OneAD: Bringing Intelligence to Advertising

Years ago, in the heyday of modems, a tech company ran an ad that still holds true. It read, “Modems Don’t Communicate, People Do.” In the torch race of personalized, people-driven businesses, the beacon is now borne by a newly ignited concept—Internet of People (IoP), steering the idea that “the Internet doesn’t communicate, people do.”

Driven by this notion, advertising agencies today are leveraging IoP’s ability to gather information from an individual’s online activities to deliver unique and hyper-personalized advertisements. However, in their pursuit of chasing audiences in the walled gardens of Facebook and YouTube, marketers and advertising agencies often tend to overlook the huge potential lying out there in the Open Internet (OI). According to industry veteran Hilo Chen—who is also the co-founder and chairman of Taiwan-based programmatic video ad operator OneAD—marketers need to change their mindset of only deploying marketing resources in walled gardens. He believes that the key to succeeding in today’s fragmented media environment is to step out of this and embrace the benefits of IoP in OI. This is where Chen’s company, OneAD, is in a class by itself.

Expanding the Horizons of Digital Advertising

Fortifying the concept of IoP in the advertising industry, OneAD is laser-focused on delivering some of the finest data-driven ad solutions to its clients. In doing so, the company leverages its unique capabilities in MediaTech, DataTech, and AdTech, and seamlessly connects the three technologies to help advertisers develop innovative advertising strategies. With a portfolio of functionalities such as audience buying for compelling creative ad formats, programmatic serving, and more, OneAD caters to the diverse requirements of clients for efficient marketing in the OI environment.

The company uses AI algorithms to interpret the impressions from massive target audiences. OneAD then leverages technologies that can develop innovative ad formats in conjunction with the gathered consumer insights. Lastly, to provide a premium private marketplace (PMP) and programmatic serving to clients, the company utilizes AdTech solutions that enable the integration of its offerings with demand-side platforms (DSPs). These unmatched capabilities, combined with OneAD’s vision to expand the horizons of digital advertising, helped the company evolve from a tech startup to the leading video ad-media operator in Taiwan within nine years of its inception.

Delivering Open-Minded Advertising

OneAD’s collaboration with multiple local premium publishers—including news, social, and binge-watched platforms—has allowed the company to develop its data management platform (DMP), OneDATA, which uses AI algorithms to scrutinize and derive data from a user’s various online activities. Composed of local and real-time data derived from multiple sources, OneDATA helps in building cross-device user identification called OneID, which further enables OneDATA to track the OneID graph and provide better data-related products and services to clients.

“With OneID’s algorithm, OneDATA can infer that a user currently reading the news on their mobile device was reading movie reviews on their laptop minutes ago, which enables the creation of user-specific ads,” mentions Chen.

Today, OneDATA, which OneAD considers the cornerstone of its services, already covers 99.8 percent of online consumers in the Taiwanese market, connecting the majority of the country’s IoP. The company’s endeavor to equip the corporates with Taiwanese consumers’ persona and online behaviors is path-breaking, especially at an age when a large number of Taiwanese enterprises have to rely on foreign DMPs, comprising foreign data that hardly caters to the local market. In addition, OneAD also enables Taiwanese businesses to unleash the true value of first-party data, which often remains the biggest challenge due to the absence of a competent DMP. According to Joyce Lee, co-founder and CEO of OneAD, “Our AI-powered OneID Audience Manager (OAM) enables clients to build brand DMPs that streamline the deployment, collection, integration, and analysis of first-party and second-party data.” It can reveal and enrich the value of brand data assets with meaningful and comprehensive consumer insights and online behaviors. “OneDATA enables advertisers to enrich their first-party data and accumulate data assets that can drive the development of comprehensive digital marketing strategies,” adds Joyce. On the other hand, OAM seamlessly addresses the concerns around choosing the right DMP by generating inside insights, eliminating first-party data silos in enterprises, and developing clients’ digital marketing strategies with a data-driven ad solution.

Enabling the Rapid Creation of Innovative Campaigns

OneAD has recently developed QuickPlan, a powerful data-driven cloud service powered by OneDATA. As a data strategy-planning platform, QuickPlan helps advertisers plan their digital marketing campaigns in no time. Talking about this innovation, which combines OneAD’s 10 years of digital campaign operational experiences, Chen says, “QuickPlan provides suggestions such as the size of the target audience, the ideal budget that can accomplish the expectation of an impactful voice, and the ad formats that meet the advertising purpose.” These capabilities enable advertisers to practically implement their campaign right after planning. However, it is noteworthy that insights generated by both OAM and QuickPlan are not limited by OneAD within its own periphery. Organizations can use those insights to proceed with their campaigns either via OneAD or apply them in international Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs).

Despite this use of advanced technology, “It is also critical to identify anonymous users and clearly portray their persona without personally identifiable information (PII),”states Chen. To this end, the company consistently collects audience data from multiple sources, predicts user demographics by leveraging machine learning, which is then verified through Digital Ad Ratings by Nielsen.

In fact, in pursuit of establishing OneAD as their first local data partner in Taiwan, both Nielsen and The Trade Desk (TTD) are constantly collaborating with the company. In 2019, OneAD’s data capabilities have also been chosen by the TTD data marketplace and Nielsen Marketing Cloud. In light of this development, the company has gained the ability to integrate with foreign brands via DSPs like TTD, DV360, and Xandr, among others, and effectively interact with Taiwanese consumers with OneDATA’s exceptional coverage.

Demystifying Multi- Dimensional Advertising

Today, OneAD has been able to steer its uniqueness in the marketplace through its ability to directly connect with publishers, allowing the consolidation of high-quality data that gives comprehensive consumer browsing behaviors from several sources. The company’s AI-powered integrating and analyzing features portray complete, diverse, and multi-dimensional consumer persona. Moreover, OneAD also obtains different kinds of brand advertising data, including campaign data such as impressions, viewability, as well as user views, clicks, and other interactive data between brands and consumers. Collectively, this data is called emotional bonding indicators, which are immensely beneficial for global 500 companies. The consumer and brand campaign data gathered by the company is also instrumental in establishing a comprehensive and persuasive strategy and measurement with OneAD AI-powered brand ad solutions to meet brand advertising expectations and results.

"OneDATA enables advertisers to enrich their first-party data and accumulate data assets that can drive the development of comprehensive digital marketing strategies"


Riding on the coattails of its unparalleled capabilities, OneAD has several success stories across a multitude of market segments. In one instance, a client of OneAD approached them to address the challenge of promoting new movies by targeting the potential audiences within a relatively short period in the film industry. Consequently, OneAD suggested the use of OAM to develop their digital campaigns. By using OAM, the client could identify some specific movie genres’ high potential consumers from their former digital campaigns. Accordingly, they could direct their resources more effectively and precisely while reaching out to their target audiences.

With a plethora of such client successes, the company has gathered an extensive library of innovative advertising strategies to mitigate the emerging challenges in the advertising space. Moving ahead, OneAD aims to continuously focus on improving not only its three-fold core technology, but also its media products, data products, and cloud services. With this ambitious roadmap, OneAD expects to continue excelling in product leadership, customer intimacy, and operational excellence to deliver faster, more innovative, and highly customer-driven advertising strategies.