As privacy regulations, signal loss, and consumer expectations change, marketers face growing challenges in creating meaningful connections. In our latest Ask the Expert segment, Tom Wolfe, SVP at Viant, and Ali Mack, VP of AdTech Sales at Experian explore how first- and third-party data strategies, advancements in connected TV (CTV), and AI tools empower marketers to build smarter campaigns tailored to modern demands.
Identity-driven advertising built on first-party data
With the decline of traditional third-party signals and the rise of privacy-first advertising, first-party data is more important than ever. By collecting data directly from customers, marketers ensure they have accurate, user-consented data to fuel personalized advertising. Viant’s identity graph takes these first-party signals—such as email addresses, household locations, and phone numbers—and connects them with additional attributes in a privacy-safe way. This approach empowers marketers to build precise audience segments without relying on cookies, which Viant phased out over a decade ago.
Combining first-party data and privacy-first solutions to build trust
By combining first-party data strategies with privacy-first solutions, marketers can build long-term success while earning consumer trust. The Viant Household ID eliminates reliance on cookies while enabling secure, compliant campaign management. Additionally, Viant’s partnerships with cleanrooms further protect their clients’ data integrity and ensure smooth collaboration between trusted parties. Beyond safeguarding consumer information, the Viant ecosystem allows their clients to integrate data seamlessly from audience segmentation to campaign activation and reporting.
How first and third-party data work together
While first-party data is crucial for precise, personalized advertising, it isn’t always sufficient—especially for smaller or emerging brands that haven’t yet amassed audience data. Third-party data plays a pivotal role in these scenarios by supplementing first-party insights, offering a broader view of consumer behavior, leading to new growth opportunities.
Viant collaborates with partners like Experian to help marketers seamlessly merge their customer information with additional consumer insights. Viant and their clients benefit from Experian’s identity data to match various identifiers such as hashed emails, device IDs, or other platform-specific tags and map them back to a single consumer profile. With a unified view of the consumer, marketers can refine targeting, expand their reach, and maintain consistency across channels. By utilizing first- and third-party data solutions, marketers can build well-rounded, effective campaigns that resonate with diverse audiences.
“Our clients have embraced the Viant Household ID because it powers a comprehensive, seamless flow from segment creation to targeting, activation, and measurement.”
Tom Wolfe, SVP Business Development, Viant
CTV as a core marketing channel
CTV is emerging as the core platform for immersive and effective advertising by merging the visual storytelling power of traditional TV with the precision of digital tools. Viant helps marketers optimize CTV capabilities by building connections between premium publishers and data, allowing marketers to personalize experiences. Whether it’s tailored ads for families watching a live sports event or pinpointing niche interests, CTV enables marketers to reach diverse audiences with meaningful ads. Beyond awareness, Viant drives results for their clients and monitors that performance across each stage of the funnel. Marketers can use the key insights to optimize their media buys on CTV and achieve even higher ROI.
Viant takes CTV performance a step further with its direct access programs. Stronger data matching via publisher partnerships improves accuracy, helping marketers connect with their ideal audience. Viant’s recent data shows that campaigns incorporating CTV achieve a conversion rate of 12.89%, outperforming campaigns lacking it by a wide margin. This dramatic improvement highlights the power of precise targeting combined with Viant’s advanced CTV tools. For marketers, this translates to impactful storytelling supported by tangible results.
“CTV drives high-level brand awareness via sight, sound, motion, and emotion, but it also powers activity through the funnel.”
Tom Wolfe, SVP Business Development, Viant
AI is streamlining marketing from start to finish
AI is transforming advertising by automating tasks like performance tracking and audience segmentation, allowing marketers to focus on strategy and creativity. At Viant, AI is part of the company’s DNA, helping marketers drive more efficient and effective campaigns.
With real-time data insights and streamlined processes, teams can quickly refine messaging and optimize budgets. This efficiency not only saves time but also empowers marketers to channel their energy into creating impactful strategies that resonate with their audiences. The integration of AI into Viant’s ecosystem also simplifies overall workflows, optimizing campaign execution from start to finish. With performance tracking made easier and segmentation automated, marketers can rely on data accuracy and actionable insights to make confident decisions.
How Experian and Viant work together
Experian’s syndicated audiences—demographic, auto, TV, FLA (Financial Fair Lending Act), and more—are available within Viant’s platform. Experian’s partnership with Viant enables the deployment of custom audiences specifically designed to meet distinct campaign objectives. Together, Experian and Viant provide solutions that support first-party data strategies, third-party data integration, CTV optimization, AI-driven insights, and identity resolution, creating a cohesive and privacy-forward marketing ecosystem.
“At Viant, we focus on the sensible, scalable, impactful opportunities.”
Tom Wolfe, SVP Business Development, Viant
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Visit our Ask the Expert content hub to watch the full conversation with Tom and Ali and learn more about Viant’s scalable identity solutions.
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About our expert
Tom Wolfe, SVP Business Development, Viant
As SVP of Business Development at Viant, Tom and his team forge strategic business partnerships that fuel the company’s growth and business strategy. He is a seasoned industry veteran with more than 25 years of expertise in content distribution, advertising, and technology, particularly in CTV. Throughout his career, Tom has played a pivotal role in establishing and managing multiple businesses at major companies such as Roku, TiVo, YuMe, and Comcast. Additionally, he has provided valuable advisory services to organizations including VIZIO, Vice Media, and many others across the ecosystem. Tom holds a B.A. in Political Science from Lehigh University and has shared his knowledge as a guest lecturer at both New York University and Drexel University.
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Experian, the leader in powering data-driven advertising through connectivity, is thrilled to unveil our latest solution, Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes. This joint solution supplies marketers and platforms with the insights and connectivity needed to understand who their customers are and reach them across digital channels. The uncertainty around third-party cookies in Chrome and the overall decline in signal complicates the industry’s ability to reach the right consumer. Omnichannel media consumption results in scattered data, making it harder for marketers and platforms to understand consumer behavior and reach them across channels. These challenges call for a comprehensive solution. Our Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes solution addresses these challenges by providing identifiers for seamless cross-channel engagement. By adding Marketing Attributes, like demographic and behavioral data, marketers and platforms also gain a better understanding of their customers. This solution uses Experian’s Living Unit ID (LUID) to combine offline and digital data, giving customers deeper insights into consumer behavior, greater audience reach, and improved cross-channel visibility. Benefits of Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes Both our Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes provide value to clients as standalone products. When clients license our Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes joint solution, they have more data at their fingertips, unlocking: Consumer connectivity: When clients license Experian’s Digital Graph, they get access to digital identifiers like mobile ad IDs (MAIDs), connected TV (CTV) IDs, hashed emails (HEMs), and universal IDs so they can target the right consumers with the relevant messages across all digital media channels. Consumer insights: Experian’s 5,000 Marketing Attributes provide our clients with detailed consumer information and insights, such as age, gender, purchase behaviors, and content consumption habits. Marketing Attributes help clients create more relevant messaging and informed audience segmentation. Client examples How OpenX offers richer targeting and more connectivity with Experian OpenX is an independent omni-channel supply-side platform (SSP) and a global leader in audience, data, and identity-targeting. With industry-leading technology, exceptional client service, and extensive scalability across all formats, including CTV, app, mobile web, and desktop, OpenX has a legacy of innovating products that enhance buyer outcomes and publisher revenue while addressing complex challenges in programmatic. In recent years, OpenX has licensed Experian’s Digital Graph with identifiers, contributing to the SSP’s largest independent supply-side identity graph, which offers advanced audiences to buyers and improved data resolution to content owners. More recently, OpenX licensed Experian’s Marketing Attributes to enrich its supply-side identity graph, which includes IPs, MAIDs, and client IDs, with a variety of attributes. This strategic move has helped OpenX’s clients benefit from enhanced consumer insights and addressability, in turn delivering greater reach to the demand side and higher revenue for publishers, despite industry signal loss. "We built on our long-term partnership with Experian to enrich our digital IDs with Experian’s Marketing Attributes, which help provide buyers better insights to audiences, thereby helping our publishers monetize their inventory. With partners like Experian, OpenX effectively facilitates the value exchange between demand and supply, ensuring our partners are able to drive results for their business in the era of signal loss"Craig Golaszewski, Sr. Director of Strategic Partnerships, OpenX How StackAdapt licenses our product bundle to address three different use cases StackAdapt is the multi-channel programmatic advertising platform trusted by marketers to deliver exceptional campaigns. They drive superior results through a variety of solutions, like contextual and first-party targeting, brand lift measurement, and optimization through insights. StackAdapt licensed a similar yet unique product combination, our Digital Graph and our Audiences. StackAdapt uses the Digital Graph to allow clients to onboard their first-party data in a seamless, self-serve manner that allows them to further segment their data using Experian Audiences. “StackAdapt has been recognized as the most trusted programmatic platform by marketers, and with the integration of Experian’s Digital Graph and Audiences, we are strengthening our leadership in the space. This partnership improves our ability to deliver precise cross-channel segmentation, reach, and measurement, helping advertisers run more successful campaigns. Our collaboration with Experian allows us to offer a differentiated solution in the market and ensure our clients can deliver the most precise and impactful ads to their audiences.”Denis Loboda, Senior Director of Data, StackAdapt We recently announced a new partnership with StackAdapt. This collaboration brings the power of Experian's identity graph, syndicated and custom audiences directly to the StackAdapt platform. Read the full details in our press release here. Four ways to use Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes When these two products come together, our clients have a 360-degree view of their consumers, which helps them power four critical use cases: Analytics and insights: Learn more about your consumers by connecting our Marketing Attributes with our Digital Graph's identifiers. For example, a retailer can discover that their recent customers over-index as pickleball fans and players, leading the retailer to sponsor a professional pickleball event. Inventory monetization: When supply-side partners know their audience better, they can attract advertisers in search of that audience. For example, a publisher might find out that their audience is full of pickleball fans, leading them to reach out to brands that want to reach this audience. Activation: Companies with access to more digital identifiers from our Digital Graph can reach more people, while controlling frequency across channels. A company might know that they want to reach pickleball fans. Now, they have the digital identifiers needed to reach pickleball fans across all digital channels where they consume content, leading to increased reach. Measurement and attribution: Use the Digital Graph’s support for various digital identifiers to understand all consumer touchpoints, from media impressions to conversions. Then, lean on our Marketing Attributes to determine who your messaging resonated with. For example, a company uses our Digital Graph to know if it was the same individual who was exposed to an ad on CTV and converted via e-commerce. On top of that, the company can use our Marketing Attributes data to find out that the people who purchased were overwhelmingly pickleball fans. Connect with us to learn more about how our Digital Graph and Marketing Attributes joint solution can provide the data and insights you need to create, activate, and measure cross-channel media campaigns. 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After a six-month beta period, collaboration in Snowflake Data Clean Rooms using Experian's offline or digital graph is now generally available for all clients. As part of this, Experian is excited to announce that Experian's identity graph will be integrated into Snowflake's Data Clean Rooms. With the growing importance of data privacy and marketing efficiency, this partnership builds off of Experian's previously-announced integration into Snowflake's AI Data Cloud for Media. Adding Experian's identity graph to Snowflake Data Clean Rooms helps advertisers, advertising platforms, and measurement partners work more effectively. Built upon Experian’s rich offline and digital identity foundation, with support for various identifiers across platforms, collaboration in Snowflake Data Clean Rooms helps clients maximize the value of their data and meet the diverse needs of modern business: Collaborate with partners for richer data insights Achieve higher match rates Improve audience building Produce more accurate and complete reports Ensure data privacy Seamless integration of AdTech and MarTech platforms Regardless of the identifier type you are looking to collaborate on, Experian has the identity data in Snowflake Data Clean Rooms to support you and your partner. This leads to higher match rates and more resolved data for you to use to benefit your media initiatives. "Integrating Experian's identity graph into Snowflake Data Clean Rooms marks a transformative leap for digital marketing. This collaboration empowers advertisers, programmatic platforms, and measurement partners with unparalleled accuracy, privacy, and efficiency. Together, we are excited to provide innovative solutions to meet the evolving needs of our clients."Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, Head of Data Clean Rooms at Snowflake The Experian and Snowflake partnership showcases how collaboration can enhance scalability and cost-efficiency. Data clean rooms provide a secure environment where multiple parties can share, join, and analyze their data assets without leaving the clean room or exposing the underlying data. By integrating Experian's identity graph within Snowflake's secure platform businesses of all sizes can receive advanced data collaboration and identity tools without the high costs usually involved. The integration prioritizes consumer privacy and data security. Backed by Experian’s Global Data Principles, Experian's deep roots in data protection and security provide customers with the most trusted way to share data and protect consumer privacy. With Experian's graph in Snowflake Data Clean Rooms, customers will get a solution that respects customer consent, safeguards sensitive data, and ensures that processing occurs with the utmost respect for user confidentiality and preferences. Further, Snowflake Data Clean Rooms uses advanced methods to preserve privacy, such as differential privacy and secure computations on encrypted data, enabling data security and integrity. Together, these methods prevent unauthorized access by keeping sensitive data within the secure confines of the cleanroom on a strict, collaboration-to-collaboration basis. The collaboration between Experian and Snowflake significantly enhances data matching and identity resolution within the Snowflake Data Cleanroom. Experian’s identity solution uses digital identifiers like hashed emails, MAIDs, and CTV IDs and offline identifiers like name and address. This allows advertisers to reach more consumers and enrich their data. Marketers can easily use their first-party data in the cleanroom, and with Experian's Graph, they get higher match rates for more accurate targeting and campaign measurement. The continued partnership between Snowflake and Experian provide advertisers, platforms, and measurement providers a secure and effective way to collaborate. This sets the stage for continued innovation in programmatic advertising, ensuring that our solutions evolve in step with our clients' needs. If you're not utilizing clean rooms for collaboration but have advanced identity needs, you can license our Graph and seamlessly integrate it into your Snowflake account. Reach out to our team to learn more Latest posts
With U.S. brands expected to invest over $28 billion in connected TV (CTV) in 2024, balancing linear TV and CTV is now a top priority. Advertisers need to integrate these platforms as the TV landscape evolves to reach audiences with various viewing habits. A successful strategy requires both linear and CTV approaches to effectively reach audiences at scale. We interviewed experts from Comcast Advertising, Disney, Fox, Samsung Ads, Snowflake, and others to gain insights on the evolving landscape of linear and CTV. In our video, they discuss audience fragmentation, data-driven targeting, measurement challenges, and more. Watch now to hear their perspectives. Five considerations for connecting with linear TV and CTV audiences 1. Adapt to audience fragmentation With consumers' rapid shift toward streaming, it's easy to overlook the enduring significance of linear TV, which still commands a large portion of viewership. According to Jamie Power of the Walt Disney Company, roughly half of the current ad supply remains linear, highlighting the need for brands to adapt their strategies to target traditional TV viewers and cord-cutters. As streaming continues to rise, ensuring your strategy integrates both CTV and linear TV is crucial for reaching the full spectrum of audiences. "I don't think that we thought the world would shift so quickly to streaming, but it's not always just all about streaming; there's still such a massive audience in linear."Jamie Power, Disney 2. Combine linear TV’s reach with CTV’s precision Blending the reach of linear TV with the granular targeting capabilities of CTV allows advertisers to engage both broad and niche audiences. Data is critical in understanding audience behavior across these platforms, enabling brands to create highly relevant campaigns tailored to specific audience segments. This strategic use of data enhances engagement and ensures that the right viewers see advertising campaigns. "The future of TV is really around managing the fragmentation of audiences and making sure that you can reach those audiences addressably wherever they're watching TV."Carmela Fournier, Comcast Advertising 3. Manage frequency across platforms Cross-platform campaigns require managing ad frequency to avoid oversaturation while ensuring adequate exposure. With a variety of offline and digital IDs resolved to consumers, our Digital and Offline Graphs can help maintain consistent messaging across linear TV and CTV. This approach allows advertisers to strike the right balance, preventing ad fatigue and delivering the right audience reach for campaign impact. "You've got to make sure that you're not reaching the same homes too many times, that you're reaching everybody the right amount of times."Justin Rosen, Ampersand 4. Focus on consistent measurement Linear TV and CTV offer different data granularities, necessitating tailored approaches for accurate cross-platform campaign measurement. Bridging these data gaps requires advanced tools that streamline reporting for both mediums. As the industry moves toward consistent measurement standards, advertisers must adopt solutions that provide a comprehensive view of campaign performance, enabling them to optimize their cross-platform efforts. "Where I think there are pitfalls are with the measurement piece, it's highly fragmented, there's more work to be done, we're not necessarily unified in terms of a consistent approach to measurement."April Weeks, Basis 5. Align with shifts in audience behavior The success of cross-platform campaigns hinges on staying agile and responsive to shifting audience preferences. As CTV adoption grows, advertisers must proactively adjust their strategies to align with how viewers engage across linear and streaming platforms. Ideas include: Regularly updating creative Adjusting the media mix Utilizing real-time data insights to ensure campaigns remain relevant "At Fox we were a traditional linear company, and essentially what we're trying to do is merge the reach and the scale of TV as well as the reach and the scale of all the cord-cutters and cord-nevers that Tubi possesses." Darren Sherriff – FoxDarren Sherriff, Fox As streaming TV rapidly changes, brands must stay ahead of trends and shifts in consumer behavior to tap into CTV's growing potential. By focusing on these opportunities, advertisers can blend linear TV and CTV, ensuring their campaigns reach audiences wherever they watch. Connect with Experian's TV experts As a trusted leader in data and identity services, Experian offers the expertise to help you succeed in television marketing. With our strong partnerships with key players in the TV industry, we provide access to unique marketing opportunities. Learn how Experian’s data and identity solutions can deliver outstanding results in advanced TV advertising. Partner with us today to enhance your marketing strategies using our Consumer View and Consumer Sync solutions. Connect with our TV experts Contact us Latest posts