• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 13, 2015

Cross Pixel Media, a data management platform that enables advertisers and agencies to create customized audience segments of consumers on programmatic exchanges that match a brand’s or agency’s target, is launching a new query-based search engine that indexes sites based on which ones deliver the highest concentrations of those audiences.

The engine, called Planit, is free to any user who wants to query it, based on Cross Pixel’s audience segments. Type a keyword of phrase for the audiences you are seeking to reach and the engine ranks the Web sites available via private and open exchanges that can be used to acquire them.

For the purposes of this article, we queried the word “target,” which gave audience segments for consumers who were looking for discount coupons from retail giant Target. Not surprisingly, the No. 1 Web site in terms of concentrations of such consumers was coupon directory Slickdeals.net, which whose audience Planit estimated could be acquired for a minimum CPM (cost-per-thousand) of $14.

Interestingly, the second-highest ranking came from Target competitor Walmart.com, whose audiences Planit estimates could be acquired for a fraction of Slickdeals CPM: $3.

Equally interesting, Target’s own Web site, Target.com, ranked 6th in delivery of the Target coupon searchers, but was estimated to be 25% more expensive than Walmart.com’s audience: $4.

Cross Pixel CEO Alan Pearlstein said the pricing indexes are merely guidelines based on going rates and bidding in actual exchanges might vary, but the audience composition data is the most meaningful part of Planit.

He says Cross Pixel is offering it free to the industry because it is a good way to demonstrate Cross Pixel’s core service of helping advertisers, agencies and trading desks identify, build and acquire audiences based on their own targeting criteria vs. generic ones available on most DMPs (data management platforms) and data exchanges, or even with their own first-party data.

The problem with a marketer’s own first-party data, he said, is that it is often difficult for brands to extend their reach beyond the customers they have data on. Cross Pixel enables them to extend that reach by matching their audiences with identifiable market behaviors based largely on search queries by consumers in-market to research or buy a brand.

“it’s a programmatic search engine,” Pearlstein explains.

Pearlstein said it has been in development for nearly a year, and that a number of big agencies and trading desks have been pilot testing it and it’s now ready for general release. He says the product is intended to be a lead generator for Cross Pixel’s core business of defining and building custom audience segments, but he said it also provides a necessary dimension for people utilizing the core service.

Once the best audience has been identified, Pearlstein says, the next step is to identify what are the best sources of content to reach them in.

Cross Pixel -- which got its initial venture funding from a group of seed investors that includes KBS+ Ventures -- doesn’t execute programmatic media buys, but helps brands and traders understand how to target them using a proprietary scoring system capable of determining if a user matches a brand’s consumer targets based on a pool of 650 million browser cookies.

“We’re scoring those cookies based on events,” Pearlstein explains, noting that events including things like a search query, using a shopping toolbar or app, reading a product review of product information on a company’s or a retailer’s Web site.

He estimates there potentially are hundreds of thousands of events that can go into defining a custom audience segment, but that Cross Pixel usually ends up focusing on about two dozen that are deemed the most meaningful signals of a consumer’s intent or in-market behavior concerning a brand.