Captify, Magnite Deal Brings CTV Search to Planning

Captify, Magnite Deal Brings CTV Search to Planning

Captify will analyze search terms from millions of publisher websites and categorize them into profiles, interests, and moments.

The news from Captify and Magnite comes as advertisers seek alternative ways to reach potential new customers now that Google’s deprecation of third-party cookies is underway. Search, the deal’s focus, can be a powerful tool in an advertiser’s arsenal because it offers the opportunity to reach a consumer through all funnel phases. Consumers now search in various ways, from research to consideration to purchase.

In an example presented by Captify and Magnite, a consumer might search for honeymoon destinations on cosmopolitan.com, rate iPhone vs. Galaxy cameras on techradar.com, and then price flights from New York to Maldives on booking.com. In such a case, Captify can collect that string of searches, look at the relationships between those searches and searches made by other consumers, and create an audience profile based on that data. In such an example, the consumer segments might be “engagement,” “techies,” and “travel.” At that point, media buyers could use that information to purchase those audience groups on Magnite’s programmatic CTV inventory.

The companies noted that Captify’s data is unique in that it is real-time, unprompted, specific, granular, and comprehensive, drawing from several sources.

The timing of the partnership also coincides with what is expected to be a banner year for CTV advertising, which is the fastest-growing major ad channel, per eMarketer.

“Captify’s Search Intelligence platform brings the audience data to power and fine-tune advertisers’ programmatic advertising campaigns,” said Andrew Bez, agency lead, Magnite, in a statement. “Bringing that to CTV is a huge step forward in an environment where audience-targeting has become more complex, with media owners keen to explore these new capabilities.”

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Up-to-the-minute audience targeting and accountability are hot topics among broadcast media companies. NBCUniversal recently showcased its plans to align television with its digitally powered ad channels at its One24 technology and developer conference.

“We want the behavior with TV to look more like digital. We want to look more like performance media,” said John Lee, chief data officer for advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal, during a press briefing before One24. “Think about how with a paid search, paid social or programmatic campaign, you’re optimizing up to the second — it’s one of the reasons to do it. You can course-correct while it’s still happening. That’s a pretty big behavior shift versus a set-it-and-forget-it, traditional mentality with TV.”