AudienceScience officially launched its audience-buying network in the UK last week. Its user profiling technology helps publishers segment premium audiences. These audience profiles are then packaged and sold into agencies and advertisers. There has been a move by agencies of late towards more audience-centric media buying, and AudeinceScience seem to be launching its premium offering at a very opportune time.

ExchangeWire caught up with Stuart Colman, Managing Director, European Operations at AudienceScience, this week to get more information on the ad net's audience buying proposition.

Can you give an overview of the new Audience Science platform roll-out here in the UK?

SC: The AudienceScience Network isn’t new – it’s been a hugely successful product in the US for 3 years. What we’re doing now is taking that well established, successful business from the US and applying that to the UK, so it’s not new, it’s just a new country.

The network has been bought to the UK as a result of the demand from our partners and its those partners who are contributing data to the network, allowing us to build aggregated, anonymous audience segments. To date the network offers over 100 segments covering a range of key audiences. There will also be the option to develop bespoke audience segments for advertisers.

This move is clearly addressing the agencies move towards audience buying. Are publishers now realising the economic importance of their data?

SC: Publishers have always been aware of the importance and value of their data and have used our technology to leverage that in the context of their own sites. The value of our network offering to our partners is that it provides them with a new way the create value from their data.
Can you give more detail on the audience segmentation?

Currently we have 14 broad segments including automotive, business, entertainment, travel, sports and technology. These will then break down into more detailed segments. For example travel allows you to target a host of specific groups including people interested in winter holidays, cruises, city breaks, business travelers etc.

Will ad inventory be exclusively premium inventory?

SC: The inventory we will be offering will be safe inventory, clearly making the most out of the pre existing relationships that we have. However, given we’re defining the desired audience for advertisers through our advanced segmentation and then targeting that exact audience, context becomes irrelevant (as long as its safe!)

How many UK premium publishers are involved in the new project?

SC: An ever growing number are contributing to this and at the same time we are building out our network team to facilitate this growth.

How will inventory be priced?

SC: CPM

Will this new platforms have open APIs for agency platforms and DSPs to buy directly from?

SC: AudienceScience offers a solution in this space – the AudienceScience Gateway, which enables agencies and advertisers to leverage their data and deliver actionable audiences across multiple platforms, including the AudienceScience Network.

Will buyers be able to bid on inventory or will all ad impressions have a fixed cost?

SC: Fixed cost for segments

Will Audience Science sell this inventory on behalf of its publisher partners?

SC: No – if you want the context of a publishers site, you’ll buy from a publisher. Our offering is about a credible alternative for advertisers who want to reach audiences rather than channels. Utilising our industry leading technology (we don’t dominate the UK and US publisher audience technology marketplace through luck – we dominate through having the best technology) we’re delivering a choice to advertisers that to date, others in the network space haven’t been able to offer to the degree of quality AudienceScience can deliver.

However, every data point used by AudienceScience is used with the full permission of our partners, is covered by a contract and is paid for, so aside from this enabling us to offer a data assurance guarantee, it means partners of our network offering are able to generate a new revenue stream through the syndicated, aggregated use of that data.