On Mar 3 and 4, 2021, across three different Virtual NOVA events in North America, UK and EMEA, and APAC, we launched the Quantcast Platform, an innovative and intelligent audience platform for brands, agencies, and publishers to know and grow their audiences. We also gathered global thought leaders from major brands, agencies, and publishers to share their perspectives on the future of advertising.
We are truly humbled and overwhelmed by the support and engagement from our attendees. The events were attended by thousands and there were many thoughtful questions from the engaged audience. We thought we’d capture the top questions and drill down further into the answers here.
What is the Quantcast Platform?
The Quantcast Platform is a new and modern intelligent audience platform for AI-driven audience planning, campaign activation, and measurement. The platform, powered by AraTM, our AI and machine learning engine, delivers in-depth and actionable audience and campaign insights, maximizes outcomes, and grows revenues across the advertising ecosystem.
What is an intelligent audience platform? How is it different from a DSP?
The Quantcast Platform can absolutely do the things a DSP can do and more. Think of it as a DSP that has:
- Built-in access to a unique, real-time dataset with a foundation of consumer consent
- Machine learning that turns data into insights about live consumer intent and interests
- AI built into its fabric such that it largely automates campaign execution to free up practitioner time so they can focus on marketing innovation
- Fully unified planning, activation, and measurement powered by same underlying data and audiences at the very center enabling practitioners to close the loop
- Effortless access to audience and campaign insights: in seconds, not hours
We like to call it an intelligent audience platform because it helps not just the demand side– brands and agencies, but also publishers to understand their audiences and better monetize their inventory.
How does the Quantcast Platform work in a world without third-party cookies?
The platform is built to help brands, agencies, and publishers thrive in a privacy-first world. We are leveraging our core products like Quantcast Measure, Quantcast Choice, and Permisio. With Quantcast Choice and Permisio, we are putting consumer consent front and center, and our Measure data set gives us a vast data footprint that is future-proof since it uses first-party tags. We’re also working in partnership with IAB Tech Lab, Project Rearc, and W3C to build solutions that will help businesses thrive in a post-cookie era. In addition, we are actively in conversations with UID 2.0, Liveramp, Pubmatic, Magnite, and others to make our solution interoperable, giving our customers the flexibility they need. You can read more about our approach and point of view here.
Tell us more about the data that the platform uses. Is your back-end dataset incorporated with major offline third-party data providers?
The Quantcast Platform is powered by directly collected data from across 100M+ web and mobile destinations. This dataset is future‑proofed as it utilizes first‑party tags, not third‑party cookies. In addition, if desired, the data can also be augmented with first‑party data from customers’ marketing systems as well as through integrations with DMPs.
You can read more about our dataset and how it powers the Quantcast Platform here.
How does the Quantcast Platform deliver better performance and results?
AraTM, our AI and machine learning engine, is the math behind the magic of better performance and results. Ara can deliver superior performance for four reasons:
- Ara operates on unique, real-time data with machine learning to predict live intent and interests. This means practitioners can reach audiences based on not just backward-looking stale data but also forward-looking intent signals.
- Ara uses these real-time intent signals to score ad impressions in real-time. This leads to more accurate evaluation of the comparative value of ad impressions.
- Ara monitors live campaign performance, observing outcomes, learning from it, and auto-adjusting thousands of variables to constantly optimize the bidding strategy towards delivering the desired campaign outcomes.
- Finally, with this automation and by surfacing audience and campaign insights, Ara frees up practitioner time so they can focus on experimenting with new audiences, creatives and other campaign strategies.
This combination of technology and human ingenuity enables the Quantcast Platform to deliver better performance and results.
Does the Quantcast Platform offer transparency on optimizations being applied to campaigns as they are automated?
The platform surfaces insights around audiences and campaigns that allows you to understand what is working well or not with week to week and day to day views, giving you the transparency you need. Our campaign insights allow you to see which campaign attributes are influencing performance behind the scenes. Not only does it provide a direct line of insight into performance changes, but also the impact to your audiences as optimizations are made.
The platform also provides many options to control your campaign: most of these are related to the goals and constraints you want to achieve (e.g. Set Moat viewability at 65%) rather than tedious lever pulling that yields mixed results at best (e.g. “upweight my bid on domain X”). Think of it as you having the control to set those outcomes, and the platform delivers you the results you want.
Does the Quantcast Platform have brand safety controls?
Yes. In addition to Quantcast ad fraud and brand safety proprietary technology, advertisers have the option to enable Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify pre-bid technology. For example, using IAS pre-bid segments, prevent ads from being shown to users on risky content (based on IAS classification) before the bid – thus eliminating the impression from being served on content you deem undesirable.
Does the Quantcast Platform have the ability to perform conversion lift tests?
The platform has experimentation capabilities that allow you to perform A/B tests to test new audiences, creatives, and messaging strategies. In addition, we plan to support in-product incrementality testing for conversion campaigns and brand-lift testing (with a real-time feedback loop) for upper-funnel campaigns.
How does the Quantcast Platform handle attribution?
The platform can work with multiple attribution models and attribution measurement solutions based on client need. We are constantly adding new ways to understand campaign performance using different attribution models, such as based on views or clicks.
Does the platform support emerging trends, such as Connected TV (CTV), audio, and Digital Out Of Home (DOOH)?
Our CTV program is in the alpha stage right now, and is in the hands of early adopters. If you’d like to be an early adopter, sign up here to join the early adopter program. We are exploring other emerging trends like audio and DOOH.
Who can use the Quantcast Platform?
The Quantcast Platform is built for brands, agencies, and publishers, to plan, activate and measure campaigns in a unified, easy-to-use platform that helps them know and grow their audiences.
How can I access insights in the Quantcast Platform?
The Quantcast Platform uncovers real-time insights on browsing interests, purchase behaviors, domain affinity, occupations, devices, demographics, and more, in a matter of seconds. In addition to audience insights, you can access campaign insights that are available as intuitive visualizations that give you transparency into campaign dynamics. You can also build custom reports to understand campaign performance.
Does the Quantcast Platform connect with existing DMPs and Attribution Tracking Data pools?
We integrate with all standard DMPs (example: Neustar, LiveRamp) and measurement partners directly. We also have many ways to understand the impact of advertising directly through interactive and intuitive reports in the platform.
What markets does the Quantcast Platform support?
The platform is available in all the major markets (NA, EMEA, and APAC). If you have a specific market you’re interested in, please get in touch with us through our website.
When is the Quantcast Platform available and how do I request a demo?
The Quantcast Platform is available today. Whether you want to operate it yourself or have it fully managed by our expert account team, we’re here to support you. Get in touch to learn about our different service options to fit your needs or request a demo.
A WRAP UP
The launch of the Quantcast Platform is part of our mission to champion a free and open internet, and we want to thank you all for your participation in the Virtual NOVA events. Here are the recorded versions for North America, UK and EMEA, and APAC.
We continue to innovate, transform and bring our expertise to the market. Our early adopter program is open for participation. We invite you to join, give us your feedback, and help shape the future of the Quantcast Platform.