• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, May 5, 2015

It’s now clear that comScore believes that the future of programmatic advertising -- if it’s ever to truly break into the realm of premium advertising -- rests on the value of pre-bid data that buyers and sellers have access to.

The audience measurement firm on Tuesday announced it has acquired Proximic, an analytics and pre-bid data company. The Proximic team will be joining comScore as a result of the acquisition, per a release. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition comes just months after comScore announced the introduction of “Trust Profiles” -- pre-bid data packets that buyers can target against in the programmatic marketplace. Just last week comScore announced it has made the “Trust Profiles” available in 44 countries after introducing the initiative in the U.S. earlier this year.

Per a release, Proximic’s pre-bid data solutions will be integrated across comScore’s media measurement suite -- including the “Trust Profiles,” validated Campaign Essentials, and Media Metrix Multi-Platform products.

In addition to its pre-bid data analytics, Proximic also offers both buyers and sellers the ability to create custom targeting segments based on contextual data, keywords and more “to filter the inventory that is being bid on in real-time,” a release reads. Proximic says these solutions are already baked into several publishers and ad tech platforms, including AppNexus.

WPP, one of the most ad tech-involved holding companies in the world, appears to be one of the winners standing in the shadows of comScore’s Proximic purchase. WPP owns a “substantial” stake in comScore, and it also owns a 15% stake in AppNexus (which Proximic is closely integrated with). The comScore-Proximic deal brings together several ad tech players that WPP already had its hands on.