• by Tyler Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_tyler, July 9, 2015

Publishers are about to get their hands on demand-side technology.

Digital ad tech firm Centro has released its latest tech platform, dubbed the Centro DSP for Publishers. It’s a demand-side platform (DSP) designed for audience extension. It enables publishers to scale campaigns and reach audiences outside of owned and operated properties, Centro asserts.

The McClatchy Company, The E.W. Scripps Company, PureWow, Emmis Communications, Freedom News Group, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Columbus Dispatch and Philly.com are among the publishers that will first have access to the platform. Centro says a total of 150 publishers are in the processes of equipping the platform.

This is actually the second time in as many months that an ad tech company has brought buying technologies to publishers. ChargeAds unveiled its “DSP for publishers” last month, which enables audience acquisition for reach extension.

“Many publishers have been long-standing partners with brands and agencies. As audiences have moved more of their media consumption online, these publishers are rightful navigators for advertisers, knowing how audiences behave, not just on their own sites, but anywhere on the Web,” stated Rick Ducey, managing director, BIA/Kelsey. “Media companies that want a larger share of ad buys need to harness their audience intelligence for wide-reaching, multi-channel campaigns that drive results for advertisers.”

There’s some unmistakable marketspeak in that quote -- specifically the last sentence -- but it’s a valid point nonetheless, and it’s really the main draw of Centro’s DSP for Publisher. The platform “helps publishers better compete with ad networks and managed DSPs that have massive scale,” a Centro representative said to Real-Time Daily.

The platform is plugged into data management platforms (DMPs), so publishers can use their first-party data to reach known audiences. They can target audiences and programmatically buy ads across devices (including mobile) and ad units (including video).

All of the offerings the new DSP sports -- the data management integrations as well as the mobile and video support -- follow recent partnerships Centro has stuck. Just last month the company partnered with DMPs BlueKai and NinthDecimal to gain access to mobile audience-targeting data, and plugged into several video ad exchanges, including DoubleClick, Dailymotion, Microsoft Ad Exchange and Maker Studios.