At A Glance
As CTV viewership grows, marketers face challenges in targeting and measurement across fragmented platforms. Identity resolution and audience strategies, supported by Experian’s syndicated audiences and privacy-safe solutions, help DSPs and advertisers reach high-value audiences, improve campaign accuracy, and drive measurable outcomes.In our Ask the Expert Series, we interview leaders from our partner organizations who are helping lead their brands to new heights in AdTech. Today’s interview is with George Castrissiades, General Manager of Connected TV at AdRoll.
Premium reach and fragmentation
As viewer attention fragments across platforms, how should marketers redefine “premium reach” in CTV to prioritize engagement and audience quality over scale alone?
A few years ago, ad supported streaming over-indexed on younger adults, those without much financial history and much more budget conscious. It would have been fair for B2B brands to assume that maybe they weren’t going to find their C-Suite audiences on those channels, and so connected TV(CTV) was positioned as a top of funnel tactic aimed at retail. But that’s all changed – ad-free prices are going up, and ad supported tiers are the norm across the majority of channels. 66% of adults have at least one ad supported streaming channel, and adults today spend nearly as much time streaming movies and TV as they spend on their mobile phones. Now that ad viewing audiences on CTV really span the full spectrum of demo, techno, and firmographic segments, savvy marketers should partner with platforms that offer breadth and depth of targeting and measurement to find the highest value audiences wherever they’re watching CTV and serve them highly relevant ads that draw their attention towards the screen. I know I’m jumping out of my seat whenever I see an AdTech or MarTech ad.
Identity and relevance
What does a strong identity framework unlock for delivering household- and person-level relevance across screens, and how does it reshape audience planning?
In privacy-safe ecosystems, people want to share less data and log in to websites and browsers less frequently. If you can’t resolve a household ID to a CTV device through Safari and other sources of obfuscated identity, you’re going to end up losing a lot of signal along the way. On top of that, targeting smaller, higher-value audiences means this attrition can have a profound impact on your ability to build meaningful reach and use audience forecasts to predict scale. A strong identity framework is the key to maintaining as much of your planned audience as possible and staying true to initial forecasts.
AI and outcome planning
How is AI evolving CTV from tactical bidding to strategic outcome planning, and what mechanisms are in place to validate true performance lift?
Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, especially not in advertising. Audiences change where and when they consume media, and so shifting budget to a placement that did well yesterday is like buying a stock when it’s outperforming – the gains might be gone by then! Predictive AI is bridging the gap to find the highest value and most engaged audiences in real time, versus being purely reactive. This helps drive outcomes which we see in the form of pipeline influence, ROAS, and site traffic lift – without exponentially increasing costs. The same is true for account-based marketing(ABM) outcomes – there’s a blend of signals, account “fit” and intent data that needs to be evaluated in a deeper, more intelligent way. AI is helping to find those highest value accounts, even before they’re in market, which means smart marketers aren’t showing up late to the party.
Measurement and incrementality
What privacy-safe, closed-loop measurement frameworks should become standard to prove incremental visits and sales from CTV campaigns?
Working with a dedicated multichannel, full-funnel ad and marketing platform like AdRoll can easily let you know when a user arrives at your site and makes a purchase, but understanding how that customer arrived there and which tactics deserve the credit requires a deeper, more sophisticated workflow. Our partnership with Experian allows all devices in a household to ladder back up to a household ID, so we can ensure accuracy without pivoting on anything personally identifiable. This works perfectly in CTV, an environment that follows an app workflow of user resettable device IDs rather than IP address or email but always connects seamlessly to web tokens including cookies. Accuracy, scale, and privacy are maintained in a proven way – you see this tech underpinning the infrastructure of streaming across all the biggest players, so marketers can rest easy.
Creative and commerce
How can creative sequencing and shoppable TV experiences convert living-room attention into commerce without compromising user experience or feeling intrusive?
I like to say that CTV trades attention for action. Users lean back and focus on the messaging and visuals of the big screen rather than scrambling for the mouse or tapping to close some intrusive pop-up. This focus means that the messaging is absorbed more quickly, but creatives can wear out their welcome just as fast. Sequential messaging really helps to move the messaging along without subjecting the viewer to longer ads where attention wanes, but also increases brand recall and specific product information because the story evolves with each impression. This is a great tactic to use when you want a viewer to take a specific action later – but shoppable ads can help motivate a user to act now, and new formats can really simplify things. Shoppable can feel out of range for most – the top players in this space own major e-comm storefronts and then tie them back into their own demand-side platforms (DSPs), content, and streaming devices. For the rest of us, dipping our toes in slowly through simple and cheap solutions like QR codes can connect audiences right to a web experience from their TVs, or intermediate solutions like interactive video ads. Users love to play around with fun on-screen experiences, and there’s a whole spectrum of crawl/walk/run options available.
Trust and governance
Which shared guardrails—brand safety, fraud control, and frequency management- are essential to unlocking sustainable, scaled investment in CTV?
I’ve always thought of CTV inventory analogously to high-end watches – if you buy from the source or a well-known, reputable dealer, you’re probably buying the real thing. But that fancy timepiece the guy was selling outside the bar, that you swore looked real? Probably not. Untrusted resellers and too-good-to-be-true pricing might mean you’re running ads on a screen at a lonely gas station at 3 am to an audience of no one, and that’s not even the worst case scenario. Good relationships and deep pockets can solve brand safety and fraud issues, but not every advertiser is going to have those resources. Brand safety and fraud prevention can reduce workload and help distinguish the good stuff from the growing pool of gray area, arguably, CTV inventory that isn’t what was promised to a customer. Outsourcing this trust also goes a long way, with buyers knowing you’re not grading your own homework. Frequency management is equally as important. Once you have your audience and your good supply, it’s important not to abuse a single household just because they meet your targeting criteria. Reach is your best friend with CTV.
Data and audience strategy
How do Experian’s syndicated audiences provide a consistent, scalable foundation for planning, activation, and measurement across CTV and digital, and what outcomes are clients seeing?
We love to talk about how Experian’s data is such an integral part of so much of streaming’s architecture, and the fact that it’s built on deterministic datasets means you’re getting scaled audiences built on knowledge rather than best guesses. That means a lot when working across multiple channels, privacy-safe environments, and households with an ever-growing number of connected devices. Our customers are always delighted at how precise targeting can be, especially in the B2B/B2C space – and knowing the size of those audiences helps them to understand how budget transforms into reach in a more predictable way. It’s confidence-inspiring to point to a new audience and tell your client that these are their future customers. The best part is showing them the outcomes reporting – we consistently see a massive spike in site traffic and engagement on days when a new Experian syndicated audience is launched!
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FAQs
Identity resolution ensures marketers can connect devices and maintain audience accuracy. Experian’s identity solutions help reduce data loss and improve audience forecasts, making campaigns more effective.
With viewer attention spread across platforms, marketers need tools that offer both broad and detailed targeting. Experian’s syndicated audiences provide reliable, scalable data to help identify and reach high-value audiences across channels.
Techniques like sequential messaging and shoppable ads keep viewers engaged and encourage action. Simple tools like QR codes or interactive video ads can connect audiences to web experiences directly from their TVs.
Strong identity frameworks help DSPs maintain accurate targeting and audience reach, even in privacy-focused environments. By connecting devices to household IDs, solutions like Experian’s Digital Graph ensure DSPs can deliver relevant ads and measure performance effectively across channels.
About our expert
George Castrissiades
General Manager of Connected TV, AdRoll
George leads the CTV go-to-market strategy at NextRoll, driving rapid growth and adoption of the channel for both B2B and B2C customers. With a track record of building and scaling CTV solutions, he is focused on developing a strategic playbook that accelerates success in the evolving digital advertising landscape.
Before joining NextRoll, George spearheaded CTV product innovation at iSpot.tv and held leadership roles in product and operations at YouTube, VICE Media, Crackle, Roku, and Innovid. His expertise spans product development, monetization, and market expansion.
About AdRoll
AdRoll is a connected advertising platform built for growth-minded marketers. With powerful AI, flexible campaign tools, and seamless integrations, AdRoll helps mid-sized businesses turn complexity into clarity and clicks into customers. The AdRoll platform delivers full-funnel performance through multi-channel advertising, audience insights, and cross-channel attribution, supporting marketers across industries including ecommerce, technology, financial services, education, and more. For B2B teams, AdRoll ABM extends these capabilities with account-based precision, multi-touch campaigns, and real-time buyer intelligence. Backed by nearly 20 years of data and award-winning support, AdRoll enables marketing teams to advertise smarter, move faster, and achieve more, all from one place.
Latest posts
If you buy media today, you’re already feeling the shift: the best results don’t always come from broad, open auctions or static “safe site” lists; they’re coming from deals that combine the right data with the right inventory and let algorithms optimize in real time. That’s curation. And when it’s done right, it reduces data and media waste for buyers and raises eCPMs (effective cost per thousand impressions) and win rates for publishers. As part of our Cannes Content Studio series, leaders from Butler/Till, Index Exchange, OpenX, PubMatic, and Yieldmo discuss how curation cuts waste and lifts results. What is real curation? Real curation isn’t “packaging inventory.” It’s a strategic framework built on three pillars: 1. Unique data Privacy-compliant and accurate. 2. Strong supply connections Access to quality inventory from publishers at scale. 3. Optimization tools To measure, refine, and improve performance throughout the campaign lifecycle. Why it matters: Manual approaches hit a ceiling. They can’t react quickly to shifting content, identity signals, or auction dynamics. That’s where technology partners come in, keeping the optimization loop running continuously. Intelligence at every touchpoint Curation isn’t about shifting control between platforms. It’s about better brand decisions, connecting opportunity-rich supply to the brand’s preferred buying platform and enriching each buy with audience data. In practice, supply-side platforms (SSPs) are ingesting richer signals to route inventory more effectively and support frequency caps and deal prioritization, in collaboration with demand-side platforms (DSPs). "I think we’re seeing a shift toward bringing more DSP capabilities into the SSP, like supply-side targeting and data driven curation. Advancements in areas like CTV are enabling targeting based on content signals, and SSPs are pulling in more data to inform which supply is sent to the DSP, helping with things like frequency caps."Matt Sattel Why page-level targeting beats static lists Static domain lists were a useful first step for quality control. The intent was sound, but the approach was too cumbersome for today’s signal-rich buying. Today, AI and contextual engines read the page, not just the site, and adapt in real time. Page-level logic delivers three key benefits: Accuracy by targeting high-intent, page-level content. Relevance by matching the creative to both the content and the audience context. Speed by enabling campaigns to move away from underperforming pages in real time, without waiting for a manual trafficking change. "AI-driven contextual engines evaluate the page, not just the domain, to curate inventory in real time. That moves curation from static allowlists to adaptive logic for greater accuracy, relevance, and speed."Sophia Su Partnerships broaden who influences the buy Curation works when publishers, agencies, data partners, and platforms share signals and KPIs. Horizontal curation (across multiple SSPs) assembles broader, higher-quality reach and resilience, ideal for scale and diversity of supply. Vertical curation (an SSP’s in-house product) provides deep controls within a single exchange, useful for specific inventory strategies. Creative and data now shape supply and demand: better creative decisioning, tested against richer signals, improves outcomes. DSPs remain central for activation and pacing. But the sell-side’s growing intelligence means more accurate inventory routing and signal application before a bid ever fires. "Curation will continue to evolve through deeper data partnerships and expanded use across publishers and agencies, with more sophisticated types of optimization. DSPs will remain critical to activation, even as sell-side decisioning plays a larger role in identifying and shaping the supply to select."Mike McNeeley Curation delivers access and measurable performance Here’s what curated deals are delivering. For buyers ResultType of result36-81%savings on data segments10-70%lower cost per click (CPCs)1.5-3xhigher click-through rates (CTRs)10-30%higher video completion rates For publishers ResultType of result20%bid density118%win rate10%revenue on discovered inventory25%eCRM on incremental impressions Why it works: When data, supply, and optimization are integrated, you reduce waste, surface better impressions, and let algorithms compound your advantage. That’s why curated private marketplaces (PMPs) have grown at ~19% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2019. "Publishers using supply-side curation see ~15% more diverse buyers and 20–25% better performance than buy-side-only targeting. Smarter packaging and signal application tighten auctions and strengthen outcomes."Howard Luks Holistic curation streamlines planning and outcomes Curation adds the data layer earlier in the buying process, starting at the supply-side. This creates more opportunities to reach the right audience and improves scale and performance. By replacing multiple line items with a single curated deal, campaign setup becomes faster and less error-prone. Curated deals also simplify measurement by including the necessary context for accurate attribution, while dynamic adjustments ensure campaigns remain optimized without requiring manual updates. "Publishers using supply-side curation see ~15% more diverse buyers and 20–25% better performance than buy-side-only targeting. Smarter packaging and signal application tighten auctions and strengthen outcomes."Gina Whelehan It’s much more streamlined, bringing more pieces together so we’re thoughtful and holistic. Adding the audience and data element creates more scale and strategy in how we curate supply and data, and ultimately better results for clients. The bottom line Curation has matured from buzzword to performance system. DSPs still anchor activation and pacing, but better sell-side pipes now pre-route inventory and apply signals before any bid starts, making the whole system faster and more accurate. When you combine unique signals, tight supply connections, and always-on optimization, you gain addressability, reduce waste, and achieve better business outcomes for both buyers and sellers. Curation isn’t just a trend; it’s where programmatic advertising is headed. Start testing curated PMPs today to see the difference for yourself. Explore curated PMPs with Audigent Curation FAQs What is curation in performance marketing? Curation in performance marketing is the process of combining data, inventory, and optimization to deliver better results. Audigent supports curated strategies through privacy-safe data and advanced integrations. How does curation benefit marketers? Curation reduces wasted spend by targeting high-quality impressions and optimizing campaigns in real time. Audigent’s solutions help marketers achieve higher click-through rates, lower costs, and better engagement across channels. What are curated PMPs, and why are they important? Curated PMPs are deals that use curated data and inventory to deliver measurable results. They help buyers save on data costs, improve ad performance, and achieve better video completion rates, while publishers see higher win rates and revenue. How does Audigent support curated strategies? Audigent provides unique data assets, privacy-safe integrations, and optimization tools that help marketers and publishers create curated deals. Our solutions ensure campaigns are more efficient, targeted, and effective from start to finish. What’s the difference between horizontal and vertical curation? Horizontal curation combines inventory across multiple platforms for broader reach and diversity, while vertical curation focuses on deep control within a single platform. Both approaches can be tailored to specific campaign goals with Audigent's expertise. Latest posts
In our Ask the Expert Series, we interview leaders from our partner organizations who are helping lead their brands to new heights in AdTech. Today’s interview is with Ben Smith, VP of Product, Data Products at Infillion. Adapting to signal loss What does the Experian–Infillion integration mean for advertisers looking to reach audiences as signals fade? As cookies and mobile identifiers disappear, brands need a new way to find and reach their audiences. The Experian integration strengthens Infillion’s XGraph, a cookieless, interoperable identity graph that supports all major ID frameworks, unifying people and households across devices with privacy compliance, by providing a stronger identity foundation with household- and person-level data. This allows us to connect the dots deterministically and compliantly across devices and channels, including connected TV (CTV). The result is better match rates on your first-party data, more scalable reach in cookieless environments, and more effective frequency management across every screen. Connecting audiences across channels How does Experian’s Digital Graph strengthen Infillion’s ability to deliver addressable media across channels like CTV and mobile? Experian strengthens the household spine of XGraph, which means we can accurately connect CTV impressions to the people and devices in that home – then extend those connections to mobile and web. This lets us plan, activate, and measure campaigns at the right level: household for CTV, and person or device for mobile and web. The outcome is smarter reach, less waste from over-frequency, and campaigns that truly work together across channels. The value of earned attention Infillion has long championed “guaranteed attention” in advertising. How does that philosophy translate into measurable outcomes for brands? Our engagement formats, such as TrueX, are based on a simple principle: attention should be earned, not forced. Viewers choose to engage with the ad and complete an action, which means every impression represents real, voluntary attention rather than passive exposure. Because of that, we consistently see stronger completion rates, deeper engagement, and clearer downstream results – like lower acquisition costs, improved on-site behavior, and measurable brand lift. To take that a step further, we measure attention through UpLift, our real-time brand lift tool. UpLift helps quantify how exposure to a campaign influences awareness, consideration, or purchase intent, providing a more complete picture of how earned attention translates into business impact. Creative innovation and location insights Beyond identity resolution, what are some of Infillion’s capabilities, like advanced creative formats or location-based insights, that set you apart in the market? One key area is location intelligence, which combines privacy-safe geospatial insights with location-based targeting through our proprietary geofencing technology. This allows us to build custom, data-driven campaigns that connect media exposure to real-world outcomes – like store visits and dwell time – measured through Arrival, our in-house footfall attribution product. We also build custom audiences using a mix of zero-party survey data, first-party location-based segments, and bespoke audience builds aligned to each advertiser’s specific strategy. Then there’s creative innovation, which is a major differentiator for us. Our high-impact formats go beyond static display, such as interactive video units that let viewers explore products through hotspots or carousels, rich-media ads that feature polls, quizzes, dynamic distance, or gamified elements, and immersive experiences that encourage active participation rather than passive viewing. These creative formats not only capture attention but also generate deeper engagement and stronger performance for a variety of KPIs. Future ready media strategies How does Infillion’s ID-agnostic approach help brands future-proof their media strategies amid ongoing privacy and tech changes? We don’t put all our eggs in one basket. XGraph securely unifies multiple durable identifiers alongside our proprietary TrueX supply to strengthen CTV household reach. This agnostic design allows us to adapt as platforms, regulations, and browsers evolve – so you can preserve reach and measurement capabilities without getting locked into a single ID or losing coverage when the next signal deprecates. Raising the bar for media accountability Looking ahead, how is Infillion evolving its platform to meet the next wave of challenges in audience engagement and media accountability? From an engagement standpoint, we’re expanding our ability to support the full customer journey, offering ad experiences that move seamlessly from awareness to consideration to conversion. That includes smarter creative that adapts to context, intelligent targeting and retargeting informed by real data, and formats designed to drive measurable outcomes rather than just impressions. When it comes to accountability, we’re ensuring that measurement is both flexible and credible. In addition to our proprietary tools, we partner with leading third-party measurement providers to validate results and give advertisers confidence that their investment is truly performing. Within our DSP, we emphasize full transparency and log-level data access, ensuring advertisers can see exactly what’s happening on every impression. All of this builds toward the next era of agentic media buying – one enabled by our MCP suite and modular, component-based tools. This evolution brings greater accountability and next-generation audience engagement to an increasingly automated, intelligent media landscape. Our goal is to help brands connect more meaningfully with audiences while holding every impression – and every outcome – to a higher standard of transparency and effectiveness. Driving impact across the funnel What is a success story or use cases that demonstrate the impact of the Experian–Infillion integration? We recently partnered with a national veterans’ organization to raise awareness of its programs for injured or ill veterans and their families. Using the Experian integration, we combined persistent household- and person-level identifiers with cross-device activation to reach veteran and donor audiences more precisely across CTV, display, and rich media. The campaign achieved standout results – industry-leading engagement rates, a 99% video completion rate, and measurable lifts in both brand awareness (3.6 % increase) and donation consideration (13.7% lift). It’s a clear example of how stronger identity and smarter activation can drive meaningful outcomes across the full funnel. Contact us Identity resolution FAQs Why is identity resolution critical for CTV and cross-channel campaigns? Identity resolution ensures accurate connections between devices, households, and individuals. Experian's Offline Identity Resolution and Digital Graph strengthen these connections for improved targeting and consistent measurement across CTV, mobile, and web. What strategies help address the loss of cookies and mobile IDs? Solutions like Experian's Digital Graph enable brands to connect first-party data to household and person-level identifiers, ensuring scalable reach and compliant audience targeting legacy signals fade. How can engagement translate into measurable results? Focusing on earned attention (where audiences actively choose to engage) leads to stronger completion rates, improves on-site behavior, and drives measurable increases in brand awareness and consideration. What makes cross-channel targeting more effective? By linking CTV impressions to households and extending those connections to mobile and web, Experian's identity solutions ensure campaigns work together seamlessly, reducing over-frequency and improving overall reach. About our expert Ben Smith VP Product, Data Products, Infillion Ben Smith leads Infillion’s Data Products organization, delivering identity, audience, and measurement solutions across the platform. Previously, he was CEO and co-founder of Fysical, a location intelligence startup acquired by Infillion in 2019. About Infillion Infillion is the first fully composable advertising platform, built to solve the challenges of complexity, fragmentation, and opacity in the digital media ecosystem. With MediaMath at its core, Infillion’s modular approach enables advertisers to seamlessly integrate or independently deploy key components—including demand, data, creative, and supply. This flexibility allows brands, agencies, commerce and retail media networks, and resellers to create tailored, high-performance solutions without the constraints of traditional, all-or-nothing legacy systems. Latest posts
Audigent, a part of Experian, was named Microsoft Advertising’s Curator of the Year. The honor recognizes Audigent’s leadership for advancing privacy-safe, sell-side curation that packages high-quality audiences with premium supply for measurable campaign performance. Once only a buzzword, curation has become a mainstream strategy for activating advertisers’ first-party data and streamlining programmatic buying. To recognize this shift and the leaders driving it, Microsoft introduced Curate and established the Curator of the Year award to celebrate excellence in this category. Audigent was recognized for: End-to-end curation from audience planning through activation for outcomes-based, closed-loop programs. Breadth of deal and supply types using unique datasets, real-time supply connections and always-on optimization. Data-driven activation with curation across a large publisher footprint that utilizes Experian marketing data, first-party data, and partner audiences. Audigent’s unique, contextual, and predictive audience data solutions are built into all programmatic media buying. The combination of Audigent’s Real-Time Data and Curation Platform and first-party data, along with Experian identity and optimization, turns real engagement into ready-to-activate audiences. These audiences are available within Microsoft Curate and across omnichannel buying. "Audigent is proud to be named Microsoft Advertising’s Curator of the Year. This is a clear validation of the work our team has done to make curation the new standard in data-driven programmatic activation. We will continue to set the standard by expanding curated deals in Microsoft Curate. This will help maximize efficiency across the bidstream.”Chris Meredith, Head of Supply Side Partnerships Together, Experian and Audigent connect identity to inventory, enabling advertisers to reach the right audiences with precision and scale. By harnessing Experian identity and audience solutions and activating Audigent-curated deals in Microsoft Curate, brands can unlock new levels of efficiency and performance across every programmatic channel. This recognition sets the stage for even greater innovation, collaboration, and results in the year ahead. Ready to design your curated library? Let's connect Latest posts