MarTech Interview with Onetag CEO, Daniel Pirchio

Programmatic curation in a cookieless world? Daniel Pirchio, the founder and CEO of Onetag, explains how efficiencies in programmatic are helping to drive the evolution of the digital advertising landscape.

Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Daniel. Tell us a bit about yourself, the background of the company and what Onetag offers to its clients?

 Ever since building my first display and video ad server with built-in ad optimization at the age of 19, I’ve been passionate about making programmatic advertising more efficient. Onetag was launched in 2015 to optimise and refine the advertising of some big corporations and has grown exponentially to become a market-leading ad technology business.

Onetag is now a global AI-powered programmatic curation technology company with main offices in Italy, the UK and the US, delivering effective digital advertising for the open internet in a cookieless world.

Who are Onetag’s clients, primarily?

Our demand customers are media agencies and their advertisers, alongside their Demand Side Platforms, who we consider to be valuable partners. Our supply-side partners include our publishers and app developers.

Our exciting new curation platform also gives a new breed of customers and partners the opportunity to package quality media and data into programmatic deals sourced directly via our Global Exchange.

A key focus for Onetag is the concept of ‘open curation’. What does this mean?

We are open in everything we do, including our platform access, our interoperability within the wider ecosystem, our unique approach to the open auction and, fundamentally, our wider support for the open internet.

Despite the industry view that the open auction is a challenging environment in which to trade, and that standard PMPs are automatically a safer bet, we’ve always believed the open exchange can be managed effectively with the right approach. Thanks to new-generation AI, open inventory can be curated at scale with fantastic results.

Our technology calls on an enormous pool of data, at a far deeper level than is usually available to DSPs, for example. This includes the impressions that a publisher sees, along with full analysis of each placement, which in turn allows for real-time, placement-level optimisation. Our technology removes the wastage and low-quality media to give brands the reassurance they need, and drives higher ROI using quality impressions.

Our curation platform provides open and direct access to our AI and supply-side infrastructure, putting the user in full and immediate control of deal creation. As the user, you directly apply the metrics and campaign controls that matter to you.

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What differentiates Onetag from other curation platforms?

Our curation platform is powered by our AI-powered optimization engine that works behind the scenes, provides future-proof deep semantic targeting and is accessed via our super easy and intuitive user interface.

Rather than simply building a product, we’ve always believed in building the best architecture possible to support the wider industry. Ultimately, it’s about empowering the market to manage the open auction correctly, having the confidence to transact within a brand-safe environment, and also providing a way for buyers and data providers to curate the deals they need at source, depending on their unique targeting requirements.

What’s in store for the future of programmatic curation? How can we thrive in a cookieless environment?

The future is really about platform interoperability and partnerships. There won’t be one solution that can solve all use cases while replacing third party cookies, so we believe in a perfect blend approach incorporating proprietary cookieless solutions, Google Privacy Sandbox, privacy-centric Universal IDs and first party data. This requires more complexity than today’s approach but with greater respect for the users’ privacy and choices.

Interestingly, Onetag has been planning for this way ahead of time, since our technology for impression-level optimisation and curation has never relied on cookies.

Instead, we use machine learning to process and interpret vast amounts of data such as attention metrics, carbon emissions and impression-level dimensions. This helps understand audience behaviour, identify placements that perform better, predict preferences more accurately and enhance campaign performance without the need of cookie identifiers.

We’re also very excited about the shift to contextual targeting, given the deep semantic solution we offer via our proprietary knowledge graph. Semantic algorithms are a powerful tool to ensure better alignment with brand messaging and exclude contexts where there’s not brand suitability. It’s great to see so many brands now engaging with contextual technology and curating this for their needs.

Armed with the best technologies, which are making programmatic more efficient than it’s ever been, there’s no reason we shouldn’t thrive in a cookieless world and create a better advertising experience for all.

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