• by Joe Mandese , February 24, 2010

That’s what Darren Herman, president of MDC Partners’ Varick Media Management, hinted at during his opening remarks on “The New Steroid â€" Data” panel at OMMA M&M this morning.

 

Herman characterized the online data flow marketplace as being in three tiers, or maybe even three narratives, depending on how you want to look at it: “First party, second party, and third party.”

The first party, he said, is the data that advertisers and agencies pull directly off a site about their brands.

 

The second party is the new cadre of data middlemen, such as BlueKai, who are aggregating online data across sites for marketers and agencies.

 

The third party, Herman suggested, is entities like Varick Media Management, a group of agency-centric audience data aggregators known as “demand-side” networks or exchanges.

 

“What if VMM acted as a hedge fund,” Herman said, adding that scenario would freak the IAB out, but that they might in fact, act as a “data co-op, playing in the middle of that.”

 

That’s the dream, he implied. The reality, he said, is that organizations like VMM are focused mainly in the “first-person” data, for very pragmatic reasons.

 

“We see a lot of opportunity in the third party, but we’re spending a lot of time in the first party,” he said, explain that the share complexity of accessing and analyzing those data sets to understand their clients online ad campaigns was enough to keep them preoccupied.

Is VMM's Herman Hedging His Bets?