Publicitas announced last month that it was looking to launch a premium exchange solution for pan-European publishers. Here Chris LeMay discusses VisualDNA's role in the new Publicitas project, and what the new SSP solution will mean for premium European publishers.

What can you share about the Publicitas sell side platform?

Publicitas is bringing to market an industry leading, pan-European, sell side platform to the benefit of Europe's premium publishers. It incorporates features that will afford publishers much greater control and choice over how both their inventory and user data is monetised. Principally, it will enable premium media owners to increase yields, maximise ad revenues, benefit from new audience-based revenue streams and gain more control over how their premium and discretionary inventory is priced and purchased.

What role does Visual DNA play in this initiative?

As a leading provider of quality audience data, our role is to provide user insight and data management services, on a global scale, to publishers using the platform. Audience insight delivered in an actionable way through deep and multifaceted profiles is a key advertising revenue driver for publishers and we're excited to be bringing the unique benefits of VisualDNA audience profiling technology to Europe's top publishers.

Should publishers take to market data wrapped with media? Or should they delineate? What does experience tell you?

Premium publishers are perfectly positioned to produce and benefit from quality audience targeting data as a result of high user engagement levels across a diverse range of content. I see no reason why data-enabled inventory should be anything but beneficial, moreover, I can see no reason why they should not benefit from both.

Will Visual DNA need to build up its data coverage in these markets by embedding image quizzes into publisher sites?

A unique component of VisualDNA audience data is the high quality, user submitted, psychographic data collected through our image-based quizzes. We already have a significant global seed set of 1m+ live quiz profiles at any given time, but we are always looking to increase that number. Because of the quizzes’ engaging nature, they have an average completion rate in excess of 86% and a great viral quality through users sharing their results with friends. We'll be releasing new quizzes in all the Euro territories in the coming months and have already been asked by some of the publishers to develop custom versions to help them understand specific aspects of their own audiences, as we've done previously for The New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Will you be able to monetise the data outside of this platform with some form of revenue share with the publishers in Publicitas?

Although we're not able to discuss the details of a revenue share agreement, we will indeed open up the opportunity for publishers to monetise valuable audience segments outside of the Publicitas SSP. VisualDNA and Publicitas are committed to creating audience data on behalf of publishers that will be made available in the leading demand side platforms, and we can acknowledge that publishers will benefit most from this offsite monetisation capability.

Are VisualDNA more of a data provider rather than an enabler? Are you bringing DMP lite solutions?

Within the Publicitas SSP our primary focus is to act as a data provider, given our unique ability to turn raw user data points into powerful audience segments that result in increased ad revenue for publishers. Along with providing data, however, we will offer a simple to use and easy to understand audience dashboard in the form of our Audience Composition Interface; some might say this is a DMP-type product.

Any plans to develop DMP capabilities across Europe, if this proves an effective strategy?

It’s difficult to define precisely what DMP capabilities are right now, let alone commit to specific DMP capabilities this early on, but I can say that all products we develop moving forward will reflect the needs of Publicitas and their publishing partners in conjunction with the needs of our demand side clients.

Where do you see the market generally right now for data in Europe? Do you see anything different to the UK re: how data is deployed?

The various European markets are well informed regarding the use of data and are making considered decisions based on their observations of the US & UK markets. Often Europe is referred to as "a market" -- which clearly it is not. It's a patchwork quilt of languages, regulations, regional advertisers, agencies and publishers. Availability of quality audience data, in combination with appropriate inventory supply, are the only barriers to what will undoubtedly become a very sophisticated "market".