In this exclusive Q&A, Carly Allcorn, Strategic Partnerships Director at illuma and Craig Golaszewski, Strategic Partnerships Senior Director at OpenX, share how both companies are working together to support accurate, scalable, and data-driven curation across the ecosystem.  

Carly, which book has inspired you most?

You, Happier by Daniel Amen. It really helped me understand neuroscience and how to collaborate better with different types of brains. 

Craig, what’s the best movie you’ve seen recently?

As the father of a 3.5-year-old little girl, my recent movies have all had a Disney princess involved in some way. Moana 2, even though it took three tries to watch the whole thing with her, has to be my most recent favorite. I’m a big Pua and HeiHei fan. 

Can you provide an introduction to illuma?

CA: Sure! illuma is an AI company offering media-agnostic, advanced contextual tools which support smarter trading for buyers and sellers across the web, apps, and CTV. We’re a valued partner to many leading global brands, agencies, media owners, and platforms.  

illuma was founded 10 years ago in London by a team of computer scientists, and we also now have offices in New York. 

What makes illuma different from other contextual providers?

CG: Something we found to be unique about illuma is their ability to dynamically learn and adjust targeting in real time in live campaigns based on contextual behaviors of a brand’s consented audience. The result is immediate and informed scale for advertisers, expanding brand reach to more of the right audiences at the right moments while maintaining consumer privacy.  
 
This means buyers don’t have to guess which contexts will work best for a campaign, they can literally watch and optimize in real time. They also have the confidence of knowing that this way of working is compliant and future proof. 

CA: Thanks, Craig! Another important part of our work is the categorization of media content for commercial use, using human-trained AI models. This vastly improves the transparency and accuracy of contextual tagging at scale, reducing wastage for advertisers and improving brand safety and suitability across the ecosystem.  

So far this year, what are the main conversations you’re having with advertisers?

The priority for advertisers this year remains finding innovative ways to reach their target audiences accurately and on quality inventory, while maintaining reach and frequency goals. There is also a deep desire to understand audience behaviors and contextual needs — and, of course, doing all of this with quality signals in a privacy-friendly way. 

And what about publishers?

CG: Our publisher partners are very much focused on ways to maximize the value of their content by providing buyers with access to their desired audiences. This is another way that we can help deliver on that promise to them.

How does this partnership build on OpenX’s data curation offering?

CG: OpenX is focused on bringing value to our global buyers in a transparent and privacy-centric way. This new partnership furthers that vision by combining the power of our ID graph and premium, direct supply with illuma’s advanced contextual capabilities for greater accuracy and scale. 

This builds on our data-driven curation offering by empowering buyers to use live, cookieless behaviors to learn about their audiences’ content consumption patterns in real time. This empowers buyers to optimize their campaigns in-flight to funnel impressions to the best-performing contexts across our premium supply.

And how does it help solve needs for publishers?

CA: It’s exciting from the publisher’s side too. By scaling campaigns based on known audience behavior, illuma can open up previously untapped content that’s driving outcomes for a brand’s campaign. This not only gives buyers valuable insights into what their high-value audiences are interested in, it also offers publishers more opportunities to monetize inventory and be incorporated into campaigns they previously might have missed.  
 
Brand suitability and safety blocks also become more of a precise science, particularly in important areas such as news, and the transparency of the whole tagging process helps publishers to increase the value of each page. This all helps to support quality journalism — which in today’s world seems more important than ever — and ultimately helps to protect the open, ad-funded internet.