Nielsen launches Marketing Cloud with eXelate infrastructure

A year ago, audience measurement service Nielsen bought the data management platform (DMP) eXelate, which collects and makes available third-party demographic and intent data on users’ offline and online behavior.

Today, Nielsen is announcing the launch of its Marketing Cloud, an integrated cloud platform that provides the two key components of eXelate — the data itself in Data-as-a-Service and the Nielsen Data Management Platform.

The Cloud’s core set of applications also includes the existing Multi-Touch Attribution for tracking which ads led to specific user actions, and In-Flight Analytics, which had been offered through Nielsen Catalina, a joint venture with Catalina Marketing. In-Flight Analytics allows brands to get sales and user response data as a campaign is in process. Here’s a dashboard screen for the Cloud:

The Cloud’s applications, which are integrated with major media and marketing platforms, are intended to support cross-channel media planning and targeting, programmatic buying, audience segmentation, consumer research and measurement of advertising/content effects on user responses and purchases.

Here’s the consumer profiling tool in the DMP:

Nielsen executive vice president Damian Garbaccio, who had been chief revenue officer at eXelate, told me that the Cloud offers a new user interface that allows a brand to readily move between the products through a single identity layer. He noted that the eXelate infrastructure for data and data management is the backbone for this suite of products and that other applications — including Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings — will be added in the coming months.

The existing products lived “in silos before,” he said, “but now [there’s] a more agile platform that allows them to scale.”