In this episode
Alison Clark, GTM strategy lead for CTV at AdRoll, makes the case that connected TV has crossed from a brand-awareness buy into a measurable performance channel — and that the shift came from three things maturing at once: outcome measurement, audience targeting down to the account and contact level, and the ability to optimize campaigns mid-flight instead of waiting for a post-campaign report. She and Greg Kihlström work through what that means practically: how brands activate first-party data they already hold against CTV audiences, which signals justify a creative refresh versus an audience expansion, how to measure a channel that produces no click, and why unified cross-channel messaging is testable rather than a matter of taste. Clark’s framing throughout is that CTV is not a replacement for other performance channels — it is the thing that makes the rest of the media plan work harder.
Key takeaways
- CTV became a performance channel because measurement caught up to it. Advertisers can now trace what a viewer did after the ad aired — branded search, site visit, conversion — so the buy is judged on business outcomes rather than reach.
- Targeting on CTV now reaches account and contact level. On the ABM side of AdRoll’s business, audiences can be built down to named accounts and contacts; on the B2C side, purchase history, prior site visits, and demographics drive the segments.
- CTV is never a replacement — it is a multiplier on the rest of the plan. Clark’s test is whether adding CTV lifts search volume, click-through rate, and conversions across the other channels, which is what AdRoll sees when clients add it.
- First-party data is only an asset once it is organized and usable. Brands already hold loyalty records, site visitors, and abandoned carts; the work is segmenting them so loyalists, new customers, and cart abandoners get different treatment across every channel.
- The optimization wait is gone, but constant tinkering is still the wrong move. Results arrive in real time, yet campaigns need time to reveal trends — change on signal, not on impulse.
- Falling site visits and conversions read as creative fatigue; flat new traffic reads as an audience-size problem. Those are the two diagnostic signals Clark uses to decide between a creative refresh and an audience expansion.
- There is no last click on CTV, so attribution has to be built from influence. AdRoll uses Innovid as third-party validation and layers cross-channel attribution to show where CTV sits in the mix and how it moves accounts along.
- Unified messaging works, and you can prove it with a market holdout. Run the unified campaign in a set of markets, withhold it in others, and measure incrementality, site traffic, and conversions against the difference.
- Creative must be built per format even when the message is single. CTV needs sight, sound, and motion storytelling; out-of-home needs bold interruption; display needs the click — same brand promise, different execution.
Chapters
- 0:00 — Sponsor intro
- 1:45 — Treating the biggest screen in the home as direct response
- 3:27 — Alison Clark’s role and CTV remit at AdRoll
- 4:25 — What changed: measurement, targeting, and real-time optimization
- 5:35 — Where CTV fits in the mix (and why it isn’t a replacement)
- 6:58 — First-party data after the cookie deprecation that didn’t arrive
- 8:42 — The signals that justify changing a live campaign
- 10:39 — Measuring a channel with no click: Innovid and cross-channel attribution
- 14:15 — Syncing CTV creative with the rest of the customer experience
- 16:14 — What a genuinely unified activation and measurement stack looks like
- 19:26 — One year out: AI and the end of manual media work
- 20:16 — How Alison Clark stays agile
Why CTV stopped being a brand-only line item
The reclassification wasn’t a single product release. Clark points to three capabilities maturing together: measurement that follows a viewer from exposure to branded search to conversion, targeting specific enough to reach named accounts and contacts on the ABM side, and optimization that happens while the campaign is live. Before all three existed, CTV could only be defended as awareness. With them, the same buy is accountable to the same outcomes as any performance channel.
Why “does CTV replace my other performance channels?” is the wrong question
Clark reframes it as a lift question: how does CTV make the rest of the media work harder? The measurable version is whether search volume, click-through rate, and conversions on other channels improve when CTV is in the plan — which is the pattern AdRoll reports seeing across clients. She is direct that CTV is expensive; the justification is the lift it produces elsewhere plus the storytelling it enables that other formats can’t carry.
First-party data is a segmentation problem before it is a targeting problem
Brands are sitting on loyalty data, site visitors, and abandoned carts. Clark’s practical sequence is to organize that data, make it usable, then build segments that reflect genuinely different conversations — a loyalist should not receive the message written for someone who abandoned a cart. Only then is it worth activating across CTV and retargeting. Skipping the organization step produces targeting that looks sophisticated and performs like a broadcast.
The two signals that tell you what to change mid-flight
Real-time reporting creates a temptation to fiddle. Clark’s guardrail is to let campaigns run long enough to show a trend, then read two specific signals. If site visits and conversions are declining, the read is creative fatigue — refresh the message or the call to action. If new traffic isn’t arriving, the audience is too narrow and needs expanding. Budget then shifts toward the creative and audiences that are working.
Attribution when the channel has no click
CTV influences what happens next rather than capturing the last interaction, so Clark builds the picture from two sources: a third-party measurement partner (AdRoll uses Innovid) to validate response timing and creative performance, and cross-channel attribution to show where CTV sits in the overall mix and how it progresses accounts or customers. The requirement she keeps returning to is defining KPIs before the flight, because there is no last click to fall back on afterward.
Proving unified messaging instead of asserting it
Unified messaging makes a brand recognizable and, in Clark’s experience, performs better — but she treats it as testable. Run the unified campaign in a few markets, hold it out of others, and compare incrementality, site traffic, and conversions. That converts a creative principle into a measured result. The nuance is that unification applies to the message, not the execution: each format still gets creative built for its own context.
What a unified stack actually delivers
The end state Clark describes is a single view: first-party audiences activated out of the CRM and CDP, all media measured together, the full customer journey visible in one place, and AI agents running background optimizations faster than a human team could. The payoff is the ability to state plainly which channel combinations drive which business outcomes, and whether the plan is producing incrementality and new customers rather than only retaining existing ones.
FAQ
What changed to make CTV a performance channel rather than a brand channel? Three capabilities matured together: measurement that tracks post-exposure behavior through to conversion, audience targeting granular enough to reach specific accounts and contacts, and real-time optimization during the flight.
Can CTV replace existing performance channels? No. Clark frames CTV as a multiplier — the question is whether adding it lifts search, click-through rate, and conversions across the rest of the media plan, not whether it substitutes for anything.
How should brands use first-party data with CTV? Start by organizing what already exists — loyalty records, site visitors, abandoned carts — into usable segments, then activate those segments across CTV and retargeting so each audience gets a message built for it.
How do you measure CTV when there is no click? Through influence rather than last touch: a third-party measurement partner to validate response and creative performance, plus cross-channel attribution showing how CTV moves accounts and customers along, with KPIs defined before the campaign runs.
What signals should trigger a mid-campaign change? Declining site visits and conversions point to creative fatigue and a refresh; flat new traffic points to an audience that needs expanding. Let the campaign run long enough to show a trend first.
How do you know unified cross-channel messaging is working? Test it. Run the unified campaign in selected markets, withhold it in comparable ones, and measure the difference in incrementality, site traffic, and conversions.
About Alison Clarke
Alison Clark is the Head of GTM Sales Strategy for AdRoll. She developed her career building and scaling advertising solutions across digital and programmatic, with a focus on driving real results for clients. She is the AdRoll customer’s number one champion to inform CTV product priorities that solve your biggest challenges.
Alison Clarke on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-clark-7566265/
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Transcript
[00:01:45] Greg Kihlström: Hi, I’m Greg Kihlström, host of the Agile Brand, and here’s a question for you. What if the biggest screen in the home could be treated less like a billboard and more like a direct response channel? Agility requires moving beyond the set it and forget it mindset of traditional media. It means having the data and the tools to react to performance signals in real time, whether that’s on a social feed or a living room screen. Today, we’re going to talk about unlocking the full potential of connected TV or CTV. We’re gonna explore how marketers can move beyond treating CTV as a simple awareness play and start leveraging it as a true performance channel, driven by first-party data and connected to a full funnel measurement strategy. To help me discuss this topic, I’d like to welcome Alison Clark, GTM strategy lead at AdRoll.
[00:03:17] Greg Kihlström: Allison, welcome to the show.
[00:03:19] Alison Clark: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:03:20] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to talking about this with you. Before we dive in, though, why don’t you give a little background on yourself and your role at AdRoll?
[00:03:27] Alison Clark: Yeah. As you mentioned, I’m the go-to-market strategy lead for CTV here at AdRoll. I’ve been here for about four months, and, you know, I’m really helping the team bring the product to market across, not only CTV but our other emerging channels, and working with marketers to help drive the best performance for their brands and campaigns as possible. I’ve been in the industry for over 20 years, and so excited to be here at AdRoll and talking to you today.
[00:03:52] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, looking forward to it. Yeah, let’s dive in then. And wanna start– we’re gonna talk about a few things here, but I wanna start with what I teed up in the intro and really just this performance shift for CTV. And for a long time, tho- those of us working in, in this field, CTV has been bucketed with brand advertising. And, you know, what are some of the key technological or strategic shifts that are now allowing marketers to not only do, do some of the brand advertising but also treat it as a true performance channel?
[00:04:25] Alison Clark: Yeah, you know, and this didn’t happen overnight. A lot has changed, right? If we think about measurement and targeting and optimization, all of those things have evolved. So from a measurement standpoint, we can now see what a consumer did after they saw a CTV ad. Did they do a branded search? Did they go to the website? Did they convert? So we can track business outcomes from when they saw the ad to the action that they took from there. On top of that, right, we can use audience targeting and be very specific. On the ABM side of our business, we can get all the way down to account and contact level targeting. So now you’re making it really more efficient ’cause you’re only talking to the customers that you really wanna talk about. On the B2C side, right, we can get purchase history, have they visited your website before, all sorts of demographics. So you’re now building these
[00:05:11] Alison Clark: audiences that are gonna drive better conversions because you’re targeting people that are already in market or have interest or are showing signals that they’ll be interested in your product. And then from there, you know, optimizations. We can make optimizations in real time if something’s working, not working, and do that really quickly, so we can make sure that the dollars are being used as efficient and effective, which is driving that performance ’cause we can see what is and isn’t working.
[00:05:35] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. And so for, for those marketing leaders that are looking at their, their channel mix here, a- as I often say on this show, they, they don’t– they never take anything away. They just keep adding more, right? So now we’re talking about performance-driven CTV, where again, you know, more traditionally, thought of as, as brand advertising. But, is it a replacement for other performance channels? Does it serve as a, a unique purpose? Like where, where does it fit in the mix?
[00:06:06] Alison Clark: You know, it’s never replacement. It’s more of how does CTV make the rest of my dollars and rest of my media work even harder? Like, how is it telling that story, getting my brand out there, having that conversation, and then how is it affecting the rest of my media, and how is it improving conversions, improving sales, and how are all these things working together? So it shouldn’t be a replacement, but more looking at it, did it increase search? Did it increase, click-through rate? Here at AdRoll, we see that all the time. You add CTV into the plan, and, and, the rest of your media performs better and more efficient, and that’s what clients are looking for. M- It, it’s expensive, but it’s helping lift the rest of your media and make them work harder, and it’s reaching a new audience in a way and a time that you can now tell the story of your brand and really tell them, you
[00:06:51] Alison Clark: know, “This is my brand. This is what we stand for,” and give them that storytelling that they otherwise can’t get across different channels.
[00:06:58] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. And so, you know, ta- talking about the, the data part of this and, and activation, certainly, y- there’s been a lot of talk about third-party cookies and, you know, I know, I know we didn’t quite have the cookiepocalypse, that, that was, uh-
[00:07:14] Alison Clark: [laughs]
[00:07:14] Greg Kihlström: … forecast, but still there’s b- there’s a lot of focus, and, and rightfully so, on first-party data and I think a good outcome of all of that, even if it didn’t, you know, necessarily come, come to fruition in the, in the way that many were predicting, it forced a lot of companies and, and brands to think about first-party data in, in better and, and more holistic ways, which I think ends up benefiting all of us. Can you walk through, you know, what, what are some of the practical steps that brands can really use this, this first-party data with CTV?
[00:07:48] Alison Clark: Well, brands are sitting on a wealth of data, right? They have who their loyalties are, who visited their websites, who abandoned carts. That is a wealth of data and insights that they have that they can activate against, and so they just need to make sure that it’s usable, right? [laughs] Is it, is it organized, and is it usable? And then you use that across all of your different channels. You build out au- audience segments ’cause you wanna talk to your loyalists different than you wanna talk to a new customer, different than someone who has abandoned their cart. So you use that data to inform your marketing, and you use it across all of your media channels. Yes, you can use that to target them on CTV, help drive them, convert them, and then you can use that for retargeting as well. It’s all really important, and it all plays into it, but the first step is making sure that it’s organized and usable so that you can build out those segments, so you can then use them to efficiently target your media and drive those sales and conversions, that are oh so important.
[00:08:42] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Well, and, and ta- when, when we’re talking about adding CTV to the, the performance, marketing mix, y- when we think digital, o- one of the key benefits of that is to be able to optimize things in, you know, whether it’s real time or near real time.
[00:09:01] Greg Kihlström: CTV has traditionally been a l- a bit less flexible than that, and so mayb- maybe thought, not thought of in the same category as, as some of the other digital options. How, how should brand marketers and, and marketers be thinking about this now, and, and what are the signals that they should be looking for to be able to adapt some of these things, mid-flight?
[00:09:22] Alison Clark: Well, the good news is we no longer have to wait to optimize, right? Like- [laughs]
[00:09:25] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah
[00:09:25] Alison Clark: … we used to have to wait to get the data, and now we’re seeing it in real time, and you can make those decisions. If you see that your website visits and conversions are down, maybe that’s a signal that you need to a creative refresh, right? That you need to tell a new message or you’re having creative fatigue. If you’re seeing that you’re not getting, you know, new traffic to your site, maybe that you need to expand your audience. So now the ability to see results and see what’s happening in real time, you can make those changes. You don’t wanna be constantly optimizing. You don’t wanna be in there all the time, and every little thing be like, “Oh, I need to change this. I need to change that.”
[00:09:58] Greg Kihlström: Right.
[00:09:58] Alison Clark: You do need it to play out over time and see, like, what are the trends, what’s happening, what creative is working, what creative isn’t working, and that does take time. but you can then make these optimizations quicker than you could in the past to make sure that, hey, this creative isn’t working. Maybe I need to change my call to action. Maybe I need to make a tweak with that. But this one’s performing really well, or these audiences are doing well. And so now you can shift budgets and allocate them different based on what, what real-time feedback from customers or who are seeing the ad and what they’re doing, which just you know, overall helps business outcomes, which is what everyone’s trying to drive. [laughs]
[00:10:39] Greg Kihlström: You mentioned earlier that brands investing in, in CTV are seeing overall lift and, through, through their efforts. Certainly, you know, we could probably talk about attribution not only for an entire show, an entire podcast. But, you know, to, to touch on it briefly here, and certainly in my experience, attribution’s always a complex conversation. There’s, there’s lots of, lots of factors here that are even can be specific to a brand. But, you know, with, with a channel that doesn’t have a direct click, attribution certainly offers some, some challenges. So, you know, how, how do you advise brands to measure impact of their CTV spend and do what you described earlier, which is tie it to overall lift of, of some of their, their efforts?
[00:13:06] Alison Clark: Yeah, you know, it’s really CTV influences what happens next. So it’s, you have to have that ability and that insight. We at AdRoll use Innovid as our partner as a third-party measurement to validate everything that’s happening. So we’re seeing what, you know, how long is it taking for someone to respond, what creative is working, and so you start to build a picture. We also have cross-channel attribution of where does CTV fit into the overall mix and how is it, impacting the other channels? So that’s really important, too, of like, CTV, where is it fitting into your mix and how is it helping progress accounts, or clients or customers along the way, depending ABM or B2C side, right? And y- and you can see that, so then you start to realize this is how CTV’s influencing the rest of what I’m doing, and here is what it’s driving, and here, here’s its impact on the business. So it, it is, you know, still there is no last click, right? [laughs] So-
[00:13:59] Greg Kihlström: Right. [laughs] Right
[00:13:59] Alison Clark: … you do have to figure out how you’re gonna measurement and what are your KPIs against it to make sure that, you know, you are seeing what happens after and then you can, you know, adjust your campaigns from there, for the other parts of your media mix that you’re purchasing as well.
[00:14:15] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, and I think the other part to that is just from, from the customer’s perspe- you know, so me- measuring and, and understanding lift and, and influence and, and things like that across channels from a, from an internal perspective, obviously critical and, and helps you understand where to put the dollars and, and focus. But from that customer experience also, it’s critical. We have the opportunity to, to tie things better, together and have a cohesive experience more than, more than ever. How should marketers be thinking about the, you know, how should they be thinking about syncing CTV creative with their, their other touchpoints so that they id- ideally even get even better lift?
[00:14:56] Alison Clark: Yeah, you know, it’s important to have a unified message. You don’t want mixed messages out there. You want a consumer to know what your brand stands for, what your brand is offering, what w- what they can expect from your brand, right? That is really important. And so with a unified messaging, you can really say, like, you have a th- you become more recognizable and easier that this is the brand, this is what they stand for, this is what they’re selling. And you know, what you find is that with unified messaging, it works better. It resonates. Yes, each you have to build your creative for each format that you’re running it, and your CTV creative, it needs to be that sight, sound, motion storytelling. Whereas your out-of-home billboard needs to be that bold, you know, grab attention as someone is out in the wild. [laughs]
[00:15:40] Greg Kihlström: Right. [laughs]
[00:15:40] Alison Clark: You know, your s- your display, you’re trying to get someone to click and convert. So right, each channel needs to have its own, needs to be treated differently but with the same cohesive brand messaging so a customer recognizes the brand consistently, and your message is unified. And you can prove this out by doing AB testing. Run a unified campaign in a couple markets, see how it performs versus in a market that you’re not, and you’ll be able to see the lift. Did it drive incrementality? Did it drive, an increase in site traffic? Did it drive conversions? And then you can really measure the impact of that unified message.
[00:16:14] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Yeah. And so, let’s talk a little bit about what, what we should be looking forward to and, and planning for as well. How do you see CTV advertising platforms integrating more deeply into some of the broader MarTech and, and CRM ecosystems? And, you know, what does a truly univo- unified activation and measurement system kind of, you know, what we’ve been touching on, but, you know, tru- you know, truly unified, what does that look like?
[00:16:45] Alison Clark: You’re gonna be able to see everything in one spot, how all of your media is being measured together, the full customer journey, and how everything is working together. You’ll then be able to activate your first-party audiences from your CRM, your CDP, right, and have that in one spot. You’re gonna have measurement in one spot, and you’re gonna truly be able to see how these campaigns are working. You’re gonna have AI agents doing a lot of things in the background in real time with optimizations and making that quicker and faster than ever. and so you’re just gonna have one whole view of your media campaign and, and really be able to see performance and measurement in one unified view.
[00:17:23] Alison Clark: Which is exciting, right? Like, that’s, that’s what we all want, is to be able to say, like, “This is driving this, and this is driving this business outcome, and here’s how we’re measuring, and here’s how it’s all working together, and this is, and this is what we’re doing,” and show that the media is working, and really helping drive those business outcomes.
[00:17:42] Greg Kihlström: Yeah, I mean, to your point, that’s, that’s what we’ve been wanting for, [laughs] for years, right? At least many, many of us.
[00:18:03] Alison Clark: They’re gonna be able to say like, “Oh, this is working. This isn’t working. When I have these channels together, it’s driving X,” right? “It’s driving this return-
[00:18:10] Alison Clark: … on investment versus when I only have this one channel,” right? We no longer wanna think of CTV as a silo. It y- we want- Everything should be working cross-channel, multi-channel, right? You want your media to work together and flow together, so you’re gonna see how each piece of the puzzle, or each piece of your media plan, I should say, is working together to drive it, and you’ll be able to say, like, “This is working. This isn’t working. I should optimize here. I should take budget from here and put it here.” Or, you know, we have a, a sale coming up or a s- a spike, a, a seasonal spike for us coming up. Okay, how am I gonna adjust those dollars to make sure that I’m making the most of this spike, based on what is performing, what isn’t performing, to go find those customers? what audiences are working, right? W-
[00:18:56] Alison Clark: [laughs] Does this audience work? How, how am I doing at retaining clients? How am I doing at driving incremental clients? Right? cl- businesses are always want, want the next customer as well. It, their loyalty is so important, but the next customer is just as important, too. So you’re gonna be able to see, are you driving incrementality? Are you driving new reach? Are you driving new customers? and what are, what is the value that those new customers are driving also for the business?
[00:19:23] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. exciting stuff. [laughs]
[00:19:25] Alison Clark: Yeah.
[00:19:26] Greg Kihlström: Well, yeah. A- Alison, it’s been great talking with you. Thanks so much for, for sharing everything today. I’ve got two last questions as we, as we wrap up here. First one, if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
[00:19:40] Alison Clark: AI and how it has changed everything and continues to change and evolve, and I think it’s great. I think it’s gonna give marketers a lot more time to do strategy. it’s gonna take a lot of the manual work, a lot of the clicking and dragging and uploading, and AI’s gonna do that for us, so, so it’s gonna be incredible, and the results, and it’s gonna be quicker, and you’re th- like I said, you’re gonna be able to make smarter business decisions quicker. So I think we’ll continue to talk about how AI is transforming, media and media buying.
[00:20:09] Greg Kihlström: Yeah. Love it. And last question for you. What do you do to stay agile in your role, and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
[00:20:16] Alison Clark: I ask a lot of questions, stay very curious. I like to stay close to customers. Ask them what are they thinking about. What is their pain points? What keeps them up at night? and just be curious, right? The more that we talk, and what are they building? What are they working towards? Love finding that out, from those clients and just, you know, always learning, always trying to stay ahead, read as much as possible, and just make sure that I am having valuable conversations.
