Opera Mediaworks and Nielsen Catalina Solutions Help CPG Brands Leverage Purchase Behavior to Deliver "No Wait" Mobile Video Ads

SAN MATEO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 12, 2016) - Opera Mediaworks, the first mobile ad platform for brands, and Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS), the leader in buyergraphic media activation and sales measurement for CPG marketers, today announced a collaboration that will allow CPG advertisers to deliver high definition (HD) mobile video ads that load instantly based on actual offline purchase behavior, and measure the impact of those ads on in-store sales. Mars Chocolate and TruMoo, in addition to Horizon Media agency, are among the first to take advantage of the capabilities now offered by Opera and NCS.

The alliance will allow mobile advertisers to leverage the largest single-source data set for CPG advertisers, with loyalty-card data from over 90 million U.S. households via over 18,000 major grocery and drugstore retailers nationwide. NCS data will fuel advanced purchase-based media activation and offline sales measurement across Opera Mediaworks' mobile advertising platform, reaching 285 million U.S. mobile devices. This will be the first time that the NCS data is coupled with zero buffering, HD, Instant-Play video, plus standard and rich media display. Advertisers running campaigns on Opera Mediaworks' mobile ad platform will be able to view the impact that their campaigns are having on offline sales, directly connecting ad exposure to in-store purchase volume.

"There is an opportunity here for marketers to take what has been considered the gold standard of CPG purchase data and combine it with the best mobile ad experiences available in the marketplace," says Mike Owen, EVP North America Sales, Opera Mediaworks.

"For a company like Mars Chocolate with such a massive portfolio of brands in the CPG category, this represents a huge opportunity to apply first-hand consumer intelligence to campaigns across a number of products," says Amanda Zaky, Digital Media Lead, Mars Chocolate. "Being able to see the nuances of purchase behavior helps us understand the small shifts we can make to target and capture new customers."

"Now, brand advertisers can be confident that their mobile campaigns will reach consumers with the highest propensity to buy," says Leslie Wood, Chief Research Officer, Nielsen Catalina Solutions. "In addition, they can measure the true incremental sales of their advertising, rather than rely on imprecise metrics like buy rates. The combination of these two things allows for much greater precision in mobile video advertising."

"This new capability is exciting because it helps answer the ROI measurement questions that clients pose to Horizon on a frequent basis," said Alex Stone, Director of Digital at Horizon Media. "The turnkey, closed loop measurement of our mobile media activations for TruMoo advances how we determine the success of our campaigns."

"Dean Foods and the TruMoo brand are pleased to enhance our collaboration with Opera through this exciting opportunity. We are looking forward to accessing fresh, actionable insights with the addition of Nielsen Catalina Solutions' data and reporting," says Wendy Poer, Senior Brand Manager at Dean Foods. "There has been strong growth in the importance of mobile across our brands, and the ability to connect digital media to offline sales will further enhance our mobile media."

Opera Mediaworks and NCS do not collect any personally identifiable information (PII). Opera Mediaworks and NCS integrated with leading data-matching service LiveRamp, which acts as a data escrow agent to scrub all PII and anonymizes the data points to protect the privacy of consumers and advertisers.

About Opera Mediaworks
Opera Mediaworks is the first mobile ad platform for brands, delivering breakthrough marketing at scale. Our technology powers the biggest publishers in the world and enables marketers to provide the highest quality experiences to more people in more places when it matters most. Our exclusive Instant-Play™ HD video technology and award-winning rich media touches, engages and creates deep interaction with consumers in the most popular mobile apps and sites around the globe. We work with over 90% of the AdAge Top 100 advertisers and 18 of the top 25 global publishers. A fully-owned subsidiary of Opera, Opera Mediaworks is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with over 20 offices worldwide. To learn more, visit www.operamediaworks.com.

About Nielsen Catalina Solutions
Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) helps CPG marketers, agencies and media companies define their most valuable audience based on consumer purchases, reach them with advertising, and measure the resulting incremental sales, by precisely linking what consumers watch and what they buy using the largest, most comprehensive retail shopper dataset. The joint-venture between Nielsen and Catalina integrates media data for all platforms from 90+ premier media companies as well as industry leading Nielsen People Meter (TV), Portable People Meter (radio), Nielsen online, and millions of set-top-box homes (TV).

The media data is matched with the buyergraphic data from over 90 million shopper households from Catalina, enhanced by Nielsen Homescan® to represent all CPG outlets. This total household view helps our clients improve ad performance to drive revenue growth and ROI. Nielsen Catalina Solutions is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Visit the website (www.ncsolutions.com/), LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/nielsen-catalina-ventures) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/ncsolutions) to learn more.