AudienceScience were one of the first company’s in ad tech to offer their technology using on a software as a service (SaaS) basis, meaning the buyer pays a subscription basis rather than on a percentage of media volume. Here Jeff Hochberg, VP of Business Development for AudienceScience, discusses the importance of transparency, the company’s relationships with agencies, brands and publishers, and fraud and viewability.
AudienceScience uses a SaaS pricing model. Could you explain how it works and how it affects where Audience Science sits in the market?
As the industry knows, the trading desk and DSP pricing model is somewhat broken. While those businesses are incentivized to drive more and more impressions through their platforms, we take an approach that removes this perceived conflict of interest. As a SaaS platform, we sit on the same side of the table as our clients, and we’re incentivized to do one of two things: either drive overall spend down while continuing to hit their desired ROI, or increase delivery at a fixed price, driving their ROI up.
So do you typically work with agencies or directly with brands?
AudienceScience works directly with brands. Our goal is to help brands navigate the confusing LUMAscape, and we do that by acting as the layer between them and all of their partners. They only focus on AudienceScience, and we take care of the integrations and technology.
Our philosophy is that advertisers often know their audience better than anyone else in the ecosystem. They already have a wealth of insights and data – they might as well own the marketing and advertising tools as well, instead of outsourcing this to media vendors on an IO (insertion order) basis.
Do you have any direct relationships with publishers?
We do work with publishers to manage direct buys on behalf of some of our brand clients. If brands choose to buy directly from specific publishers and manage their digital media through our platform, then we prefer to manage the integration. We currently have direct integrations with more than 100 premium publishers around the world, as well as all of the major global SSPs. Our current efforts concentrate on building out our publisher and SSP partnerships in regions such as China, Russia and Brazil.
What has AudienceScience been doing to combat fraud and to improve viewability?
We take fraud very seriously, and we protect our advertisers from exposure to bot traffic and ghost sites by maintaining 100 percent transparency. If we can’t see the URL for an impression made available on an exchange, then we will never let that impression reach the advertiser. We also partner with some of the leading fraud detection firms and are always testing new products and partners that focus specifically on this issue.
