• by Felicia Greiff , March 9, 2016

Rubicon Project and Cadreon, IPG Mediabrands’ ad tech unit, announced a global partnership to support programmatic direct buying Wednesday. 

Cadreon will use Rubicon Project’s Guaranteed Orders platform to power the reservation of direct inventory in desktop, mobile and video channels. In turn, Cadreon will offer brands analysis informed by Rubicon Project's private marketplace (PMP).

Guaranteed Orders, acquired by Rubicon Project through a November 2014 acquisition of iSocket, is a part of its Orders solutions. 

"Essentially, our partnership will make it easier and far more efficient for advertisers to execute guaranteed buys against premium inventory using programmatic tools," Erik Hovanec, head of buyer cloud, Rubicon Project, said in an email. The partnership will deliver precise user behavior data to Cadreon, he added, maximizing investments across both programmatic RTB inventory and non-RTB direct inventory.

As the ad industry consolidates, the need to make more data-informed programmatic guarantees will increase, stated Jon Mansell, VP-marketplace innovation at IPG Mediabrands’ Magna Global. "This means migrating off the open exchange and into more strategic partnerships with publishers," he added.

Rubicon Project's managed revenue hit $1 billion in 2015, and it's 2015 revenue nearly doubled the total for 2014, from $125.3 million to $248.5 million.