AudienceScience Launches Cross-Device Targeting Technology

AudienceScience, a demand-side platform (DSP) that services brands and marketers directly, will this week announce the launch of a new cross-device targeting technology called “Signature.”

The idea behind the new technology is to assign a unique “signature” to single (anonymous) users. Marketers can then target those signatures across devices to connect with the same consumer on a regular basis.

The technology uses a “combination of probabilistic data” that is “informed and modeled from deterministic data sets.” Cutting through the jargon, that means that AudienceScience’s new tech uses probabilistic data that is compared to deterministic data sets for refinement (i.e., a clients’ first-party data).

That’s not the say the technology isn’t accurate. In fact, AudienceScience claims the targeting technology correctly links individual consumers to disparate devices over 90% of the time. While that assertion is unverified, it’s not unreasonable -- Tapad’s cross-device targeting technology, which also uses probabilistic modeling, was deemed by Nielsen to accuarately match devices to specific consumers over 90% of the time.

In a recent Forrester Wave report, AudienceScience was named a “Strong Performer” in the DSP category. The main knock against AudienceScience in that report was that it could stand to offer marketers more channels and devices to advertise on. While the introduction of the “Signature” technology does not add any new devices or channels, it does improve AudienceScience’s cross-device offering.

“AudienceScience has always had the capability to run programmatic across all screens,” a company representative said to Real-Time Daily. “The launch of the [AudienceScience] Signature product allows marketers to follow the same user across devices.”

The new tech enables AudienceScience clients to use the same targeting strategy across all screens. Previously, they had to develop separate strategies for each device, and while they were trying to target the same audience this way -- and they may have been succeeding -- there was no easy way to tell.

“Until now, waste and ad replication across channels have been widely accepted by marketers, despite the very clear negative impact,” stated Tim Barnes, chief product officer at AudienceScience. “Even with the latest technological advancements, brands and their agencies were relying on guesswork when it came to frequency and targeting strategies. There’s no place for that in today’s ad market.”

The move serves as further evidence that marketers are enamored with the idea of cross-channel programmatic advertising, and that the ad tech providers of the world are racing to build new software to make it more of a reality.

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