• Adweek, Thursday, August 5, 2010 11:26 PM

The rise of ad exchanges and audience-based buying strategies has led widget provider Clearspring to morph into an audience data company. Clearspring distributes the AddThis sharing tool deployed by publishers that reaches 1 billion people. AddThis -- which facilitates content sharing across social networks -- is collecting reams of data on user interests, preferences and media consumption patterns. Now the company hopes to turn that into a new-style advertising play, only without actually showing ads.

Clearspring is opening up its data set to advertisers in an audience platform the company has tested since January. Agencies can use the anonymous information in order to inform ad buys made through demand-side platforms to find audiences via ad exchanges or audience aggregators.

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