Ozone, a digital advertising business, today announces the launch of OzoneOS, a new technology suite designed to help publishers unlock more value from the audience relationships they’ve built by bringing first-party audience intelligence directly into programmatic decision-making.
Premium publishers’ audiences have never been more valuable, says Ozone. As search-driven traffic has declined over the last 18 months, the known, loyal audiences who visit publishers directly have become increasingly important. Yet the legacy tools publishers rely on were built to monetise volume rather than audience value, leaving first-party intelligence largely disconnected from revenue decisions beyond direct sales.
Ozone says OzoneOS addresses this challenge by pairing direct control of the ad stack with Ozone’s cross-network intelligence, designed to bring publishers’ understanding of their readers closer to the point of transaction. By providing deeper insight into what different audiences are worth and which buyers value them most, OzoneOS puts control back in publishers’ hands, enabling them to make more informed decisions about pricing and how first-party signals are made available.
OzoneOS brings together two connected capabilities, added Ozone:
- Audience models: Extending the application of Ozone’s mature edge models, this puts user-level intelligence at the heart of pricing, distribution and enrichment decisions across all revenue lines. Beyond advertising, this delivers powerful insight to inform content and audience development decisions.
- Orchestration: Giving publishers the tools to streamline management of ad layouts, page behaviour and demand partners, improving advertising performance and the reader experience.
Both of these capabilities have been designed to prepare for future opportunities that will impact publishers. Built on clean, structured data foundations, they give publishers greater flexibility and control over their revenues today, while delivering a framework to enable publisher teams to build and execute custom AI strategies in the future, Ozone continued.
Early results with a major global publisher show a 63% increase in revenue per page and a 66% improvement in viewability against a backdrop of 69% fewer ad requests.
The impact extends beyond publishers to readers and marketers. With reduced ad load, readers benefit from a cleaner experience, while the ads that remain enjoy even more attention, helping to deliver stronger performance for brands. The publisher also saw a 3x increase in the price buyers paid and a 15% lift in brand count.
Commenting on the launch, Danny Spears, chief operating officer at Ozone, said: “Premium publishers invest heavily in building deep relationships with their audiences, yet the technology used to monetise them doesn’t reflect that reality. If quality journalism is to thrive, publishers need to capture more of the value they create.
“We’ve seen AI create an oil-and-water split in the publisher market. At one end, premium publishers invest in original content, run diverse models across subscriptions, advertising and partnerships, and attract loyal readers who come direct. At the other, we have properties that regurgitate content and monetise unknown traffic opportunistically. Yet both have been served by the same technology. With the launch of OzoneOS, that no longer needs to be the case for audience-first publishers.”
The technology was first unveiled to publisher partners at Ozone's CTRL event in London on 22 October, with initial capabilities being introduced across the UK and US.
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