Season 2 Episode 13
Identity’s Critical Role in AdTech with Krista Panoff of Innovid

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RESOURCES   ❯   The Marketing Rapport Podcast

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Marketing Rapport podcast, Tim Finnigan talks with Krista Panoff from Innovid about the evolving landscape of digital advertising and Connected TV (CTV).

Krista shares her insights on the importance of identity in AdTech, explaining how it forms the foundation for targeting and measurement across fragmented platforms. She discusses Innovid’s approach to solving CTV challenges, including frequency management and real-time optimization.

The conversation explores how self-service tools are leveling the playing field for small and medium-sized businesses in CTV advertising. Krista also highlights emerging trends in the industry, such as the focus on outcome-based measurement and the shift towards automatic, real-time campaign optimization. Throughout the discussion, she emphasizes the need for advertisers, publishers, and tech providers to collaborate in addressing CTV’s growing pains and improving viewer experiences.

Guest-at-a-Glance

Key Insights

• Identity: The Foundation of Modern AdTech
  Identity resolution has become crucial in today’s fragmented digital landscape. It’s the backbone that powers targeting, measurement, and personalization across various platforms and devices. As privacy concerns grow and different entities approach data handling differently, a robust identity framework is essential for uniform targeting and accurate measurement. Without it, confidently tying impressions to actions becomes nearly impossible. The industry must focus on developing quality identity graphs and logic to match data correctly, ensuring effective campaigns and meaningful insights.
• CTV’s Growing Pains: Tackling Frequency and Fragmentation
  Connected TV (CTV) is experiencing rapid growth, but it’s also facing challenges similar to early digital advertising. Frequency issues and fragmentation are top concerns for advertisers, publishers, and viewers alike. To address these problems, the industry is developing tools for better delivery optimization, reduced errors, and improved frequency management across multiple platforms. By learning from past digital advertising challenges, CTV stakeholders can work together to create a more efficient, transparent, and viewer-friendly ecosystem that maximizes working media dollars and reduces infrastructure inefficiencies.
• Real-Time Optimization: The Future of Campaign Performance
  The advertising industry is shifting away from post-campaign analysis towards real-time optimization. This change allows advertisers to make immediate adjustments based on campaign performance data. By implementing automatic systems that adjust campaigns based on predefined thresholds and goals, advertisers can significantly improve performance without manual intervention. This approach accelerates learning and implementation, enabling campaigns to adapt quickly to audience responses and market conditions. As the world moves faster, real-time optimization becomes essential for maximizing campaign effectiveness and ROI in the dynamic digital advertising landscape.

Episode Highlights

The Evolution of Data in Advertising
Timestamp: (00:59 – 03:37)

Krista Panoff discusses her career trajectory, highlighting the transformation of data usage in advertising. She explains how her experience with phone book data led to working with consumer databases for various applications. This evolution continued through her work in fraud and identity at TransUnion, eventually leading to her current role at Innovid focusing on measurement.

Quote: “We were working with phone book data that we had made available via an API. This was like the start of consumer databases using those for skip tracing, people search, government law enforcement applications… all sorts of really cool things that just kind of opened the door to understanding how really accurate data at a consumer and household level can power business needs.”

The 360-Degree Perspective in AdTech
Timestamp: (06:30 – 08:48)

Krista explains Innovid’s unique position in working with both advertisers and publishers. This dual perspective allows them to provide value on both the buy and sell sides of the industry. She highlights how Innovid helps brands create, deliver, and measure personalized media while also assisting publishers in demonstrating the value of their media to advertisers.

Quote: “We really work across the entire industry. In my particular role, when I’m engaging with publishers, I’m working with them as a brand and a media owner. So it makes it really fun because we can talk to them about how I can help them as a brand make better value out of their media investments and how I can help them demonstrate the value of their media in really unique ways to their advertisers.”

Addressing Fragmentation in CTV Advertising
Timestamp: (11:07 – 13:31)

The conversation shifts to the challenges facing Connected TV (CTV) advertising, particularly fragmentation. Krista discusses Innovid’s efforts to address these issues through their Harmony suite of initiatives. She emphasizes the importance of reducing inefficiencies and maximizing working media dollars in the growing CTV landscape.

Quote: “We deliver 1.3 billion ad impressions per day. MRC accredited ad impressions per day. We have a really unique view across the industry, across channels. That’s CTV, digital, social, display, audio, everything. And when you think about the ability to look at that full landscape of what’s happening and empower brands with tools like Harmony Direct, which is essentially delivery optimization tool.”

The Shift Towards Outcome-Based Measurement
Timestamp: (16:27 – 18:09)

Krista highlights the industry’s growing focus on outcomes and true proof of performance for ads. She discusses how measurement is evolving beyond traditional metrics like reach and frequency to focus on driving consumer actions and proving business value. Additionally, she touches on the importance of solving frequency problems in CTV to improve viewer experience.

Quote: “Outcomes is the hot topic. It’s kind of that true proof of performance for the ad. And I think you’re seeing all different various flavors of outcomes, but I think it’s more and more, yes, you know, our old style of reaching frequency and what was my reach as a metric? That’s one thing, but what am I actually driving the consumer to do and how can I prove that outcome and the value to my business?”

Top Quotes

Krista Panoff [19:55]: “If you’re going to take the time to measure it, act on it.”
Krista Panoff [09:10]: “I think of identity as the foundational infrastructure that essentially powers everything that we all are doing in this industry.”
Krista Panoff [10:51]: “I think we’re at a critical juncture for CTV. We really believe this at Innovid. We all have seen the tremendous growth CTV has had over the last few years, and it’s a matter of time before all TV is digital.”
Krista Panoff [03:37]: “We work across the largest media and tech platforms in the industry, publishers, networks, streamers, DSPs, SSPs.”