Ross Caveille is UK Country Manager at PulsePoint. Here he discusses the PulsePoint proposition in Europe - and how the newly merged company will differentiate itself in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
Can you give an overview on the merger between ContextWeb and Datran?
On September 22, ContextWeb and Datran Media merged to create PulsePoint, a new company with the capability to deliver solutions for marketers and publishers across multiple digital platforms (display, mobile, email, social, video, RTB). The merger was a natural step as the two companies have been in market together for over a year, in the US, which has proven to be a great success. Earlier in 2011, ContextWeb gained a patent for the contextual technology that underlines the platform and became the leading display solution in the contextual space offering unique opportunities to advertisers and publishers. The merger with Datran Media was driven by our customers, and the wider market, demanding improved capabilities in granular audience targeting and analytics. As a result of this merger, advertisers and publishers are able to leverage PulsePoint to provide both niche environment and granular audience targeting and insight solutions.
From the outside, these two companies do seem an unexpected pairing in terms of the business offerings? Can you give some insight into the value for your clients in merging the two companies?
The greatest strength of the merger is in the uniqueness both ContextWeb and Datran Media bring to form PulsePoint. Both companies have complementary patented technology which ensures the business is bringing something different and of greater value to our partners. As I say above, one of the driving forces of the merger is client demands and the need to diversify our product offering to align with the digital market as it is today and how we see it evolving moving forward. The initial combination of the two platforms has provided successful results for clients seeking highly relevant and scalable audience-in-context solutions. In fact, it has quickly become apparent that the value the two companies could deliver together was greater than they could as individual entities. PulsePoint marries each company’s unique solutions and services for audience and contextual targeting, content distribution and real-time bidding. The integration of analytic media technology solutions enables predictable audience engagement at scale across display, social, mobile, video and email. It also delivers the cross-channel insights marketers need to fuel better decision making and performance.
So what is PulsePoint now? How do you position the new PulsePoint solution? Platform play? Exchange play? Data play? Or holistic marketing offering?
We position PulsePoint as a holistic technology platform. PulsePoint will be focused on offering the first technology platform for brands that want to see and reach their most engaged target audiences across digital channels including display, social, mobile, video and email. Our publishing partners will equally benefit from the technology platform, gaining deeper visibility in to their audience and content, along with smarter user engagement opportunities that will drive business results.
As a media business, we value and invest in the skill-set of the team operating our proprietary, patented technology stack. Additionally, we will license the technology stack as a holistic solution or as single point solutions to agencies, publishers and brands. The technology and expertise of the PulsePoint team are key to our success. The merger provides the scale we need to continue to increase our investment in game-changing technology and deliver what leading edge marketers need to be successful.
Your operation in Europe has been much more ad net focused? Will we see a change in strategy here?
It really depends who you are and what you are looking to achieve. To date, the business in the UK has serviced clients in the ad network model but also provides a real-time bidding platform to address this ever growing flow of demand. We look to differentiate and add value across both, for example 45% of the available impressions across our RTB platform are expandable enabled. It is clear that ad networks and indeed all companies within the digital space need to develop and evolve to manage change or they face some difficult times ahead. We are fully capable of trading with both advertisers and publishers that wish to continue to engage as they feel comfortable doing so but beyond this PulsePoint has a fantastic array of solutions that we believe can provide value to all partners on the supply and demand side and everyone in-between. The ability to provide multiple proprietary technology solutions will be the driving force behind the different strategies we employ and I would expect PulsePoint to work more as a partner empowering others to better service their clients and manage the changing environment we all operate in.
Given that they are a number of ad trading companies all competing for European agency budget, how will PulsePoint differentiate itself in the market here?
PulsePoint’s integrated platform meets marketer’s needs today and positions the company for the future - for where the market is moving. It integrates serving, monitoring, reporting and optimization across display, social, mobile, video and email and is RTB enabled (display). It also provides the unique ability to learn from user engagements on one digital channel and leverage those insights to inform and predict engagements in other channels –all in real-time and at scale. For example, user interaction with social media can determine when/how/and which ad messages are served to users in display and then say mobile. PulsePoint is evolutionary because it is a “value” connector. With unprecedented speed, accuracy and efficiency, PulsePoint delivers value to its clients by connecting them to insights and informed ad serving that drives success throughout their digital marketing plans. Currently, businesses we see in this space that offer multi-platform solutions are made up of stapled-on technologies and services. We believe our solution set will be one of if not the first of its kind to be fully integrated across one platform.