John joined OMD in 2017 from the global creative agency BBDO where he was CEO.
In this conversation, he speaks about managing brand’s media investments during the time of COVID.
He talks of the high wire act that marketers face with the ebb and flow of the pandemic, where hope turns to despair as the virus reemerges and hope inches back.
He addresses the “new normal” of the workplace, and the challenges of keeping the agency focused, trained and inspired in the home/office hybrid.
And he speaks about the importance of diversity and inclusion in the workplace and explains the recently launched training program for people of various backgrounds.
A longtime volunteer in the not-for-profit sector,John says that commitment to community action and philanthropy is essential for both brands and for each of us in our lives. John lives this credo as the Chairman of the Red Cross of Greater New York.
Great, inspiring conversation. Thank you, John.
Thank you to our series sponsor TransUnion.
And thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy the episode.
]]>In this video interview with Beet.TV, TransUnion’s EVP of marketing solutions and media vertical Matt Spiegel explains why his company is making the move for one of the major ad data providers.
November 2020:
Experian + Tapad: $280 millionSeptember 2021:
TransUnion + Neustar: $3.1 billionIdentity is becoming expensive.https://t.co/4VZjixO3s4
— Giulio S. (@astaniscia86) September 13, 2021
“We’ve seen a really good complimentary set of capabilities – at the core mission, they really fit nicely,” Spiegel says.
“They built up what they call their OneID technology platform, a great cloud-based, AI-integrated, well-connected technology platform for resolving identity in real-time.
“They’ve got a clearly market-leading suite of measurement solutions, very importantly, focused on marketing performance measurement versus other types of measurement.”
Spiegel says TransUnion, which has a $23 billion market cap, is buying Neustar’s risk, communications and marketing solutions offerings, but not its security business.
TransUnion's acquisition of Neustar is a game changer in the MarTech sector. @mspiegel and team have executed on a killer identity strategy! https://t.co/HjwV9vFJ6l pic.twitter.com/XUjYC3od3T
— Terence Kawaja (@tkawaja) September 13, 2021
To many, TransUnion may be best known as a provider of consumer credit information.
Under Spiegel, TransUnion has been making in-roads becoming an audience data provider.
Neustar would be its latest acquisition in that space after TruSignal (2019), Signal (2020) and TruOptik (2020).
$3.1 billion — that is what your data is worth https://t.co/TBMmAEj9SB
— Josh Sternberg (@joshsternberg) September 13, 2021
“We feel strongly that the era of identity (will) underpin marketing ecosystem, one that’s focused on enabling personalised marketing in both the household and individual level,” Spiegel adds.
He says the death of the cookie, the lack of mobile IDs, the increasing of streaming and the digitization of the world has made the ecosystem increasingly complex.
“In a world of multiple digital identity signals, multiple different touch points of consumers and worlds, where there are “walled gardens”, there isn’t just open access to all data.
“To have the accurate underpinning of identity is a complex data science problem
“The more technology you put behind there, the more data sourcing rules and regulations you put behind there, the more data governance you put behind there … all those things really create the ecosystem that allows you to build from a strong foundation.”
]]>The company had acquired Tru Optik, Signal Digital and TruSignal, as it built out its own ambition to provide consumer and household data to power ad targeting. Now it is bundling them into a single suite, TruAudience.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Matt Spiegel, EVP Marketing Solutions, Head of Media Vertical at TransUnion, explains the rationale.
TruAudience has three legs:
“Our focus has been on really making sure we’re ready for the next wave of personalization underpinned by an accurate view of identity that was fundamentally fundamentally built in a post cookie world,” Spiegel says.
“It’s not just about individuals. It’s not just about devices or just about households. It’s actually fundamentally about all three.”
On TruAudience Data Marketplace, specifically, Spiegel says: “Now, whether you want to use TransUnion data or comScore data or IHS data or Kantar data, it’s, it’s a marketplace available right now to connect you to get to 80 million connected homes.
“That’s a higher match rate, more accuracy than a lot of the other solutions available on market for all that money being spent in streaming media.”
Under Spiegel, TransUnion has been making in-roads becoming an audience data provider, not just a consumer credit information provider.
It recently began powering OpenAP’s identity solution and began injecting identity into Blockgraph, a TV industry initiative.
According to Spiegel in TransUnion’s product announcement: “The marketing and advertising sector is on the precipice of reinvention with the demise of third-party cookies, the rise of privacy-centric solutions and the overarching need for brands to break down silos and communicate to consumers across channels — from connected TV and audio, to direct mail and linear TV.”
]]>While he made early progress with product development and industry partnerships, funded from a few early stage angel investors, access to venture capital was nearly impossible. While he says the adtech industry was open to him, he was shut out by VC’s — unable to even to get preliminary pitch meetings. He blames racial bias.
With VC’s investing less than 1 % in Black-founded start-ups, Andre is committed to changing the equation both by his example, advocacy and now personal investing in promising companies.
This is one of the topics covered in a wide ranging podcast session moderated by guest host Ashley Swartz, CEO of Furious Corp. They cover a number topics including the transformation of TV, the background and promise of the acquisition by Transunion.
Editor’s Note: This episode was published in January of the year. It is as compelling and important as ever, so we are republishing it this week.
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service.
The BeetCast is sponsored by Mediaocean.
]]>In the latest move, OpenID, the US TV network consortium, is launching its own such identity system.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Matt Spiegel, who runs the media division of TransUnion, explains how the identity system, powered by his company, will work.
“Each of these different players in the industry need to create an understanding of identity and be able to translate that across different platforms and have the right connect connection points,” Spiegel says. “They all have to be able to translate from one data set to another, from one identity to another.
“In order to do that behind the scenes, you’ve got to have the right different data matching mechanisms … called ‘crosswalks’ … to maintain a translation layer from one ID set to another. What we’re doing is giving … the OpenAP ID that ability.
“When they work with their network partners or their advertising partners, because it’s underpinned by TransUnion’s intelligence and we are connected to all these different ID sets, the ability is (for targeting) to … start anywhere. (For example), start with a client’s first-party data, start with the network’s first party data, start with a third-party available data.”
OpenAP is a way for ad buyers to buy across AMC Networks, Fox, NBC Universal, ViacomCBS, Univision and The Weather Channel properties.
Launched three years ago, OpenAP first aimed to harmonize the meta data descriptions used by a variety of TV broadcasters in order to make selling more scaleable.
Then it made a step-change by launching an actual marketplace through which ad buyers can purchase data-driven TV ads across those networks from OpenAP itself, or else through buying platforms with OpenAP integrations.
And it launched a supply-side platform (SSP) in January.
It announced its OpenID in April, calling it a “a consistent person-level audience definition that is unified across linear and digital video environments and enables efficient matching with viewership currencies for distribution to multiple television publishers, evolving advanced TV from age and gender demographics to ID-based targeting”.
According to the launch:
]]>“Advertisers will start every campaign by identifying an audience that will be resolved to a set of OpenIDs, which can be broad or narrow based on campaign objectives.
“Audiences are defined at the ID level then matched to viewership data and platform IDs for linear, digital and addressable activation to create a unified, cross-platform OpenID audience.
“OpenIDs are shared with TV publishers for use in linear and digital campaigns, with publishers using their internal tools to build targeted media plans.”
She explains the rising value of contextual marketing, the need for unified identity solutions, and “clean rooms.” Addressing the upside of the pandemic for Meredith, she says the publishers’ editorial focus on home and family has become more relevant during these times.
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Optik, a TransUnion company.
]]>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.
]]>Creating a unified identity graph, and establishing “clean rooms” and interoperable marketplaces – all the while in a privacy compliant manner – are some of the industry topics discussed here.
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Optik, a TransUnion company.
]]>With the acquisition of 4C last year, Mediaocean has become a cross platform player, expanding beyond its roots to planning, optimization and measurement.
These are some of the conversations in this podcast with Mediaocean CEO Bill Wise and guest host Matt Spiegel, EVP of Transunion and head of its fast growing media vertical.
Bill and Matt take a deep dive around the challenges of interoperability among digital platforms and TV, measurement vs. currency, the needs for identity, and the right balance between efficiency versus price. Lots covered here.
Thanks Matt and Bill. Great conversation.
Please subscribe to the #BeetCast on your favorite podcast service. The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Optik, a Transunion company.
]]>Says Scott Hagedorn, CEO of Omnicom Media Group in this BeetCast podcast moderated by Matt Spiegel, EVP of Transunion.
Part of the problem is that sensational content optimizes algorithms that in turn pull advertising in. While the number of impressions might be high, associations with the content is not necessarily valued and potentially detrimental to the advertiser, Hagedorn warns.
In this wide-ranging conversation, topics include identity, privacy and the importance of the integration of the supply chain with media investment.
The BeetCast is sponsored by Tru Opik, a Transunion company. Please visit this page to find more episodes of the BeetCast and to subscribe via your preferred podcast service.
]]>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.
]]>Tru Optik is a data marketplace and management platform that includes the behavior of more than 80 million homes on connected TV, streaming audio and gaming. Deal terms were not immediately disclosed.
TransUnion already made an investment in Tru Optik in April 2019. At the time, in this video interview we are republishing today, Tru Optik CEO Andre Swanston said data security issues had been at the forefront.
“TransUnion seemed to care more about than probably anybody that we’ve talked to in the industry,” Swanston said. “A lot of the diligence process was around privacy policies and data security.”
At the same time, TransUnion’s Matt Spiegel said: “What Tru Optik has built is an aggregator of that kind of data stack, that data marketplace, and we think has the best one that we’ve seen in the marketplace.
“We loved their approach to the market … being this kind of connective tissue between different source of inventory, different sources of data, to make the ability to transact in this OTT world much more simple and scalable.”
In its announcement today, TransUnion says: “Combining both companies’ collective data sets, analytic capabilities and market connectivity, TransUnion and Tru Optik will be able to more precisely — and with greater scale — match individuals and households across the physical and digital worlds.”
The deal is the latest example of M&A activity converging on the two trends of streaming media and audience identity resolution. Tru Optik was represented in the deal by Terry Kawaja CEO of LUMA Partners. The deal is expected to close this month.
TransUnion is commonly known as a provider of consumer credit reports. It claims to have a consumer credit database on one billion people in more than 30 countries.
In the last couple of years, TransUnion has also been building out a business focused on leveraging consumer profiles as targetable criteria for advertisers.
The identity products Tru Optik is working on don’t rely on cookies.
Third-party cookies are being deprecated by browser makers, limiting advertisers ability to target, and the industry is seeking out alternatives.
]]>Auto brands like Nissan have had no choice but to move to a more digital strategy. Many dealerships are not considered essential businesses and instead of forcing consumers into a shopping process that they’re not comfortable with, brands now want to offer options for both. This way, even when these businesses do open back up, the customers feel as safe and supported as possible.
“We and our dealers have been working really closely with our local governments on, how we can actually start to have virtual retailing, which, in automotive wasn’t very prevalent, and what we’ve done on our end is actually start to accelerate ecommerce projects and shopping tools that were maybe seven months if not a year down the road and accelerate those so that we could begin implementation and launch those over the next weeks into the next couple of months,” Witherspoon says.
According to Witherspoon, higher priced items like cars still aren’t retailing online at the same rate as they would at dealerships, but that this is due to regulatory reasons, and lack of infrastructure there, which is what Nissan is working to fix with more urgency. For marketing, Witherspoon and her team have tried to look more specifically at the consumer sentiment in these times, and then evolve their marketing messages accordingly.
“It’s definitely a different approach versus what typically happens which is, ‘this is what we as the brand or marketer wants to say, now we’re going to put it out there and let you adapt to it,’” Witherspoon says. “It’s definitely the other way around. And even now that we’re a couple of months in, we’re starting to tweak and adjust all of our existing communications over time based on the feedback that we’re getting from consumers and what the consumer sentiment is.”
At the beginning of the pandemic, this meant avoiding a heavy sales push and focusing more on instilling trust and confidence in Nissan as a brand and an awareness of what is going on in the world. Over time, this has adjusted slightly, with the brand pinpointing confidence factors, whether it is services they can provide, payment deferrals, or other more specific messages.
Plans have changed around planning large media buys as well. For Nissan, this meant pausing the launch of one of their newest Sentra model until a time in which there will be more demand.
“We’re looking at re-planning that,” Witherspoon says. “We’ve spent a lot of time over the last several weeks looking at the ways that we can predict or project where consumer sentiment and where their media behavior is going to be.”
This includes considering a range of scenarios, from the optimistic outcome of a complete return back to normal, to the more pessimistic view of this having a long lasting impact on consumer sentiment. This requires flexibility, from brands to marketers to publishers.
“I think this will change what the Upfront process is,” Witherspoon says. “I think that it was already starting to move in a more flexible direction and a much more advanced targeting standpoint, but I think it’s really, ‘what is the flexibility with your marketing dollars?’ I think that’s where we’ll see the next shift.”
This video is part of a series titled Navigating Accelerated Change, presented by Transunion. For more videos, please visit this page. We recorded Allyson in her home in Nashville and Matt at his in Chicago.
]]>In this video interview with Beet.TV, Matt Spiegel, head of media at TransUnion, says diminishing ad prices, more opportunistic ad buys and targeting technology will combine to welcome in a new tier of brand advertiser that traditionally had not played in TV.
For one, Spiegel thinks seasonal “back-to-school” and holiday diary markers will see healthy ad spend.
“There’s going to be a lot of pent up demand come this holiday,” he says. “I think there’s going to be a lot of money there.”
Couple that with a raft of content, like top-tier sports, that otherwise have pocketed premium ad spend; Spiegel suggests it leaves remaining content, with cheaper ad rates, ripe for newcomers.
“I think it opens the door for a lot of new advertisers,” he explains. “A lot of new categories that have historically been crowded out (will) likely have room to play.
“TV has often been a big-marketer game, especially linear television, because it’s a high dollar commitment (and) often a longer-term commitment.
“As more dollars are kept to be spent at the moment of opportunity … you leave room for the torso of clients that are not the big spenders but are in many categories that, especially right now, can spend more money.”
The upfront ad sales season is the time of year when programmers traditionally tout their upcoming content slates to secure upfront ad buy commitments.
But securing advance bookings from brands in this environment could be more difficult than before, whilst many TV broadcasters are significantly discounting their ad rates in a bid to stop haemorrhaging under-pressure advertisers.
Spiegel agrees that “the (TV) upfront has probably changed forever”.
He imagines new advertising coming from higher-education e-learning providers, all kinds of subscription services and from fitness operators launching digital content strategies.
eMarketer reports how ad costs are currently falling across the board.
The confluence of circumstances could be good news for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, which have already been advertising on TV over the last couple of years but which could use the opportunity of cheaper inventory to make a bigger impression.
They are the kinds of marketers that are “data-driven”, Spiegel says: “Those types of marketers are the ones that therefore expect their media partners, their ad tech partners, or a combination of the two, to do a better job allowing micro-segmentation, to do a general better job allowing frequency of optimizations, to do dynamic creative messaging, and to do the types of stuff that really leads to higher marketing ROI.
“Personalization is becoming ever more important. To enable those types of things, you needed a firm grasp on understanding individuals and understanding the households with various identity signals that are necessary to address the appropriate devices, in many cases meaning not relying on a cookie ID but relying other identity signals.”
This video is part of a series titled Navigating Accelerated Change, presented by Transunion. For more videos, please visit this page.
]]>Ad tech has been on the front end of that curve for some time now, but there has been a shift in the speed at which every industry and individual has had to adapt to this digitization, from food delivery and subscription services to streaming services.
“When you’re forced to make a choice between not having access or accessing these types of goods and services through a digital perspective, it changes the game,” Spiegel says.
As a result, Spiegel believes that the industry has fundamentally altered the trajectory of consumer behavior for both short and long term. Now that people have picked up these digital behaviors, they likely will not ditch them once the world returns to normal.
“I think the more that we demonstrate to people that you can interact in this digital way and more people get comfortable with it, it’s just going to stick,” Spiegel says. “And I think that has implications not just for the short term but for the long term as well.”
For digital companies like TransUnion, part of the leadership process right now is accepting that there are more unknowns than knowns, and being transparent and honest organization-wide. It also means being active in seeking out more information.
“For my section of the industry within TransUnion that means how do we get a handle on what does the ad spending look like over the next six to twelve months, what categories are clearly going to go dark and what categories might replace them?” Spiegel says. “What’s the impact of the fact that there are no big TV tenpole events right now and how does that impact how spending will change?”
It all comes down to prioritizing information and figuring out what the trends are going to be for the remainder of the year, and from there making product and market decisions based on those realities. Spiegel recommends that companies be “conscious capitalists” in the near future, not simply chasing the dollar at all costs but rather providing value to clients and partners in information, analysis, and assessment.
“There’s a marathon aspect to this and not a sprint,” Spiegel says. “We’ve got to do right by all constituents and that will, at the end, all work out.”
]]>TransUnion aims to develop solutions for the connected consumer in mind. They have a comprehensive and accurate data set around identity, combined with audience solutions to create addressable interactions for partners to have with their consumers. As a credit reporting agency first, Oliveira explained their advantage working in media.
“What we’re bringing to the table for media companies is this idea of identity and audiences that are brought together underneath that TransUnion umbrella,” Oliveira says.
The company works with first-party data to gather an accurate understanding of who the individual is in order to create more precise engagements.
“If you think of the heritage of TransUnion as a credit reporting agency,” Oliveira says. “We can’t use the data from the credit reporting agency, but we can acquire data and validate it against that data set. TransUnion then has a large aggregated set of identifiers and data assets at the PII level, and we can make that available through the appropriate channels for media companies.”
This can mean providing media companies with predictive audiences from a modeling perspective or helping them combine audiences to make available to their ecosystem partners.
As far as addressable, Oliveira believes that TransUnion’s role is to power confident, addressable interactions. The accuracy of their data set is what ensures that partners can reach the consumer in the most specific and engaging ways.
“The reality is if your data is not accurate, you can’t have an addressable conversation that will bear fruit,” Oliveira says. “We think it’s really important that that’s powered by an accurate data set to enable the ecosystem to do all the things that connected consumers are really looking for.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of RampUp, LiveRamp’s summit for marketing technology in San Francisco. This series is co-sponsored by LiveRamp and ZEFR.
]]>That comes after Facebook, suffering its own Cambridge Analytica scandal, last year shut Partner Categories, the program which it allowed advertisers to target ads using customer profiles bought from Experian, Acxiom, Epsilon, Oracle Data Cloud, TransUnion, WPP, Greater Data, Quantium and CCC.
So how is a company like TransUnion, a credit scoring agency, negotiating its new business initiative – selling consumer financial data to help marketers better target their advertising?
In this video interview with Beet.TV, TransUnion’s Matt Spiegel explains: “We’re a company that’s been under various regulations given the data we touch for many years, and as the world becomes more and more highly regulated in the marketing space (through) things like GDPR and CCPA and the like.
“We’re used to having a compliance footprint that understands how to deal with regulations.”
So what is TransUnion, a credit score supplier, offering advertisers? Partly, a suite Spiegel calls “Digital Marketing Solution”, partly a data offering to big publishers and ad-tech agencies.
He explains: “How can we take the same type of assets that we have … and apply it to an industry which is clearly becoming more data driven, more driven by data making decisions and have a bigger need for data sciences?”
It’s something TransUnion is now bringing to connected TV, after a partnership with Tru Optik, the OTT targeting and measurement tech vendor, which sees Spiegel’s company invest in the Stamford, CT-based firm.
“What Tru Optik has built is an aggregator of that kind of data stack, that data marketplace, and we think has the best one that we’ve seen in the marketplace,” Spiegel says.
“We loved their approach to the market … being this kind of connective tissue between different source of inventory, different sources of data, to make the ability to transact in this OTT world much more simple and scalable.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Tru Optik InFronts 2019, NYC. The series is sponsored by Tru Optik For additional videos, please visit this page.
]]>The funding round for the provider of over-the-top targeting, measurement and privacy management was led by Mithera Capital and also included Connecticut Innovations, Arab Angel Fund and Progress Ventures.
“We’ve been very deliberate and frugal in terms of how we raise capital,” Swanston says in this Beet.TV interview at the company’s fifth annual InFronts event. “We accomplished a lot with relatively a very small amount of money. To be able to have the success that we’ve had and then now have a much larger cash infusion is really substantial for us.”
Tru Optik has doubled in size “in just the last quarter and our revenue is pretty much skyrocketing,” Swanston adds. With regard to the relationship with TransUnion, he cites as main factors as scale and quality of data plus being “tight knit” on data security. As to the latter, “Those are things that TransUnion seemed to care more about than probably anybody that we’ve talked to in the industry. A lot of the diligence process was around privacy policies and data security.”
Where Swanston sees OTT/connected TV headed in the next couple of years is “we’re not even going to call it that anymore. It’s just going to be called TV because it will be the main opportunity to reach consumers across the biggest screen in the household.”
Tru Optik recently expanded its management ranks with the additions of Richard Kosinski as EVP of Sales and Jonathan Bokor in the role of Chief Privacy and Business Affairs Officer.
“We’ve always been blessed with some really talented, experienced people,” says Swanston. Really what we’re doing now is just being able to do that even more increasingly and fill gaps that we had” in such areas as sales and privacy.
Tru Optik kicked off this year’s InFronts by presenting a timeline of the company’s accomplishments and partnerships in an industry with non-stop announcements from companies announcing all manner of news. “The funny thing about it that we laugh about internally is everything that anybody has announced in the last six months, Tru Optik announced in 2018, or 2017 or even 2016.”
One of its more substantial undertakings is the recently announced integration with the Oracle Data Cloud, something that Tru Optik began working on in the summer of 2017, according to Swanston.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Tru Optik InFronts 2019, NYC. The series is sponsored by Tru Optik For additional videos, please visit this page.
]]>For years, marketers have talked about reaching a point in the advertising ecosystem where they can know so much about their audiences that they can craft and customize the most precise messages and content for consumers.
That is still the hope, but getting there is going to take some foundational components, a conference on the topic of “relevance” in advertising heard.
“Ultimately if media companies and advertisers and marketers are going to be able to deliver good, relevant content, it has to start with understanding consumer behavior and understanding consumer identity,” TransUnion’s Matt Spiegel told Beet.TV in this video interview.
“How we can provide information about consumers so that you can make sure you’re dealing with as much certainty as possible?”
That’s something Spiegel has been working on since this summer, when he joined TransUnion, a credit score and identity protection company, from MediaLink, a strategic advisory.
Why did Spiegel make the switch? In TransUnion’s words: “His expertise will further TransUnion’s ability to deliver the addressable solutions required by enterprise marketers and media companies to make informed modeling, strategic investment planning and digital targeting decisions.”
And that makes relevance, well… relevant.
“Part of what we’re doing is being able to use that kind of intelligence to provide targeting segments, both custom-built as well as syndicated audiences, that allow us to help be that fuel,” Spiegel tells Beet.TV.
This video is part of a series leading up to, and covering the Xandr Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. This Beet.TV program is sponsored by Xandr, a unit of AT&T.
]]>