SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – As cookies crumble, could machine learning put the pieces back together for advertisers?
That’s what digital ad marketplace TripleLift thinks, as it announces its planned acquisition of 1plusX, a Switzerland-based company that helps enrich first-party datasets with predictive modelling in a privacy-compliant way.
In this video interview with Beet.TV at Beet Retreat, 1plusX’s Americas VP Neil Smith explains why that is important, and why being based in Europe means it has stolen a march.
European lead
“Europe is several years ahead of the US in that regard because of GDPR and the preparations that media companies have had to do there,” Smith says.
“In the US, I think big media companies are now really investing in this space.”
The company is 58-strong and was founded by two ex-Google data scientists.
It will power what TripleLift calls its Media+Data strategy.
Putting back the pieces
He identifies three areas media companies are trying to solve:
- Data blind spots – inventory they can’t connect to audiences.
- Ongoing reduction in identity signals from platform operators.
- Stitching together third-party audience data.
“The coming wave is data collaboration,” Smith says.
“All of the potential data collaboration partners that publishers are being asked to work with feels like the early days of programmatic again, where there’s just a significant amount of operational effort to make those happen.”
First-party time
Use of first-party data – that which brands, media owners or others gather about their own audiences, with permission – has become the primary concern in ad land, as cookies and other digital identifiers are revoked on privacy grounds.
The advertising industry still wants to be able to join up marketer and media-owner audience data sets to best effect, but a new breed of company is resorting to alternative tactics, like modelling, to do it in a privacy-compliant manner.
But Smith says it is not just advertisers who can benefit from the approach.
Modelling for media
“Increasingly important is taking that same understanding of audience and looking at how that impacts a content business,” he says.
“Especially as US media companies have gone direct to consumers, understanding how to take both their content and subscription services to consumers on their own platform takes a deeper understanding of audience as well.”
1plusX customers include BBC, New York Times, Diageo and Williams-Sonoma.
You are watching coverage from Beet Retreat San Juan 2022, presented by AppScience, Infillion, MadHive, SpringServe, Univision & VideoAmp. For more videos, please visit this page.
