Indie data management platform Lotame has remained relatively quiet since the acquisition of cross-device tool AdMobius in 2014.
Because Lotame rode out the wave of DMP consolidation between 2013 to 2014 (Oracle acquired BlueKai, Neustar snapped up Aggregate Knowledge and Rocket Fuel bought [x+1]), Lotame CEO Andy Monfried claims his company has one key advantage over some of its peers.
“We have about 4 billion cookies and about 2.5 billion device IDs we’re sitting on,” he said. “When we onboard a client, we can immediately show them everything else about a profile that they may not have known. That’s all inside of DMP – it’s not another service or product we add on. It’s our core focus.”
Specifically, that focus has recently centered around fusing online and offline data sets for more than 200 DMP clients, including publishers, advertisers and information service companies.
Monfried spoke with AdExchanger.
AdExchanger: A number of DMPs are pushing into TV targeting. What’s Lotame doing here?
ANDY MONFRIED: We are the DMP of record for a very large TV manufacturer, which has about 12 million TVs in US households right now. As their DMP of record, we’re capturing all the viewership data for those televisions in real time. Each one of these TVs is IP-enabled, so in a non-PII fashion we’re able to take that static or set IP address and link it to all the devices in a house with our cross-device match.
What can you determine from that viewership data?
If someone is watching “Dancing With The Stars,” we’re able to immediately match that viewer behavior back to all the mobile devices in a household. So if someone at a trading desk wants to buy against all those people in a household in a privacy-compliant way, who were watching “Dancing with the Stars,” we’re able to help them target that. The second thing we’re able to do is [match a] a brand’s cookie and mobile IDs in a digital format [to the programming] those people are watching.
How are you connecting shopper data to television viewership data?
We work with both Kantar Shopcom and Skimlinks. The ability for those companies, which sit at the bottom of the funnel, to be closer to TV is driving a huge piece of our predictive modeling. One of the biggest opportunities for DMPs as it relates to television and intent-based data sits at the local level.
We’re seeing opportunity for mid-size advertisers who are buying local and regional TV to leverage data better. We now work with four large, local broadcasters as clients, and we’re able to bring enhanced analytics around intent, their client’s viewership data, so that when you want to buy a regional ad for an automaker it’s actually got a huge amount of digital and intent data behind it.
How did you recognize the local TV market opportunity?
We were working with Targeted Victory, the [audience platform] for the Republican National Committee, and we started doing some testing about two years ago to match set-top box data through third parties. What we saw was this huge opportunity in looking at television to understand consumer behavior at the household and individual level. We’re spending most of our time in local, where there are billions of dollars spent that need better analytics, better knowledge for targeting, and many mid-size marketers at the local level who need a DMP. We’re focused on making our platform self-service enough that we can tackle that market.
What’s your client breakdown these days? Is it mainly publisher, advertiser or third-party partner activation?
There are two things. We’re able to help publishers deliver their audiences and campaigns cross-device [through our acquisition of] AdMobius and the second is the trading desks. We’ve really been able to pump in cross-device audiences that are now inclusive of TV. We’re also coming out of alpha on a product called [Smart TV Audiences] where we’re delivering smart TV segments based on connected TV viewership data to DSPs like Tremor Video, Videology, The Trade Desk and TubeMogul.
Other DMPs like Adobe Audience Manager and Oracle DMP are making a TV push. How is Lotame differentiating?
In the last three quarters, more than half of our new DMP customers came from customers who were using another DMP. On average, we’ve grown about 75% per year in top-line revenue. And that speaks to me of maturity in the market, [as well as the] service and focus you can get from an independent DMP. Meaning you’re not just part of a big organization that’s trying to pull you into their tech stack engine and where data management is just another product. For us, data management is the only thing we’re focused on, and the portability of data, segmentation [and] onboarding activation are what we live every day.
Which parts of your data management platform are resonating with clients?
When we go to sell an agency or brand, we don’t need to sell the full suite of a DMP. Where we see major success is solving cross-device, optimization, analytics and onboarding – these are four of the solutions we’re focused on today. As we continue to productize these things, they’re not going to be full-suite DMP deals. We know brands have existing tech stacks, so we need to fit into what they’ve developed. We don’t try to upsell any other products and services like some of the other large tech stacks are, whether that’s upselling analytics or CRM capabilities.
The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
