant pressure to get identity resolution right.
Data security and privacy: A Fort Knox for your data
AWS Clean Rooms empowers their customers to establish a secure data clean room within minutes, facilitating collaboration with any other entity within AWS. This fosters the generation of unique insights regarding advertising campaigns, investment decisions, clinical research, and more. With AWS Clean Rooms, the need to store or maintain a separate copy of data outside the AWS environment for subsequent dispatch to another party for consumer insight analysis, marketing measurement, forecasting, or risk assessment becomes obsolete.
AWS Clean Rooms provides an expansive set of privacy-enhancing controls for clean rooms. This includes query controls, query output restrictions, and query logging that allows customers to tailor restrictions on the queries executed by each clean room participant. Moreover, AWS Clean Rooms include advanced cryptographic computing tools that maintain data encryption—even during query processing—to adhere to stringent data-handling policies. This process employs a client-side encryption tool—an SDK or command line interface (CLI)—that utilizes a shared secret key with other participants in an AWS Clean Rooms collaboration.
With a wealth of expertise in data privacy management, Experian enhances campaign effectiveness and fosters trust by managing standardized customer data securely. By using the identity graph, you can preserve a unique identity for each customer. This strategy enables you to comprehensively understand your clientele and reach your business objectives in a regulatory-compliant manner.
The future of data-driven marketing starts here
AWS customers can use AWS Clean Rooms to establish their own clean rooms in mere minutes, initiating the analysis of their collective data sets without sharing their underlying data with each other. Customers can use the AWS Management Console to choose their collaboration partners, select data sets, and configure participant restrictions. With AWS Clean Rooms, customers can effortlessly collaborate with hundreds of thousands of companies already using AWS without needing to move data out of AWS or upload it to a different platform. When running queries, AWS Clean Rooms accesses data in its original location and applies built-in, adaptable analysis rules to assist customers in maintaining control over their data.
Coupled with Experian’s trusted data privacy management and unique Experian ID, businesses can effectively manage customer data, secure partners’ communication, and achieve regulatory-compliance objectives. This combination allows companies to use data-backed insights to supercharge their marketing initiatives, resulting in more meaningful customer interactions, improved match rates, and business success.
About the authors
Kalyani Koppisetti, Principal Partner Solution Architect, AWS
Kalyani Koppisetti is a technology leader with over 25 years of experience in the Financial Services Industry. In her current role at AWS, Kalyani advises financial services partners on best-practice cloud architecture. Kalyani works closely with internal and external stakeholders to identify industry technical trends, develop strategies, and execute them to help Financial Services Industry partners build innovative solutions and services on AWS. Technical and Solution interests include Cloud Computing, Software-as-a-Service, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Storage Virtualization and Data Protection.
Matt Miller, Business Development Principal, AWS
In his role as Business Development Principal at AWS, Matt drives customer and partner adoption for the AWS Clean Rooms service specializing in advertising and marketing industry use cases. Matt believes in the primacy of privacy-enhanced data collaboration and interoperability underpinning data-driven marketing imperatives from customer experience to addressable advertising. Prior to AWS, Matt led strategy and go-to-market efforts for ad technologies, large agencies, and consumer data products purpose-built to inform smarter marketing and deliver better customer experiences.
Tyler Middleton, Sr. Partner Marketing Manager, Experian Marketing Services
Tyler Middleton is the Partner Marketing Lead at Experian. With almost 20 years of strategic marketing experience, Tyler’s focus is on creating marketing strategies that effectively promote the unique value propositions of each of our partners’ brands. Tyler helps our strategic partners communicate their mutual value proposition and find opportunities to stand out in the AdTech industry. Tyler is an alumnus of the Seattle University MBA program and enjoys finding new marketing pathways for our growing partner portfolio.
Latest posts
Commerce media networks have had a strong start. Growth has been fast, demand has been strong, and brands have made it clear they want closer access to commerce-driven audiences. But as more networks mature and enter the space, many are starting to feel the same pressure point: scale. Most commerce media networks were built as managed service businesses. That model works well early on. High-touch, white-glove partnerships make sense when you’re working with a handful of strategic brands. But there’s a ceiling. There are only so many teams, only so much inventory, and only so many advertisers that model can realistically support. It’s one thing for a large retailer to build custom programs for a P&G. It’s another to do that at scale for hundreds or thousands of brands. At some point, growth slows, not because demand disappears, but because the model can’t stretch any further. The scale problem no one likes to talk about That’s where many commerce media leaders find themselves today. Pausing to assess what comes next. For a long time, growth has been measured almost entirely through media dollars. That mindset is understandable. Media is familiar, it's easy to quantify. It shows up clearly in negotiations and revenue reports. But viewing commerce media networks purely as media sales engines creates long-term risk. It can strain brand relationships, limit innovation, and distract from what commerce media networks actually do better than almost anyone else: understand consumers deeply. Signals are the real asset Commerce platforms sit close to decision-making. They see what people search for, what they consider, what they buy, and when those behaviors change. Those signals are incredibly powerful. And yet, most networks only activate them inside their own walled environments. That’s a missed opportunity. Curation represents the next area of growth for commerce media networks, and it doesn’t require replacing or diminishing existing media revenue. In fact, it complements it. No single commerce media network has all the data needed to give advertisers the scale and reach they're looking for. And no advertiser wants to recreate the same audience in dozens of disconnected platforms. That friction creates inefficiency and slows decision-making. Why collaboration supports sustainable growth The opportunity is to look beyond first-party data alone and start thinking about collaboration. Second-party data. Data partnerships. Signal sharing done responsibly and transparently. Imagine an advertiser defining an audience once and being able to understand and reach that audience across multiple commerce environments. Not through a series of disconnected buys, but through a more consistent approach built on shared understanding leading to increased reach and more impactful campaigns. That’s easier for advertisers to manage, and it creates an additional revenue stream for commerce media networks that complements media sales rather than competing with them. Curation strengthens media, it doesn't replace it Media will always play an important role. There is clear value in custom experiences tied directly to a commerce environment. Think buyouts, sponsored experiences, custom creative integrations. Those are situations where brands want to work closely with the network itself. But the signals commerce media networks hold don’t need to be limited to those moments. Those signals can be monetized independently through data products, co-ops, and partnerships that extend their value into other channels. That’s how curation adds value without undercutting existing revenue. A practical path forward for commerce media leaders For commerce media leaders thinking about their next phase of growth, the focus should be on sustainability. Building a massive media operation takes time and investment. Data-driven revenue streams can be introduced more quickly, require fewer internal resources, and provide steadier margins. It’s a practical approach. Use signal-based revenue to fund growth. Let that revenue support investment in tooling, talent, and media innovation over time. Bootstrapping, in the truest sense. Why transparency matters early There’s also a broader responsibility here. In many advertising channels, transparency followed growth, often after pressure from the market. Commerce media networks have an opportunity to do this differently. To lead with transparency from the start. To be clear with brands and consumers about how data is used, how signals are created, and how value flows through the ecosystem. Because the reality is this: commerce media networks are holding some of the most valuable intent signals in the market today. But those signals don’t retain their value in isolation. If they aren’t enhanced, combined, and made accessible in the right ways, someone else will step in to do it. And when that happens, control shifts away from the source. The bottom line The next chapter of commerce media isn’t just about selling more media alone. It’s about recognizing the value of the signals already in hand, working together to make them more useful, and building additional revenue streams that support long-term growth. That’s how commerce media networks grow without eating their own lunch. About the author Kevin Dunn Chief Revenue Officer, Experian Kevin Dunn joins Experian Marketing Services with more than 20 years of leadership experience across marketing and advertising technology, most recently serving as Senior Vice President of Brands and Agencies at LiveRamp. In that role, he led growth across retail, CPG, travel, hospitality, financial services, and healthcare, overseeing new business, account expansion, and channel partnerships. Kevin is known for building cohesive, accountable teams and leading with optimism, clarity, and a strong sense of shared purpose. His leadership philosophy centers on empowering people, driving positive outcomes for clients and fostering a culture where teams can grow, take smart risks, and succeed together. Latest posts
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