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Zeotap partners with Illuma for a unique audience-powered contextual expansion solution

Zeotap and Illuma announce a partnership which combines audience targeting with contextual-AI, bringing user insights and campaign scale post-cookie

In a strategic move that anticipates the imminent shift in digital advertising, Zeotap Data, the leading provider of people-based digital audiences, has announced a partnership with Illuma, the leader in AI-powered expansion and optimisation. This collaboration offers a new tactic in the face of third-party cookie deprecation.

Zeotap and Illuma have teamed up to create a powerful advertising solution. They combine Audience targeting, which focuses on specific groups of people, with Contextual targeting, which looks at the content being viewed. This collaboration helps advertisers by extending Zeotap audience targeting with contextual expansion powered by Illuma. This allows clients to scale with relevant reach and provides valuable insights into how their target audience behaves online.

With Google phasing out 3rd party cookies in Chrome by September 2024, understanding and reaching audiences at scale takes on great significance. Using persistent identifiers as the basis, Zeotap activates an audience and, powered by Illuma’s machine learning, delivers actionable insight within 48 hours. This innovation empowers agencies and advertisers to comprehend and engage with content on a deeper level, increasing advertising relevance and unlocking cost-effective, incremental contextual inventory in every global DSP that matters.

The partnership arrives at a critical juncture, offering a beacon of innovation and adaptation, as it brings together persistent ID-based audiences with contextual understanding  to create a robust expansion solution.

Matt Bennathan, Chief Commercial Officer at Zeotap Data, commented on the partnership: “Our collaboration with Illuma represents a significant leap forward. This partnership is more than just a response to industry changes; it’s a proactive step towards a new era of digital advertising. We’re combining Zeotap’s data-driven capabilities with Illuma’s cutting-edge contextual AI to offer a solution that’s not just a cookie alternative, but a smarter, more effective way to reach relevant, incremental audiences”

Peter Mason, founder and CEO of Illuma, said: “This new collaboration between Illuma and Zeotap offers advertisers a deeper understanding of audience interests based on live contextual behaviour, and the chance to significantly increase qualified reach and drive outcomes using the latest AI technology.”

Zeotap Data was designed in Germany for GDPR, delivering accuracy and scale without compromising on privacy, and offers persistent, people-based and deterministic audiences built from  over 500 million unique IDs, with more than 1bn data data points refreshed daily. Leveraging exclusive data partnerships from the telecoms sector, Zeotap Data is fully-consented, GDPR and ePrivacy compliant and is not reliant on third party cookies for scale or reach. Presented in a universally recognisable IAB 1.1 segmentation to cater for all sectors, with validated demographics and unique Zeotap Tribes, high-fidelity audiences are delivered with unparalleled accuracy. Accessible through every buying channel that matters, Zeotap Data provides unmatched client service to ensure agencies, advertisers, and platforms deliver campaign success.

About Illuma: Illuma is a British AI company pioneering contextual solutions for enterprise since 2014. Its real-time scaling technology is used by brands and agencies to boost the results of digital ad campaigns. Meanwhile, broadcasters, publishers and online platforms use Illuma to organise, classify and categorise their inventory for commercial activation. Illuma was founded by publishing experts and computer scientists from Imperial College, UCL and Cambridge University. The company is based in London with additional offices in New York. .