Acxiom Releases Audience Operating System

Acxiom, an enterprise data, analytics, and software-as-a-service company, last week introduced a way for marketers, agencies, and publishers to define, manage, and reach best audiences across online and offline channels.

Acxiom Audience Operating System enables marketers to connect all types of traditionally disconnected data and create a singular view of the consumer.

"Consumers are being bombarded by irrelevant advertising at every turn. This isn't the result of marketers having too little data. Rather, it's because marketers are drowning in too much data—data that's disconnected and siloed, creating disconnected experiences," said Scott Howe, Acxiom's president and CEO, in a statement. "Today, for the first time in history through Acxiom AOS and our AOS-authorized partner applications, marketers are able to fully leverage all kinds of data—first-party, transactional, digital, social, mobile and other audience information—to provide more meaningful and relevant experiences for their customers and prospects. Acxiom is on a mission to end advertising waste and noise, and AOS is the answer."

AOS is comprised of three key layers that enable one-to-one marketing at scale. They are the following:

• The Data Layer: allowing marketers to ingest and unify virtually any type of data—structured, unstructured, first-party CRM, third-party data source, and Acxiom's consumer data—making it accessible in one place via a click.
• The Audience Operations Layer: enabling that data to be cleansed, matched, and contextualized to provide actionable insights about real people that can then be activated across channels and media buys.
• The Applications Layer: activating a growing roster of trusted development partners to create AOS-approved apps customized to meet any marketing need.

"The true mark of sophistication is simplicity, and the lack of it has been a critical impediment to enabling big data to deliver game-changing value," said Phil Mui, Acxiom's chief product and engineering officer, in a statement. "That ends today with AOS, a platform that is able to ingest data from everywhere and apply it to targeted audiences anywhere through an intuitive, unified interface. Importantly, AOS is absolutely privacy-compliant and keeps privacy promises made to consumers by us, advertisers, publishers, and all participants in this ecosystem. We have designed solutions that re-create machine logic and meaningful algorithms that are so easy to use, anyone can leverage them to quickly derive transformative insights. And we purposefully rejected a closed, vertically integrated solution stack in favor of secure yet open APIs that allow trusted partners to innovate with us and capitalize on the wisdom and energy of the ecosystem. With AOS, we never intended to build a better mousetrap. Instead, we chose to breed a world-class cat."

Acxiom AOS comes pre-loaded with a set of Acxiom's foundational applications specifically tuned to enable marketers to derive immediate value. These tools include the following:

• Acxiom Audience Architect: A "one-stop shop" to acquire, enhance and reach audiences;
• Acxiom Cross-Channel Planner: The power tool for audience assembly and media planning;
• Campaign Optimizer: A next-best offer recommendation and optimization simulator and engine;
• Acxiom AOS Analytics: Rich big data visualizations for campaigns, audiences, and channels; and
• Acxiom Technical Tools: Deeply integrated tools, including SmartLink Manager (cross channel links and QR codes) and AbiliTag Manager (Web page tracking tags).

Beyond the pre-loaded apps, AOS provides an open way for trusted development partners to connect, leverage, and add to its value. Already companies including Adometry, AdSlot, Aditive, CrowdTwist, IDInteract, Integrate, Martini Media, and MediaMath are introducing AOS-approved apps, and the roster of trusted partners and apps will continue to expand significantly over time to create a comprehensive ecosystem built around AOS.

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