Collaboration between broadcasters and retailers has moved from conference-panel theory to commercial reality. Facing the targeting precision and closed-loop measurement of YouTube, Meta and, most recently, the Amazon-Roku tie-up that unlocks 80 million authenticated CTV households, broadcasters are racing to enrich their inventory with commerce data. 

Retailers, in turn, want to extend their audiences beyond owned channels. The result is a wave of alliances: Channel 4’s data-clean-room partnership with Nectar360, ITV’s Matchmaker programme with Tesco Media & Insight, TF1’s addressable TV work with Intermarché via Infinity Advertising, and the new SMB-focused marketplace announced by Comcast Advertising, Sky, ITV and Channel 4 at Cannes 2025.

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Four Integration Hurdles—and How a Holistic CDP Solves Them

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Building Blocks for Successful Alliances

Collaboration collapses without three foundations:

1. Consistent first-party data capture—forced log-ins (Channel 4 pioneered this a decade ago) and loyalty programmes create the raw material.
   
   
2. Composable data storage—a CDP layer that models diverse schemas yet enforces common keys.
   
   
3. Neutral clean-room infrastructure—so each side can co-segment and activate without sharing raw rows.
   
   

mediarithmics embeds all three, allowing broadcasters to expose a CTV impression table and a retailer expose a basket-level table, then computes reach, frequency and incremental sales inside its secure enclave.

AI Is the Next Accelerator

AI is transforming audience building—from manual setups to smarter, assistive tools. Imagine typing “health-conscious mums who bought plant-based yoghurt twice this quarter” and instantly receiving a scored segment across CTV and retail IDs. Integrated machine learning models then generate look-alike and socio-demo segments, which feed dynamic creative and content recommendations on broadcaster apps. This automation lets ad-ops teams shift focus from spreadsheets to strategic planning.

Market Nuances Demand Flexible Architecture

UK broadcasters lean on second-party data to boost scale, whereas French players invest more heavily in addressable set-top integrations. mediarithmics supports both: open-internet ID expansion for UK reach and privacy-preserving household mapping for France’s STB ecosystem. This flexibility ensures that whether a campaign targets Nectar shoppers on All 4 or Intermarché households on TF1, the same CDP spine orchestrates the journey.

Action Plan for 2025

1. Audit data readiness across CTV and retail stacks—harmonise consent flags and ID namespaces.
   
   
2. Deploy a collaboration-ready CDP that natively integrates a clean room and identity graph.
   
   
3. Standardise KPIs (reach, ROAS, incrementality) at the log level to satisfy both CFOs and CMOs.
   
   
4. Layer AI-driven segment discovery on top of shared data to unlock speed and scale.
   
   

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