Sapient pitches BridgeTrack ad platform in India

Sapient Interactive’s proprietary online ad platform, developed over seven years, is made available for global clients

Sapient, the global provider of marketing and IT applications, has announced the availability of its proprietary BridgeTrack ad server and online marketing platform as a standalone product. BridgeTrack was developed over seven years, and has been used by Sapient’s interactive agency, Sapient Interactive, for 25,000 campaigns. Sapient Interactive is the second largest digital agency in the US, according to ‘Advertising Age’, with clients such as Citibank and Motorola.

Sapient pitches BridgeTrack ad platform in India

The platform lets marketers perform advanced tracking functions for their interactive campaigns, beyond click-throughs and page impressions. It reveals instant data on customer behaviour, such as which element of the creative performs better, data on customers’ buying behaviour and a comparison of different ads across various websites. BridgeTrack is both hosted and deployed by the company.

“BridgeTrack is a global product launch. We are as keen on getting queries from India as we are from other countries,” says Nitin Mathur, India marketing head, Sapient Corporation.

The company, however, does not have a sales team in place for the product yet and will only be aggressively pitching the product at a later stage.

There has been a flurry of acquisitions this year in the online advertising marketplace. Google picked up DoubleClick, an established online advertising network in April. This led to a series of acquisitions: Yahoo! bought Right Media, Microsoft bought aQuantive and WPP picked up 24/7 Media. BridgeTrack projects itself as a relatively neutral ad platform, given that there are no conflicts of interest.

“Advertisers and marketers who use ad servers from Double Click and aQuantive to measure the impact of different types of media – including Google search and MSN – are worried about loss of objectivity and conflict of interest,” said Gaston Legorburu, chief creative officer at Sapient, in a statement.

He also added that the company will develop new features for the platform, including “a new universal, content optimisation engine that will allow clients to change content in real time across multiple media channels with just one click”.

As online advertisers look for more interactive ways to engage their audience, tools like BridgeTrack will play a key role in shaping the Internet advertising industry in India.

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