Mark my words. This merger will change our industry. Finally we have a media business that can combine major reach AND digital's targeting capability (without being an online platform where poor viewability and ad fraud significantly waters down the value of its big reach). 

Equally importantly, this article discusses their intention to use the Vantage technology for good not evil – meaning they are looking to target category buyers not traditional hyper targeted demographics. Demographics have a limited to zero relationship with actual buyer behavior and have been likened to a horse and cart in the age of space travel, yet we continue our media buying journey by horse and cart.

All they need now is a purchase layer. Let me explain. In 2017 some work was done out of the USA by Rubinson Partners, Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) and Viant. The authors gathered in-store actual purchase history from NCS to determine buying segments and modelled their expected buying windows. Then, using look-a-like modelling buyer segments (via Viant) were exposed to brand campaigns online, close to their expected buying window (based on the grounded principles of recency). And voilà – incremental sales were achieved. 

Reaching category buyers via purchase-based targeting, where purchase data is used to build look-a-like consumer segments for targeting, is the holy grail. But underlying reach quality is becoming more and more elusive and unfortunately the online platforms that have traditionally had the greatest capability to roll out look-a-like targeting, close to the purchase occasion, are more likely the culprits of poor ad delivery. Until now.