Digital Innovation New Publishing Tech
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Q&A: Mediarithmics and how universal data platforms can help publishers

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Founded in 2012 by CEO Stéphane Dugelay, mediarithmics is an end-to-end Data Marketing Platform (comprising DMP, DSP, CMP, marketing automation, and DCO technologies) – or more succinctly, a Universal Data Platform.

Headquartered in Paris and operating across 16 European countries as well as the U.S., mediarithmics provides tools to protect, structure and leverage the value of publisher data, helping create new, innovative business models. It also allows brands to launch personalised, cross-channel marketing campaigns in real-time using programmatic technologies.

WNIP caught up with mediarithmics’ UK Country Manager, Graeme Finneberg, to learn more.

What business problem is your company addressing?

Publishers are losing revenue to the likes of Google and Facebook because they are finding it hard to compete with their advertising offerings. Mediarithmics’ technology helps publishers get more value out of their own data and enables publishers to pool their data in cross-publisher data alliances which create the scale and data richness they need to compete with the duopoly.

For example, mediarithmics is powering the Gravity Alliance, the largest Data Alliance in Europe, consisting of 25 leading publishers, telecoms, search and ecommerce companies who are pooling their data. Mediarithmics fully complies with new European Data legislations, allowing each member to combine their strengths to boost media reach whilst maintaining full ownership of its data assets and measuring its data contribution.

What is your core product addressing this problem?

The mediarithmics’ platform allows publishers to maximise their own data and benefit from partner data. Its Activity Analyser does away with a huge issue for publishers of different media brands that have different taxonomies. Typically resolving this can be hugely time consuming and/or costly. The Activity Analyser converts all the information across all the websites into a singular language (working atscale), solving a huge pain point for publishers.

Another benefit to publishers is that, unlike its competitors, the mediarithmics’ DMP does not compress data, allowing them to build hundreds of segments in minutes (where competitors can take 30 days) so real audience numbers can be actually identified, not estimated, in a very short time. This is particularly beneficial for publishers who are often guessing what segments advertisers need, which may mean under-selling inventory or letting advertisers down.

It’s also important to emphasise that mediarithmics is a transparent and honest platform which doesn’t monetise or share data.

Can you give some examples of publishers successfully using your solution?

An interesting case study for publishers is our work in building and running the Gravity Alliance in France which, unlike UK alliances such as the Ozone Project and Pangea, has not only large publishers like Le Parisien and Lagardere Active, but two telecom firms (SFR and Orange) and also search firms, content providers and sizeable retailers (e.g. Fnac-Darty). They realise that, by combining their data, the alliance is creating a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Mediarithmics was selected as the technology partner of the Alliance for a number of reasons, but our market-beating security, transparency, scalability and attribution modelling capabilities were important factors in the decision. However, with 25 members comprising 160 sites, 300 data partners and 190 independent data streams, bringing the data into one place was a massive undertaking. We took it from planning through to launch and beyond, such as creating a taxonomy that worked for all data, legal issues (e.g. unified GDPR permissions), data onboarding and stakeholder management. With over 150 campaigns already executed via the platform and revenues of 5 million Euros in its first year, the Gravity Alliance is a model that other publishers should watch.

Pricing?

We are a SaaS model with a monthly subscription fee based on volumes of data collected.

What are other people doing in the space and why?

There are some key points of difference that set mediarithmics apart from other companies in the marketplace. Firstly, the platform is a Universal DMP (DMP and DSP combined), rather than a separate DMP or CDP (customer data platform) with a DSP. Crucially, if publishers want to collect data in real-time, they are beholden on the DSP they work with for their updates hindering them from piping data/actions out in real-time.

With mediarithmics, clients are working in true real-time as data collection and output is done within the Universal DMP.

Secondly, with traditional DMPs, you have to apply/search within their set categories. The mediarithmics platform is graph-based, which means that data doesn’t have to fit neatly into pre-prepared segments. This allows publishers to collect data at every data point and user point, and all kinds of data including logins, third-party cookies, as mediarithmics can match individuals against new data as it comes in. This makes it possible to collect, store and use much richer data at scale.

Finally, mediarithmics makes it easy for publishers to take control of their data – both in terms of ownership and how they use it. With other providers, changing DMP can be painful requiring starting from scratch, but with mediarithmics, it is a quick and effective transition, even when combining hundreds of data sources. Plus, you can export and reuse all the data if you subsequently decide to move onto another DMP later on down the line.

How do you view the future?

Publishers are under pressure to deliver more compelling reasons for advertisers to spend with them rather than Google, Facebook etc. I think we will see far more data alliances being created, bringing more opportunity for advertisers to access deeper data layers and insights when buying campaigns, as well as greater scale.

With the importance of data being used more and more frequently and correctly in a post GDPR world, it’s crucial for publishers to select a technology partner that adheres to these principles and offer the tools need to execute their strategies, ie real-time, non-compressed data collection, full transparency, no data leakage etc.

Thank you.


Download WNIP’s new Media Moments 2018 report, which dives deeper into this year’s developments in publishing, and looks at what opportunities 2019 could usher in. The report is free and can be downloaded here.