Where web publishers once perceived great danger in data leakage they are now embracing multi-publisher platforms where advertisers’ first-party data can be integrated for optimized people-based marketing.
One such platform, MerkleONE, was embraced in late 2015 by News Corp. and other publishers are expected to follow as Merkle builds out its publisher-addressable marketplace solutions, according to the company’s VP and Head of Programmatic, Mac Delaney.
Like others, Delaney sees an overabundance of definitions and too few standards in the programmatic space. There needs to be a focus on leveraging technology in combination with data to buy audience-based media more efficiently.
“It is a specialized function that has to become the actual standard for how we think about marketing,” says Delaney. “As we operate media buys in the media services model, inventory becomes less about the placement and far more about the person.”
Delaney recalls as recently as five years ago “publishers would tell you some of their greatest fear, if not their greatest, was data leakage. Here we are five years later and with a publisher-addressable marketplace model this that is actually going to bring highly valuable data into a safe harbor environment.”
He credits Facebook and Google with developing data services that inspired platforms like MerkleONE.
“People-based marketing has to actually tip based on the onboarding and the joining of publishers in what Facebook and Google started,” Delaney says. “We want to be at the forefront of the trend.”
This video part of a series about the state of programmatic advertising sponsored by OpenX. Please find other videos from the series here.
