Merkle launches addressable ad solution that builds audiences from publisher, advertiser & Merkle data

This week, Merkle launched its own effort to facilitate addressable ad targeting across a network of premium publishers with a new solution called Publisher Addressable Marketplaces (PAM).

PAM brings together access to publishers’ known audiences, advertisers’ first-party data and Merkle’s DataSource database, which spans over 90 percent of US consumers and more than 1,000 attributes, according to Merkle. This user data is grouped into CRM-based audiences that advertisers can target across the publisher network on mobile and/or desktop without relying on cookies.

PAM relies on Merkle’s CRM data onboarding and analytics and Sonobi’s JetStream ad tech platform that is open to both advertisers and agencies.

“With PAM, we are expanding the number of viable options available to the advertiser for truly people-based media that delivers scalability across leading publishers. This offering supports the movement in the programmatic industry away from tonnage and CPM efficiencies toward quality, in a way that is a win for advertisers and publishers alike,” said John Lee, EVP, chief strategy officer for Merkle, in a statement.

Lee offered more details on how the audience matching works:

The match with publishers is a deterministic one utilizing email and terrestrial address. Once matched, Merkle enhances the user profile with DataSource variables. These variables cover a wide range of demographic, psychographic, transactional, and other behavioral data, which is aggregated from over 25 of the leading suppliers of third-party data. We then use these IDs and DataSource variables to build people-based audience segments and propensity models used for targeting and measurement.

Merkle also says the PAM offers a fraud-free solution for advertisers to buy above-the-fold placements on premium inventory in either guaranteed or non-guaranteed audience buys. Lee expanded on why Merkle is confident in the authenticity of the audiences being targeted:

Because almost all PAM inventory is based on a deterministic, person-based ID match, the risk of fraudsters manufacturing bogus cookie IDs is nearly impossible. It is far more difficult for a bot to impersonate a real person when both advertiser and publisher know who they really are.

All ad formats are supported across mobile and desktop, including display, native, news feed, video and in-app, depending on what is supported by the publisher. Participating publishers include Pandora, Trusted Media Brands and Time. Merkle says it will add more publishers and technologies to PAM.