This article originally appears on TechCrunch.
There’s a lot of talk about using data to power programmatic advertising, but according toMediaMath CEO Joe Zawadzki, the reality hasn’t lived up to “all the hopes and dreams.” That’s something he’s hoping to change, partly through today’s launch of MediaMath’s new Helix business unit.
Well, not entirely new. It’s built on top of MediaMath’s Adroit Shopper Co-op, which the company acquired from Akamai. In fact, the technology has changed hands a few times — as Helix President Jacob Ross put it, “Different owners have invested in it for a decade.”
However, Zawadzki said that in the three years since the acquisition, MediaMath has been “replatforming it in a couple of different dimensions” and integrating it with MediaMath’s ad-buying tools and data — now it’s unveiling the results of that work. The company says Helix allows marketers to use anonymized shopping data from hundreds of members, including one-third of the 100 largest retailers in the US, which marketers can then use to target their ads.
“MediaMath throws off a lot of data exhaust in the way that they generate marketing,” Ross said. “We’re combining that data asset that MediaMath has with the shopper co-op to create a holistic profile of a consumer.”
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