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The Quest For A ‘Bloomberg Terminal’ For Digital Advertising

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Ravi Patel

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AdExchanger readers may recall the story of AdFin, which set out to build a Bloomberg terminal-style dashboard for advertising that pipes in log-level data to offer clients a holistic view of their supply chain. AdFin tried to serve a real need for transparent intelligence at a time when brands were losing confidence in the programmatic supply chain, but the company went under after taking part in the now-infamous Association of National Advertisers/Ebiquity study on agency rebate practices.

This week on AdExchanger Talks, AdFin’s former head of product and CEO Ravi Patel recaps the company’s origin story and subsequent flameout. Patel is now at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he continues his efforts to productize data for advertisers. Unlike AdFin, PwC’s media intelligence product focuses on an expansive definition of media that includes not just open programmatic inventory, but also walled gardens and other supply sources.

“The Bloomberg terminal was started to create greater transparency in the financial markets,” he says. “When you achieve that full transparency, or ‘visibility and control’ as I like to call it, you can make better investment decisions. We wanted to provide brands, agencies, and the entire ecosystem a more complete and reliable data set.”

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