• by Tobi Elkin  @tobielkin, January 17, 2017

Independent media agency Horizon Media on Tuesday said it has selected Adbrain as its main provider of cross-device technology. Horizon’s programmatic buying operation, HX, will use Adbrain’s cross-device ID mapping on programmatic platforms across its network.

The agency conducted beta tests with clients using Adbrain’s data last year. It also tested four cross-device vendors that make their device graphs available to the public.

“Adbrain will help Horizon reach finite audience pools across multiple devices, thereby expanding our ability to efficiently reach and deliver messaging to the right person in the right place for our clients,” Trevor Mengel, director, programmatic product, HX, Horizon Media, told Real-Time Daily via email.

While cross-device targeting has gotten more effective, “measurement still has some way to go,” said Mengel.

He added the biggest challenge with measurement is “multiple sources of truth that commonly relay different results to our stakeholders.” Horizon’s media buyers can optimize off of reporting in a demand-side platform, but the numbers may be inconsistent with what a client sees in the ad server or attribution platform.

“This could be solved by facilitating more inter-operability between identity graphs and attribution platforms, however to date, we’ve seen companies pairing up rather than creating open ecosystems,” Mengel noted.

Adbrain said its Adbrain Identity Platform uses patented algorithms to accurately predict device identifiers of anonymous individual consumers.

The technology enables Horizon’s clients to anonymously recognize consumers across all the devices and approach the right consumers with a personalized and consistent story.