Cross Pixel Media announced Data Desk which the company says, “is unique because it is the only audience marketplace to present audience data on a brand by brand basis, offering the advertiser full transparency into the source and brand behind the audience.” Read the release.
CEO Alan Pearlstein discussed Data Desk and some of its details.
AdExchanger.com: How does Data Desk differentiate from other intent data offerings? Is this just a pool of retargeting pixels collected by Cross Pixel Media, for example?
AP: Cross Pixel is the only intent data marketplace that operates transparently. Our advertisers know the specific sources of the data they are targeting in their campaigns. The other data marketplaces create intent “buckets” that include a wide range of audiences from a variety of unknown sources. Some of those audiences may be appropriate for the advertiser and some not. The data buyers really have no idea what they are buying. Data Desk enables the advertiser to understand the data they are buying and plan more effective audience campaigns through transparency and information. The media side of the audience buying equation is demanding and moving towards transparency and now, with Data Desk from Cross Pixel, audience sources will be transparent also.
We just finished a campaign for a leading camera manufacturer that was eager to reach “bottom of the funnel” camera shoppers. Data Desk enabled the camera company to target an audience of active camera shoppers from sites such as ritzcamera.com, bandhphotovideo.com, focuscamera.com and other electronics web sites. The camera company used Data Desk to select the audiences from retailers that carried their products, and exclude audiences from retailers that didn’t carry their products, to ensure that their advertising was influencing a consumer that would have an opportunity to buy their cameras. This had a tremendous impact on the results of the campaign. If the advertiser was forced to target a “bucket” of “in market” camera shoppers, with no insight into the audience, they would have been paying to reach a lot of people that they didn’t want to reach.
Knowing the source of the data and the brand behind the data gives advertisers a huge advantage when targeting because the brand carries so much information about the audience you are targeting.
For advertisers, how do you suggest they measure if the data works? Do you allow for testing?
Data Desk is about performance advertising and our platform allows our advertisers to track on a granular basis, audience by audience. We think performance measurement is critical and we encourage all of our advertisers to track all of their marketing efforts through Data Desk, whether the goal is sales or brand awareness. We also offer a very generous out clause so that our advertiser’s can feel comfortable working with Data Desk and starting a test campaign with limited risk.
By John Ebbert
