PRESS RELEASE
Digital ad server technology company aiMatch rounds out SAS’ integrated marketing management platform
CARY, NC (Feb. 21, 2012) – SAS, a leader in business analytics and integrated marketing management, has acquired aiMatch, a company that provides cloud-based ad server technology to help publishers sell and manage online ad inventory. SAS’ advanced analytics combined with aiMatch’s technology will provide publishers with an end-to-end solution to help manage, forecast, optimize and measure ad inventory to maximize ad revenue. Current aiMatch customers include APN Digital, Photobucket, Pinger and Popcornflix.
The digital advertising market is growing rapidly. Last year $32 billion was spent on online advertising in the United States and the market is projected to reach $50 billion by 2015. Despite its size the digital ad market is fragmented and lacks purpose-built analytical applications, making it difficult for publishers to effectively manage ad inventory and optimize profitability. “Digital advertising has huge potential to benefit from the application of advanced analytics,” said Jim Davis, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at SAS. “Publishers lack a solution to help them efficiently manage ad inventory. Advanced analytics will help determine optimal ad pricing, audience and inventory to yield maximum ad revenue.”
As the digital ad market continues to shift toward real-time bidding, SAS’ ability to process and reallocate ad inventory in real-time, whether via video, mobile, display or other digital media, will be critical for publishers. Having the technology to help publishers automate sales through a variety of business models (display advertising, ad exchanges, and ad networks) and provide better audience targeting through behavioral segmentation analysis positions SAS to help meet changing market needs.
“Due to an explosion of data the online advertising industry is in desperate need of better solutions to analyze and make use of all of the new information available to them,” said Jeff Wood, former CEO of aiMatch. “Publishers are actively seeking a technology partner that does not compete with them in the media space. Combining aiMatch’s intelligent decision and delivery engine with SAS’ analytics and optimization capabilities provides a highly desirable solution to both of these problems.”
SAS also plans to extend its capabilities to advertisers and agencies to help them make more informed decisions on where to advertise and how to optimize budgets for maximum impact.
The aiMatch acquisition makes SAS, recently named a leader in Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrant for Integrated Marketing Management and The Forrester Wave™:Cross-Channel Campaign Management Platforms, Q1 2012, unique in now having a fully-integrated multi-channel marketing platform with ad intelligence and management capabilities. These newly acquired capabilities will complement existing solutions in the SAS® Customer Intelligence suite that focus on solving critical challenges across marketing.
i eMarketer, June 2011.
About SAS
SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 55,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world The Power to Know®.
