MediaMath Brings Facebook Ads to Its Buying Tool

By: Published: September 23, 2011

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Digital media-buying startup MediaMath has released a new social product that extends the concept of audience buying to Facebook.

Advertisers are increasingly using so-called "demand-side platforms," or DSPs, to reach specific audiences wherever they happen to be on the web. Early on, that meant acquiring publisher inventory through ad exchanges. But now MediaMath, one of the leading independent DSPs, says their self-serve tool now plugs directly into Facebook via the network's new ads API.

The New York City-based company had previously offered Facebook ads via partnerships with third-party vendors, but only through a standalone system that did not integrate with the rest of its self-serve buying platform.

Now, with the new MediaMath Social product, the company says brand marketers and agencies will be able to optimize their buys across both display and social and gain better insights through more unified reporting.

"The ability to see spend and performance across both display and social is really interesting," said Joe Zawadzki, MediaMath CEO. "You can do market-mix modeling effectively, figure out how to spend in one channel vs. another and the impact across the two.

One agency that has been testing out Facebook buying through MediaMath is Hill Holiday. "We can now do optimizations more rapidly," said Adam Cahill, Hill Holiday exec VP and co-media director. "And when we see things working on a Facebook campaign, we can quickly take those insights and apply them to other parts of the buy."

Facebook officially opened its Ads API to the public last month. The program had previously been in private beta.

In July, MediaMath closed a $20 million round of funding, led by Safeguard Scientifics.

Mr. Zawadzki said his 150-person company plans to roll out offerings that plug into the ad platforms of LinkedIn and Twitter in the first half of 2012.