Online video advertising network, Tremor Media, announced an upgrade to its Acudeo technology yesterday which will offer advertisers “an enhanced targeting solution that uses real-time audience data to better package inventory across its network.” In addition, the company announced a partnership with online data and audience measurement provider, Quantcast. Read the release.
AdExchanger.com discussed the news and its implications with Jason Glickman, CEO of Tremor Media.
AdExchanger.com: How is Tremor Media making it easier for brand marketers – who are accustomed to TV, reach and GRPs – to buy online video advertising?
JG: In order to have a GRP equivalent for online video, you have to be able to buy and deliver based on audience. For the most part, digital is bought and delivered based on impressions, without any accountability for audience delivery. Our targeting solution allows advertisers to plan, buy, and deliver based on audience delivery (just like they do with TV). Also, because of our first-look targeting capability, we are able to do it at scale – which is another requirement for making online video more like TV.
How does the Quantcast partnership work? Do you share revenue with Quantcast for the audience targeting they provide to your clients?
Can’t share contractual info regarding Quantcast. One important thing to note is that Acudeo can integrate with several data sources, so Quantcast is one of several data partners we work with. We’ll be announcing others in the future.
Can you drill down on how the “real-time” offering and “real-time updates” mentioned in the release is different than previous targeting methods?
Prior to launching real-time demographic targeting, we utilized comScore data to identify sites within our network that index high for a particular audience segment, and we would create customized site lists around that audience. With this approach, audience targeting was done at the CAMPAIGN and SITE level. With real-time targeting we are able to identify a user’s audience segment (no personally identifiable info) wherever and whenever they appear on our network because we are able to retrieve segmentation data at the time the ad server request, which allows us to choose the appropriately targeted ad based on the data that comes back. With this approach, audience targeting is done at the USER and IMPRESSION level. This is made possible by the fact that our Acudeo publisher technology is integrated into the player environment. Acudeo calls information from our 3rd party data sources so that in real time our ad server knows which ad to serve to the user.
There are two important benefits of how we’ve enabled real-time targeting thru Acudeo – Precision & Scale:
1) Simultaneous real-time data look-up provides targeting precision.
Acudeo enables us to look up multiple data sources in real time to find the users’ most updated demographic segment info. Simultaneous look up across multiple data sources enhances our user coverage on the network, while real-time audience data ensures that we base our targeting on the most up-to-date audience data.
2) Targeting users on the first impression provides scale.
Tremor Media’s Acudeo flash component is integrated into the publishers’ players, which gives us ability to segment audiences and serve relevant ads on the first impression on the network. Other XML based networks typically identify the user, insert a targeting cookie on the first visit, and re-target the users from the second visit which compromises scale.
By John Ebbert
