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AMSTERDAM – The Edge Initiative, a specialist in programmatic, automated trading, big data and data science, is joining Candid Group, the largest independent media group in The Netherlands.
The Edge Initiative provides services for both demand and supply parties in the area of programmatic, automated trading and RTB. “For us, it was important to join an independent media group with similar ideas regarding programmatic buying and data science”, says Erik Geurts, founder of The Edge Initiative.
The Candid Group – located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands -, consists of full-service media agency labels Stroom, Head to Head, BBK Media, Het Mediakantoor, research agency Vostradamus, online marketing and development agency Lavinci and marketing news platform frank.news. According to the company, the addition of the new label offers many advantages.
Gérard Ghazarian, CEO of the Candid Group: “The acquisition, I prefer to call it a collaboration, fits our strategy to link independent media entities to each other, in order to offer economies of scale otherwise only available to large international media agencies. We used to have access to exchanges through multiple parties, now we have one overall solution for that. The clients of the media agencies in our group benefit from this acquisition, because of cost reductions and technical know how on programmatic and automated trading. We’ve also looked closely at the synergie with group member Vostradamus, specializing in Data Science and Social Media.”
The collaboration offers opportunities for parties outside of our group, who want to benefit from the economies of scale previously only accessible to large agency networks and publishers. “Advertisers and agencies will be serviced better with lower costs, instead of seeing a large portion of their media budget spent on high technical fees.”, says Ghazarian.
The Edge Initiative facilitates partners connecting to the AppNexus eco system, and provides additional services and products. Transparency and ‘price accountability’ are key. The fact that both demand (DSP) and supply (SSP) are integrated in AppNexus, offers many advantages in comparison to other parties. “There are good reasons around safe commercial uses of data that explain why parties decide to select an independent platform like AppNexus, contrary to – for example – Google. For us, the new collaboration signals the optimisation of the services we offer our clients”, according to Ghazarian.
Erik Geurts will remain actively involved in The Edge Initiative after the acquisition. “The company I founded six years ago, developed into a significant player on both the demand and supply side. I’m proud to be able to see it continuing to grow and flourish as a new member of Candid Group.”, he says, “Yield optimization is an ongoing story for media sellers. For advertisers and agencies, RTB and programmatic are an ever changing arena. By joining Candid Group, we can offer even more value to our current and our future clients.”