AdAudience, an audience-buying venture launched earlier this year by a number of Germany's largest publishers, has decided to change its platform provider. Having inked a deal with Wunderloop earlier in the year, AdAudience is now looking to partner with Nugg.ad. The new partnership will take effect on September 1. There's no official line as to why AdAudience has decided to move vendors. Nugg.ad was on the shortlist during the tender process for AdAudience's platform provider, coming very close to winning the initial bid. It is likely that Wunderloop's recent problems were a big motivating factor for the change of technology partner. There are no details on the specifics of the new platform, but it's a given that AdAudience will not stray too far from its original strategy of offering audience-specific buys to German agencies. The question is whether or not it will be an automated platfrom, offering access to DSPs and agency trading desks.

Here's the press release in full:

Duesseldorf, August 30, 2010. AdAudience is switching service providers and will start collaborating with nugg.ad AG on September 1, 2010. By that time, the complete system integration of AdAudience will be finished so that a smooth transition from Wunderloop to nugg.ad is guaranteed. Ten socio-demographic target group specifications and 65 affinity characteristics derived from the user behaviour in the AdAudience network will be available immediately.

On September 1, AdAudience will also offer its advertising partners three new types of advertising media for clients and agencies, which are meant to satisfy the increasing demand for branding-specific online advertising: The Banderole and Maxi ad from the premium package will be available for booking and the Flash layer will be integrated. Directly at the start of its collaboration with nugg.ad, AdAudience will also launch new products on the market: 'Frequency targeting' will be offered to optimise contact classes in the entire AdAudience network by enabling an optimisation of the campaigns according to contact corridors. Products such as the 'branding optimiser' will also be available to make the branding effect measurable and optimise campaigns according to this parameter. In this context, AdAudience can identify individual target groups in the pre-stages of the campaign so that the advertisements can be directed even more precisely.

Frank Herold, Managing Director of AdAudience: "We are looking forward to our collaboration with nugg.ad in the future. We have a shared understanding of the market and the same ideas about how we can advance the targeting market with our solutions. We are expanding our existing portfolio by developing additional exciting products, which can offer a particularly high value in AdAudience's premium-quality and wide-reaching network."

Karim H. Attia, Member of the Executive Board at nugg.ad AG: "With AdAudience, we are gaining a partner whose core business consists of marketing valuable target groups with a large, qualitative reach. We are very pleased about joining with Frank Herold and his team to continue establishing our vision of digital brand communication on the market. The combination of our Predictive Targeting Technology with the advertising formats of the Premium AdPackage and qualitative ranges provided by AdAudience is a fantastic offer for the advertising industry."