Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) announced that it has acquired the private company Demdex, a leading data management platform company. Global spending on online advertising is a large and growing market and is projected to reach US $ 109 billion by 2013 * when online advertising becomes an increasingly strategic part of the marketing components. The optimization of online audience is a critical factor for advertisers and publishers to maximize their investment in online advertising. The inclusion of Demdex in the Adobe® Online Marketing Suite, driven by Omniture®, offers an audience optimization solution that will allow advertisers and publishers to consistently deliver more relevant digital experiences to their customers.
The online advertising market is undergoing fundamental changes because more and more advertisers change from buying content-oriented locations to buying specific audiences. This helps advertisers more efficiently invest advertising budgets and avoid advertising their products to audiences that do not meet their criteria. Publishers increasingly seek to provide audience data that meets the requirements of advertisers to offer advertising inventory at premium rates. This move to buy and sell segmented audiences requires advertisers and publishers to more easily gather, consolidate and share anonymous audience data. This has created a complex and highly fragmented advertising buying and selling process.
The optimization of the audience is the collection, compilation and intelligent management of anonymous audience data and is strategic for publishers and advertisers focused on increasing the efficiency of buying and selling online advertising. Adobe allows publishers to leverage their data to create groups of anonymous audience segments aligned with the audience requirements of advertisers. Adobe also allows advertisers and publishers to manage how their valuable audience data is collected, shared and used by the processes, systems and technologies of their partners.
“Our customers are recognized among the largest advertisers and publishers in the world and have been asking us for help to improve the way we buy and sell advertising online,” said Brad Rencher, vice president and general manager of the Omniture Business Unit at Adobe. “With the inclusion of Demdex, the Adobe Online Marketing Suite will allow advertisers to behave more intelligently in their advertising budgets, and publishers to leverage their audience data to generate more profit. With audience optimization, Adobe is literally changing the way we buy to sell advertising online. ”
“Integrating our technology into Adobe’s capabilities and vision is a powerful combination for advertisers and publishers,” said Randy Nicolau, president of Demdex. “We will continue to develop our technology as part of the Adobe Online Marketing Suite to help customers stay ahead of the rapidly evolving online advertising market.”
“As a leading technology media company, our audience data is incredibly valuable to our business and our advertising partners,” said Vivek Shah, president of Ziff Davis. “Now that Demdex is part of the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, we hope that Adobe solutions will help us find even more ways to offer value to our customers and advertising partners.”
“Online media will capture a greater share of advertising revenue based on the appeal, capabilities and size of the audience, but the complexity and isolation of the metrics have prevented this from happening so far,” said Andrew Frank, vice president of Research at Gartner, Inc. “The incorporation of data and technology into advertising and marketing processes will fundamentally change the nature of online media businesses.”
Adobe continues its commitment to consumer privacy as a key part of its products, services and online experience in general. With the acquisition of Demdex, Adobe is associated with Evidon (formerly known as Better Advertising) and becomes part of the Open Data Partnership of Evidon (ODP). Evidon, selected by the Digital Advertising Alliance to carry out its self-regulating program of interest-based advertising, gives businesses an easy and standard method to provide evidence of compliance with industry standards and offer consumers greater transparency and control over advertising based on the interests they receive.