SAN JUAN, PR — Skydeo has launched a new audience segment management platform designed to make data selection more intuitive and efficient, according to Mike Ford, CEO of the predictive audience data and insights platform.
The company’s release of SAM, the Skydeo Audience Manager tool, is intended “to help our brands and agencies find the segments that they need a lot faster, a lot easier, and in a lot more fun way,” Ford said in an interview with Beet.TV at the Beet Retreat San Juan.
Consumer-inspired interface
The new tool addresses “pain points” with traditional data management platforms, incorporating design principles from ecommerce sites to create a more engaging user experience, Ford said.
“Most of the platforms that you see out there today… they’re kind of like a spreadsheet in the sky, if you will… [they’re] clunky, slow,” Ford said. “Most of our buyers, people hands on keyboards, they’re in their mid to late twenties. They’re used to mobile apps, they are used to ecommerce shopping. And so we basically put an Amazon front end on the data marketplace.”
This approach has resulted in a “very graphical, very easy to filter, super fast searching” interface that aims to improve workflow efficiency for media buyers.
Comprehensive data partnerships
While the platform launched with Skydeo’s own extensive audience datasets, it also includes integrations with other major data providers to meet agency and brand requirements.
“We started with the Skydeo audience dataset because it was near and dear to our hearts, and so that’s about 30,000 segments that people can activate across, whether it’s auto or condition graph, which is our health and wellness segments or accounts graph, which is our B2B segments for targeting by company,” Ford said.
He noted that the company has also established partnerships with other major data providers like Epsilon to ensure compatibility with agency requirements.
Cross-platform activation
A key differentiator for the SAM platform is its ability to deploy audience segments across multiple channels simultaneously, Ford noted.
“What we’re powering is the ability to push one audience across programmatic, paid social, CTV in a couple clicks,” Ford explained. “That’s kind of a new way of operating without having to bring in a bunch of different agencies or different teams to do that.”
Looking ahead, Ford identified “agentic AI” as an exciting area of development Skydeo intends to get out in front of. He’s already sanguine about AGI tools potentially allowing for even more streamlined audience activation. “I want to target BMW users in Trade Desk and TikTok — and the system will do it for you,” he said, describing his vision for future enhancements. “That’s just super efficient, but people need to learn the system first and get set up.”
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