Every consumer uses an average 3.4 devices. This year, will upgrade their phones. Add in an average 19 cookies per consumer, across devices and browsers. To accurately reach people across devices and cookies, marketers must find a smart way to match them. There are three different methodologies for doing this:

That’s a lot of opportunities to say the wrong thing to the wrong person.

• Probabilistic: Relies on limited third-party data to make guesses about consumers.
• Deterministic (walled gardens such as Facebook and Google): Generally reaches only logged-in users (and can’t message cross-device unless they log in across devices).
• Deterministic (commerce-based): Starting with anonymised consumer IDs, this methodology links people to the purchases they make, plus their device IDs, cookies, demographic data and more. The highly accurate IDs last for years, even as devices update and cookies clear.

Based on these options, you can gather that commerce-based matching is the best approach to building long-lasting connections to the most consumers.