CivicScience Launches Advertising Division

In Pittsburgh, USA, market intelligence company CivicScience is launching an advertising company tapping data from its 100m plus survey respondents. The new firm starts with $15m seed funding from investors including the NPD Group, and is led by CEO Doug Lauretano.

Other strategic investors include Thomas Tull, founder of Legendary Entertainment; and Jeff Wilke, former CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon. The new company, whose name is not yet revealed, is built on CivicScience's market intelligence platform, and in addition to billions of permissioned, self-reported poll responses will make use of relationships with hundreds of digital publishers and Fortune 500 advertisers who are clients of the CivicScience platform. The launch aims to ride the wave of increased concern about privacy, and the elimination of third-party cookies, providing privacy-compliant anonymized ad targeting not dependent on third-party cookies, helping publishers to compete with the 'walled gardens' for advertising dollars.

Lauretano (pictured) is a twenty-year veteran of media and technology, with experience from Fortune, CNN, WSJ Digital Network, and most recently Media.net, where he led efforts to launch and build a new business as SVP & GM. Meanwhile within the parent company, Zachary Nippert has been promoted from Chief Commercial Officer to lead CivicScience's market intelligence business; and John Dick continues as CEO of the parent company, supporting both divisions.

'Media companies need to reinvent their advertising capabilities' says Tull, 'as privacy rules rapidly evolve. What CivicScience can do with its massive dataset, engaged user base, and trusted brand relationships gives them a tremendous opportunity to lead the market in this new age'.

Last week Tokyo-based Macromill also announced the launch of a digital advertising business, Macromill Ads, tapping the data from its 1.3m proprietary consumer panelists to provide a one-stop service from ad planning and distribution to the measurement of effectiveness.

Web site: www.civicscience.com .