DataFuelX Launches Video Ad Marketplace Connecting 13 Publishers

As media audiences fragment, an analytics company hopes to bring some of them back together. DataFuelX, a company led by former TV sales executives, is launching DFX Marketplace, a new way for advertisers to connect to commercial inventory across multiple publishers through a single point of entry. The company, founded by Dan Aversano and Michael […]

As media audiences fall apart, an analytics firm hopes to reconnect some of them.

DataFuelX, a company led by former TV sales executives, launches DFX Marketplace, a new way for advertisers to connect to commercial inventory across multiple publishers with a single point of entry. Founded by Dan Eversano and Michael Strober, two sales veterans who have held senior positions at places like WarnerMedia, TelevisaUnivision and Nexstar Media, among others, the company is rolling out its offering at a moment when advertisers are hard-pressed to reach large groups of consumers across linear or digital. RELATED STORIES After Kelly Clarkson slams Brooklyn novelty shop, shop says 'unique' songbird she wanted wasn't actually for sale

Aversano says: "We're launching a cross-publisher marketplace for linear and CTV that supports demographic and audience-based buying. Agencies will have multiple ways to participate — through our platform, APIs or AI agents. Our platform also supports direct transaction across linear, digital, as well as programmatic. It's a very unique model." "Most of the solutions we've come across are primarily focused on digital programmatic transactions." Popular in Variety

The emergence of such a market is more commercial inventory, especially broadcast-related, is bought programmatically or through algorithms and software designed to find advertising time that will be seen by a specific audience, such as someone in a certain geographic area, for example, or someone who might need a car or baby products.

DataFuelX said its new marketplace will support AI-driven buying and selling, enabling AI assistants and customer representatives to work across all participating issuers through a single interface.

The marketplace is built to support agency buying and selling, allowing DFX AI assistants and approved client agents to work through a single interface across participating publishers while maintaining human control over strategy and final decisions.

New market entrants can pursue planning, activation, optimization and other tasks under one system.

"Premium video remains one of the most powerful ways for advertisers to achieve reach, but the complexity of differentiating true premium video among an increasingly expanding but diluted ad inventory infrastructure has limited its growth and share of overall video ad dollars," Cunningham said in a statement. "DFX Marketplace is an important step toward modernizing the infrastructure for cross-platform, cross-platform publishing, using intelligence, automation and artificial intelligence to make access, transactions and premium video easier. Optimizing at scale."

The company says its platform is already used by major publishers and has supported more than $300 million in media transactions.