LAS VEGAS — After years of ad industry striving, the convergence of identity resolution with artificial intelligence tools is finally delivering on the practical promise of brands crafting truly personalized, real-time marketing at scale.
“Missing pieces, like the identity layer and AI, are coming together in ways that enable both the scale and the speed that’s needed to do things in a way that the consumer will appreciate and value,” Heather Campain, SVP of Growth Strategy at Epsilon, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Groceryshop conference in Las Vegas.
This convergence is rebalancing brand/retailer/consumer relationships from transactional exchanges into personal connections built on understanding who consumers are across devices and touchpoints.
Enhancing personalization
Understanding consumer identity across devices and channels creates the foundation for relevant communication throughout the customer journey. Without this layer, orchestration across paid, earned, and owned media remains fragmented.
“You have to start with identity, because it’s all about who we’re trying to talk to,” Campain said. “Our ability to understand who that person is and to be able to talk to them in a relevant way across those things, also through our ecosystem… to orchestrate the journey, make sure you know who you’re talking to, you’re following them through that journey, and you’re making it personal.”
Identity resolution — despite its clinical terminology — simply means knowing who you’re talking to and maintaining that understanding as consumers move between phones, tablets, and other devices.
Eliminating complexity
The advertising industry has a tendency to complicate straightforward concepts through technical jargon that obscures the fundamental objective of understanding and connecting with individuals.
“Identity resolution is a clinical sounding term. But it’s simply just knowing who you’re talking to,” Campain said. “When you have the ability to resolve who a person is and get to know them, then it sets you up for success in terms of how you interact with them.”
Layering AI capabilities on top of identity resolution enables speed and personalization that puts the person at the center of relationship development rather than treating consumers as anonymous impression opportunities.
Breaking down silos
Data silos between brands and retailers persist despite generations of discussion about collaboration challenges. The solution requires starting with mutual objectives rather than jumping directly to data sharing mechanics.
“A retailer’s shoppers are very important to them. And for a brand, their consumers are very important to them. So what are your shared objectives and starting with those shared objectives,” Campain said.
On the technical front underpinning those mutual connections, turning to clean room’s ability to marshal first-party data in a privacy-safe method is the next step in the process. It also requires collaboration between purpose-driven approaches that identify which personal characteristics and data sets matter for specific objectives rather than beginning with empty containers and generic data sharing, Campain noted.
Data partnerships are essential
Building comprehensive data sets that cover entire consumer journeys internally has become increasingly difficult. To solve that issue, external data partnerships have become critical for marketers and retailers seeking holistic consumer understanding.
“I do think data collaboration is the way forward. I think it’s really hard to build your own data sets holistically for everything you need in a consumer journey,” Campain said.
These partnerships will focus on harmonizing consumer journeys in more significant ways, extending beyond outbound communication to include two-way data acquisition that enables ongoing consumer learning throughout their journey.
Real-time personalization at scale
The combination of identity infrastructure and AI capabilities finally enables the live streaming events and real-time personalized experiences that the industry has discussed without being able to execute at scale.
“You’ll see better live streaming events, you’ll see more personalized in real time at scale abilities,” Campain said. “When you know who you are speaking to or who you are having a conversation with, this way, it allows you to leverage great things about identity and AI to build more relevant personal relationships in real time, so a consumer feels seen and has the ability to connect in a much more relevant way.”
You’re watching “From Walls to Bridges: The Power of Cross-Functional Data Collaboration”, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at GroceryShop 2025, presented by Epsilon. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
