Columbia, MD, October 14, 2021

OpenX and Merkle Partner to Create New Path to Activate Audiences Across the Open Web with Speed, Scale, and Precision

OpenX, a leading global omnichannel exchange, today announced it has partnered with Merkle, a leading technology-enabled, data-driven customer experience management (CXM) company, to enable seamless audience activation across the open web for any audience built with Merkle’s proprietary identity solution, Merkury. To achieve this, OpenX mapped the Merkury ID to its own OpenAudience identity graph, matching the identity solution to all of OpenX’s publisher inventory across display, mobile, and connected TV.

OpenX is fully integrated into the Merkury buyer interface, and the integrated solution provides increased reach to advertisers, with access to over 170 million IDs to find their audience segments among this scaled group of consumers across the entire OpenX exchange. 

To execute a campaign, marketers select the specific publishers on which they want their ads to run [either a single publisher or a multi-publisher private marketplace (PMP)], set up different line items with different levels of targeting, and then generate a single Deal ID that can be executed through their DSP of choice. Deal IDs can be generated in minutes, and all campaigns are run without any disruption to the traditional programmatic workflow.

Ben & Jerry’s was the first advertiser to test the new integration, setting up a campaign to reach their audience of in-market ice cream consumer prospects. The video campaign ran across a multi-publisher PMP on desktop, mobile web, and mobile app – providing Ben & Jerry’s scalability, ease of deal management, and transparent reporting. ​

“Marketers are increasingly investing resources into building audiences through solutions like Merkury, but creating the audience is only half the battle,” said Brian Murphy, SVP of Buyer Development at OpenX. “They also need to be able to match and activate their audiences at scale, and they need an easy and efficient way to do it. Creating PMPs for every publisher is simply too time intensive and inefficient.”

Added Murphy: “We have spent the past few years architecting our technology to make audience activation as turnkey as possible, and with our combination of scale, ease of use, and high match rates, we’re now confident that OpenX is the single best supply side partner for any marketer.”

“We are always looking for ways to improve ease of activation, and our partnership with OpenX provides a new way for our clients to run on multiple premium publishers in a single Deal ID across devices and with increased precision,” said Gerry Bavaro, chief strategy officer, Merkury, at Merkle.