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

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

SHARE:

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.”

Last year, about 20% of BlueKai’s clients were publishers. This year, that number is 30%.

A company like MLBAM must be able to say more to an advertiser than that it attracts sports fans or even fans of the Yankees or the Angels. Advertisers are interested in segments of sports fans who are planning on a trip to Hawaii. They want to find sports fans who aren’t just interested in cars but have expressed an interest in a Mercedes or a Nissan, and happen to follow the Yankees. But even that kind of information is not detailed enough.

“They want all that, and they want to know if  this is someone who tends to spend higher than others in those given segments,” Tawakol says. “If publishers can present that to an advertiser, it puts more control in their hands. And it ultimately allows them to drive up yields. He who can leverage the arbitrage value of the data first is going to get a bigger piece of the pie.”

These days, much of MLBAM’s business comes from mobile through its subscription-based At Bat app for Apple’s iPhone and Google Android. For the past two years, the company has been working to expand both its tiered subscription products and match those with aggressive ad support on its video inventory. The company works with Auditude on its streaming video ads. Auditude hopes to put BlueKai to work on making those placements more valuable as well.

“BlueKai’s advanced data management platform will allow us to distribute relevant ads to our audience while delivering higher engagement and brand recall,” Noah Garden, EVP, Revenue of MLBAM, said in an email to AdExchanger.

Although BlueKai is mostly known for cookie-based data products, Tawakol also says the partnership with MLBAM will showcase that it doesn’t need cookies to make its system effective.

“We do have a solution that allows for the capture without data and works on iPhone and Android,” Tawakol says.

So far, MLBAM and BlueKai are not working on mobile together, though there is the possibility of doing so down the road, Tawakol says. In addition to reflecting the increased work from publishers, there is a growing interest in clients generally in finding a way to connect audiences from the PC to smartphone to tablet.

“Most clients choose a PC- or a mobile-focused DMP separately, but that’s changing too,” Tawakol says. “More and more of our business covers all channels and screens. It’s something that will be more a part of our business, as part of a natural, industry-wide evolution that’s taking place.”

Must Read

Google’s Proposed Fix To Its Ad Tech Monopoly Is At Odds With The DOJ’s Remedies

Late Friday evening, Google filed its proposed remedies to its ad tech monopoly to District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema, and unsurprisingly, they’re rather mild – and very different from what the Department of Justice is looking for.

Lance Armstrong

Exclusive: Lance Armstrong’s VC Firm Invests In AI-Powered Health Care Ad Tech Startup BranchLab

BranchLab, an AI startup for healthcare marketers, just added a new high-profile backer: Lance Armstrong’s Next Ventures, which invests in health and wellness startups.

Comic: Gamechanger (Google lost the DOJ's search antitrust case)

Judge Mehta’s Remedies For Google’s Search Monopoly Won’t Cure What Ails Publishers

Remedies in the federal search antitrust case against Google landed with a thud earlier this week. Most publishers and ad industry pundits were sorely disappointed.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

Conversion APIs Are Becoming Table Stakes – But Not All Brands Have Bought In

CAPI integrations have moved from a nice-to-have to a necessity for anyone operating within walled garden environments. Now they’re laying the groundwork for an outcomes-driven ad ecosystem.

Peppa Pig

The Media And Retail Deals Behind The Peppa Pig Franchise Expansion

Peppa Pig is everywhere. Whether or not you have children, you likely know the little girl pig from the kid’s cartoon show. But the Peppa media franchise is just getting started.

How A For-Profit College Is Using CTV Ads To Win Over New Students

The American College of Education partnered with performance TV company MNTN to better reach its audience of adults seeking higher education.