Agencies and advertisers are now looking to do more audience buys. Top level executives at the big European agencies are actively pushing their organisations in that direction. Data is integral to the success of these audience buys, as it’s nigh on impossible to aggregate and target the right audience without leveraging the cookie. AudienceScience seems to be reacting fastest to the changing needs of the market. It recently launched its platform, Audience Gateway, to help agencies and advertisers build more effective data segments for better targeting.

So how does it work? And where does it sit in the eco-system? The Audience Gateway is aimed specifically at media buyers and sits between the agencies and the market. It pulls data from multiple sources, and can process large numbers of data points. It then segments all the required information into actionable data. The platform can pull data from a number of sources, including: the client’s online and offline data; data exchanges, like Bluekai and Exelate; AudienceScience’s own available segments; and additional third party sources. Audience Science has stressed that its new offering is platform neutral and will work with any vendor or data provider.

How Audience Gateway Works

What’s so interesting about Audience Gateway from the perspective of the agencies is its ability to bring together data from so many different sources. Presently there are few agnostic players in the market that can offer access to so many data points. The platform can also be used to buy media across multiple inventory sources if agencies chose to do so – but it is Audience Gateway's capability of leveraging huge amounts of data that will peek the interest of buy-side traders. Even if advertisers or agencies can't get access to quality data from their own sources, Audience Science can offer buyers data segments from publishers on its premium audience network.

A few points to note here: it's not known if the platform will be RTB enabaled, but you'd expect this to become a feature given that a lot of the traders using Gateway will be buying in real time in the coming months; the platfrom will only be made available to advertisers and agencies, and not ad networks; and you have to wonder how effective this will be if publishers continue to abstain from automated bying platforms, although I do expect this to change this intransigence to change very shortly.

Audience Gateway will see the company going up against the re-targeting heavy weights, buying platforms and behavioural ad networks in the European market – and it is in a very strong position to grab more market share. Audience Science is capitalising on its experience in the data market over the past couple of years, and looks set to attract a lot of interest around the new platform.