Audience Partners Acquires Bering Media, the Leading ISP and Mobile Audience Network and Technology Firm

FORT WASHINGTON, Pa., Oct. 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Audience Partners, an Enterprise Advertising Management company announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Bering Media, the leading Audience Network for broadband Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). As advertisers are adapting their messaging and media buying to a rapidly evolving multi-screen world, the combined company is poised to allow advertisers to synchronize digital multi-screen advertising with their linear and addressable television media buys.

"We are at an exciting inflection point in addressable advertising, measurement and device convergence. Bering Media's platform possesses the perfect blend of privacy technology and authoritative, IP address targeting capabilities. Their doubleblind privacy technology is the only architecture that allows an advertiser to leverage proprietary carrier targeting data across multiple carrier networks while ensuring that the carrier's own data always stays inside their network," said Dave Helmreich, CEO of Audience Partners. "Together, our companies will be better equipped to serve our full service media customers, provide automated media buying tools, and ultimately enable our cable, ISP and wireless partners to leverage and monetize their data while emphasizing both security and privacy."

Audience Partners operates an addressable advertising platform leveraging data science, programmatic ad buying and unique first party data assets to target individuals seamlessly across multiple devices. Audience Partners reaches over 260 million devices through their addressable footprint and 100 million addressable mobile devices. Focused on politics, advocacy, healthcare, automotive and financial services, Audience Partners' success has been its ability to accurately reach high value audiences on their digital devices at scale by connecting offline databases with online devices.

The acquisition of Bering Media reinforces the Audience Partners enterprise platform in three key areas:

Unparalleled, Authoritative Targeting Reach:

• The authoritative IP addresses leveraged for targeting are directly provided by the ISPs, and updated in real time, ensuring 100% accuracy
• Advertisers can leverage carrier data and create addressable audiences across multiple cable, DSL, Fiber, and wireless carrier networks
• The Bering Media cookie-less solution provides the perfect compliment to Audience Partners' existing platform providing additional, unique reach and scale

Peerless Privacy Technology:

• Bering Media's doubleblind privacy™ architecture ensures privacy compliance as the carriers' data always stays inside the carriers' own network

Synchronized Digital and TV Campaign Execution:

• The combined Audience Partners and Bering Media platform solution allows advertisers to synchronize online advertising plans with their cable TV zone buys and reach that crucial "tune-in" audience across all devices and screens.
• Bering Media's patent pending ability to match first party data to the addressable media system provides advertisers the ability to use their own customer data for ad targeting

"We are very excited to join the Audience Partners' family," said Michael Ho, CEO of Bering Media. "Audience Partners' addressable advertising platform is the perfect compliment to what Bering Media has built for the ISPs, MSOs and wireless network operators. Our combined offering will give advertisers incredible reach and targeting capabilities across all screens."

"Audience Partners expertise in politics, advocacy and healthcare and their growing experience in automotive and financial services data make them appealing," said James Loughran, SVP of Digital Sales at NCC Media, a strategic partner of both Audience Partners and Bering Media.

In 2014 for Governor Chris Christie, Audience Partners became one of the first companies to run an addressable TV campaign where the same voter database was used to power TV ads on cable TV as was used for ad placements on desktop, mobile phones and tablets.

The acquisition is expected to close in October, subject to final shareholder and investor approvals.

About Audience Partners
Audience Partners is an Enterprise Advertising Management company that operates an addressable advertising platform leveraging data science, programmatic ad buying and unique first party data assets to target individuals across screens on PCs, mobile phones, tablets, and addressable TVs. Focused on the political, advocacy, healthcare, automotive and financial services verticals, Audience Partners' success has been its ability to accurately reach high value audiences on their digital devices at scale by connecting offline databases with online devices. The company's philosophy has been to use "first party, mailing address data" as the linchpin of its online targeting.  Advertisers, agencies and media companies have purchased over 6 billion ad impressions for 2,100 clients via 10,000 campaigns since 2008.  Audience Partners' clients consist of Presidents, Senators, Members of Congress, Governors, powerful advocacy groups, U.S. Government agencies and a growing number of the nations largest hospitals, health insurers, financial services companies and automotive dealer groups. Founded in 2008, the firm has offices in Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia.

About Bering Media
Bering Media is the leading audience network for broadband Internet service providers (ISPs), multiple-system operators (MSOs) and wireless network operators. Bering Media's doubleblind privacy technology is the only architecture that allows an advertiser to leverage carrier data across multiple carrier networks while ensuring that the carrier's own data always stays inside the carrier's own network. Bering Media's platform is used by virtually all of the US broadband service providers to power campaigns from local and national advertisers, existing TV sales forces, the carriers' own marketing departments as well as offers privacy compliant data matching services. Founded in 2008, the firm is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

SOURCE Audience Partners