George, with nearly 20 years in digital video and over a decade in CTV, what key moments shaped your journey, and what brought you to lead the CTV effort at AdRoll?
Over the past two decades, I’ve been fortunate to work at the forefront of CTV innovation, from building ad ops at Roku and leading product strategy at iSpot.tv, to navigating the evolution of streaming at platforms like YouTube and Crackle. Each role helped me understand not just the technology behind CTV, but the viewer experience and business dynamics that drive it. What brought me to AdRoll was the opportunity to take that expertise and apply it in a full-funnel, cross-channel context—something the industry has long needed. At AdRoll, I saw a chance to build something that makes CTV both more accessible and more accountable to performance. I’ll admit, a few years ago, CTV wasn’t going to be the right solution for most performance advertisers. Now, audiences, measurement, targeting, and reach have evolved to the point that performance CTV is a real thing, and I’m excited to build solutions that prove that.
CTV ad spend continues to grow, yet many brands are still hesitant to fully embrace it. Why do you think marketers are still cautious about fully investing in it, despite growing ad spend?
Marketers are still calibrating their expectations around CTV. It’s a relatively new channel compared to display or social, and for many, the learning curve feels steep, especially when it comes to cost, creative production, and measurement. There’s also been a historical disconnect: CTV was seen as a branding tool, not a performance driver. At AdRoll, we’re helping brands reframe that narrative by showing that CTV can drive measurable impact across the funnel. The key is making it feel as performance-ready and integrated as any other digital channel.
How is the CTV solution you’re leading at AdRoll tackling key challenges like targeting, measurement, and cross-channel integration?
We’ve designed our CTV solution to be full-funnel and fully connected from the start. On the targeting side, we partner with Experian to enable hyper-relevant audience selection using over 200 million CTV IDs and over 2,000 syndicated segments. For measurement, we partner with Cint to provide real-time brand lift insights and upper-funnel impact analysis, helping brands understand how CTV contributes to awareness and perception. AdRoll makes CTV a natural extension of your marketing mix, syncing seamlessly with display, social, and email campaigns through one dashboard and a unified identity graph.
How are you leveraging AI and identity graphs at AdRoll to advance targeting and personalization in CTV?
AdRoll’s BidIQ engine powers real-time optimization across all channels, including CTV. While CTV doesn’t support click-based optimization like display, BidIQ adjusts bids and pacing based on exposure-to-conversion patterns and cross-device behavior. Meanwhile, our integration with Experian’s digital identity graph helps unify household-level data, so we can deliver personalized creative to the right audiences, whether it’s based on CRM lists, behavioral signals, or geography. It’s AI and identity working together to make personalization more meaningful without sacrificing privacy.
Why do you believe CTV deserves to be seen—and used—as a full-funnel performance channel, not just a top-of-funnel tactic?
CTV is no longer just about awareness. With advances in targeting, creative formats, and attribution, brands can now use CTV to guide consumers from first exposure all the way to conversion. We’ve seen it firsthand—brands that combine CTV with synced display or email ads see stronger ROI and faster purchase cycles. When you consider that 70% of viewers are on a second device while watching CTV, it becomes a performance opportunity hiding in plain sight.
In your view, how does CTV offer a privacy-safe yet effective alternative to channels like social media?
CTV inherently operates in a cookie-free environment, relying instead on authenticated logins, identity graphs, and opt-in data from trusted providers. That makes it both privacy-safe and identity-rich—ideal for marketers navigating today’s regulatory shifts. Compared to social, where targeting can be opaque and subject to frequent algorithm changes, CTV offers transparency, control, and stability. It’s why so many brands are starting to prioritize CTV in their omnichannel mix.
How are you helping brands at AdRoll use first-party data to retarget across CTV and digital for a unified customer experience?
First-party data is central to how we help brands unify the customer journey. With AdRoll, marketers can upload CRM lists, segment audiences based on purchase behavior or funnel stage, and deliver consistent messaging across CTV, display, and email. If someone sees a CTV ad, we can follow up with a personalized offer via web or mobile, using our cross-identity graph to ensure the message feels connected, not repetitive. It’s retargeting with purpose.
How are you approaching measurement and cross-channel attribution at AdRoll to prove the real impact of CTV campaigns?
We provide advertisers with performance dashboards that link CTV exposure to downstream behaviors like site visits and purchases. Our cross-channel attribution dashboard highlights which channels contributed most to conversions and how CTV fits into that path. We recently had a client who believed only the most “premium” publishers could drive attributable engagement. However, we proved how their customers could be influenced by ads running in streaming-native and cost-effective placements, which enabled them to maximize performance without breaking the bank. By combining CTV exposure data with CRM activity and third-party analytics, we help brands measure both upper-funnel impact, like brand lift, and bottom-funnel outcomes, like ROAS.
How do you see B2C marketers successfully unifying their media mix to fully integrate CTV into their performance strategy?
The most successful marketers treat CTV as an integral part of their media plan, not a standalone channel. They start by aligning creative and messaging across touchpoints, then use CTV to kick off a sequence that continues on mobile, email, or display. AdRoll helps facilitate this through unified campaign management and targeting tools, so marketers can run synchronized campaigns that drive awareness, consideration, and conversion in lockstep.
What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to marketers looking to future-proof their advertising strategy in an increasingly fragmented, privacy-first media environment?
Even if your objective is bottom funnel performance, don’t get stuck thinking a full funnel approach isn’t right for your brand. The same strategy that the biggest brands in the world employ is available to you, and it’s more cost-effective and easier to manage than ever. Invest in channels and partners that prioritize identity resolution and flexibility. The brands that will win in the long term are those that can connect the dots across screens without relying on third-party cookies and do so in a way that respects consumer privacy. CTV is one of the few channels that strikes this balance. Combine it with first-party data, cross-channel reach, and intelligent optimization, and you’ll be ready for whatever comes next.
A quote or advice from the author
“AdRoll makes it easy to connect CTV with the other ads you’re running, so it all works together through a single platform. Customers don’t experience ads in silos, so your campaigns shouldn’t run in silos either. That’s why we’ve built our CTV solution to be cross-channel by design.”
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George Castrissiades, General Manager of
CTV at AdRoll
George Castrissiades is the general manager of connected TV (CTV) at AdRoll, where he leads the company’s strategy to establish and scale CTV as a key programmatic channel. With over a decade of experience in CTV and a background spanning product, operations, and measurement, Castrissiades has held leadership roles at iSpot.tv, YouTube, Roku, and Innovid. He is a frequent speaker at major industry events and a contributor to CTV-focused thought leadership.
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