Acxiom partners with Client Command for automotive shopper tracking
Partnership announced October 2 grants Acxiom access to Active Shopper Network, analyzing 60 billion webpages monthly across 250 million consumer profiles.
Acxiom and Client Command announced a partnership on October 2, 2025, designed to enable automotive manufacturers to identify consumers actively shopping for vehicles. The collaboration provides Acxiom with access to Client Command's Active Shopper Network platform, which tracks online behavior to detect purchase intent signals.
The Active Shopper Network analyzes 60 billion webpages monthly and observes behavior across more than 250 million consumer profiles to identify active vehicle shoppers. The system processes data from 90 percent of U.S. connected devices, achieving match rates exceeding 70 percent across known and anonymous users. According to the announcement, the platform tracks over 24 million verified vehicle shoppers monthly.
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Client Command's system assigns each shopper an intensity score based on recency, frequency, and depth of shopping activity. The platform can identify up to five vehicle makes and models per consumer based on their browsing patterns, providing insight into purchase intent and competitive cross-shopping behavior. These signals update in real time as shoppers browse the open web, researching vehicles, comparing features, and reading reviews.
"This isn't guesswork or modeling; it's verified behavior from real people making real decisions," Jonathan Lucenay, President and CEO of Client Command, stated in the announcement.
The solution operates through Interact, IPG's marketing platform, making intent-based audiences available to Acxiom and IPG clients. The system resolves anonymous site visitors in real time via Acxiom's Real ID technology while maintaining compliance with CCPA and other data privacy standards, according to the companies.
Keith Camoosa, Chief Product and Technology Innovation Officer at Acxiom, characterized the approach as using "responsibly sourced behavioral signals" to help automotive manufacturers connect with consumers. The partnership enables automotive brands to deliver personalized content and offers based on detected shopping intensity rather than demographic targeting or broad audience segments.
For the marketing community, this development represents a significant shift in how automotive brands can identify and reach potential buyers. The technology moves beyond traditional audience modeling to track actual browsing behavior, providing marketers with specific make and model consideration data rather than general purchase intent signals.
The system operates through two delivery methods. Batch delivery supports CRM systems, email nurturing campaigns, and dealer follow-up processes. A real-time API enables personalized website content, programmatic advertising, and call center routing based on current shopping intensity scores. This dual approach allows automotive manufacturers to activate the data across multiple marketing channels simultaneously.
The automotive industry has historically relied on dealer networks and third-party lead generation services to connect with potential buyers. Digital advertising in the automotive sector typically used demographic targeting, contextual placement on automotive websites, and lookalike audiences based on existing customer data. Client Command's Active Shopper Network introduces behavioral tracking at scale, monitoring specific vehicle research activities across the open web rather than limiting observations to owned automotive properties.
The platform's ability to identify specific make and model consideration sets provides automotive manufacturers with competitive intelligence. A shopper researching multiple brands signals different intent than someone focused on a single manufacturer. The system captures this cross-shopping behavior, potentially allowing brands to target consumers actively comparing their vehicles against competitors.
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Privacy compliance remains a central component of the implementation. The companies emphasized that the system detects high-intent signals without compromising personal data. Anonymous visitors can be resolved through Acxiom's identity resolution technology when appropriate transparency and choice mechanisms are in place. The architecture separates behavioral observation from personal identification, according to the announcement.
Client Command, founded in 1999, has focused exclusively on automotive data solutions. The company holds patents covering its Active Shopper Network platform. Acxiom, operating as the connected data and technology foundation of the Interpublic Group of Companies, maintains operations in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, China, Poland, and Mexico.
The partnership plans to extend the Active Shopper signal framework beyond automotive into financial services, insurance, and travel categories. This expansion would apply the same behavioral tracking methodology to identify consumers actively shopping for mortgages, insurance policies, or vacation packages.
Intent data has become increasingly valuable as marketers seek alternatives to third-party cookies and traditional audience targeting methods. The automotive industry represents a particularly suitable category for intent-based targeting because vehicle purchases involve extended research periods and substantial financial commitment. Consumers typically spend weeks or months comparing options before making a purchase decision.
The scale of data processing distinguishes this platform from smaller intent-tracking systems. Analyzing 60 billion webpages monthly requires significant infrastructure and data processing capabilities. The system must identify vehicle-related content, track user behavior across multiple sessions, attribute activity to individual profiles, and update intensity scores continuously as new behavioral signals emerge.
Match rates exceeding 70 percent indicate the platform can connect a significant portion of observed browsing behavior to identifiable consumer profiles. This resolution rate determines how effectively automotive brands can activate the intent data for personalized marketing. Lower match rates would limit the practical application of behavioral insights.
The real-time API capability enables immediate personalization based on current shopping activity. When a high-intent shopper visits an automotive website, the system can dynamically adjust content, offers, and calls-to-action based on their intensity score and consideration set. This differs from batch-processing approaches that may use intent data hours or days after the original behavioral signals were captured.
Dealer networks stand to benefit from the consideration set data. When the system identifies that a consumer is researching specific makes and models, dealers can craft targeted messaging aligned with the shopper's demonstrated interests. This coordination between automotive manufacturers and dealer networks has historically presented challenges due to fragmented data systems and misaligned incentives.
The companies framed the technology as improving the car buying experience by making marketing more relevant. However, the system fundamentally tracks consumer behavior across the web to enable targeted advertising. Whether consumers perceive more relevant automotive ads as an improvement depends on individual privacy preferences and tolerance for behavioral tracking.
Acxiom has positioned itself as prioritizing data ethics and governance while maintaining a privacy-first approach. The company's involvement brings established identity resolution capabilities to Client Command's behavioral tracking platform. This combination connects browsing behavior with marketable audiences that can be activated across advertising platforms.
The announcement follows broader industry trends toward first-party data strategies and privacy-compliant tracking methodologies. As third-party cookies face deprecation, marketers increasingly seek alternative methods for identifying and reaching consumers with purchase intent. Intent-based platforms tracking specific shopping behaviors offer one approach to maintaining targeted advertising capabilities.
For automotive marketers, the partnership provides a tool for identifying active shoppers before they submit lead forms or visit dealerships. Traditional automotive marketing relied heavily on capturing consumers late in the purchase journey, after they had already narrowed their choices. The Active Shopper Network aims to identify and engage consumers earlier, while they are still researching options and forming preferences.
The continuous refinement of signals ensures the data remains current as shopping behavior evolves. A consumer's intensity score can increase as they engage in more frequent and deeper research, or decrease if their browsing patterns suggest waning interest. This dynamic scoring differs from static audience segments that may not reflect current purchase intent.
The integration through Interact positions the intent data within IPG's broader marketing technology ecosystem. Clients using IPG's platform can access the shopper identification capabilities alongside other marketing tools and data sources, potentially creating more comprehensive automotive marketing strategies.
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Timeline
- October 2, 2025: Acxiom and Client Command announce partnership providing access to Active Shopper Network platform
- 1999: Client Command founded, focusing on automotive data solutions
- Ongoing: Platform analyzes 60 billion webpages monthly across 250 million consumer profiles
- Current operations: System tracks over 24 million verified vehicle shoppers monthly with 70%+ match rates
- Future plans: Companies plan to expand Active Shopper signal framework into financial services, insurance, and travel categories
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Summary
Who: Acxiom, a data and technology company operating as part of the Interpublic Group of Companies, partnered with Client Command, an automotive data solution provider founded in 1999.
What: The partnership grants Acxiom access to Client Command's Active Shopper Network platform, which analyzes 60 billion webpages monthly to identify consumers actively shopping for vehicles, assigning intensity scores and tracking make and model consideration sets across 250 million consumer profiles.
When: The partnership was announced on October 2, 2025.
Where: Acxiom operates from Conway, Arkansas, with additional locations in the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Poland, and Mexico; the Active Shopper Network tracks behavior across 90 percent of U.S. connected devices.
Why: The partnership enables automotive manufacturers and dealers to identify and reach consumers during active vehicle research phases using real-time behavioral signals, moving beyond traditional demographic targeting and broad audience segments while maintaining privacy compliance through CCPA-compliant identity resolution methods.