The cable TV industry initiative aimed at securely sharing viewer data whilst keeping privacy in mind just levelled-up, by striking a partnership that gives it access to a huge consumer identity graph.
Blockgraph – owned by Comcast NBCUniversal, Charter Communications, Inc. and ViacomCBS – is partnering with TransUnion, the consumer data company which has been making in-roads as an ad data provider.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Matt Spiegel, EVP Marketing Solutions and Head of Media at TransUnion, explains how the arrangement will work.
Privacy + identity
According to the pair’s announcement:
“Blockgraph will leverage TransUnion’s growing portfolio of identity and data-driven audience solutions, including privacy-focused identity, data modeling, audience creation and activation solutions.
“Blockgraph also will utilize data marketplace applications through TransUnion’s recent acquisition of Tru Optik.”
Spiegel says: “What Blockgraph has really been working on is the technology infrastructure for a safe set of environments – both privacy-safe and data security-safe environments – where specifically a lot of the cable operators, the MVPs and the networks, have a home to be able to place their customer data.
“Where TransUnion comes in is helping provide a lot of that identity, intelligence, and the tools to use the data within their environment.”
‘Transact at scale’
Blockgraph Spreads Its Wings: More Partners, Manningham Says
Spiegel continues: “We’re really working together to provide the best of that data security, privacy centred world that comes from Blockgraph’s platform and technology married to TransUnion’s identity intelligence and data creation tools so that it’s easier for both the buy side and the sell side to transact in more addressable means.
“Putting those things together actually makes it possible for the markets to transact with much more scale and much more ease.”
For several years now, tech vendors have searched for an application for blockchain technology in ad-tech. The technology, a variant of which powers cryptocurrencies, works by using a shared, “immutable” – or, untamperable – ledger of actions like ad transactions.
Blockgraph is using it to help publishers improve data privacy and movability in an industry that suffers greatly from lack of supply chain transparency, where intermediary vendors stand accused of obfuscating effectiveness and pocketing “ad tax”.
The company has been signing deals with more data partners lately.
Data marketplace
TransUnion to Acquire Tru Optik To Bolster Connected Identity Matching
But the TransUnion partnership could give Blockgraph customers a big new data set to play with.
“It’s not as simple as people often think to be able to translate a household ID into a specific target segment, into the ability to deliver that,” Spiegel adds.
“Whether you’re buying off of a given linear platform or a network, whether you’re buying through an MVPD or whether you’re buying through a streaming service, those things that are not inherently connected.”
The hook-up will be bolstered by TransUnion’s recent acquisition of Tru Optik, the data marketplace and management platform that includes the behavior of more than 80 million homes on connected TV, streaming audio and gaming.