Mike Welch wasn’t exactly a native to programmatic.
He’s a longtime Xandr sales and strategy leader and the EVP and GM of the business under Microsoft. But he took on AppNexus as an outsider, since he was head of strategy of the AT&T AdWorks group when the telco acquired AppNexus.
Since then, he’s only getting deeper into the programmatic data sphere. On Tuesday, Welch became the new CEO of Captify, a third-party data company built on web search info.
“My job now is to step in at this stage of the lifecycle and make a step-change leap in terms of growth,” he said. “Sometimes it takes an outsider to do that.”
Captify packages audiences and contextual targeting data by licensing search info from site publishers. While Captify isn’t a search engine – most publishers or merchants license Google Search – the site operator still sees the data when visitors conduct a search on their page (some sites have their own query bar). That data is sold to Captify, similar to how LiveRamp might license audience and identity data from the same publishers.
Third-party data companies have a bad rap lately, especially in Europe – and Captify is founded and headquartered in London. But to be a successful programmatic player requires serious adaption skills, Welch said.
Captify started as a primarily managed service and has pivoted to become a part of the programmatic curated data marketplace, he said. The next phase, without third-party cookies, will make Captify more of a contextual targeting specialist rather than a search-based retargeter.
Third-party cookies have been around for programmatic lifespan, and the multiple delays by Google Chrome in phasing out cookies has made many third-party data companies and programmatic tech complacent that the can will be kicked down the road forever.
“It’s been off-again, on-again for years, but it seems clear to me that it’s going to happen this time,” he said.
Why now?
The main reason is that, at first, Google consistently signaled to advertisers and the ecosystem that the tech and policies weren’t ready and would be delayed. And then they were delayed.
But lately, Welch said Google has begun to signal it is ready to deprecate third-party cookies. Google Ads released its own Privacy Sandbox findings and is advocating more forcefully for adoption, he said, while Chrome is expanding the Sandbox APIs to a legit pool of testable users.
Ad tech that’s based on first-party data has the buzzy attention right now. Captify isn’t a data clean room solution, he noted. It isn’t a retail media network.
But there are ways for publishers to earn money and advertisers to sharpen their campaigns that don’t create packages of personally identifiable web users, Welch said. “And search intent is the most valuable data there is.”
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