I sometimes think I’m writing too much about ad targeting, but then I ask myself: would Dear Reader rather learn that Sailthru has a new SMS? Probably not. So here’s news that audience creation company Dstillery can now target programmatic ads using real time signals like URL, location, and time of day. There’s no persistent ID or contextual targeting; there’s also no way to track results outside the ad impression itself.
I don’t know how many barroom brawls have started as debates over vertical vs horizontal integration, but BARC is pulling no punches in this attack on horizontal business intelligence. They blame it for over-centralization, loss of flexibility, and the growth of poorly-governed “shadow BI”. BARC favors vertical (that is, department-specific) BI and sees machine learning as the key to self-service “data democratization”. Interesting insights.
TV set maker Samsung is also helping to target ads. They’ve just launched Total Media Solution, a managed service that loads an advertiser’s media purchases into Samsung’s own Demand Side Platform, watches the ads received by each viewer, and makes incremental ad buys to reach to viewers who were not exposed. It’s a clever, if creepy, use of Samsung’s ability to monitor content consumption on its TVs.
CDP and marketing cloud vendor Zeta Global announced an agreement to purchase LiveIntent, which helps companies do email-based advertising. The deal will let Zeta expand its identity graph, enter the publisher monetization business, and accelerate its mobile and retail media products. Zeta will pay $77.5 million in cash and $172.5 million in common stock, with potential for additional payments based on performance.