In order for a brand to reach relevant and receptive audiences at scale, audience addressability should be a main focus. It is one of the basic building blocks to growing a customer base. But as the online world evolves to meet stricter privacy standards and track data in new ways, organizations must adapt their strategies to find and impress the right buyers. 

What is audience addressability and why is it so important?

Audience addressability refers to the ability to identify and target customers as individuals and segments and understand how they engage across different devices and domains. It’s being able to tie data points to individual identifiers in order to create a well-rounded view of who your audience is and how they can be reached.  

Creating “recognizable” audiences through audience addressability gives your brand a blueprint of how to reach and engage your customers. You can track an anonymous group of individuals’ activity, interests, and preferences across devices and channels, which naturally illuminates opportunities for you to grab their attention and funnel them through the buyer journey.

Mastering audience addressability is beneficial for both consumers and marketers. When you can identify and reach your audience, you can make sure that your targeted and relevant messages will reach them, add value to their lives, and drive interest in your brand. 

The disappearance of third-party cookies poses a challenge

Addressable audiences have historically been powered by third-party cookies, which track users’ online interactions. But third-party cookies are taking a bow and leaving the stage, which is changing the way marketers can connect with and grow large addressable audiences. 

Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers have already completely blocked cookies and Google’s Chrome is planning on phasing them out by the end of 2023. It’s more important than ever for brands to explore new, privacy-compliant alternatives to target and expand their audiences. In order to continue building addressable audiences, brands must find a way to track diverse groups of IDs across devices in a centralized way. That’s where universal identifiers come into play.

Universal identifiers are the solution 

Universal IDs, IDs that are consistent and trackable across all domains and apps, have been championed as the answer to tracking and reaching customers after cookies are gone for good. They are the most future-proof solution because they function very similarly to third-party cookies, are owned by publishers, and provide maximal privacy protection and compliance. There are two types of universal IDs that marketers can use to improve audience addressability. 

The first type is deterministic, or de-anonymised IDs. These are similar to third-party cookies in that they track on-site user behavior, but the type of cookie used is first-party owned (meaning the ID is tied to the domain of the website owner). Since data generated by deterministic IDs is limited to the website domain, it’s not possible to track cross-site or cross-channel insights. 

The second type of Universal IDs are probabilistic IDs. These mesh first-party cookies such as email and login IDs with additional anonymized online user behavior and attributes. This helps to create user profiles that can be matched with other non-logged-in user profiles, making it possible to track users across different devices and browsers. A combination of both of these Universal ID types is the best-case solution to exceptional audience addressability in the present and future.

Improve audience addressability with universal IDs

Brands have lists of customer names, emails, and phone numbers that can be uploaded directly to advertising platforms and matched to users within that platform to create targeted and relevant ads. This is effective, but limiting. Marketers want to target the same audiences across platforms and devices. That’s where the probabilistic universal IDs come into play.

An onboarding service such as Narrative takes that same list of customer data, anonymizes it to protect identity, and matches it to multiple online platforms. Using an onboarding service is a popular strategy used by enterprise marketing departments because it allows organizations to augment their first-party PII with valuable insights without sacrificing privacy. By acquiring new matches and valuable user data, marketers are able to access their audience more easily and effectively. 

Narrative helps you match your digital identifiers with Universal Onboarding 

Build an omnichannel view of your customers with help from Narrative’s transparent, self-service, and fast onboarding app. Narrative matches digital identifiers from a pool of  billions of IDs in a matter of minutes. You’ll be able to link disparate identifiers to create consistent personalized experiences across channels and devices.

Just upload your customer records into Narrative’s data collaboration platform and you’ll be able to match them against hundreds of providers in real time. Our built-in PII hasher will securely encrypt your private customer data before you upload to ensure privacy compliance. Then, after matching your information to relevant information across channels, your newly enriched customer profiles will be delivered securely to you. Choose where your matched results are sent to, and only pay for the IDs that match. You’ll also be able to set your preferred spend with custom budget controls. 

Boost your audience addressability in just a few clicks. Our experts would love to help.