TargetSpot’s co-CEO Leigh Newsome on Big Data in audio advertising

leigh newsomeFollowing up our coverage of the integrative partnership of audio ad network Targetspot and data company Quantcast, we wanted to understand the depth of integration, and what Big Data means for the online audio advertising industry.

We chatted with TargetSpot co-CEO Leigh Newsome, and started by asking how this partnership is distinguished from previous work the two companies have done together.

“It’s a new integration with Quantcast, and we’ve done a lot of work on it over the past few months,” Newsome told us. “There’s a deep technical integration. A lot of it is unique and proprietary to TargetSpot.”

Deepening the relationship was important to Targetspot’s 2015 strategy.

“One of our big strategies going into 2015 is hedging on the Big Data side. We want as much data as we can to make the most intelligent decisions about advertising that we can, and also have a great set of measurement tools across our network. There are two themes: Big Data and audience segmentation. With Quantcast we have a unique integration that covers the vast majority of our network. This allows us to provide deep insights into the network — down to the individual station and down to the listener. The goal is to understand the audience in a deep way, and use the data for targeting.”

We asked about programmatic advertising — software-based buying and selling of “smart impressions,” often in real time.

“Programmatic is a natural step for our industry,” Newsome said. “There’s a lot today in the Targetspot platform. Programmatic is broken down into many areas. This is about the combination of technology and trafficking — relying on the technology to make real-time decisions to deliver ads. You can classify [the Quantcast partnership] in that direction.”

Newsome’s thinking goes beyond TargetSpot business priorities. Throughout the conversation he referred to industry needs, connected to Targetspot’s competitive maneuvers.

“The industry needs technologies that really know to target and deliver the ads. On the technology side TargetSpot has always been the leader in targeting. We’re going to have significant exponential growth over next year in what we can do with that.”

We asked about advertiser demand for data-rich intelligence about audience targeting.

“The industry is asking questions about what we can do from the advertiser and publishers perspectives to really enhance targeting, delivery, and measurement. We’ve had significant requests from our customers saying ‘This is something we want.’ We’re trying to hit the ball out of the park. The Quantcast integration is one of many things we’re working on. We definitely get the demand for it.”

Brad Hill