InfoSum today announced the launch of its Discovery platform, which enables media owners to make their audiences available for powerful privacy-safe insights, planning and activation in a cookieless world.

Tougher data laws and increased restrictions from web browsers herald the imminent demise of the third-party cookie as a way of tracking consumer behaviour and providing targeted advertising. InfoSum’s alternative solution is a Unified Data Platform, which connects datasets for analysis in a decentralised architecture, without exposing or sharing raw data.

The new platform allows for data collaboration without compromising commercial trust or consumer privacy. Brands and agencies are able to conduct statistical analysis using rich first-party customer data from publishers to discover audience affinity and connectivity – providing a real alternative to cookie-based targeted advertising.

InfoSum has signed a commercial agreement with Telegraph Media Group and is also set to work with a number of other premium brands, agencies and publishers, including Immediate Media and Infectious Media.

Leading programmatic agency Infectious Media will be using Discovery to assist with media planning for its clients. Harry Doyle, CTO said of the partnership: “Brands work with us because they want relevant, data-driven advertising, while having total transparency over the value of their media spend. Discovery will provide us with in-depth insights for our media planning, and is a major step forward in tackling the challenges around data in the rapidly changing digital landscape.”

Through Discovery, publishers can make their rich audiences available for brands and media agencies to discover, measure audience affinity and activate against. Matthew Rance, Commercial Audience Manager at Immediate Media, added: “We are always looking for ways to highlight the value of our diverse range of publications to brands. Given the current industry challenges, we’re exploring Discovery as a solution to strengthen and expand our relationships with brands, and creating new opportunities for them to reach the highly-engaged audiences that our special interest content appeals to.”

Richard Foster, Chief Revenue Officer at InfoSum, added, “This is truly game-changing for publishers wishing to compete with the dominant digital platforms. Through Discovery, brands and agencies will be able to conduct statistical analysis against publishers’ audience segments to determine affinity. By removing the reliance on third-party cookies, we provide the advertising industry with a first-party solution that will optimise the way brands and agencies target consumers, and enabling publishers to monetise their rich data. What’s more, our approach lessens the compliance burden and means there is no need to compromise on commercial trust, data privacy or data security to unlock the value of first and second-party data.”