Audience Partners

Audience Partners was an enterprise advertising management firm that developed and operated a data-fueled, addressable advertising platform. The company was established in 2008, though some sources suggest 2007 or as early as 2002. It was founded by Rich Masterson, who started the company in a small firehouse in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania. Other individuals associated with the founding are Jeff Dittus and Scott Berman. Dittus, who served as Chairman and CEO, brought a background that included roles as CEO of MediaBay and experience at venture capital firm IT Capital. Masterson noted the company was a "bootstrapped Philadelphia startup that was started by accident."

The firm's business model centered on leveraging data science and programmatic ad buying to target specific individuals across a variety of digital screens, including PCs, mobile phones, tablets, and addressable TVs. A core component of its strategy was linking first-party, offline data, such as mailing addresses, to online devices. This was achieved through a proprietary IP-to-household matching platform, enabling advertisers to precisely reach high-value audiences at scale. The company's revenue was generated by selling advertising impressions to its clients; by 2017, it had delivered over 6 billion impressions for thousands of clients across 10,000 campaigns.

Audience Partners carved out a niche by focusing on specific high-stakes industries: politics and advocacy, healthcare, and higher education. Its client roster included presidential candidates, U.S. government agencies, major hospitals, health insurers, and universities. One of the company's key assets was its CampaignGrid unit, which provided nonpartisan services to political campaigns by marrying voter and consumer data for targeted online advertising. On March 2, 2017, Audience Partners was acquired by Altice USA, the fourth-largest cable operator in the U.S. at the time. The acquisition was a strategic move by Altice USA to integrate Audience Partners' digital targeting capabilities with its own addressable television advertising solutions, aiming to create a comprehensive multi-screen advertising platform. Following the acquisition, the team, including CEO Jeff Dittus, remained with the company to help integrate and expand the services.

Keywords: addressable advertising, programmatic ad buying, data-driven advertising, political advertising, healthcare marketing, higher education advertising, CampaignGrid, IP-to-household matching, first-party data, offline to online targeting, multi-screen advertising, voter data, consumer data, ad tech, Jeff Dittus, Rich Masterson, Altice USA acquisition, advertising management, digital media solutions, audience targeting