What the era of composable identity looks like for brands

Sponsored by Adstra • December 16, 2024 •

An illustration of a black office chair under a spotlight, symbolizing the challenges brands face in managing identity solutions amid signal loss, privacy regulations, and fragmented ecosystems. The chair features a red scarf and a folder with a white question mark, representing the need for adaptable and composable identity frameworks in a complex digital landscape.

Lance Brothers, Chief Revenue Officer, Adstra

In an increasingly fragmented ecosystem, brands face challenges navigating signal loss, privacy regulations and complex customer journeys with traditional identity solutions.

As digital transformation continues to reshape all business aspects, brands demand robust and adaptable data solutions — including an identity solution that is as flexible as it is comprehensive. Composability is emerging as the key to unlocking the next generation of data management.

One-size-fits-all data solutions are falling short for brands

Over the last decade, brands have invested heavily in digital transformation, building extensive data stacks that include CDPs, CRMs, tag managers, media platforms and more. Despite these advancements, many brands still have critical gaps in their identity capabilities.

The rigid, bundled identity solutions of the past struggle to keep up with the demands of a fragmented, privacy-conscious digital environment. Most legacy solutions either offer too broad a set of capabilities — becoming prohibitively expensive and complex to implement — or are overly limited — lacking the flexibility needed to adapt across various data systems.

Traditional, one-size-fits-all approaches are no longer effective in an era where brands must deliver real-time personalization and connect customer insights across channels. This shift has paved the way for composability, a model that allows brands to choose and configure only the identity components they need. This enables brands to address specific challenges without overhauling their entire tech stack.

How composable CDPs paved the way for emerging identity solutions

The composable model is not entirely new; it has already gained traction in the CDP space. These data platforms are essential to marketers because they allow brands to unify customer data and activate insights across multiple channels.

However, many monolithic CDPs have also become bottlenecks. Their rigid structures and long deployment times prevent brands from responding quickly to evolving customer needs and regulatory demands.

Composable CDPs have emerged in response to these limitations. Popularized by platforms like Snowflake, these CDPs offer a modular architecture that sits on top of cloud data platforms. This framework allows brands to assemble their CDP with best-in-breed components for data ingestion, transformation and activation. Brands gain direct control over their data, enabling them to bypass the limitations of pre-packaged, black-box solutions.

The composable CDP model has gained traction because it’s faster to implement, easier to maintain and highly adaptable — making it ideal for businesses facing rapid change. Now, as more brands recognize the benefits of composable CDPs, it’s only natural that the same logic would extend to identity. If the CDP is the vessel for unifying data, composable identity is the engine driving that data’s relevance and impact.

Why the future of Identity is composable

Just as composability has improved CDPs, it is transforming how brands approach identity management. Composable identity solutions provide a modular, adaptable framework that meets the complex, situational needs of modern brands. Rather than relying on a rigid solution that struggles to evolve with business demands, composable identity allows brands to tailor identity capabilities to their immediate needs and scale up as requirements change.

New composable solutions that are built for flexibility address two of the biggest challenges facing identity today: fragmentation and interoperability.

Composable identity adapts to fit within crowded tech environments, supporting everything from CRM integration to cross-channel campaign measurement, without forcing brands to rebuild from scratch.