In a strategic move that anticipates the imminent shift in digital advertising, Zeotap Data, the leading provider of people-based digital audiences, has announced a partnership with Illuma, the leader in AI-powered expansion and optimisation. This collaboration offers a new tactic in the face of third party cookie deprecation.

Zeotap and Illuma have teamed up to create a powerful advertising solution. They combine Audience targeting, which focuses on specific groups of people, with contextual targeting, which looks at the content being viewed. This collaboration helps advertisers by extending Zeotap audience targeting with contextual expansion powered by Illuma. This allows clients to scale with relevant reach and provides valuable insights into how their target audience behaves online.

With Google phasing out third party cookies in Chrome by September 2024, understanding and reaching audiences at scale takes on great significance. Using persistent identifiers as the basis, Zeotap activates an audience and, powered by Illuma’s machine learning, delivers actionable insight within 48 hours. This innovation empowers agencies and advertisers to comprehend and engage with content on a deeper level, increasing advertising relevance and unlocking cost-effective, incremental contextual inventory in every global DSP that matters. 

The partnership arrives at a critical juncture, offering a beacon of innovation and adaptation, as it brings together persistent ID-based audiences with contextual understanding to create a robust expansion solution.

Matt Bennathan, chief commercial officer at Zeotap Data, commented on the partnership: "Our collaboration with Illuma represents a significant leap forward. This partnership is more than just a response to industry changes; it's a proactive step towards a new era of digital advertising. We're combining Zeotap's data-driven capabilities with Illuma's cutting-edge contextual AI to offer a solution that's not just a cookie alternative, but a smarter, more effective way to reach relevant, incremental audiences.”

Peter Mason, founder and CEO of Illuma, said: “This new collaboration between Illuma and Zeotap offers advertisers a deeper understanding of audience interests based on live contextual behaviour, and the chance to significantly increase qualified reach and drive outcomes using the latest AI technology.”