Blockgraph – owned by Comcast NBCUniversal, Charter Communications, Inc. and ViacomCBS – is partnering with TransUnion, the consumer data company which has been making in-roads as an ad data provider.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Matt Spiegel, EVP Marketing Solutions and Head of Media at TransUnion, explains how the arrangement will work.
According to the pair’s announcement:
“Blockgraph will leverage TransUnion’s growing portfolio of identity and data-driven audience solutions, including privacy-focused identity, data modeling, audience creation and activation solutions.
“Blockgraph also will utilize data marketplace applications through TransUnion’s recent acquisition of Tru Optik.”
Spiegel says: “What Blockgraph has really been working on is the technology infrastructure for a safe set of environments – both privacy-safe and data security-safe environments – where specifically a lot of the cable operators, the MVPs and the networks, have a home to be able to place their customer data.
“Where TransUnion comes in is helping provide a lot of that identity, intelligence, and the tools to use the data within their environment.”
Blockgraph Spreads Its Wings: More Partners, Manningham Says
Spiegel continues: “We’re really working together to provide the best of that data security, privacy centred world that comes from Blockgraph’s platform and technology married to TransUnion’s identity intelligence and data creation tools so that it’s easier for both the buy side and the sell side to transact in more addressable means.
“Putting those things together actually makes it possible for the markets to transact with much more scale and much more ease.”
For several years now, tech vendors have searched for an application for blockchain technology in ad-tech. The technology, a variant of which powers cryptocurrencies, works by using a shared, “immutable” – or, untamperable – ledger of actions like ad transactions.
Blockgraph is using it to help publishers improve data privacy and movability in an industry that suffers greatly from lack of supply chain transparency, where intermediary vendors stand accused of obfuscating effectiveness and pocketing “ad tax”.
The company has been signing deals with more data partners lately.
TransUnion to Acquire Tru Optik To Bolster Connected Identity Matching
But the TransUnion partnership could give Blockgraph customers a big new data set to play with.
“It’s not as simple as people often think to be able to translate a household ID into a specific target segment, into the ability to deliver that,” Spiegel adds.
“Whether you’re buying off of a given linear platform or a network, whether you’re buying through an MVPD or whether you’re buying through a streaming service, those things that are not inherently connected.”
The hook-up will be bolstered by TransUnion’s recent acquisition of Tru Optik, the data marketplace and management platform that includes the behavior of more than 80 million homes on connected TV, streaming audio and gaming.
]]>Blockgraph is a JV of Comcast, ViacomCBS and Charter’s Spectrum Reach that uses the technology behind Bitcoin to enable privacy-compliant sharing of digital ad transaction and effectiveness data between partners.
Now it is broadening its partner base from broadcasters to the back-end.
In this video interview with TransUnion’s media EVP Matt Spiegel for Beet.TV, Blockgraph CEO Jason Manningham explains.
“It started with distribution – we focused a lot of our efforts, initially focusing on some of the largest distributors in the US,” Manningham says.
“What we see next is working with both demand partners, and bringing them into the equation.
“But, in order to do that, the base of the network will be working with some of the biggest identity enablers in the industry who have the right signals and have the rights to use those signals at scale.
Blockgraph Touts Data Control To Major Players, New CRO Schleider Says
For several years now, tech vendors have searched for an application for blockchain technology in ad-tech.
It works by using a shared, “immutable” – or, untamperable – ledger of actions like ad transactions.
Digital advertising, of course, is an industry that suffers greatly from lack of supply chain transparency, where intermediary vendors stand accused of obfuscating effectiveness and pocketing “ad tax”.
For Manningham, use of Blockgraph could be widespread. He continues: “Then likewise, other kinds of applications, whether it’s modelling, or being able to push segments to all of the programmatic platforms.
“So, we really see this as an ecosystem where we’re bringing together all of the right constituents for whether it’s for addressable TV, data-driven linear, or cross-channel video, which would also include OTT/CTV.
“So for us, it started with core addressable TV, and now we’re increasingly focusing on cross-platform, and working with some of the biggest identity and data partners in the world to make this a reality at scale.”
Comcast’s Blockgraph Sets Up As A JV With Charter, ViacomCBS
Blockgraph was launched in 2017. It uses peer-to-peer technology to let marketers, publishers and distributors match audience segments without sharing consumers’ identifiable information and without any technology intermediaries.
Blockgraph, which already included Comcast, ViacomCBS and Charter’s Spectrum Reach as partners, recently reconstituted as a joint venture, in which the three groups will take equal ownership. Jason Manningham, who was GM of the project, became CEO.
Comcast’s NBCUniversal also began integrating Blockgraph into AdSmart, the pioneering addressable TV platform it got when Comcast acquired Sky.
Manningham, tells Spiegel the tech has application in digital video.
“The landscape is just inherently more complex when it comes to video,” he says. “You have distribution channels, and those are increasingly more fragmented.
“And those are not always the same party as the inventory publisher, as the brand advertiser or the data provider.
“So all of these companies need to work together, but they need to do it in a controlled, compliant fashion.”
You are watching “The New Media Reality: A Consumer-Centric View of Identity and Personalization Emerges,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by Transunion. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>Aleck Schleider has joined Blockgraph from Amobee, where he was SVP of client and data strategy. The company announced today.
“We’re really talking to all the major players out there that are that are all trying to figure out the best way to collectively enable the industry in a collaborative effort where everyone benefits, but everyone has control,” he says to Beet.TV in this video interview.
“It’s the programmers and broadcasters who are now figuring out ways to make their traditional linear spots become addressable. We’re talking with all the major data partners, syndicated, or CRM companies that are managing first-party data, as well as the measurement companies.”
The initiative was launched in 2017. It uses peer-to-peer technology to let marketers, publishers and distributors match audience segments without sharing consumers’ identifiable information and without any technology intermediaries.
The idea of applying blockchain technology to advertising industry problems has been circulating for a few years.
We are excited to announce Comcast’s collaboration with industry partners on Blockgraph software to jumpstart the use of secure data sharing for Advanced TV Advertising: https://t.co/yks0mDtwVi #Blockgraph
— Effectv (@effectv) December 21, 2018
Exponents believe blockchain’s use of an “immutable ledger”, a record of every transaction and event, stored in unison by every node in the network, can give ad buyers deeper insight and more certainty into where parts of their spend are actually going.
“The core function of Blockgraph is really to support a collaborative solution platform, that allows the industry to excel in terms of removing a lot of friction for bringing data into an addressable environment,” Schleider says.
“If you think about Charter and Comcast as a whole, in a collaborative effort, their ability to actually bring data into the TV environment, across set-top box or across broadband, is a superior function. Blockgraph was developed to take advantage of that superior function.”
Blockgraph, which already included Comcast, ViacomCBS and Charter’s Spectrum Reach as partners, recently reconstituted as a joint venture, in which the three groups will take equal ownership. Jason Manningham, who was GM of the project, became CEO.
Comcast’s NBCUniversal also began integrating Blockgraph into AdSmart, the pioneering addressable TV platform it got when Comcast acquired Sky.
In forming as a JV, Blockgraph is another example of the collaborative approach that has taken hold in the TV industry over the last year and a half, as broadcasters have realized they need to come together to achieve scale.
Comcast’s Blockgraph Sets Up As A JV With Charter, ViacomCBS
“What we’re doing is facilitating for the companies that have and manage their own data assets, to control those assets, to rights-manage those assets, and to allow for the enablement within the control, without the data leaving their systems, to support the ecosystem who wants to utilise their data and their services for addressable TV,” Schleider adds.
“It’s all permission-based. We’re just enabling a more privacy-centric away to facilitate that direct conversation between the two partners without any middle man in place – better, faster, efficient, less expensive”
]]>Blockgraph, which already included Comcast, ViacomCBS and Charter’s Spectrum Reach as partners, is now reconstituting as a joint venture, in which the three groups will take equal ownership. Jason Manningham, who was GM of the project, will become CEO.
Comcast’s announcement of the move also revealed that the group’s NBCUniversal has begun integrating Blockgraph into AdSmart, the pioneering addressable TV platform it got when Comcast acquired Sky.
In forming as a JV, Blockgraph is another example of the collaborative approach that has taken hold in the TV industry over the last year and a half, as broadcasters have realized they need to come together to achieve scale.
The initiative was launched in 2017. It uses peer-to-peer technology to let marketers, publishers and distributors match audience segments without sharing consumers’ identifiable information and without any technology intermediaries.
The idea of applying blockchain technology to advertising industry problems has been circulating for a few years.
Exponents believe blockchain’s use of an “immutable ledger”, a record of every transaction and event, stored in unison by every node in the network, can give ad buyers deeper insight and more certainty into where parts of their spend are actually going.
At Beet Retreat San Juan 2020, Jason Manningham said: “It is designed to become the “identity layer” for the TV industry, providing a platform on which media companies and publishers can offer marketers data capabilities without disclosing identifiable user data to third parties.
“Today, everyone who wants to match data is required to send that to the trusted third party. That can be very manual and it requires using these third parties who are putting an extra tax on the ecosystem. Blockgraph is a platform approach, so it allows near realtime matching off of data without exposing the underlying raw data sets. ”
“We’ve been quietly amassing a group of distributors across a large footprint of TV viewing homes, as well as inventory partners.”
More on the news reported by the Wall Street Journal.
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