Most brands reach the same customer several times across different channels and devices without realising it's one person. This short video explains how an identity solution fixes that, and the practical steps follow below.
What is Epsilon CORE Identity?
Epsilon plans, buys and measures advertising around real people rather than cookies or devices.
Epsilon's CORE Identity does this by tying disparate signals across digital and physical touchpoints together with known, deterministic data linked to a real person such as name and address. That connects the journey from the first impression through to the sale, online or in store, so you can see what each channel contributed. The process behind it is called identity resolution.
Without it, a customer who sees your ad on their phone, their laptop and their tablet looks like three different people. That leads to three frequency counts and three sets of spend, and nobody can see which ad actually led to the sale. Budget goes on repeat exposure instead of new reach, and the customer sees the same message more often than they should.
Benefits of Epsilon CORE Identity for brands
- More of your budget goes on new reach. When you can see that three devices belong to one person, spend stops going on repeat exposure and moves to people you haven't reached yet.
- You know your true reach. Campaign reports count unique people instead of devices or cookies. That matters most when you add a channel like connected TV or display and need to know whether it found new audiences or reached the same ones again.
- Your messages build on each other. Recognising the same person across the TV screen, their phone and their laptop lets you sequence creative instead of repeating it, so awareness turns into consideration.
- Every channel has to earn its place. Linking ad exposure to sales, online and in store, shows whether an add-on channel actually drove purchases. That makes it easier to defend or cut budget at planning time.
- Offsite retail media becomes more measurable. When TV and display run alongside retail media, person-level identity helps connect what customers saw to what they went on to buy.
- It holds up as signals change. Identity built on name and address doesn't depend on cookies or device IDs, so your reach and measurement stay consistent as browsers and platforms change how they track.
How to make your advertising identity-led
- Start with your own customer data. Consented first-party data, such as transactions, loyalty records and CRM, gives you a known set of real people to build from.
- Resolve identity at person level. Match devices, emails and channels to an individual rather than treating each as a separate customer. Name and address are more stable anchors than an email address or cookie.
- Cap frequency per person, not per device. Set limits across channels so one customer doesn't see the same ad five times on three screens. Epsilon Digital applies this across CTV, video and display.
- Separate customers from prospects. Knowing who already buys from you stops you paying to acquire them again, and frees budget for new reach.
- Connect exposure to sales. Link ad impressions to purchases, including in-store transactions, so measurement reflects what customers actually did.
- Reward the channels doing the work. Once you can see each channel's contribution to a sale, shift budget towards the ones that drive results.
- Build privacy in. Work with pseudonymised identities and consented data so the approach holds up under GDPR.
Where do I start with identity-led marketing?
Start by checking how your current campaigns count people. Are frequency caps set per device or per person? Can you tell whether an ad reached an existing customer or a new prospect? Do in-store sales feed into your campaign reporting? Any "no" shows you where budget is leaking.
Epsilon's CORE Identity is built for exactly this problem. It ties fragmented touchpoints back to a real person, so you reach each customer without wastage and can measure the impact of every channel with confidence. The outcome is fewer wasted pounds and a better experience for the customer.
See how CORE Identity works
Find out how CORE Identity can help you reach real customers and measure what's working.
