Sarah Robertson, chief product officer at Experian Marketing Services, looks at the rise of super signal aggregators (SSAs). She examines what industry members can gain, from helping them adhere to privacy regulations, to enabling more precise and relevant targeting.

How does Experian define super signal aggregators?

Super signal aggregators are ecosystems or platforms that bring together diverse, high-quality signals to power more efficient, performant marketing. Much more than data collection, Experian believe an SSA is defined by three core components: 

First, aggregation. SSAs synthesise rich and diverse signals from across the ecosystem to enable a deeper understanding of consumers and the levers needed to effectively reach and engage them. It’s not just about the volume of signals but the quality, actively replacing scrapped or inferred data with a smarter, safer approach built around the ingestion of quality, trusted data sources collected transparently and compliantly. 

Next, activation. Of course, you can have as much data as you like but if you can’t activate it, it’s meaningless. At the core of any great SSA is a robust framework that makes data signals addressable and actionable, whether that’s through identity, contextual or probabilistic resolution, or a combination of all three. This connectivity between signals and activation is fundamental, fuelling sophisticated AI-driven algorithms that feed programmatic campaigns, continuously adjusting and optimising in real-time to drive better performance.  

Lastly, measurement. By ingesting signals from across the ecosystem, SSAs move beyond disjointed platform-by-platform measurement models to a unified, panoramic view of the entire lifecycle, from awareness through to conversion. Through closed-loop feedback, SSAs refine models in real time - enabling smarter decisioning, more accurate attribution, and clearer visibility into what’s truly driving performance.

Collectively, these three components – unified through a single system – enable deeper consumer understanding, authentic, meaningful connections and smarter, faster performance for marketers. 

To what can we attribute the rise of the SSA? 

Over the last decade, the ad tech ecosystem has been hamstrung by poor quality data, widespread signal loss, growing fragmentation and ongoing inefficiency. At the same time, consumer expectations for personalised, relevant experiences have surged, creating a disconnect between what the industry currently delivers and what audiences demand.

SSAs have emerged as a way to bridge this disconnect. Rather than relying on fragmented, inconsistent insights that fail to translate into meaningful activation or measurement, SSAs offer a holistic, end-to-end framework, designed to understand, activate and measure, with precision, speed and privacy at its core. 

How do SSAs help industry players adhere to privacy regulations? 

SSAs collect and aggregate signals from a wide range of sources, streamlining data processing and governance into a single, cohesive system. This centralised approach simplifies consent management and enables advertisers to activate campaigns without exposing raw personal data. As a recent development, SSAs are built without the traditional reliance on cookies, instead integrating signals such as contextual, probabilistic and consented first-party data which are inherently more privacy safe.

What value does the ecosystem gain from the birth of SSAs? 

SSAs may be at the early stages of adoption, but the transformation they are already enabling across the ecosystem is clear. 

SSAs are revolutionising planning and activation for advertisers, connecting the dots between insight and activation and enabling more precise, relevant targeting based on what the signals tell us about the audience, rather than the other way round. This is driving campaign performance in a way that’s faster, more efficient and more predictive than ever before.

Meanwhile, publishers sit on a wealth of high-quality yet underutilised data. SSAs provide a vehicle to leverage this data. In return, they’ll unlock greater monetisation and smarter attention strategies. Those with high-quality traffic and rich contextual data stand to gain the most, driving stronger yield and more meaningful connections.

SSAs make experiences more relevant for consumers, personalised and privacy safe. By intelligently aggregating signals, SSAs ensure that the ads, content and offers served to a consumer aligns with their interests, behaviours and purchasing habits. This means less noise, more value. 

Looking at the wider ecosystem, SSAs bring together data and AI to unlock operational efficiency at scale. But this isn’t just good business, it’s better for the planet. Less bids and less ad wastage means reduced carbon impact, supporting our industry’s sustainability goals. 

However, SSA’s can’t operate in isolation. Fundamentally, SSAs run on quality, trusted data, which requires active engagement and collaboration from publishers, platforms, agencies, and data providers. 

By working together, we have the opportunity to reshape the industry: creating more authentic consumer connections, improving performance, and delivering more measurable, meaningful results for everyone across ad tech.