RSS FeedArchive for the ‘Data’ Category

IP Targeting May Replace The Cookie, Says AcquireWeb

acquirewebAcquireWeb is not a new, bootstrapped startup – but it could be labeled an evolved one with a new home in display advertising.

CEO Al Gadbut describes his 27-person company, launched in 2001, as “a marketing data technology company focusing on customer identity integration within the digital space.” When the Foster City, California-based company started out, it was primarily focused on helping clients with database marketing, building out more robust email lists and bringing offline data online, or vice versa.

Today, AcquireWeb helps with web analytics, site optimization and targeting for display advertising, and has enjoyed a 300% increase in its online business in the past year, according to Gadbut.

He adds that AcquireWeb is ready if the cookie goes away in display, too.

AdExchanger spoke to Gadbut recently about his company, its products and industry trends.

AdExchanger: What problem is it that AcquireWeb is solving?

AL GADBUT: In a broad sense, we help clients begin to understand where and who their customers are across their different databases. We have an expertise in identifying who might be a customer in one database, but also linking that to another customer in another one of their databases, with an emphasis on using digitally specific data. We help make those linkages. By virtue of having that expertise, it also allows us to help them move their offline data into an online environment for digital display targeting or even website optimization.

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Mozilla’s 'Underblocking' Cookie Issues; FTC Commissioner Supports Self-Regulation Among Advertisers

PrivacyMozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, must fix three areas within its third-party-cookie-blocking patch before it can be rolled out to users, according to Stanford graduate student Jonathan Mayer, who developed the patch.

The problematic areas involve “underblocking,” i.e. inadvertently allowing unwanted tracking cookies past Firefox’s cookie blocking patch, Mayer explained in a blog post today. “Cookie policies are inherently imprecise,” Mayer observed. “Some unwanted tracking cookies might slip through, compromising user privacy (underblocking). And some non-tracking cookies might get blocked, breaking the web experience (overblocking). The challenge in designing a cookie policy is calibrating the tradeoff between underblocking and overblocking.”

Overblocking cookies has not been a problem for the patch, according to Mayer.  Last week, Mozilla engineers requested at least six more weeks to measure the cookie-blocking patch’s performance and analyze its impact. As part of the testing, three areas that are being examined are as follows:

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Mozilla Delays Blocking Third-Party Cookies

firefoxMozilla has postponed activating the third-party blocking feature on its latest browser, Firefox 22, according to an update on its developer page.  The blocking feature has been postponed “to collect data on the effect of blocking some third-party cookies,” according to the blog post.

A Mozilla spokesperson provided the following statement: "Mozilla has been actively gathering input from users and stakeholders across the digital media ecosystem on the potential impact of the third-party cookie patch. We are ensuring proper measurement of its actual effects and will hold it in the Aurora testing build for at least one more six-week release cycle to allow for that."

Sid Stamm, lead privacy engineer at Mozilla, shed more light on the topic, noting in a discussion forum that measuring the impact of blocking third-party cookies on Firefox’s browser, is “not as simple as we originally thought” since there is “some data structure to do and potentially [performance] concerns too.”

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As Sellers Take Their Data More Seriously, BlueKai Expanding Publisher Push

Omar Tawakol, CEO, BlueKaiLast month, BlueKai signed a deal to build a data management platform for MLB Advanced Media, the interactive business division of Major League Baseball, designed to connect the company's 30 team websites for advertisers.

MLBAM was the fifth publisher BlueKai has added to its client list this year. CEO Omar Tawakol tells AdExchanger that while the company has always worked with publishers, he's now seeing more activity from the sell side. And that has him thinking about the differing needs of sellers and buyers, though there is a plenty of intersection in the tools that both sides require to understand and package audience data.

"Publishers obviously use data differently than agencies," Tawakol says. "If you think about how they viewed the digital ad landscape just two years ago, publishers saw data management in a very defensive manner. The fear was that advertisers are armed with all this audience data that's allowing them to buy inventory more cheaply. But they've gotten more strategic about it and are not taking the defensive crouch any more."

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RTB 'Hockey Stick' Has DG's Peer39 Ready For 50% Growth By Q3

alexIt’s been over a year since ad tech and video ad distribution company DG acquired semantic data provider Peer39 and folded it into DG’s MediaMind online division. During that time, Peer39-er Alex White has had a front row seat to his company’s integration into DG with his new role as GM of DG’s Data and Trading operations.

White says that although being in a larger company can sometimes make it harder to get things done, the new resources have provided significant benefit to Peer39's business. According to White, DG has quietly built infrastructure support that will allow it “to scale at the speed of RTB,” which might have otherwise become prohibitive for an independent Peer39.

AdExchanger spoke to White last week about Peer39 and the use of his company’s data in digital advertising.

AdExchanger:   Looking at the Peer39 products in particular, is it all about integrating your semantic technology into exchanges, or are there other opportunities?

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Placements Are Dead, Long Live Audience Says Krux's Chavez

kruxWith Krux’s initial conception of its publisher data management platform (DMP) nearly complete, CEO Tom Chavez is thinking about what’s next for his 2.5-year-old company.  Chavez says, “We had a broad idea of all the pieces that we wanted to conquer, and within the last year, those puzzle pieces have come together. It spans not just data protection where we started, but more importantly into management – the segmentation and authoring of audience segments as well as tag management.”

From Chavez’s perspective, and considering what he says he sees from publishing clients, the DMP is hitting its stride.

AdExchanger spoke to Chavez about his company, industry trends and what’s next.

AdExchanger: So do you call yourselves a DMP right now?

TOM CHAVEZ: It’s a funny thing. Two years ago, I resisted the moniker. It wasn’t clear what DMP meant. In theory, it could apply to about 25,000 different companies on the planet. But now, as it has taken shape in our space, people understand that data equals data about consumers: what they want, where they’re headed, what they like, and what they’re doing on the web.

I’ve accepted the term. I’m still not convinced that it’s the most apt descriptor. At this point, it‘s the term that fires off the right patch of neurons for everybody.

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B2B Audience Targeting Works On Facebook, Says Bizo's Russ Glass

bizoIn the past few years, Bizo CEO Russ Glass says that marketers have gotten smarter about using online data for targeting – and that’s a good thing, since his company’s success revolves around B2B audience segments gleaned from data partnerships with publishers. It’s less about “evangelizing the value of data,” says Glass, as the marketer brings specific desired outcomes that they want to effect with data’s help.

AdExchanger spoke to Glass last week about data trends and Bizo's evolution.

AdExchanger: How do you make the case for third-party data?  And do you believe first-party is key to a marketer’s success in online ads?

RUSS GLASS: These labels are other people's labels. Third-party data sometimes is someone else's first-party data, right? The whole nomenclature is not quite right. I would much rather see it be high-quality data versus low-quality data.

I'll give you our use case. It would correlate with any data company using registration data and other very high-quality sources of first-party data that create this data set. In fact, I would say that our data is going to be of higher quality than most first-party data sets for the same reason that the Experians and Acxioms of the world exist: we spend time and effort keeping data up-to-date and relevant. It's impossible for any first party to have that same level of effort in their own data, so they tend to outsource it.

The marketer needs to think about quality instead of whether it’s first-, second- or third-party data.

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Neustar's AdAdvisor Unlocking Transaction Data For Online Audiences

neustarWith a PhD. in econometrics and an analytics and statistical background on the AdAdvisor side of the Neustar “house,” VP of Research & Analytics Ken Inman has good reason to be laser-focused on building consumer predictive models. Inman oversees the development of targeted marketing applications, using data and information to help address challenges in customer relationship management (CRM). In other words, he’s trying to understand what motivates people to buy.

Inman says, “Predictive modeling and trying to figure out a target audience for whatever service or offering you provide – that’s what my world is about.”

Last week, Neustar announced a new analytics tool called “Campaign Conversion Insights (CCI),” which the company describes as a “service that allows marketers to measure the performance of digital ad campaigns based on conversion, leads and sales.” Read it.

AdExchanger spoke to Inman last week about the new product, Neustar AdAvidsor and industry trends.

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High On The Facebook Hog, Datalogix Raises $25M

roza-datalogixNo company has seized the Facebook data opportunity as well as Datalogix. Facebook and Datalogix have worked together since 2011, when they began linking Facebook ad impressions to in-store purchases. Later, Facebook tapped Datalogix as the first partner in its Custom Audiences CRM and offline data-matching program. Acxiom, Epsilon and BlueKai were later added.

Datalogix has grown from 150 to 250 staffers in the last year, partly on the strength of its work with Facebook, opening offices in Detroit, San Francisco and London.

This morning Datalogix announced a $25 million Series B equity round, led by Institutional Venture Partners. The money will be used for product development and further geographic expansion.

CEO Eric Roza spoke with AdExchanger.

AdExchanger: How did your relationship with Facebook begin?   

ERIC ROZA: Sheryl Sandberg and I first discussed the possibility of working together three and a half years ago. I was introduced by Sheryl to Brad Smallwood, the head of measurement and analytics.

How did the first year of offline conversion tracking go?   

Intense…a lot of groundbreaking analytical work. No one has ever measured media at this scale. We're going to take the majority of impressions that get served and measure those back to in-store purchasing.

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The Cookie Has Five Years Left Says Merkle's Paul Cimino

briligSince being acquired in September 2012, Paul Cimino’s Brilig Data Exchange serves not only its own customer base but also that of its new owner, Merkle, and all of the first- and third-party data it looks to leverage on behalf of its Merkle clients across marketing campaigns.

In an ongoing effort to understand how data is applied in digital advertising, we asked Cimino, VP/GM Brilig Digital Data Solutions at Merkle, about  industry trends and how the data exchange works.

AdExchanger: The Brilig Data Exchange is positioned as a cooperative. How does that cooperation manifest itself?

PAUL CIMINO: There are a couple of key ways. One is that all of the sellers of Brilig agree to be part of a composite market or a segment-building market. And, we have tools that allow buyers to construct an audience from a variety of sources.

Today, we're serving networks, agency trading desks and arbitrage agents connected to DSPs. And we partner with the DSPs as channel partners.

Secondly, we service Merkle as its digital data platform.

So, how does one build a segment?

There are three use cases to build what we call a composite or custom segment.

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