Iridio has enhanced its Connected TV (CTV) digital solution, debuting a custom-built AI-powered channel identification engine that brings transparency, accuracy and performance to streaming media. RRD’s proprietary technology maps billions of fragmented bid signals to more than 200 validated channels and 88 contextual genres, enabling genre or channel identification for up to 94% of impressions served. The solution also rejects inefficient bids, reduces fraud and improves placement quality without sacrificing scale.

As CTV ad spend continues to increase, the industry has reached a tipping point. Despite the platform’s growth, a majority of marketers remain plagued by a lack of transparency, frequently struggling to justify their investments without clear insight into where their ads are actually running.

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Traditional programmatic CTV often obscures specific show and channel data. Iridio’s technology utilizes a sophisticated three-step content classification pipeline – combining multiple LLM passes together with manually-curated verification rules – to ingest and normalize app store information, network signals and content data, transforming them into standardized, high-confidence reporting for advertisers.

Precision engineering and AI logic

At the core of Iridio’s CTV offering is its Channel Identification. By processing over 44 billion CTV bid stream signals per day, Iridio’s AI confidently labels impressions with high accuracy. This precision allows Iridio to offer a level of granular detail usually reserved for higher-cost direct deals, but with the scale of the open web.

Central to Iridio’s AI is its contextual solution, which is built in-house and fully customizable. It allows clients to define specific focus genres to match brand identity. Iridio combines granular customization with non-skippable, quality inventory across all major streaming devices and apps culminating in delivery of precision targeting at the scale of 130 million households.

Unlike the industry standard to charge a premium for contextual layers, Iridio provides this capability at no additional cost, allowing brands to prioritize 88 proprietary genres and 1,300 interest categories to drive deeper viewer relevance and reduce ad fatigue. Ultimately, Iridio’s optimization capabilities and contextual targeting solution provide that premium relevance at programmatic scale and cost.

Protecting value over volume

Iridio’s technology prioritizes value over volume, effectively rejecting inefficient bids that fail to meet strict verification standards. Iridio ensures that every impression is served alongside premium, verified inventory by avoiding irregular or unverified sellers.

“For too long, CTV has been a black box for brands, where they pay premium prices for inventory without knowing exactly what content their ads are supporting,” said Paul Mandeville, Iridio Chief Product Officer. “By applying our proven technologies to solve the channel identification crisis, we’re providing data along with the certainty that marketers demand. We’re moving beyond mere impressions to true contextual intelligence, allowing our clients to see the full picture of their media buy while maintaining the ability to customize reach.”

The roadmap to sales lift

While current reporting provides unprecedented visibility into genre and app-level performance, Iridio’s engineering roadmap is focused on new tailored CTV tiers. A tiered approach allows advertisers to select the level of precision that best fits their objectives, ranging from geo-based targeting designed to maximize verified reach across 130 million households to tiers that run exclusively against inventory that’s 100% identifiable by channel and genre. By matching specific inventory priorities and optimizations to unique brand identities, Iridio ensures that every campaign – whether focused on broad expansion or surgical contextual placement – is built on a foundation of verified, high-quality content.