When we launched the company earlier this year, in the middle of a global pandemic, our thesis was fairly simple:

• As privacy becomes a feature across the board, both tech platform changes and increased regulation will make a huge impact on ad tech
  

• This will create a movement where publishers and advertisers (as well as a slew of intermediaries) will have to actively ask users to share some data on themselves and get a permission to use it
  

• The infrastructure that enabled data-driven advertising to function was built on cookies and IFAs, and it’s about to disappear
  

• As a result, this data-sharing infrastructure is moving underground where collaboration will continue, but data will be shared using secure, privacy-preserving protocols
  

This all will result in a gradual onset of confusion and chaos, but ultimately, eventually, the ecosystem will be better off. The mess created by the programmatic revolution will be replaced by less wasteful, more ethical, more secure, new ways of dealing with ads.

It starts with three core functions that have to be satisfied by a new generation of customer data management technologies:

First, we need to deal with the identity crisis, with third-party cookies and IFAs slowly crumbling. We need a way to collect data that is respectful of the user and backed by consent, yet still uses identity data at the core. Without third-party cookies and IFAs, this will lead to a translation layer: from personal profiles stored by the publisher on the user to an addressable cohort across various touch-points (open web as much as mobile, CTV and audio). In addition to using local storage for data collection, there is also an opportunity to make use of first-party cookies, just like it was in the good ol’ days.

Second, although we do ingest data from CDPs and DMPs, assembling audiences and preparing them for anonymized activation using existing ad tech infrastructure is part of the the new way of working with audience data.  This activation can happen through ad servers, ad exchanges or other content personalization technologies.

And third, we need better ways to transact based on audience data.  When it comes to advertising, the value of data is amplified when it transits between partners. Cookie and IFA-based transaction models created a lot of trust issues which actually prevented great use of this data. The new generation of data management technologies will be decentralized, where partners will run their individual instances of the platform, and use secure multiparty computation protocols to collaborate.  This is a bit complicated at first, but ultimately this layer will enable the fundamental fabric of how ads are targeted and measured.

That, in essence, is what we do.

A mere 6 months after launching the company, we are starting to roll out our product to customers. It’s quite difficult to describe what the product IS, but we feel that calling it a Data Connectivity Platform is the best way to describe the core value that we’re bringing.

Having pre-seeded the company ourselves, we are also starting a fundraising process for our seed round. Our team counts 9 people now, and we are very much excited to grow it and accelerate our growth.

Privacy is the driving force behind massive change in the advertising industry

When we decided to create Optable it was driven by what we saw as massive changes coming to the way that audience-based advertising worked. This evolution has not been understated as gigantic events such data privacy regulations, changes to how Apple’s massive ecosystem interacts with the advertising industry, and the deprecation of 3rd party cookies across the internet have all received their fair share of airtime. That said, the story is deeper than your typical tech mantra of “disruption brings opportunity.” The mission of the founders of Optable can best be described by what we commonly refer to as “privacy-safe advertising.” At a high level, that may seem oversimplified but the mission here is more than privacy. It's really about empowering media owners and their advertising partners to respect their audience and create a more sustainable, enjoyable and performant experience for all parties - and that all starts with privacy. 

Privacy is the driving force behind so many of the changes that are shaping our industry and it has been the “nail in the coffin” for one of the biggest pieces of ad tech - the legacy DMP. This is exactly why we have spent countless hours going back to the drawing board and re-architecting the DMP from the ground up so that it can support the needs of the media & advertising industry now and in the future. Today we would like to more formally introduce the Optable DMP along with our data activation solution, Optable Activate, and data clean-room solution Optable Collaborate.
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A brief history of DMPs

Data Management Platforms (or DMPs) have evolved dramatically in the last 15 years. They were initially hailed as groundbreaking technologies that could empower media owners, publishers and marketers to better leverage their own data as well as partner data for monetization, content creation and marketing. As digital advertising behemoths emerged and audience-based media buying boomed as the default method of advertising, DMPs chased the opportunities in monetization leading to most first-generation DMPs being relegated to cookie-matching and data reselling through DSP endpoints. Changes in browser-based consent and advancements in cross-device identity spawned a new-wave of DMPs that were less cookie-focused and while many first-generation DMPs were acquired by companies that also have large amounts of consumer data such as Salesforces acquisition of Krux and Nielsen's acquisition of eXelate. Meanwhile the Marketer community fully embraced CDPs as an alternative to DMPs given their greater focus on marketing automation and customer journey analysis. 
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Privacy-centric changes have accelerated and the market needs innovative solutions

What we have seen post-pandemic is that consumer privacy demands are accelerating and the  3rd party data frameworks that fueled tons of data leakage from publishers are now becoming unacceptable from a consumer point-of-view. This is driving a massive shift in the execution of audience-based media buying back to the media owners. As we talk to our customers, we continuously hear many of those first and second generation DMPs just simply don't satisfy their needs as they aren’t built to support a new wave of innovation like data clean room collaboration, and device/browser-focused activation, and scalable real-time audience management across many sites and devices. As a result, we decided to revisit audience data management from a foundation level and re-build the architecture that the media owner and publisher community need to build sustainable revenue growth and deliver great content experience to their audiences.
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Optable is focused on building modern audience data management architecture

Over the last couple years we have worked with many of our customers and prospects to comprehensively map out their cross-organizational requirements as it relates to audience data management. Today, we are focused on building future-proof solutions to monetization but long-term we know the DMP is a central brain for many media owners and publishers and are architecting a solution that can also build a better content experience and solve major marketing challenges. In order to guide our work, we have created 4 principles that shape our DMP:

1. We need to integrate privacy by design - Privacy is the number one force changing our ecosystem and therefore with every capability we develop we are focused on using not only best-in-class privacy technologies but also customizable privacy & data governance controls depending on an organizations need.

2. We need identity solutions that are fully flexible and ecosystem compatible - With a rapidly shifting landscape in audience identity we have focused on developing a platform that can integrate, normalize and orchestrate across both all of your own data sources as well as industry frameworks and 3rd parties. 

3. We need to rethink data activation - This goes beyond just campaign activation to data activation broadly. This means out-of-the-box solutions for data clean room collaboration and seamless integration with all of the right advertising platforms.

4. We need solutions that can scale with a publisher's current resources - Very few media companies have the resources and capabilities to build and maintain data management solutions themselves. We are focused on building for the business user and are shaping both our technology and commercial model so that it can deliver value that is in line with our customers goals and operations.
5. Add something about commercial dynamics 

Our goal is to deliver long term value to our customers and help provide them with a platform for which they can create scalable growth in their businesses. If you are a media owner or publisher and are looking to update or evolve your data strategy - we would love to speak with you!

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