Julia Amorim, CEO of MediaNet
When Casale Media rebranded as Index Exchange in January, it wanted to signal that it’s become a technology platform wholly devoted to the sell-side of the programmatic advertising business. But it wasn’t clear what would become of its legacy ad network business, MediaNet.
It’s now been revealed that rather than being shuttered during the Index rebrand, MediaNet has been spun off as a separate company, led by Julia Amorim, former CMO for Casale Media and daughter of founder Joe Casale.
“The opportunity was there to really continue to provide high quality media options to our existing clients,” Amorim told Marketing. “I love what our family has built. We have great clients, we have an amazing team. The decision to take on reshaping what was already, I think, an incredible business was an easy one to make.”
Casale decided to spin off MediaNet late last year in order to eliminate potential conflicts of interest between MediaNet’s advertiser/agency clients and Index’s publisher users. Index CEO Andrew Casale (Amorim’s brother) has been a vocal proponent of clear divisions between buy-side and sell-side technology vendors, believing it’s too difficult for platforms to maintain neutrality when bringing in revenue from both sides of the marketplace.
The MediaNet brand has existed since 2005, when Casale Media attached the name to its real-time ad network, one of the first on the market. In 2011, with programmatic gaining traction, the company launched what would become the Index supply-side platform, and MediaNet — considered a more “traditional” ad network model — fell out of favor.
But MediaNet continued to do business in the background with a loyal base of media buyer clients and publisher partners, and over the past several years it’s quietly morphed from a conventional ad network into something more like a trading desk. It offers service-intensive in-house buying using a variety of proprietary and licensed platforms to acquire inventory across open exchanges like Index and DoubleClick Ad Exchange, as well as through programmatic direct and private marketplace channels.
“Our transition into programmatic was very natural. It wasn’t something new or separate to us,” said Amorim.
Instead of designing and licensing out a proprietary demand-side platform, as many ad tech companies are doing, MediaNet intends to be “platform-agnostic,” similar to an agency-owned trading desk like Cadreon or Accuen. “We’re able to match clients with the very best technology available for their particular needs,” she said. “We have total flexibility. We can connect clients to virtually any supply.”
MediaNet has also broadened its service focus, launching a custom business intelligence unit, which packages data insights for clients, as well as a creative services unit to design and adapt media for multi-channel delivery.
Amorim said many of the marketer and agency clients that have worked with MediaNet for years as part of Casale Media have stayed on with the new independent company, and that so far maintaining continuity for existing clients has been a bigger priority than seeking new ones.
Over the past decade, Casale and later Index have gained a reputation as a transparent, quality supplier with zero tolerance for fraud. Amorim said she plans to maintain that focus at MediaNet, and hopes the Casale name and expertise will help the company stand out a time when transparency has become the industry’s biggest buzzword.
“Casale Media has always had the flexibility, because of its ownership structure, to do things the right way, instead of just focusing on the bottom line,” she said. “And that model now extends to MediaNet.”
