Identity Data: A Quick Guide to the Players and Technology
Identity data is an increasingly essential dataset given the fragmented digital ecosystem, where users engage across multiple devices, platforms, and environments. Identity data creates the infrastructure that ties together the signals of a single user, enabling targeting, attribution, and personalization at scale. For the engineers, analysts, and product teams building with identity data, this post covers the essentials: what identity data is, where it is used, who provides it, and why Unacast plays a unique role in fueling identity resolution systems.
What Is Identity Data?
Identity data comprises the various anonymous digital identifiers associated with an individual or household. These identifiers can include mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs), hashed emails (HEMs), cookies, IP addresses, usernames, and even connected TV IDs. Teams match and connect these identifiers into cohesive clusters to build identity graphs to understand which identifiers correspond to a single anonymous user or household profile.
At its core, an identity graph functions as a database of identifiers and associated data points that collectively define a user’s digital footprint. It plays a critical role in audience targeting, personalization, attribution, and measurement across the advertising and marketing ecosystem.
Deterministic vs. Probabilistic Linkages
Identity data includes a mix of deterministic and probabilistic linkages. Deterministic data originates from known, verified relationships, such as a user logging into a mobile app with their email address, which can tie a HEM directly to a MAID. This type of linkage is highly accurate but often lacks scale. In contrast, probabilistic identity data is inferred from behavioral patterns, such as repeated dwell times at a specific IP address, suggesting that a device belongs to a particular household. These inferred connections trade some certainty for broader reach. Identity graph providers often blend both approaches, using deterministic data to anchor their graphs and train their probabilistic models, then scaling reach through statistically modeled linkages across devices and environments.
How Unacast Powers Identity Graphs Differently
Unacast supplies data and data linkages essential to building identity graphs. As a location intelligence company, Unacast processes over one billion raw location signals daily from various providers to create a single, reliable dataset that fuels multiple products. Processing this data involves removing signals with incomplete data, merging them based on spatial and temporal proximity, and providing each signal with more robust analytics to further contextualize behavioral patterns.
Real-world behavior from our location intelligence solutions helps make identity data actionable. A MAID on its own is just an anonymous identifier that tells you that a device exists, but not much else. Location intelligence adds critical behavioral context by revealing where that device goes, when, and how often. This allows companies to understand real-world habits, such as daily commutes, frequent store visits, or time spent at specific venues.
These patterns help tie devices to meaningful attributes that can then be used to link MAIDs to other identifiers, including HEMs and FLIPs. In essence, location data transforms static identifiers into dynamic user profiles.
Unacast’s Data Linkages product enriches MAIDs with two powerful connectors:
- MAID-to-HEM: Deterministic connections between mobile advertising IDs and hashed emails, enabling people-based targeting and CRM activation.
- MAID-to-FLIP: Links a device to the IP addresses associated with its frequented locations, providing probabilistic insights into households or workplaces.
This enrichment data is highly valuable for identity graph builders seeking to increase the number of IDs per cluster, improve precision, or validate probabilistic models with known deterministic pairs.
Who Uses Identity Data and Why
Identity data is core infrastructure across several industries:
- AdTech & MarTech: DSPs, SSPs, CDPs, and DMPs rely on identity graphs for targeting, segment extension, attribution, and cross-device measurement. Identity enables omnichannel messaging, personalization, and ROI tracking.
- Retail & eCommerce: Brands use identity to link online and offline behavior, activate CRM segments in digital environments, and drive retention through personalization.
- Media & Streaming: Content platforms resolve identities to personalize viewing experiences, optimize subscriptions, and limit frequency across devices.
- Finance & Insurance: Fraud prevention, underwriting, and omnichannel engagement strategies all benefit from accurate identity resolution.
- Data Marketplaces & Platforms: Data aggregators and resellers need identity data to enrich profiles, enhance reach, and standardize datasets.
Identity Data Providers
These companies supply foundational data, such as MAIDs, hashed emails (HEMs), IP addresses, or behavioral signals that power identity resolution and help enrich identity graphs.
1. Unacast
Unacast provides high-quality location and identity data that links MAIDs to real-world behaviors like visitation patterns, enabling accurate enrichment with HEMs and frequently leveraged IPs (FLIPs). Our data fuels identity resolution across ad tech, retail, and analytics use cases by adding spatial and behavioral context to otherwise anonymous identifiers. Our identity data is optionally fused with location intelligence to provide higher confidence and additional data points for targeting and measurement purposes.
2. Factori
Factori specializes in mobile and digital identity enrichment, delivering curated datasets that enhance device identifiers with MAIDs and HEMs. Their offering supports identity resolution workflows across programmatic advertising, analytics, and attribution.
3. Truthset
Truthset focuses on validating the accuracy of identity data, particularly for demographic attributes associated with HEMs and MAIDs. Their scoring system helps marketers and platforms understand the quality and reliability of the identity data they’re using.
Identity Graph Providers
These companies build and maintain large-scale identity graphs, the systems that connect various identifiers such as MAIDs, HEMs, cookies, IPs, and household-level data to model real people or devices across channels.
1. LiveRamp
LiveRamp, a Unacast customer, created an IdentityLink graph that connects online and offline identifiers across platforms for cross-device marketing and attribution. It is one of the most widely adopted identity graphs in the adtech and martech ecosystems, powering a variety of programmatic advertising tools and platforms.
2. Experian
Experian, who also works with Unacast, has identity resolution solutions that connect consumer data across channels using a persistent, household-based identity graph. They combine financial, demographic, and behavioral data with deterministic identifiers to provide marketers with accurate and scalable audience targeting.
3. Merkle (Merkury)
Merkury is Merkle’s identity resolution platform that enables brands to own and operate their own private identity graph. It blends deterministic and probabilistic data to connect devices, emails, and offline data in a privacy-compliant, persistent identity solution.
Identity Data in 2025
In a world looking beyond third-party cookies and concerned with data privacy, identity resolution is a data infrastructure challenge. For technical teams building or improving identity graphs, the quality and diversity of input data is everything. Unacast’s role in enriching device data with household-level context and privacy-safe identifiers makes it a critical partner for the next generation of identity solutions.Want to explore how MAIDs, HEMs, or FLIP enrichment can impact your project? Book a meeting with us today.
