Every term this site — and this industry — leans on, in plain English. Each definition stands on its own, so feel free to quote it. The four layers themselves live at Id-Resolution, BuyerJourney, IntentAudiences, and OmniChannelAds.
The core idea
Identity Layer
An Identity Layer is the connected set of systems that turns anonymous website traffic and open-web audiences into named, understood, reachable buyers. It has four parts: identity resolution (who is this?), buyer-journey mapping (where are they in their decision?), intent audiences (who is in-market right now?), and omnichannel activation (how do you reach them?).
Most businesses treat visitors as sessions. An Identity Layer sits underneath your marketing and resolves those sessions into people — the same person across devices, visits, and channels. Each part is useful on its own; together they compound, because resolved visitors sharpen your audiences, and sharper audiences feed your ads.
Not the same thing as a CDP or login infrastructure. The four layers: Id-Resolution · BuyerJourney · IntentAudiences · OmniChannelAds.
Identity graph
An identity graph is the master map that ties every scattered signal a person leaves — devices, browsers, email addresses, home addresses, site visits — back to one real human. Without one, every visitor is just an anonymous session that ends when the browser closes.
Graphs differ enormously in quality. The one behind this suite holds 5.1 billion verified identities and is deterministic: people are matched against verified records, not guessed at from behavior. Identity & intent data is provided by Delivr.ai, our data provider.
Identity resolution
Identity resolution is the process of matching an anonymous website visitor to a real, contactable identity. A pixel observes the visit, the signal is checked against an identity graph, and "someone was here" becomes "here's exactly who, and how to reach them."
It's the first layer of the stack, because everything downstream — journeys, audiences, reach — only works once you know who you're looking at. This layer is Id-Resolution.com.
Deterministic matching
Deterministic matching ties a visitor to an identity using verified records — known emails, addresses, and device links — rather than statistical inference. The alternative, probabilistic matching, guesses that two signals are the same person because their behavior looks similar; it scales cheaply but is often wrong.
Deterministic graphs trade raw coverage for confidence: when they say it's you, it's you. The graph behind this suite runs 75–85% deterministic match accuracy.
Match rate also: resolved visitors
Match rate is the share of a site's visitors that identity resolution successfully ties to a real person. The industry average hovers around a quarter of traffic; this suite's graph resolves 50%+ — roughly double — and the resolved share of your traffic is what the pricing tiers count.
Session
A session is one visit to a website by one browser — the unit analytics tools count when they can't tell who a visitor actually is. The same person on a phone at lunch and a laptop at night is two sessions, two "users," and zero names. Treating sessions as people is how ~97% of traffic stays a stranger; resolving sessions into people is the whole point of an Identity Layer.
Signals & intent
Intent data
Intent data is the set of behavioral signals showing that a specific person is actively researching a product or service category. Reading comparison articles, visiting category sites, returning to pricing pages — aggregated and scored, these separate the people shopping now from the people who merely fit a profile.
See intent topic, in-market, and intent audience.
Intent topic
An intent topic is a single subject a person can show buying interest in — "menopause supplements," "CRM software," "Montana cabins" — scored from their research behavior. The graph behind this suite scores 22,000+ intent topics per person, daily, which is what lets an audience be built around exactly what you sell rather than a broad category.
In-market
In-market means actively researching or comparing a purchase right now — not merely fitting the demographic of someone who might. At any given time only 5–10% of your market is actually buying; everyone else is budget spent on people who aren't ready. Intent data exists to find that 5–10%.
Intent audience
An intent audience is a list of real people assembled because their intent signals show they're in-market for what you sell. Unlike a lookalike audience, it's built from observed behavior, not statistical resemblance — these people are researching your category whether or not they've ever heard of you. This layer is IntentAudiences.com.
Lookalike audience
A lookalike audience is an ad-platform audience of people statistically similar to your existing customers — a modeled guess, not observed intent. Lookalikes answer "who resembles my buyers?"; intent audiences answer "who is buying right now?" The two can coexist, but only one of them knows the person is actually shopping.
Open-web audience
An open-web audience is a set of prospects found by their behavior across the wider internet, before they've ever visited your site. Site traffic tells you about people who already found you; the open web is where the rest of your market is researching. An Identity Layer works both directions — resolving the traffic you have and finding the buyers you don't.
Journey & funnel
Buyer journey
The buyer journey is the path a person travels from first noticing a need to completing a purchase — typically: just looking, comparing options, and close to deciding. Mapping each resolved identity to a journey stage tells you who needs education, who needs a nudge, and who needs a reason to buy today, so the same message never goes to all three. This layer is BuyerJourney.net.
Marketing funnel
The marketing funnel is the narrowing path from everyone who could buy from you down to the people who actually do. Wide at the top (awareness), narrow at the bottom (purchase). "Lighting up your funnel" means seeing — by name — who sits at each stage, instead of watching anonymous percentages leak out the sides.
Form fill
A form fill is a visitor volunteering their contact details through a form — and it's the only identification most websites ever get. Fewer than 2% of visitors ever do it. The other 98% leave namelessly, which is precisely the gap identity resolution exists to close.
Activation & reach
Omnichannel activation
Omnichannel activation is turning one audience into coordinated campaigns across display, social, email, and CTV at once. One push, everywhere your buyers already are — instead of rebuilding the same audience separately inside each ad platform. This layer is OmniChannelAds.net.
CTV Connected TV
CTV is streaming television — Roku, smart TVs, streaming apps — that can serve targeted ads to specific households. Unlike broadcast TV, a CTV ad can be aimed at the households in your intent audience, which puts television inside the same campaign as your display and social ads.
Pixel
A pixel is a small snippet of code on a website that observes visits so they can be measured and resolved. In this stack, one first-party pixel powers both Id-Resolution and BuyerJourney — they share it, which is why the second layer is free with the first. Pixels operate under the site's privacy controls; see our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.
What an Identity Layer is not
CDP Customer Data Platform
A CDP organises data you already hold about people you already know — your customers, your subscribers, your CRM. An Identity Layer works upstream of that: on the anonymous visitors and open-web prospects you haven't met yet. If a CDP is a filing cabinet for known contacts, an Identity Layer is how names get into the room in the first place. The two are complementary, not competitors.
Identity layer the authentication sense
In security vocabulary, an "identity layer" means login infrastructure — the systems (Auth0, Okta, Cognito) that verify credentials and control access. That is not this. This site uses the marketing sense of the phrase: buyer identity — who is visiting, researching, and ready to purchase. No logins, credentials, or access control involved.
Standards & shorthand
SOC 2 Type II
SOC 2 Type II is an independent audit of how a company protects customer data — not at a single moment, but demonstrated over a sustained period. On this site, SOC 2 Type II is held by Delivr.ai, our data provider, whose identity graph powers these products.
IAB TCF v2.2
The IAB Transparency & Consent Framework is the advertising industry's standard for collecting user consent and passing it to every vendor in the ad chain. Version 2.2 is the current standard. On this site, TCF v2.2 participation is held by Delivr.ai, our data provider.
GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation is the European Union's data-privacy law, governing how personal data on EU residents is collected, used, and erased. How Net Results Consults LLC handles your data under it is described in our Privacy Policy.
CCPA / CPRA
The California Consumer Privacy Act and its successor the California Privacy Rights Act give California residents rights over their personal information — including the right to opt out of its sale or sharing. Exercise yours on our Do Not Sell or Share page.
DTC
Direct-to-consumer — brands that sell to buyers on their own site rather than through retailers. DTC brands live and die by knowing who's on their site, which makes them natural Identity Layer customers.
OTA
An online travel agency is a booking middleman — Expedia, Booking.com — that charges hotels a commission, typically 15–20%, on each stay. Winning the booking direct, by resolving and reaching the guest before they book elsewhere, is the classic hospitality play for this stack.
SMB
Small and mid-sized business — the companies that enterprise marketing infrastructure has historically priced out. The premise of this entire suite: the customer-identity stack big brands pay six figures for, scaled to everyone else.