Magazine publisher Time Inc has agreed to acquire Adelphic to bolster its programmatic advertising offering.
The deal will help advertisers more precisely target groups of consumers across its titles, which include Fortune, Time, Sports Illustrated and People.
Adelphic joins marketing company Viant, which Time bought a year ago. It uses first-party data and programmatic technology for ad targeting.
"Adelphic will bring superior media execution capabilities to Viant’s advertising cloud platform as one of the only DSPs built mobile-first,” said Viant co-founder and CEO Tim Vanderhook.
“This addition will give marketers and their agencies the globally scaled people-based platform they have been consistently asking from us.”
Time Inc president and CEO Rich Battista says the move will extend the company's reach to one billion global consumers.
Adelphic's self-serve platform, which lets marketers buy and manage their own media, was also a reason the company set out to acquire Adelphic.
“We know that in addition to premium content, advertisers are looking for more efficient buying processes for digital audiences. With Adelphic’s proven self-service capabilities, Time Inc and Viant will be able to deliver greater programmatic competencies and benefits to our partners,” Battista says.
The deal is expected to close during the first quarter of 2017.
Speaking at the Media Summit last year, APEX Advertising chief executive Pippa Leary, said Australian publishers could be looking to get into bed with airlines, telcos and supermarkets to marry their inventory with these businesses authentication data, in a bid to take on the likes of Google and Facebook.
The move could see local publishers access these firms pools of customer data, with the hope that the partnerships will be able to help publishers fight back against the walled gardens created by the digital behemoths.
She said conversations between publishers and these businesses are already happening, explaining that the industry is set to see a rise in the “identity co-operatives”, which such deals would create.
“I think everyone is in the process of looking at this right now,” she says. “Everybody is wondering how do you create people based marketing solutions and addressability that is going to be able to compete against the walled gardens?”
In 2015 The Guardian, in partnership with CNN International, the Financial Times, The Economist and Reuters, launched a global programmatic private marketplace, named the Pangaea Alliance, allowing advertisers to buy to the publishers' premium advertising inventory programmatically.
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