Jeremy Helfand, EVP and Chief Sales Officer, at United Online, discussed the company's new audience-buying platform - Adcurate - which enables audience buying of United Online properties.

AdExchanger.com: How will United Online differentiate from competitors such as Fox Audience Network with the Adcurate™ platform?

JH: Adcurate is intensely focused on audiences – who they are, how best to reach them, and what insights are available from marketing to them. We think advertisers and their agencies need to be more discerning of data sources and inventory in the audience-buying environment. Having direct access to verified demographics on our audiences in addition to owned and operated media makes Adcurate a preferred audience-buying solution.

How do you manage potential conflict between your direct sales efforts and the Adcurate platform?

We have found that channel conflict between direct and indirect sales is sometimes more perception than reality, and often unnecessary. As a publisher, we’ve been addressing channel conflict for years With Adcurate, we are using some of the same approaches that allow a publisher to maximize its value when using both direct and indirect channels, such as prioritization, types of data available, and other tactics. Ultimately, we strive to align our organizational objectives so that everyone wins when all channels do well.

Can you discuss impressions levels currently running through the Adcurate platform? And, will you allow other demand-side platforms to buy from you or are you going direct to the advertiser? Your release notes the feedback from "top advertisers."

We are interested in efficiently and effectively utilizing the data in our audience platform. So, to the extent there are companies, like DSP’s, that can benefit from our audience platform and help extract the value of a “top of the funnel” brand solution, we are willing to talk.

Do you think that in order for publishers to unlock audience data, they will need to build their own platform as United Online has done?

It’s a tall task. We actually created a new company inside of United Online for Adcurate. We believe what we’ve developed allows us to most effectively harness the value and knowledge of our audiences and best make that available to the market. You have to have the scale and reach to make this an appropriate value proposition for advertisers. Most importantly, I think publishers need to better understand how valuable their data can be and protect that value.

By John Ebbert