LOS ANGELES — It may be more commonly thought of as the company that compiles your credit history but, in the new media era, Experian is carving out a role for itself as the bridge between islands of ad data.

In this video interview with Mediatel Events director Justin Lebbon for Beet.TV, Brad Danaher, Managing Director, TV Strategy, Experian, explains the problems advertisers see, and what the solution might be.

Identity accuracy

“There’s a lot of need for brands to know the exactly who’s watching their programmes, for the networks to know who’s watching the programmes,” Danaher says.

“Our role is to really make sure that that identity is accurate and consistent over time for really the entire TV ecosystem.”

CTV Starts In NYC: Experian’s Danaher On TV Targeting Data

Unify the data

Across the advertising industry, ad buyers are both rejoicing at the new opportunities to target CTV viewers – and recoiling at the fragmented ways in which they have to blanket the market.

After all, many different CTV services do it very differently.

“If you have a cable box in which you watch TV on one end but then you have a smart TV watch, some other TV, those are going to different companies,” Danaher explains.

“So, what’s needed is to bring that together in one place so that you can determine that is still Bill Smith, for example.

“That is happening sporadically. That’s what makes it a challenge for buyers – they’re having to buy different sections of inventory and not quite sure how they’re linked.”

Connect the dots

In its latest foray to solving the problem, Experian in November 2020 acquired Tapad, a provider of digital identity resolution for marketers.

The company provides cross-device data, digital linking and distribution capabilities.

“That has really helped us to expand our coverage for identity so that we can really connect the dots for our customers.

“We are able to connect the person-level data and the device data and the impression data; the viewing activity data is provided by one of our partners.”

You are watching coverage from Beet Retreat Santa Monica 2021, presented by FreeWheel, IRIS.TV, Samba TV, TransUnion & Warner Music Group. For more videos, please visit this page.