In this exclusive Q&A, Ksenia Konkina, VP of Product at RevOptimal, shares how the data provider’s first partnership with an SSP is redefining deterministic targeting in programmatic.

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Oh, definitely an archeologist. So now instead of digging around ancient burial sites, I dig around adtech pipelines!

Can you provide an introduction to RevOptimal?

At RevOptimal, we believe most consumer targeting is missing half the picture. So much of digital advertising focuses on what people buy, browse, or believe, but we spend a third of our lives at work — and our professional identities deeply shape who we are and how we make decisions. That’s why RevOptimal takes an identity-first approach to link the personal with the professional.

This is RevOptimal’s first partnership with an SSP. What made OpenX the right fit strategically?

Besides having one of the sharpest teams in the space (I won’t play favorites, but I could), OpenX has consistently operated at the leading edge of SSP technology, identity, and supply path innovation.

OpenX is one of the only SSPs with a true in-house identity spine. Since RevOptimal is identity-first down to our core, a spine-to-spine integration lets us deliver deterministic audiences at scale without relying on fragile identifiers like cookies or IPs.

OpenX’s innovation around deal flexibility, bid request integrity, and supply intelligence gives our audiences an environment where they can really shine. With OpenX, we finally get to bring deterministic scale directly into programmatic supply.

How does our partnership make it easier for buyers to activate high-quality, deterministic data at scale?

We’re launching with OpenX in a few key ways:

• Off-the-shelf availability. Our top 500 syndicated segments are instantly available within OpenXSelect.
  
• Custom curation. RevOptimal acts as both a data partner and a curator. We build, manage, and optimize deal strategies throughout the campaign lifecycle — including 24-hour custom audience turnaround.
  
• Always-on deals. Many of our highest-demand segments are also available via always-on deals that teams can bid against immediately in DSPs like DV360.

RevOptimal builds audiences from resumes, associations, and education history — can you explain how this process works while maintaining compliance and privacy?

A large share of our data is self-declared and deterministic, and we take our role as a data steward extremely seriously. We operate with compliance by design, following all state-level privacy frameworks, auditing for SOC 2 Type II every year, and processing data only with the appropriate permissions in place, ensuring that consumer’s choices are respected in all contexts.

All incoming and outgoing data is normalized to privacy-safe identifiers so that everything transacts through a secure spine-to-spine integration. Our dataset is sourced from ATS systems and job boards — not LinkedIn scraping, web harvesting, or bidstream shortcuts — and is protected within an end-to-end security framework where data remains encrypted, tightly permissioned, and routinely audited. 

We also ensure that we have any required end user opt-outs or consents in place for data we collect. The result is clean, permissioned, human-verified data that enables precise, compliant audience building at scale, as outlined in our trust center.

What makes healthcare providers (HCPs) and political audiences particularly suited to your deterministic approach?

These two categories are hard to reach, easy to get wrong, and incredibly important to get right.

For HCPs, we’re fortunate to have full-text professional data across clinicians, specialists, staff, and administrators, including NPI-linked profiles. 

Most HCP targeting on the market is still probabilistic — based on office IPs, content consumption, inferred specialty, or historical browsing. We build from the individual outward, which significantly improves accuracy and match rates.

For us, politics isn’t a vertical — it’s a system. Effective political targeting requires reaching:

• Voters
• Public-sector workers from municipal to federal levels
• Corporate and institutional influencers
• Policy decision-makers
• High-value “circles of influence”

We move beyond the classic voter file solutions in the space to incorporate B2B data, influencer mapping and real-time surveying to get to the beating heart of the general public, all deployed in compliance with local political advertising laws and applicable privacy regulations. 

How does partnering with OpenX help advertisers leverage deterministic data more efficiently within programmatic environments?

If you want to win at the scale and precision game, you have to apply data on the supply side for hard-to-reach audiences, full stop. There’s just no way around this. 

You aren’t fishing for rare identities on the open exchange; you’re starting with supply that already over-indexes for your target. Every step downstream — bidding, winning, serving — gets more efficient when you reduce wasted impressions at the top of the funnel. It’s all around better reach. Conversion metrics lift across the board. Importantly, you are not wasting a single dollar on wasted impressions that were never in target to begin with. 

It creates this beautifully self-reinforcing loop: better supply → cleaner auctions → higher in-target rates → stronger outcomes.