The research reveals a consistent pattern: marketers can feel effective without identity resolution until growth, personalization, measurement and optimization expose the limits of disconnected systems and partial audience understanding.
Moving beyond “good enough” requires more than adding another capability to the marketing stack. Identity delivers the greatest value when it connects data, audience understanding, activation and measurement across the marketing environment.
From findings to action
Identity should operate as a connected foundation, not an isolated feature
Across the research, performance differences become most visible when marketers move beyond known customers, deliver personalized experiences, coordinate activity across channels and measure results at the individual level.
For organizations without identity resolution, the priority is establishing that foundation. For organizations already using it, the opportunity is to apply identity more broadly and connect it more deeply across marketing operations.
The question is not simply whether identity exists. It is how effectively identity works across the marketing system.
01 Build the foundation
Make identity foundational across the marketing stack
Move identity beyond a single platform or isolated use case.
Marketers can feel effective without identity until audience growth, personalization, measurement and optimization expose the limitations of disconnected systems and partial audience understanding.
Organizations need a people-based identity foundation that connects customer understanding across the marketing environment. For organizations already using identity resolution, the opportunity lies in expanding its role across systems and solutions.
Identity creates greater value when it operates as a foundational layer rather than as a feature embedded within one platform.
Create a consistent identity foundation that can support audience understanding, activation and measurement across the stack.
02 Expand the audience
Extend identity into audience growth
Use privacy-safe environments to move beyond the customers already known.
The research shows that performance gaps widen most clearly when marketers move beyond existing customers. Identifying and reaching prospects becomes harder as available signals decrease and uncertainty increases.
Clean rooms can help marketers discover and activate unknown and unauthenticated audiences using identity in privacy-safe ways. By extending identity through clean-room environments, marketers can move beyond proxy segments toward more precise, people-based prospecting.
Use identity to increase confidence and precision when expanding beyond known audiences.
03 Activate consistently
Connect identity directly to activation environments
Carry identity into the channels where audiences are actually reached.
Performance gaps widen when identity stops at the data layer. To fully realize its value, identity needs to extend into activation environments such as programmatic display, connected television and other addressable media.
When identity supports activation, marketers are better positioned to deliver relevance and personalization consistently across channels and formats.
Translate connected audience understanding into more consistent activation across channels.
04 Measure and improve
Use identity to unify measurement, learning and optimization
Connect marketing activity to clearer outcomes and carry learning forward.
Identity can serve as a link between activation, engagement and measurement. That connection helps marketers understand what worked, why it worked and how future performance can improve.
Without a connective layer between audience activation and results, uncertainty persists and limits marketers’ ability to learn and optimize over time.
Create a continuous learning cycle that connects activation, results and future optimization.
The path forward
Identity creates greater value when every part of the system reinforces the next
A stronger identity foundation helps marketers understand more of their addressable audience. Extending that foundation into growth environments helps marketers discover new prospects. Connecting identity to activation supports more relevant experiences. Unifying measurement and learning helps those experiences improve over time.
The recommendations are most effective when treated as a connected system rather than as separate initiatives.
Move beyond “good enough”
Build a stronger foundation for marketing performance.
Connect customer understanding across data, audience growth, activation and measurement to deliver more relevant experiences and create clearer visibility into marketing performance.
About Epsilon
Epsilon is a global leader in data and identity with expertise in digital media, clean rooms, customer data platforms, loyalty and marketing services. Positioned at the center of Publicis Groupe, Epsilon helps brands deliver personalized experiences at scale and build lasting customer relationships by unlocking the potential of data and identity.
Epsilon operates in more than 30 countries across EMEA, the Americas and APAC with more than 8,000 employees.
About the American Marketing Association
The American Marketing Association is a global professional marketing association serving students, practitioners, executives and academics. Its work includes scholarly journals, training, conferences, professional development, certification and a network of chapters and college communities.
About the research
The American Marketing Association, in partnership with Epsilon, conducted an online survey of 203 U.S. business-to-consumer marketers at organizations with more than 500 employees. All respondents were manager level or above. The survey was conducted in April 2026.
Percentages shown in charts may not total 100% due to rounding.
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