Adobe, TubeMogul Bring More First-Party Data to Bear

Related: Sluggish Programmatic TV Could Finally Pick Up Steam

Mergers in the ad tech space are also having an impact on the growth and effectiveness of programmatic TV.

Adobe acquired TubeMogul last year, and TubeMogul’s Todd Gordon, now director of programmatic TV at Adobe, said the combination has enabled clients to leverage data that been used in search and display advertising to target video across screens and TV.

“One of the things that we’re seeing that’s really interesting in TV more broadly is clients wanting to use their own first-party data or use digital data to help them be smarter about how they do TV buying,” Gordon said.

“Clients that use Adobe’s audience manager as their DMP [data management platform] are going to be able to leverage that data really seamlessly in our platform,” he said. “So, we’ll continue to be an open platform that’s agnostic to whatever data clients what to bring. But if you are on that, you’re going to be able to leverage more of the data that Adobe can manage and create for you in a really smart way with really high match rates without data loss.”

That opens up opportunities for targeting and to attribute accountability in TV in ways that weren’t previously possible.

“We can now see, in terms of understanding who those customers are, who was exposed, rate converted, what level of frequency drives conversion — these are the kinds of questions you couldn’t answer a few years ago,” Gordon said. “We certainly don’t have all the answers, but we’re really closer to understanding what works and, for a particular brand, what’s the right combination of things that can help drive store visits, sales, whatever the core goals are.”

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.