Contextual intelligence platform GumGum has acquired Playground xyz, a global, attention-based advertising platform. The transaction was completed using a mix of cash and stock and will be immediately accretive. With the addition of Playground xyz, GumGum said it will now provide advertisers with the ability to measure the attention of their contextually-driven campaigns without the use of personal data. 

Playground xyz developed the Attention Intelligence Platform, an integrated tech stack to measure and optimize towards Attention Time – how long, in seconds, an ad is actually looked at. Playground xyz does this through its AI technology that is trained and verified using real eye-tracking data. Founded six years ago in Australia, Playground xyz has expanded operations across APAC, EMEA, and the US. Demand for the platform has continued to accelerate, with the company seeing greater than 60 per cent year-over-year revenue growth. 

“In a future without the cookie or personal data, we believe that digital advertising will come down to capturing the consumer’s mindset through a combination of creative, context, and consumer attention,” said GumGum CEO, Phil Schraeder. “Each is independently important, but together make up The Mindset Matrix, which will be key to understanding and optimizing campaigns of the future. Our accredited contextual technology, combined with Playground xyz’s proven attention measurement and optimization solution, will allow advertisers to future proof their attribution strategies by moving past basic viewability metrics to better understand the true effectiveness of their digital campaigns.”