The joint venture between top German publishers G+J Electronic Media Sales, IP Germany, SevenOne Media and Tomorrow Focus to aggregate premium ad inventory started operations yesterday. The new partnership will be headed up by Frank Herold, formerly Director of Sales at IP Interactive Germany.

The publisher exchange, which will now be known as AdAudience, will look to attract greater agency spend by segmenting audiences and profiling users across all the participating publishers’ premium ad inventory.

AdAudience will sell standard banners, rectangles and skyscrapers across all the exchange members' web properties to begin with but there are plans to roll out more bespoke solutions in the coming months. The new venture will also focus exclusively on the German-speaking markets. RTL has more on the story here:

The four joint venture partners each hold equal stakes in the newly founded AdAudience GmbH, based in Dusseldorf. The companies will let the new company market an agreed portion of their inventory. By bundling their collective reach, AdAudience will achieve a net reach of around 75 per cent of the German online population right from the start. Beyond this quantitative aspect, a new form of targeting provides a qualitative improvement compared with conventional advertising products. The company’s portfolio will consist of target-group packages: alongside the ‘Top Target Groups’, which are defined by their market relevance, there will be “packages” combining three demographic criteria, as well as bespoke offers for individual customers.

Frank Herold, who previously served as Sales Director Interactive at IP Deutschland and is now the Managing Director of AdAudience, says: “AdAudience lets advertisers and agencies book vast reach in narrowly targeted demographics and in quality environments from a single source.”

Rectangles, Skyscrapers and Superbanners will be bookable to begin with – and an expanded version of the latter is planned. But AdAudience will also develop and market exclusive new advertising formats. The AdAudience product range caters to advertisers in the German-speaking countries – currently in the German and Austrian markets. AdAudience markets its portfolio both to agencies and directly to customers.