Former 24.com general manager Geoff Cohen and digital agency &innovation have joined forces with the Ole! Media Group to form a new venture, Delv, which will provide targeted advertising services using big data.
Cohen, who will head up the new venture, was until recently GM of Media 24's digital division. He says Delv is headquartered in Cape Town, and approximately R9 million has been committed to the start-up.
Delv finds, matches and analyses online behaviour, usage trends and brand affinity for customers. It then creates data sets with high relevance scores. These 'intentionality' data sets are built from e-commerce, data and publishing companies, and structured to provide key triggers for activation. Sets are then matched into multiple media platforms, enabling brands to target the right audience with greater precision while allowing media owners access to a significant new revenue stream.
&Innovation has taken a minority stake in the business, as it sees the potential for Delv and actionable data, says Cohen. The majority of Delv is owned by Ole! Media Group, which recognised the huge potential for big data in this sector, he adds.
Cohen points out &innovation has done a number of projects in the data science space, most recently in financial services.
"Through Delv, we are solving a key part of the challenge: helping enterprises understand which components of their customer data are valuable to obtain more customers. The data science component of programmatic buying has been under-represented in today's market; until now that is."
He notes most people rely on basic data driven off search and some basic audience extension. "Internationally, there has been 30%-plus uplifts in results in using data management platforms, and we are setting our baseline against that number.
"We believe we can change how people make media decisions in the future. Through Delv, we make their spend far more effective going forward and give them far more insight into the making of those decisions," he notes.
"One of the key ideas is 'in-market data', which is all about identifying for our clients, customers that are deeply interested in acquiring their product. Delv can identify these customers through correlating a number of third-party proprietary data sources; some of these are through unique relationships we will be announcing soon, and others are through the Oracle data cloud, which Delv has access to."
According to Cohen, though only recently formed, Delv has already been active in the market, acquiring clients and an integration with Oracle Marketing Cloud.
"With Oracle Marketing Cloud technology and processes, Delv can identify, maximise and multiply the value of data for both advertisers and publishers."
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