Lotame launches what it calls ‘first TV data management platform’

In March, data management platform (DMP) Lotame announced Smart TV Audiences, where it partnered with an unnamed smart TV maker to get anonymized, real-time data on what programs those sets were showing.

It connected the data with info about that household’s probable smartphones and computers and their online and offline activity, via IP matching, geo-location, purchase intent data, usage patterns and other techniques.

Now, the New York City-based firm is taking that TV-plus-online data collection and applying it to advertising on television, creating what it describes as the first TV DMP.

If a maker of pickup trucks, for instance, wants to reach people who have indicated by their online behavior that they have or are looking for such vehicles, Lotame can find the kinds of programs — and their times — that are popular with that segment of anonymized online users, in specific TV viewing markets.

The advertiser can then not only target ads to those TV programs at those times, but also on the online places frequented by those kinds of customers. Lotame can also provide aggregate online behavior about that segment of users after those ads have run, and it can find lookalike segments of users online — who have similar online behavior — for additional ad targeting online.

“No one else has matched [this kind of] audience data to linear TV viewing, at this scale,” Lotame Director of TV Solutions Ryan Reed told me.

The new TV DMP follows the development of a prototype that Lotame created for Pearl TV, which owns and operates about 200 local broadcast TV stations in the US. Lotame says it collects anonymized program viewing data from nearly 15 million connected TV across 210 Designated Market Areas (DMAs).

Reed told me that Pearl, which wanted to develop more targeted advertising on local TV, initially presented his company with a Request for Proposal. A prototype was developed in response, following by this commercial DMP.

[Article on MarTech Today.]

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.