• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 4, 2024

Experian has acquired Audigent, a data activation and identity platform in the advertising industry, giving it massive amounts of consumer and business data to target ads.

Audigent’s first-party publisher data and inventory network, as well as its sell-side distribution, will integrate with Experian's existing demand-side capabilities. It builds on the company's identity technology to help clients gain a better understanding of customers. 

Kimberly Gilberti, general manager of Experian Marketing Services, told MediaPost that Audigent will continue to operate as a stand-alone brand for now.

When asked about the legality of acquiring so much data, especially for a company based in California, Gilberti said "privacy is among our highest priorities. Experian operates in highly regulated environments and complies with the data protection laws in all the countries that we operate in."

Drew Stein, CEO and co-founder of Audigent, will remain and assume the role of managing director. 

Stein developed Audigent's cookieless header-bidding solution and Hadron ID, a privacy-centric identity framework.

Experian and Audigent have partnered on a range of data innovations including the integration of Experian data into the Audigent SmartPMP and the creation of Experian Contextually Indexed Audiences, which combines deterministic audience with contextual targeting.

Although not unexpected because of the way the companies’ three-year partnership had demonstrated synergies in the past, it will be interesting to see how the combined companies, both with massive amounts of data, will support advertising.

Data and analytics associated with the combined companies are enormous. Audigent claims to have access to more than 4 billion first-party IDs, more than 1.8 billion monthly traffic, and a first-party device graph exceeding 13.3 billion, according to information on their website.

Imagine adding that to Experian’s 3.6 petabytes of data, at least, from individuals worldwide. The company claims to have access to more than 1 billion people and businesses, including 235 million U.S. consumers and more than 25 million U.S. businesses. 

In September, Audigent partnered globally with Onetag, an AI-powered curation platform. That collaboration unlocked premium programmatic capabilities for publishers by combining the strengths of both platforms data, insights, and AI-powered curation.

At the time, Onetag supported publishers such as Yahoo, DotDash, BuzzFeed, and Weather.com. It gave Audigent’s clients access to Onetag’s global publisher supply base, traffic shaping technology, and real-time data to significantly boost advertising campaign performance.