Acxiom integrates identity solution with Adobe to give marketers more control

Dive Brief:

• Acxiom, the data-marketing unit owned by Interpublic Group (IPG), announced that its real-time identity solution will be integrated into the Adobe Experience Platform as part of a new partnership with the software firm.


• Easy access to Acxiom Real Identity intends to help Adobe customers improve digital personalization, ad delivery, identify resolution and management. Marketers can create a "consent-based data pool" to draw on as they contend with the deprecation of third-party cookies, which has put a higher premium on privacy-safe targeting alternatives.


• The model looks to give marketers greater control over their identity solutions and tech stacks, allowing for the creation of brand-owned identity graphs and reduced reliance on third-party cookies across owned and paid media.

Dive Insight:

Acxiom is pairing its identity solution with Adobe's platform to engage more enterprise brands that are interested in creating and managing their own identity graphs in the face of third-party cookie deprecation. The announcement billed the tie-up as bridging the gap between marketing tech and ad-tech ecosystems.

"We are excited about this integration with Adobe that enables a much tighter connection between a brand's identity management and the many channels, paid and owned, where they reach customers and prospects," Eugene Becker, general manager and executive vice president at Acxiom, said in a press statement.

The deal links the Acxiom Real Identity tool, which leverages first-party Personally Identifiable Information, with multisourced data from over 50 countries. In the release, Acxiom said clients who have used these technologies in tandem have seen as much as five times the amount of incremental recognition of authenticated website visitors identified in exposure to paid media campaigns. To illustrate by hypothetical example: A marketer that saw 10,000 website visitors were served its ads in the past might have been able to identify 1,000 of those visitors using available technologies. With the combined Acxiom and Adobe offering, the number of identifiable users jumps to 5,000.

Acxiom continues to build out partnerships aimed at helping marketers preserve their digital precision and scale in a more privacy-minded era. Earlier in October, it linked with Teads on an agreement that will make privacy-compliant Acxiom data more easily accessible through the media firm's proprietary self-serve platform, Teads Ad Manager.

IPG, which acquired Acxiom for $2.3 billion in 2018, has broadly been ramping up its efforts to address challenges related to cookie deprecation. Acxiom and IPG's Kinesso marketing tech company are acting as closed operators within Unified ID 2.0 (UID2), a cookie alternative originally developed by demand-side platform The Trade Desk. As part of the deal, Kinesso stores first-party data in privacy-safe environments while using UID2 with audiences created by IPG agencies. Acxiom then connects that data to UID2 to construct privacy-compliant first-party graphs for clients.