• by Philip Rosenstein , August 11, 2016

Canadian ad-tech firm SourceKnowledge announced Thursday the release of Engage, its new software as a service (SaaS) platform. The firm aims to ramp up self-service capabilities for its programmatic clients, integrating machine learning into the platform.

The Engage platform outlines campaign metrics and creatives, allowing for quick and actionable snapshots of campaign performance.

“We used to be handcuffed with Excel spreadsheets to report in-depth campaign data, and would have to send those over to clients in batches. With Engage, clients get real-time updates on campaign performance and specific data points like return on ad spend, average order value, and lifetime value,” said Patrick Hopf, CEO of SourceKnowledge.

“SourceKnowledge built Engage to meet the need of brands that are bringing programmatic in-house such as eCommerce and mobile game publishers, whose business models require detailed tracking and conversion of the highest qualified customers over a general assessment of brand awareness,” stated Hopf.

As the platform is still in a learning phase, a SourceKnowledge team will bolster the machine learning capabilities that continually feed behavioral data into the platform and help qualify the value of ad opportunities and “weight the proportion of traffic in context of a total media buy.”

The Engage platform uses non-binary bidding algorithms to rank ad opportunities across the network. Rather than completely eliminating certain publishers, the platform develops a map of user behavior, targeting those placements that would be best for a particular advertiser.