NEW YORK, Oct. 11, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Horizon Media, a global leader in data-driven media and marketing, announced today the launch of its pioneering Out-of-Home audience targeting platform, AMP, a first-to-market tool that will increase efficiencies of data-driven audience targeting. As part of the launch, Horizon is making a strategic investment in Mira, a real-time data partner that fuels the AMP platform.

AMP's revolutionary technology generates sophisticated data visualizations that enable strategists to more quickly evaluate and make better informed decisions that optimize placements for both traditional and Digital OOH placements. AMP is powered by significantly enhanced data inputs for Out-of-Home placements, including inventory data, audience behavioural data, targeting data, first party client data and competitive data to better identify audiences and optimize Out-of-Home media inventory.

The agency also has a partnership with Geopath – the not-for-profit industry body that powers a smarter Out-of-Home marketplace through state-of-the art audience location measurement, deep insights, and innovative market research – to leverage its inventory data. The AMP platform overlays Geopath’s inventory catalogue with numerous audience data sources to target desired audiences while optimizing total ad spend.

Because it sees enormous potential for its clients, Horizon has made a strategic equity investment in Mira – the first data engine platform to address the concept of real-time audiences for Out-of-Home – to infuse AMP with real-time audience metrics. Mira has pioneered the process of crowd analytics, building a geospatial overlay of audience behaviors and interests by analyzing billions of real-time location events each day. Horizon’s AMP platform dynamically renders this data, providing users with the best-suited areas to reach the highest concentration of target audiences.

In addition, Mira is able to tailor Digital Out-of-Home screens in real-time based on nearby mobile audiences; and dynamically target Digital Out-of-Home and Digital Place-based (DOOH) and DPb Programmatic, while capturing attribution for ROI.

Mira’s programmatic technology is particularly exciting for the agency as it plans to further evolve AMP into a digital Out-of-Home programmatic buying platform in the coming months. This will allow Horizon’s Out-of-Home planners to plan all Out-of-Home and invest in digital Out-of-Home within one universal platform. 

“Technological innovation and access to valuable new data allows us to evolve and improve the way that we do business,” said Jill Nickerson, Senior Vice President, Out-of-Home, Horizon Media. “There wasn’t a third-party tool that satisfied our data and automation needs, so we created AMP, a sophisticated, data-driven Out-of-Home planning tool that has quickly streamlined our planning and buying process; leveraging audience, location and first-party client data. The tool also allows our teams to use the same audience profile data set as other investment groups within the agency, making audience targeted investments universal across those channels."

“Horizon has consistently paved the way forward in our industry and has been utilizing our data for almost 12 months,” said Jon Frangakis, Co-Founder and CEO at Mira. “Horizon’s AMP platform further streamlines Mira data into a digestible format and makes it available on a self-serve, on-demand basis to Horizon’s teams. We're excited to partner with Horizon to explore and develop further innovation in the space.”

Horizon will continue to expand its data partnerships to fuel its ground-breaking AMP technology platform. AMP is designed to be nimble enough to advance as data and technologies are developed, making Out-of-Home planning a sophisticated, nimble and efficient process that further boosts the effectiveness of ad campaigns.

About Horizon Media
Horizon Media, Inc. is a global leader in data-driven media and marketing. The company was founded in 1989, is headquartered in New York with offices in Los Angeles and Toronto. Recognized as one of the world’s ten most innovative marketing and advertising companies by Fast Company, Horizon Media has been recognized as U.S. Media Agency of the Year by Adweek and AdAge, and Independent Media Agency of the Year by Mediapost. Renowned for its incredible culture, Horizon is also consistently named to all the prestigious annual Best Places to Work lists published by Fortune, AdAge, Crain’s New York Business and Los Angeles Business Journal. Bill Koenigsberg served as the Chairman of the 4A’s Board of Directors from 2014 to 2017, and currently serves as Vice Chair of the 4A’s Board of Directors. Bill was the first person from a media agency to hold this prestigious position in the 100-year history of the 4As, the marketing industry’s leading trade association. Horizon Media has estimated billings of $8 billion and over 2,000 employees.

Contact
Horizon Media
Kaya Lobaczewski
(212) 220-2102
klobaczewski@horizonmedia.com