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 Brian Chisholm, SVP of Strategic Partnerships at OpenX.
About OpenX
OpenX is an independent omni-channel supply-side platform (SSP) and a global leader in supply-side curation, transparency, and sustainability. Through its 100% cloud-based tech stack, OpenX powers advertising across CTV, app, mobile web, and desktop, enabling publishers to deliver marketers with improved performance and dynamic future-proofed solutions. With a 17-year track record of programmatic innovation, OpenX is a direct and trusted partner of the world’s largest publishers, working with more than 130,000 premium publisher domains and over 100,000 advertisers. As the market leader in sustainability, OpenX was the first AdTech company to be certified as CarbonNeutral™ and third-party verified for achieving its SBTi Net-Zero targets. Learn more at www.openx.com.
Collaboration solves programmatic challenges
Could you share the story behind the partnership between OpenX and Experian and how this collaboration differs from typical data-provider/DSP or SSP relationships in the market? What unique challenges in programmatic advertising does this partnership solve?
OpenX first partnered with Experian in 2019 when we were building the industry’s first data-driven supply-side curation platform. Being the only SSP with a proprietary people-based identity graph (further enriched by Experian) gives OpenX a unique set of capabilities that are only growing in value in the market. We are seeing retail media networks, large agency planning platforms, and indie and specialty shops lean into OpenX’s tools to match, activate, and measure people-based audiences through our robust curation platform and premium supply.
Enhancing campaigns with data enrichment
How does combining Experian’s marketing data with OpenX’s technology create tangible benefits for advertisers, agencies, and publishers?
Last year, we expanded our partnership with Experian to enrich our digital IDs with Experian’s Digital Audiences, essentially making Experian data available directly to marketers across all OpenX supply and formats, including CTV. For marketers, this direct integration increases both match and activation rates. Meaning, not only do we match more of the starting audience universe to our system, we then provide more opportunities to identify and transact on those users in the bidstream. The result is greater reach for buyers even in previously unaddressable environments like Safari or mobile web – and publishers benefit from the increased addressability OpenX provides their supply.
Delivering impactful inventory solutions
OpenX has been enhancing its curation offerings beyond just providing curated marketplaces. Could you describe the strategic shift you’re making in how you package and deliver inventory?
At OpenX, we have a broader and more dynamic view of curation. It’s not just about gathering data or bundling inventory; it’s about layering on identity-based precision, enabling the targeting of the right audiences with premium, brand-safe inventory for our clients.
We saw the value of curating inventory and audiences on the supply side early on. We started by building capabilities for our own exchange and then found that our approach created tremendous value for data owners and marketers alike. Over the past five years, we’ve been continuously investing our curation platform capabilities to super serve those partners. As a result, we have what we think is by far the most robust and flexible platform in the market. We can match and integrate with any kind of data, curate supply at a granular level, activate audiences and help measure outcomes in multiple ways. We also provide turnkey integrations to third-party platforms.
Balancing customization with scalability in deals
There’s often tension between customization and scalability when it comes to curated deals. How does OpenX strike the right balance to meet varied advertiser objectives while ensuring operational efficiency for publishers?
Truthfully, we’re not finding that scale suffers with curation. We currently have 237 million monthly active users in our exchange that we can match and activate curated deals against. That’s a unique claim for an SSP, and we back it up with our identity graph. This directly benefits our publishers who see a 20% increase in overall bid density and a 118%+ increase in win rate for curated deals vs. open market.
Data-driven curation done on the supply side offers efficiency and drives results for buyers, while publishers are able to activate their own first-party data programmatically, increase their monetization, and maximize the value of their inventory. As the industry continues to adapt to a privacy-first, consent-based ecosystem, data-driven curation will play a key part in ensuring both sides of the marketplace continue to thrive.
Driving results with CTV curation
Connected TV is arguably the most dynamic channel in programmatic right now. How do curation improvements accelerate more precise or outcome-based targeting in CTV environments?
I want to take this a step further and say that biddable is the future of CTV. Not only does biddable enable advertisers to purchase closer to campaign activation, it gives buyers the option to curate deals, flexibility, addressability and ease of transacting at will. No minimums, no commitments.
Our CTV strategy has been centered around combining flexibility, efficiency, and real-time optimization capabilities with access to premium, direct, glass-on-wall inventory. TV by OpenX, powers the direct activation of curated audiences at scale through data-driven, contextual, attention, and sustainability offerings.
What does this mean for buyers? Advertisers can choose from any one of OpenX’s 250+ data partners, including Experian, to target an audience via CTV inventory using OpenX’s cross-platform identity graph. This setup allows buyers to increase scale and optimize toward their desired campaign outcomes via their preferred DSP. The focus on inventory quality and scale combined with advanced targeting curation provides a key driver of performance in CTV.
Identity resolution for better CTV measurement
In a channel as fragmented as CTV, measuring performance can be complex. What role does identity resolution play in better measurement and attribution? How do Experian’s identity capabilities integrate within your platform to drive measurable outcomes?
We talked about the value of audience targeting via curation above. Another critical driver is our ability to power true closed-loop measurement for advertisers or partners like retail media networks. OpenX is able to provide automated log-level reporting via BIDS, which includes exposed IDs from our proprietary ID graph back to our partners in near real time.
This closed-loop attribution enables partners to measure real-world outcomes like ROAS, conversion rates and incrementality. Insights and learnings from data can then be used to make optimizations mid-campaign, to further improve performance. Measurement starts with having a strong foundation to identity resolution – which Experian helps us achieve.
Tailoring audience strategies in the auto sector
The automotive vertical demands highly specific audience insights—everything from in-market signals to lifestyle and aftermarket service and parts data. How does the Experian–OpenX partnership enhance audience strategies in auto?
Experian’s deterministic data, combined with the OpenX identity graph, empowers buyers with identity tools to create targeted audience segments of likely auto intenders. For verticals that have high customer acquisition costs like auto, these insights are particularly valuable, as buyers often struggle to identify their audiences at scale in environments that drive campaign performance.
Experian’s automotive data is one of our most requested audiences from buyers. We match Experian’s high-quality data directly to our platform, often leveraging Experian’s IDs, which leads to greater scale and fidelity. In addition, our platform can curate supply to a granular level to drive results for buyers.
Complying with evolving privacy regulations
With data privacy regulations multiplying—like GDPR, CCPA, and others—how does OpenX’s direct connection with Experian ensure responsible data usage and compliance?
At OpenX, we don’t see privacy regulations as a challenge but rather an opportunity. Instead, it’s a key differentiator for us. We’ve had a strong focus on data and identity since 2017, and we believe that if you’re talking about these topics but not talking about privacy, you’re missing an important piece of the equation.
Regardless of the environment — CTV, mobile, app, or web — in today’s privacy-focused world, success in data and identity is inseparable from a commitment to privacy. We support this obligation with dedicated leadership that helps our partners navigate evolving global regulations, including critical areas like child-directed content under new laws from Australia to Maryland.
Thanks for the interview. Any recommendations for our readers if they want to learn more?
To learn more about our solutions and partnership opportunities, visit the OpenX website or contact your Experian account representative to schedule your free match test.
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About our expert
Brian Chisholm, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, OpenX
Brian Chisholm is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at OpenX, where he spearheads the curation, data, and identity efforts. He and his team have been instrumental in building out OpenX’s industry-leading curation platform and partnerships.
With more than two decades of experience in digital media, Brian has developed partnerships that leverage and expand OpenX’s core technology assets and deliver material value for the company’s buyer, publisher, and platform partners. Before joining OpenX, Brian held senior roles at innovative startups and digital stalwarts, including Overture/Yahoo, SpotRunner, and Apptera.
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Originally appeared on MarTech Series Marketing’s understanding of identity has evolved rapidly over the past decade, much like the shifting media landscape itself. From the early days of basic direct mail targeting to today's complex omnichannel environment, identity has become both more powerful and more fragmented. Each era has brought new tools, challenges, and opportunities, shaping how brands interact with their customers. We’ve moved from traditional media like mail, newspapers, and linear/network TV, to cable TV, the internet, mobile devices, and apps. Now, multiple streaming platforms dominate, creating a far more complex media landscape. As a result, understanding the customer journey and reaching consumers across these various touchpoints has become increasingly difficult. Managing frequency and ensuring effective communication across channels is now more challenging than ever. This development has led to a fragmented view of the consumer, making it harder for marketers to ensure that they are reaching the right audience at the right time while also avoiding oversaturation. Marketers must now navigate a fragmented customer journey across multiple channels, each with its own identity signals, to stitch together a cohesive view of the customer. Let’s break down this evolution, era by era, to understand how identity has progressed—and where it’s headed. 2010-2015: The rise of digital identity – Cookies and MAIDs Between 2010 and 2015, the digital era fundamentally changed how marketers approached identity. Mobile usage surged during this time, and programmatic advertising emerged as the dominant method for reaching consumers across the internet. The introduction of cookies and mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) became the foundation for tracking users across the web and mobile apps. With these identifiers, marketers gained new capabilities to deliver targeted, personalized messages and drive efficiency through programmatic advertising. This era gave birth to powerful tools for targeting. Marketers could now follow users’ digital footprints, regardless of whether they were browsing on desktop or mobile. This leap in precision allowed brands to optimize spend and performance at scale, but it came with its limitations. Identity was still tied to specific browsers or devices, leaving gaps when users switched platforms. The fragmentation across different devices and the reliance on cookies and MAIDs meant that a seamless, unified view of the customer was still out of reach. 2015-2020: The age of walled gardens From 2015 to 2020, the identity landscape grew more complex with the rise of walled gardens. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon created closed ecosystems of first-party data, offering rich, self-declared insights about consumers. These platforms built massive advertising businesses on the strength of their user data, giving marketers unprecedented targeting precision within their environments. However, the rise of walled gardens also marked the start of new challenges. While these platforms provided detailed identity solutions within their walls, they didn’t communicate with one another. Marketers could target users with pinpoint accuracy inside Facebook or Google, but they couldn’t connect those identities across different ecosystems. This siloed approach to identity left marketers with an incomplete picture of the customer journey, and brands struggled to piece together a cohesive understanding of their audience across platforms. The promise of detailed targeting was tempered by the fragmentation of the landscape. Marketers were dealing with disparate identity solutions, making it difficult to track users as they moved between these closed environments and the open web. 2020-2025: The multi-ID landscape – CTV, retail media, signal loss, and privacy By 2020, the identity landscape had splintered further, with the rise of connected TV (CTV) and retail media adding even more complexity to the mix. Consumers now engaged with brands across an increasing number of channels—CTV, mobile, desktop, and even in-store—and each of these channels had its own identifiers and systems for tracking. Simultaneously, privacy regulations are tightening the rules around data collection and usage. This, coupled with the planned deprecation of third-party cookies and MAIDs has thrown marketers into a state of flux. The tools they had relied on for years were disappearing, and new solutions had yet to fully emerge. The multi-ID landscape was born, where brands had to navigate multiple identity systems across different platforms, devices, and environments. Retail media networks became another significant player in the identity game. As large retailers like Amazon and Walmart built their own advertising ecosystems, they added yet another layer of first-party data to the mix. While these platforms offer robust insights into consumer behavior, they also operate within their own walled gardens, further fragmenting the identity landscape. With cookies and MAIDs being phased out, the industry began to experiment with alternatives like first-party data, contextual targeting, and new universal identity solutions. The challenge and opportunity for marketers lies in unifying these fragmented identity signals to create a consistent and actionable view of the customer. 2025: The omnichannel imperative Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, the identity landscape will continue to evolve, but the focus remains the same: activating and measuring across an increasingly fragmented and complex media environment. Consumers now expect seamless, personalized experiences across every channel—from CTV to digital to mobile—and marketers need to keep up. The future of identity lies in interoperability, scale, and availability. Marketers need solutions that can connect the dots across different platforms and devices, allowing them to follow their customers through every stage of the journey. Identity must be actionable in real-time, allowing for personalization and relevance across every touchpoint, so that media can be measurable and attributable. Brands that succeed in 2025 and beyond will be those that invest in scalable, omnichannel identity solutions. They’ll need to embrace privacy-friendly approaches like first-party data, while also ensuring their systems can adapt to an ever-changing landscape. Adapting to the future of identity The evolution of identity has been marked by increasing complexity, but also by growing opportunity. As marketers adapt to a world without third-party cookies and MAIDs, the need for unified identity solutions has never been more urgent. Brands that can navigate the multi-ID landscape will unlock new levels of efficiency and personalization, while those that fail to adapt risk falling behind. The path forward is clear: invest in identity solutions that bridge the gaps between devices, platforms, and channels, providing a full view of the customer. The future of marketing belongs to those who can manage identity in a fragmented world—and those who can’t will struggle to stay relevant. 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