The challenge: audience targeting outpaced show-level transparency
Programmatic had already transformed how InterMedia targeted audiences. What hadn't kept pace was show-level transparency: it stayed fragmented, without a scalable, privacy-safe way to buy or optimize against it. InterMedia could see who saw Laundry Sauce's ads, but not what those viewers were actually watching in the moment, or which programming environments were actually converting, while the campaign was still live.
Three control lines carried the buy, differentiated only by audience strategy (20+ Orders, Top Revenue, AOV). The constraint wasn't the audience. It was which content environments the ads were landing on, and there was no live way to see or act on that.
The solution: show-level signals, activated as a live bidding input
InterMedia set out to solve this for the live Laundry Sauce campaign, working with Pontiac Intelligence and Peer39 to turn authenticated show-level signals into real-time bidding decisions instead of a post-campaign report.
- Peer39 provided the content classification layer: analyzing the campaign's own post-buy data across five dimensions in combination, Service, Network, Genre, Rating, and Device, and identifying the specific programming environments across open-exchange streaming supply that were actually converting.
- Pontiac Intelligence integrated those authenticated content signals directly into its real-time bidding infrastructure, so show-level performance could function as a live optimization input alongside geography, device, daypart, and streaming environment, evaluated in-flight rather than surfaced only after the campaign had ended.
- InterMedia Advertising deployed the solution, concentrating investment into the programming environments the signal identified as driving the strongest outcomes for Laundry Sauce.
The architecture was built to be privacy-safe: it classifies programming environments, not individual viewers, keeping it clear of VPPA concerns.
A sample of the winning combinations (three-way pockets of Service, Network, and Genre, ranked by carts, keeping only combinations that beat the campaign-wide 2.47% page-view-to-cart rate):
The results: show-level intelligence, turned into a performance driver
By making show-level intelligence an active optimization input rather than a passive report, the campaign delivered:
- 64% improvement in add-to-cart efficiency, campaign-wide.
- 2.5x higher page-view-to-cart conversion rate on optimized inventory.
- 37% more page views per impression from rated content, with 2x higher checkout completion versus unrated.
- ~94% of purchased impressions tied to show-level signals, enabling optimization across open-exchange inventory at scale.
Methodology: conversions are attributed to ad starts via SSP auction ID, and cost is modeled per impression from matched-auction CPMs. All comparisons in this case study use a common window so the optimized line and controls are measured over identical dates.
Together, Pontiac Intelligence, Peer39, and InterMedia Advertising showed that authenticated content intelligence, activated at the supply level, can be a real performance driver, not just a planning input.
