• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 13, 2014

A year after introducing a programmatic TV audience-buying platform, AudienceXpress is beefing up its targeting features, striking deals with leading consumer audience segmentation sources Nielsen, Nielsen Catalina and Neustar to enable advertisers and agencies to programmatically buy TV with the same precision they buy online media.

The deal with Nielsen provides access to two consumer purchasing data sets -- Nielsen Buyer Insights and Nielsen Catalina Solutions -- allowing buyers and sellers using AudienceXpress to segment TV inventory based on how well they index on actual product purchasing behavior. The deal with Neustar enables them to tap into the same kind of online user data used by DSPs, agencies and trading desks to buy audiences over online programmatic exchanges.

AudienceXpress, which is a subsidiary of addressable TV advertising developer VisibleWorld, claims the deal represents a “first of its kind” for TV audience targeting -- matching conventional TV audience data to online behavioral data.

“Viewers have expanded beyond TV and are increasingly consuming content across multiple screens and channels,” states Ted Prince, senior vice president-information services at Neustar, which acquired one of the online world’s leading DMPs -- or data management platforms -- Aggregate Knowledge more than a year ago and incorporated it into its systems.

“The challenge for advertisers,” he adds, “is to effectively bridge the gap between online and offline audiences to maximize reach.”

Both the Neustar and the Nielsen and Nielsen Catalina deals make good on AudienceXpress CEO Walt Horstman’s promise to build out the data-targeting features of the platform to give TV buyers and sellers the same kind of front-end analytics that people are accustomed to using in the online world.