Centro’s Basis ad platform now shows unified creative-level data across programmatic, search, social & display

Chicago-based Centro announced that its programmatic ad platform Basis can now show advertisers what creatives performed best at a granular ad-level across DoubleClick, Facebook, Instagram, Google Search, and Google Display Network as well programmatic and direct-to-publisher buys made through its own DSP.

For example, a campaign might be running the same creative messaging across multiple channels. Instead of having to log into each channel separately to analyze performance, marketers can evaluate that messaging across all channels in one view in Basis.

An example of a cross-channel creative-level report in Basis.

Centro CEO Shawn Riegsecker said users have always been able to track how a campaign is performing across channels with Basis, but now they can see creative-level performance relative to geography and other targets on ads delivered via its own DSP as well as third-party ad servers as part of a cross-channel view. That includes video advertising. Video unit measurement includes impressions, clicks, starts, completes and conversions. The company says more video metrics may become available later this year.

Advertisers can make adjustments based on those insights in real-time on their programmatic and direct buys made within Basis. Search and social campaign management is done outside of Basis at this point.

Additionally, Centro now provides more media planning intelligence for open auction, private marketplaces (PMP) and direct-to-publisher buys. Strategists can evaluate the whether to work with publishers directly or with exchanges and private marketplaces. Its updated publisher directory includes 9,000 vendors and 11,000 contacts for data on available inventory across publisher channels and buying tactics. The directory shows all buying options available on a property, previous contract and pricing data between an agency and publisher, and PMP deals. Centro says it has pre-negotiated 1,800 PMP deals for all its users.

Centro added native DSP capabilities to the platform last year. In addition to direct-to-vendor media buying and programmatic advertising, the platform also offers universal campaign reporting across search and social, business intelligence reporting and media operations functionality.

Riegsecker described Basis as the only media buying and operations platform that includes ERP (enterprise resource planning) functionality purposely built for digital media industry, a DSP (demand-side platform) and a BI (business intelligence) platform all in one.

Centro says it has roughly 700 employees and about $500 million in media spend ran through the platform last year.