
Our next segment in our Ask the Expert series dives into the importance of data enrichment and its benefits across connected TV (CTV) advertising. Ask the Expert features a series of conversations with product experts where we focus on topics that matter the most in AdTech. In our latest segment, Natalia Irmin, Director of Strategic Data & Media Partnerships at a4 Advertising, joins us to chat with Experian’s SVP of Sales & Partnerships, Chris Feo.
a4 is an advanced advertising and data company that offers audience-based, multiscreen advertising solutions for local and national advertising businesses.
In their conversation, Natalia and Chris review:
- The benefits of data enrichment
- First-party data enrichment across advertising
- Data enrichment in CTV advertising
- How Experian and a4 work together
What is data enrichment?
Data enrichment enhances first-party data sets using third-party data sources. This process involves merging first-party data from internal sources with data gathered from other internal sources or from external third-party sources.
Examples of data that can be part of the enrichment process include:
- Demographic information
- Contextual signals
- Behavioral patterns
- Interests
- Purchase-intent
The more you know about your customers, the better equipped you are to reach them where they are with the right message. By enriching your data, you can enhance your messaging, provide personalized offers, and establish a loyal customer base.
First-party data enrichment across advertising
Businesses are transitioning from cookie-based third-party targeting to first-party data enrichment solutions as a result of cookie deprecation. When data enrichment is paired with internal first-party data, you can generate a more holistic customer profile.
a4 has a rich set of first-party data, based on the subscriptions to their services. a4 uses first-party data enrichment across advertising in two ways:
- Measure performance using their viewership data
- Advise their customers on where they should focus their advertising efforts based on the customer’s viewing behavior
a4 supports the enrichment of their customers’ first-party data so they can get the most out of their insights.With Experian’s privacy-first approach, a4 can continue to rely on their first-party data while protecting personally identifiable information (PII).
Data enrichment in CTV advertising
CTV advertising refers to digital advertising that appears through a streaming service during a viewer’s video content, like a movie or TV show. CTV ad campaigns allow businesses to personalize their digital marketing messages while the viewer watches content on various platforms. CTV offers a highly measurable opportunity to increase brand awareness.
Benefits of data enrichment in CTV advertising
Data enrichment provides three key benefits that can enhance targeting, personalization, and campaign effectiveness in CTV advertising.
Understand your target audience
By using enriched data such as demographic information, viewing behavior, and interests, you can gain deeper insights into your target audience, refine your targeting strategies, and create highly personalized ad experiences. Data enrichment also enables better measurement and optimization of ad campaigns, maximizing ROI.
Integrate enriched data with other marketing channels
You can integrate enriched data into CTV with data from other marketing channels. This enables the creation of comprehensive and cohesive marketing strategies that provide consistent messaging and enhance cross-channel targeting.
Enhance the value of ad inventory
Data enrichment can also benefit content publishers and broadcasters by enhancing the value of ad inventory and providing more targeted and effective advertising opportunities.
Enabling your marketers to target specific audiences will result in improved campaign performance. Through data enrichment, you can increase return on your ad spend and boost the value of your publisher’s ad inventory. a4 and Experian can help your business attract additional demand with audience enrichment. a4 uses Experian’s vast offering of audiences and combines it with Experian’s Graph. This data can later be used to activate across a4’s parent company, Altice’s owned and operated properties, as well as beyond Altice’s own footprint via premium publisher partners.
How Experian and a4 work together
a4 and Experian have a long-standing partnership that enables a4 to enhance its data. Through our Consumer View and Consumer Sync products, a4 can add audience attributes to its subscriber and viewer data to precisely pinpoint the audience that its clients are targeting. Experian helps a4 in building a comprehensive customer profile, which helps expand the customer base for a4’s advertising clients.
We form partnerships, like we do with Experian, to enhance our data further, so that we can combine the power of the viewership and exposure data for those other attributes that clients might need.” – Natalia Irmin, Director, Data & Strategic Partnerships, a4 Advertising
Through Experian’s audience attributes and Graph, a4 can assist advertisers in targeting audiences beyond their usual reach, creating a better user experience. a4 can personalize experiences and promotions to prioritize customers with a higher likelihood of making a purchase. By tailoring messages and promotions to individual customer preferences, businesses can improve their advertising efforts and deliver them through their preferred channels.
Watch the full Q&A
Visit our Ask the Expert content hub to watch Natalia and Chris’s full conversation about data enrichment and its benefits across the advertising world. In the Q&A, Natalia and Chris also share their thoughts on the importance of first-party data enrichment, addressability, and measurability in CTV advertising.
About our experts

Natalia Irmin, Director, Strategic Data & Media Partnerships, a4 Advertising
Natalia Irmin is the Director of Strategic Data & Media Partnerships for a4 Advertising. With over 10 years of experience working with data in the Defense, Finance, and Advertising industries, Natalia currently leads the a4 Strategic Partnerships team in the development of advanced data and media products in support of the organization’s media planning, buying, and advanced analytics business. Natalia holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts from Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Chris Feo, SVP, Sales & Partnerships, Experian
As SVP of Sales & Partnerships, Chris has over a decade of experience across identity, data, and programmatic. Chris joined Experian during the Tapad acquisition in November 2020. He joined Tapad with less than 10 employees and has been part of the executive team through both the Telenor and Experian acquisitions. He’s an active advisor, board member, and investor within the AdTech ecosystem. Outside of work, he’s a die-hard golfer, frequent traveler, and husband to his wife, two dogs, and two goats!
Latest posts

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Next up in our Ask the Expert series, we hear from Sarah Ilie and Lauren Portell. Sarah and Lauren talk about the internet’s value exchange – what we gain and lose when it’s so easy to share our information. Is convenience hurting or helping us? The age of connectivity Today, it’s almost unimaginable to think about how your day-to-day life would look without the convenience of the internet, smartphones, apps, and fitness trackers; the list goes on and on. We live in the age of connectivity. We have the convenience to buy products delivered to our homes on the same day. We can consume content across thousands of platforms. We also have watches or apps that track our health with more granularity than ever before. The internet's value exchange In exchange for this convenience and information, we must share various kinds of data for these transactions and activities to take place. Websites and apps give you the option to “opt in” and share your data. They also often let you know that they are collecting your data. This can feel like an uncomfortable proposition and an invasion of privacy to many people. What does it mean to opt-in to a website or app’s tracking cookies? What value do we exchange? What opting in means for you Opting in to cookies means that you are allowing the app or website to track your online activity and collect anonymous data that is aggregated for marketing analytics. The data provides valuable information to understand users better to create better online experiences or offer more useful products and content. Granting access to “tracking” offers several benefits to users such as a customized, more personal user experience or advertising that is more likely to be relevant. For example, let’s imagine you have recently been using an app or website to plan a camping trip. By sharing your data, the website or app has visibility into what is interesting or useful to you which can lead to related content suggestions (best campsites) or relevant advertising and product recommendations (tents and camping equipment). It’s important to know that the marketing data collected when you opt in is extremely valuable. The revenue that advertising generates is often very important to websites and apps because this is how they make money to continue providing content and services to consumers. Data privacy practices Privacy concerns regarding how companies and developers use tracking information have risen over the last couple of years and have resulted in additional protection for consumers’ privacy while still allowing companies to improve their products and advertising. One big step in this direction has been simply making people aware that their data is being collected, why it’s being collected, and providing users with the option to share this data for marketing analytics through opting-in or not. Other important steps to maintain online privacy include formal legal legislation and self-regulation. The right to privacy is protected by more than 600 laws between individual states and federal legislation and the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce recently voted to pass the American Data Privacy and Protection Act. Additionally, marketing organizations such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Association of National Advertisers regulate themselves with codes of conduct and standards given there is so much attention on privacy issues. Is the internet's value exchange worth it? The data that we choose to share by opting in has a lot of benefits for us as consumers. There are laws in place to protect our data and privacy. Of course, it’s important to be aware that data is collected and used for marketing purposes, but it’s also reasonable to share a certain amount of data that translates into benefits for you as well. The best data unlocks the best marketing. Contact us to tap into the power of the world’s largest consumer database. Learn how you can use Experian Marketing Services' powerful consumer data to learn more about your customers, drive new business, and deliver intelligent interactions across all channels. Meet the Experts: Lauren Portell, Account Executive, Advanced TV, Experian Marketing Services Sarah Ilie, Strategic Partner Manager, Experian Marketing Services

We’re excited to introduce our new Q&A series, Ask the Expert! Ask the Expert will feature a series of conversations with product experts. We’ll spotlight and dive into the areas you care most about: identity resolution, targeting, attribution, and more. Our first segment features a conversation on Hashed Email. Jeff Tognetti, the Product Development Team Lead at DealerX joins us to chat with Experian’s Chief Revenue Officer, Chris Feo. Chris and Jeff review how to future-proof your identity strategy by exploring Hashed Email use cases, technical details, and offer an expert point of view on the cookieless future. Let’s review a few highlights from their conversation. DealerX’s use case When DealerX first started working with us, we focused on digital identity. 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