Adap.tv claims its Audience Unifier is the "first and only" media buying solution to fully leverage Nielsen's new cross-platform offering, and to reach across every stage of the video ad buying cycle (including campaign forecasting, targeting, buying, optimizing and analyzing). Adap.tv has announced Adap.tv Audience Unifier, a unified measurement and management system for media buying that it claims allows advertisers to "programmatically buy defined Nielsen audiences across a range of buy models, including spot, RTB, and committed"; also to "create more targeted, better optimized digital video ad campaigns" by aligning them with TV viewing behaviors among their target audiences.

With the combined offering, media buyers gain immediate and direct access to audience data from Nielsen's cross-platform offering "Nielsen Online Audience Segments – TV Viewing," along with automated tools to apply to integrated TV and online video campaigns.

Nielsen just announced the Online Audience Segments offering last week, and named Adap.TV as one of its first partners alongside Microsoft, Specific Media, Undertone, and Videology. Nielsen describes the opportunity to marketers as this: Online Audience Segments – TV Viewing leverages Nielsen’s data assets and TV knowledge to correlate how people watch TV with how they behave online. Nielsen uses representative sample of TV and online panelists to create a privacy-protected source for segment models based on viewers, rather than on households. Thus, Nielsen can model groups of consumers ideal for a given campaign or message. It also offers the ability to reach consumers online based on lifestyle, demographics and consumer packaged goods (CPG) habits.

"Effectively managing audiences across platforms is the holy grail of TV and video advertising," said Vijay Rao, Vice President of Client Strategy at Adap.tv. "It enables online video to be used more effectively to reach hard-to-find audience segments such as light TV viewers and to reinforce exposure to TV ads."

Powered by Nielsen data, Adap.tv believes the Audience Unifier solution enables advertisers to:

• Select pre-defined Nielsen TV audience segments or custom segments based on types of TV viewership, including shows or channels most viewed, light or heavy viewers, genres and viewer attributes.
• Instantly forecast the price and availability across all inventory sources of the targeted Nielsen audiences.
• Move beyond impressions to precisely estimate and manage the unique reach, frequency, and GRPs. For example, specific frequency caps can be applied to any campaign and target audience.
• Optimize performance against specific goals before running a single impression.