The Total Economic Impact™ Of TransUnion Audience And Identity Solutions

Organizations increasingly struggle to identify, reach, and activate audiences consistently as signals fragment across channels, partners, and devices. Gaps in identity resolution can limit addressability, increase media inefficiency, and constrain organizations’ ability to confidently design and activate audiences at scale. This study examines how improving identity accuracy and audience understanding can help organizations expand reachable audiences while improving marketing effectiveness and efficiency.

TransUnion audience and identity solutions support identity resolution and audience creation and activation by helping organizations better link individuals and households across data sources and channels. By strengthening identity and audience confidence, the solutions can help organizations improve reach and targeting precision across identity‑dependent marketing use cases.

TransUnion commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Audience and Identity Solutions.¹ The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Audience and Identity Solutions on their organizations.

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed four decision-makers with experience using TransUnion audience and identity solutions. For the purposes of this study, Forrester aggregated the experiences of the interviewees and combined the results into a single composite organization, which is a large, consumer‑focused enterprise with approximately $50 billion in annual revenue and 150,000 employees.

Interviewees said that prior to using TransUnion audience and identity solutions, their organizations struggled to consistently identify and activate audiences across channels due to fragmented identity data and reliance on multiple partners and processes. Efforts to improve addressability and targeting were often slow, manual, or limited in scale, and teams lacked confidence in audience quality and targeting accuracy. These limitations led to missed activation opportunities, inefficient media spend, and operational friction across marketing, data, and analytics teams.

After the investment in TransUnion audience and identity solutions, interviewees said their organizations improved their ability to link individuals and households across data sources, enabling more consistent audience creation, activation, and suppression. Teams were able to expand the portion of their audiences that could be reliably reached while also improving targeting precision within already addressable populations. Key results from the investment included expanded reachable audiences, reduced inefficiencies in media spend, improved confidence in audience activation, and more streamlined workflows for identity‑dependent marketing initiatives.

Quantified benefits. Three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) quantified benefits for the composite organization include:

• Expanded audience reach enabled by increased identity match rates, worth $5.0 million over three years. The composite organization incorporates additional identifiers and improves identity resolution to increase the portion of consumers and households that can be reliably recognized and reached across identity‑dependent activation channels. This enables more precise matching between audience data and real‑world consumers, making previously unaddressable audiences reachable without increasing overall media spend. The resulting expansion in addressable reach enables incremental outcomes that translate into operating profit while maintaining existing campaign strategies and budgets.

• Improved performance of existing reach through enhanced audience targeting, worth $671,000 over three years. The composite organization applies richer identity and audience attributes to improve outcomes within audiences it was already able to reach. More precise targeting improves relevance and reduces inefficiency, delivering measurable performance lift without requiring additional impressions. These gains reflect higher-quality engagement from existing reach rather than incremental scale.

• Increased operating profit from audiences rooted in identity activation, worth $1.6 million over three years. Improved identity accuracy and audience quality increase the value of outcomes generated through activation for the composite organization. By prioritizing higher‑value audiences and reducing low‑quality engagement, the composite organization realizes incremental operating profit from a subset of existing outcomes. These improvements reflect better economic efficiency rather than increased volume.

• Reduced operational effort for audience creation and activation workflows, worth $326,000 over three years. Identity‑enabled automation and more unified audience workflows reduce the manual effort required to prepare, manage, and activate audiences. The composite organization captures this value as productive capacity freed rather than headcount reductions, allowing its teams to focus more time on optimization and strategy.

• Reduced media waste through improved identity accuracy, worth $2.4 million over three years. The composite organization reduces inefficiencies embedded in media spend caused by low‑fidelity identity matching. Improved identity accuracy increases confidence that impressions are delivered to intended audiences, reducing spend on unaddressable, duplicate, or ineligible impressions. Avoided waste reflects improved efficiency rather than negotiated pricing changes.

• Avoided third‑party onboarding, enrichment, and data costs through vendor consolidation, worth $137,000 over three years. By consolidating identity and audience capabilities, the composite organization reduces reliance on overlapping third‑party vendors. Avoided onboarding and enrichment costs represent durable cost avoidance realized once consolidation is in place.

Unquantified benefits. Benefits that provide value for the composite organization but are not quantified for this study include:

• Improved confidence in identity and audience understanding. Interviewees said richer and more accurate identity resolution improved confidence in who they were reaching across channels. Better visibility into individual- and household-level audiences helped their teams design campaigns and suppression logic with greater certainty, reducing hesitation in activation decisions.

• Greater agility in planning and execution. Interviewees noted that streamlined identity and audience workflows allowed their teams to move faster when launching or adjusting campaigns. Faster access to reliable audiences supported quicker pivots in response to market changes, campaign performance, or shifting priorities.

• Stronger cross-functional collaboration across marketing, data, and analytics teams. Interviewees explained that a more unified identity and audience foundation improved coordination between teams that previously operated in silos. Shared audience definitions reduced rework, simplified handoffs, and helped teams align on targeting and activation strategies earlier in the planning process.

• Clearer executive-level visibility into audience strategy and performance. Interviewees reported that improved household- and segment-level clarity made it easier to communicate audience strategy and results to leadership. Improved transparency supported more informed discussions around media investment, prioritization, and long-term audience development.

Costs. Three-year, risk-adjusted PV costs for the composite organization include:

• Implementation and setup costs. The composite organization incurs a one‑time implementation and setup cost of $55,000 initially to configure identity resolution, integrate data sources, and enable audience activation workflows. Interviewees described this effort as limited to initial adoption and not recurring in later years.

• TransUnion Audience & Identity Solutions subscription and usage. The composite organization incurs recurring subscription and usage costs totaling approximately $6.4 million in present value over three years. These costs reflect ongoing access to identity resolution, enrichment, and audience activation capabilities and scale modestly as usage expands.

The financial analysis that is based on the interviews found that a composite organization experiences benefits of $10.1 million over three years versus costs of $6.4 million, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $3.7 million and an ROI of 57%.