Acxiom’s Solutions Give Mediabrands’ Clients a Competitive Edge

Brands are operating in a competitive landscape, where consumer expectations are sky-high and data-driven personalization is core to brand success. Reaching the right audiences in the right places and engaging individuals with relevant, meaningful experiences, boosts not just immediate sales, but also customer retention and advocacy – delivering long-term value.But with third-party cookies set to further diminish through user opt-outs in Chrome and data privacy regulations only getting stricter, data-driven personalization isn’t easy. Brands need a robust foundation of Data and Identity that doesn’t just provide a wealth of insights, but also enables greater transparency around how the brand is using the data and improves compliance with evolving regulations. Data and Identity must support optimization across all the touch points customers expect – including closed ecosystems – and be able to measure the results to drive continuous improvement.

This is where IPG Mediabrands’ Data and Identity partner, Acxiom, leads the way. It’s more important than ever for brands to lean on both their own first-party data combined with third-party data to perfect their approach to personalization. This, in turn, enables brands to better understand the wants and needs of their customers and to more effectively tailor their offerings, thereby strengthening and deepening the customer relationship. With 55+ years’ experience in privacy-first data services and solutions Acxiom’s Data and Identity expertise underpins the success of IPG Mediabrands’ clients and delivers a competitive edge.

Acxiom in China

In China, Acxiom is a trusted provider of omni-channel marketing solutions for brands, specializing in data-driven strategies that help businesses build meaningful connections with their consumers. With a strong focus on customer-centric approaches, Acxiom delivers end-to-end integrated marketing solutions, from strategic consulting, planning to the implementation of digital marketing infrastructure. This includes platforms like CIE, Enterprise WeChat clienteling, and engagement tools across Tmall, JD.com, Douyin, and WeChat ecosystems.In addition, Acxiom offers robust data asset management and governance, AI/ML model development, and deep consumer insights. It also supports CRM system development, customer data integration, and the management of ongoing CRM activities. By enabling precise targeting across key areas like customer acquisition, repeat purchases, and retention, Acxiom helps brands enhance consumer relationships and drive sustainable growth. As a reliable partner in data-driven marketing, Acxiom empowers brands to maximize their marketing impact across multiple channels.Based on over 20 years’ experience in China and the industry-leading marketing expertise, Acxiom China has launched four major marketing solutions to help brands achieve sustainable digital growth:

• Omni-channel CRM Solution

• ECRM Marketing and Ops Solution

• SCRM Consumer Operation Solution

• CIE Platform and Tech Solution

Acxiom empowers brands to integrate diverse touchpoints across both public and private domains, enabling the accumulation of valuable customer data assets from a wide array of platforms and social media channels, including Tmall, JD.com, Douyin, WeChat, official websites, and offline stores. Leveraging advanced data encryption technologies and rigorous data management protocols, Acxiom ensures the security and privacy compliance of customer data while delivering a unified Customer ONE-ID and comprehensive 360° customer profile. This provides deep, multi-dimensional customer insights that enhance data-driven decision-making. Furthermore, through its e-commerce and WeChat ecosystem solutions, Acxiom enables brands to gain a holistic understanding of omni-channel memberships and customer operations, unlocking the full potential of data to accelerate business growth.

Understanding the Scale andRichness of Acxiom Data

(China Excluded)

Many data providers will claim to have the largest data repository, but Acxiom’s InfoBase marketing data products, anchored by Real ID, is the largest ethically-sourced database both in the US and across the globe. And this is supported by the figures quoted in an analyst’s recent assessment of one of Acxiom’s large holding-company competitors.The numbers speak for themselves. Acxiom’s data offerings deliver insights on:

• 260 million people in the US, covering 98% of the US adult population

• 2.6 billion people globally, covering 68% of the global digital population

• Up to 10,000+ data attributes per Acxiom Real ID (which includes both Acxiom and Acxiom-integrated partner data accessible in IPG Mediabrands’ audience platform)

Of course, volume is far from the only factor governing the richness of data. Brands also need to think about the variety of sources from which data is drawn, as well as the accuracy and freshness of that data.

Variety of Data Sources

Acxiom’s data set is people based, with a mixture of demographic, transactional, and behavioral data associated with each individual ID. Drawing on different types of data provides a rich variety of lifestyle attributes, and means Acxiom’s footprint can be expanded to wider audiences. A data provider that relies solely on data from credit card transactions, for instance, would be unable to reach unbanked communities or underrepresented multicultural audiences who do not use credit cards.

Recency of Data

There’s a lot of talk about real-time data refreshes. But this is currently only possible for data relating to behavior on client-owned websites. Acxiom Identity extends this reach by deploying client-owned pixels called rTAGs on client-owned and paid media. These rTAGs are first-party tags that capture interactions and help you understand you’re engaging with a known customer or prospect across your entire digital footprint. Because Brands own the corresponding private graph, operating costs are relatively low, which allows clients of any size and data maturity to benefit from this real-time data.Acxiom’s data spine is updated at different intervals depending on data availability. Stable data types such as demographic data, for example, are updated as frequently as monthly, faster moving behavioral data is updated weekly, and online customer data is updated in real-time. This mix provides a just-in-time blend of stability and current, actionable insight.

Leveraging Acxiom’s Easy-to-Integrate Technology

When a client licenses Real ID from Acxiom, the client controls the first party graph. The client defines with Acxiom experts how best to operate and leverage it. Just as important, Acxiom’s technology is easy to integrate with client systems; even in an age where technologies continue to proliferate.

Building Bridges Beyond Cookies

While Google has changed its plans to force a deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome, we know that it will be replaced with a new mechanism whereby users can choose to opt-in or -out. We are predicting a high opt-out rate, effectively creating a similar scenario to a complete deprecation event. In a world with severely diminished availability of third-party cookies, the ability to recognize people and activate audiences across devices – in both the open web and logged-in environments – is vital. Real ID enables brands to accurately identify and ethically connect with people anytime, anywhere, using a combination of private identity graphs and first-party tagging services. The strength of Acxiom’s referential graph allows for high fidelity in cross-domain identification, and means it is not dependent on client data.To enhance its already superior data and matching capabilities, Acxiom has best-in-class data partnerships, including 1:1 ID matching partners for client interoperability and technology integration. Other partnerships include Amazon, Google, LiveRamp, Meta, Salesforce, and The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0.

An End-to-End Media Offering

Acxiom’s holistic, media-based, technology is offered by Interpublic (IPG) as the IPG marketing engine. It sits at the enterprise level and is a unified set of standards, practices and technology layer, built on consumer insights at scale fueled by Acxiom data and identity products. This centralized technology and data stack powers workflow, customer experience, media, commerce and production. By unifying marketing on one platform, we can drive marketing performance in real time, as well as build brands for long-term success. It is the only end-to-end solution offered by an agency holding group. The IPG marketing engine uses Acxiom IDs throughout the planning and activation modules, rather than requiring client-owned data.Outside of data attribute connections and end-to-end solutions, IPG also boasts a unique approach for media clients of cascading ID matching to maximize reach across addressable platforms:

The IPG Identity Solution

Connecting the strengths of our teams to power a comprehensive global Identity solution.

These connections enable a 98.2% match rate globally: the highest in the industry. For IPG Mediabrands clients, this has resulted in up to a 30% increase in 1:1 matches against other data providers.At IPG Mediabrands, we prioritize pairing rich data with media inventory that meets all regulatory requirements and our clients’ standards. We focus on high-quality media buys through a combination of an Inclusion List, third-party ad verification and ongoing collaboration with our technology partners.

Privacy Enabled by a Global Footprint & Strong Partnerships

With the rollout of global privacy regulations such as the EU’s GDPR, many data providers lost their data capabilities outside of the US.With Acxiom’s global data footprint and team of data acquisition and data protection experts, Brands can have confidence that the data Acxiom licenses is ethically sourced. In countries where Acxiom does not have local presence, it has direct integrations and enrichments with global leaders.

Data privacy and security have been a core tenet in Acxiom’s history as all records are ethically compiled. Key stats to demonstrate this commitment to data privacy include:

· One of the first in our industry to create the role of Chief Privacy Officer

· One of the first to roll out data subject rights, nationally, even in the absence of a national privacy law

· Frequently asked to supply expertise and information to Congress and regulators regarding industry data collection and use practices

· 500+ annual privacy and digital responsibility assessments

Acxiom’s privacy practices do not apply solely to how it builds data offerings, but extends to how clients’ first-party data is expanded and enriched. Acxiom’s private identity graphs are also developed based on 55+ years of privacy-by-design practices which is unique for agency holding companies.Clients’ first-party data can be matched and enriched through Acxiom, but the data stays within a partition that is only accessible to the client. When a client’s first-party data is activated through IPG marketing engine, matched Acxiom IDs are pushed through IPG Mediabrands technology, instead of the client’s data needing to move out of its protected environment.

Acxiom’s Data and Identity in Action

The following real-world use cases illustrate the results IPG Mediabrands’ clients have been able to achieve with the support of Acxiom data and identity.

Financial Credibility: Acxiom’s data is used to predict and model financial credibility so financial services clients can pre-qualify users before sending them invitations to apply. This reduces customer conversion time by 60%, increases qualified reach by 100%, and reduces media waste by 70%.

Self-Service Activation: IPG marketing engine enables self-service models for clients’ owned media spend and applicable client retail media network activation using first-party data enriched by Acxiom. This decreases time to market by 30%.

Creative Decisioning: Acxiom and clients’ first-party data is used for global, full-funnel customer strategy to activate across media channels in direct and addressable ways. Over 1,000 attributes are used for real-time creative decisioning, with a resulting 36% lift in customer acquisition.

In today’s environment, with continually evolving privacy regulations and sky-high customer expectations around personalization, brands need a strong data and identity foundation. Access to Acxiom’s market-leading data and identity capabilities means IPG’s clients can have exactly that, giving them an edge in a world of fierce competition.