The fall of 2017 has been a big season of integrations for data science and media technology provider 4C Insights. First came its link to Mediaocean on the buy-side and shortly thereafter NBCUniversal on the sell-side.
With NBCU making its television inventory available via application programming interfaces, “it was pretty natural for us to come together,” says Anupam Gupta, Chief Product Officer, 4C Insights.
Since its founding in 2011, 4C has brought data science together with workflow to facilitate smoother and more efficient media planning and buying, beginning with digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat and LinkedIn. “We started doing that with social, but of course social is not the be all and end all,” Gupta says in this interview with Beet.TV. “What we’re trying to get to is cross channels. TV of course is a big share of eyeballs.”
4C decided just over a year ago to expand beyond social, choosing linear TV as opposed to video. “In the TV case, some of the brands that we work with are bringing CRM data to linear TV, which hasn’t necessarily been done before.”
In a deal announced this month involving retailer Target, 4C has access to NBCU inventory “that is available to buy, let’s say, over the next couple of months. So therefore in the 4C planner you can plan a campaign and out comes a media schedule that says ‘here is how you want to allocate your budget to reach the goals that you have across the various programs on NBC,’” Gupta explains.
With the Mediaocean combination announced in September, 4C’s platform brings together inventory bought in both the Upfront and scatter markets. “It was very important that we cover both the use cases. We tap into the inventory, build an optimized plan and push that plan back into Mediaocean by integration.”
Gupta says that in the last six months or so, everyone is talking about applying “audience centricity” to linear television “and frankly television more broadly speaking. It’s the same thing that’s been done in digital advertising.”
Calling it the best parts of digital advertising now coming to linear TV, he welcomes the ongoing wave of buyers and sellers pushing the envelope of innovation.
“I think the people who are going to be successful down the road are the ones that are experimenting with these things now, getting the kinks out of the system, learning and then moving along,” Gupta says. “And I think next year you’re going to see a lot of the stuff happening at scale is my prediction.”
This video is part of a series of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Advanced Advertising conference held during NYC TV Week. Beet.TV’s coverage is presented by 4C Insights. Please find additional videos on this page.
