The time when marketers could rely solely on IP addresses to identify website visitors has passed. Today, pinning sales and marketing hopes on lists derived from IPs is limiting at best. There are a number of reasons why IP addresses are diminishing in importance for sales and marketing teams, including the persistence of hybrid and remote work teams as well as the growing use of privacy-focused networks. But marketers can overcome obstacles to identifying website visitors’ domains and use that intel to design stronger go-to-market plans.
The persistence of hybrid work
Despite highly publicized return-to-work mandates, in 2025, hybrid work accounts for 43% of professional employment. In addition, fully remote work continues to endure post-pandemic, with about 25% of employees working from home full time, according to Flex Index.1
With millions of U.S. professionals logging in from a place other than a business address at least a few days a week, marketers are struggling to track the companies where their anonymous website visitors work in order to develop targeted outreach. That’s because the IP address in a person’s home will show up as owned by an internet provider like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, Xfinity, etc. Many homes also have employees from two or more companies using the same router. Additionally, a single IP address, such as a café, could be used simultaneously by employees of dozens of different companies.
The rise of VPNs
Virtual private networks (VPNs) encrypt users’ data and mask their IP addresses. VPN usage – including VPN browser extensions and routers – has been on the rise,2 with some companies demanding that remote employees use VPNs to protect sensitive data. In addition, a growing number of individuals also employ VPNs to protect their online activity and access entertainment content more easily. This uptick in VPNs also thwarts marketers’ attempts to successfully track website visitors.
Growing use of modeling and AI
As signals from IPs weaken, the industry is turning to modeling to resolve events and interactions back to a company. For example, an IP-to-company composition-based model that leverages a combination of probabilistic and deterministic data can maximize both reach and accuracy of identity resolution. This kind of Machine Learning (ML) solution has been shown to achieve high reliability and deliver large-scale visitor data resolution while maintaining quality.
Feeding the model a truth set
When building a model to identify web traffic, it’s essential to use a high-fidelity truth set. Simply put, giving your model information that you know to be true will ensure that model-based decisions are sound. While there are many data sources in the martech space, finding high-quality data is key to getting valuable results. Combining premium first-party data with publicly available data sources can create a sound truth set for the identity resolution model.
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Minding privacy considerations
As businesses get more creative in being able to resolve events and interactions back to a company, it’s important to work in a privacy-compliant way. This includes hashing emails, which protects customers’ data through encryption while still allowing marketers to track them across multiple platforms. In addition, it’s essential to use consented data in order to guarantee transparency and adhere to relevant regulations.
Over the last ten years, Bombora has created a Data Co-op where we have direct relationships with publishers, so there is transparency and clarity about what data is being collected and with whom it is being shared. This direct relationship with publishers helps us establish a level of trust that has earned us the reputation as a trusted steward of B2B data.
In the B2B world, the goal is to get to the account level, not the person. By resolving the identity of a website visitor’s employer – rather than personal identity – marketers can ensure that personal privacy is protected.
The future includes creative approaches, greater scale
Because of the challenges that exist in IP-to-domain resolution, the industry is actively pursuing creative ways to resolve identity back to the domain. Cookies, hashed emails, mobile device IDs, and other alternative IDs are already playing a more prominent role. Marketers are also leveraging AI-based solutions to overcome obstacles, including a remote workforce. With broader approaches in place, marketers are able to resolve website visitor domains on a far greater scale. By turning to advanced B2B domain resolution using the full range of these techniques, marketers can unlock all the advantages of identifying visitors’ domains in a compliant and highly effective way.
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