London, 30 July, 2026: Experian and AUDIENCES today announce a new partnership designed to help brands and agencies unlock greater value from their first-party customer data and deliver more effective marketing across the media ecosystem.
Experian is uniquely combining its consumer insight, enrichment and interoperable identity capabilities with AUDIENCES' cloud-native technology. By leveraging Experian's signal-agnostic identity capabilities, with 85% household connectivity across 500 million digital identifiers, brands can reach more of the right customers, improve media effectiveness and generate stronger returns on their first-party data investments, all while delivering more relevant customer experiences.
Deployed entirely inside a brand or data owner's cloud infrastructure, the AUDIENCES application then keeps data securely under the organisation's control, ensuring privacy is built into the workflow ensuring the brand remains the data controller at all times.
Despite significant investment in collecting and understanding first-party customer data, 72% of marketers struggle to activate it effectively due to technical, operational and privacy barriers*. As brands navigate an increasingly complex ecosystem of platforms, identifiers and media environments, alongside evolving consumer data privacy regulations, valuable customer intelligence too often fails to reach the activation channels where it can improve campaign performance and deliver stronger marketing outcomes.
Together, Experian and AUDIENCES are helping remove these barriers by enabling organisations to enrich customer data, connect customer intelligence to activation across channels and create more relevant audience opportunities. The result is broader reach, improved performance and greater transparency, governance and control.
Experian and AUDIENCES are initially working with a small number of brands to validate priority use cases as the collaboration is brought to market.
Colin Grieves, Managing Director, Experian Marketing Services UK&I, said: "For years, the industry's focus has been on collecting first-party customer data. Today, the real opportunity is turning that insight into measurable marketing outcomes.
"Too often, however, marketing teams know who they want to reach but are constrained by the complexity of connecting customer insight to the platforms, identities and activation opportunities needed to reach those audiences.
"Through this partnership, we're helping marketers unlock more value from the customer data they already hold, powering stronger relevance, improved marketing performance and greater confidence in how campaigns are delivered and who they are reaching.”
Rob McLaughlin, Co-founder and CEO of AUDIENCES, said: “One of the biggest barriers to activating first-party data isn't a lack of insight - it's the operational complexity of connecting that data to the fragmented media ecosystem. Our collaboration with Experian solves that challenge by providing a secure, interoperable activation layer that allows brands to translate their existing customer data into privacy-first audience signals that can be deployed consistently across today's media landscape.
"The underlying data remains firmly under the brand's control, meaning marketers can activate across channels more efficiently while maintaining the security, transparency and compliance that modern marketing demands.
"Together, we're helping brands simplify audience activation, reduce operational friction and make first-party data work harder across search, social, programmatic, CTV and emerging digital channels."
ENDS
Notes to Editor
* Experian Media Buying in Transition Report, 2025
About Experian
Experian is a global data and technology company, powering opportunities for people and businesses around the world. We help to redefine lending practices, uncover and prevent fraud, simplify healthcare, deliver digital marketing solutions, and gain deeper insights into the automotive market, all using our unique combination of data, analytics and platforms. We also assist millions of people to realise their financial goals and help them to save time and money.
We operate across a range of markets, from financial services to healthcare, automotive, agrifinance, insurance, and many more industry segments.
We invest in talented people and new advanced technologies to unlock the power of data and to innovate. A FTSE 100 Index company listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN), we have a team of 25,200 people across 33 countries. Our corporate headquarters are in Dublin, Ireland. Learn more at experianplc.com.
About AUDIENCES
AUDIENCES is an independent, cloud-native software company headquartered in London, helping brands, retailers, publishers and data owners unlock and activate customer intelligence securely within their own cloud infrastructure. The AUDIENCES platform enables organisations to connect, distribute and activate first-party and proprietary data across advertising, retail media and customer engagement channels while retaining control of the underlying customer data.
Trusted by organisations including FTSE 100 brands, major UK retailers and global enterprises, AUDIENCES helps customers maximise the value of their customer intelligence through an open, interoperable and privacy-first approach. Learn more at weareaudiences.com.