Locality Launches Audience Engine

Has Locality re-engineered the foundation of local advertising to deliver performance, precision, and transparency, at scale, for advertisers? That is certainly the objective of the local video solutions provider, which launched its Locality Audience Engine in collaboration with Lovelytics, Newton Research, and Databricks.

Locality and its strategic partners seek to engage local audiences by integrating generative AI, automation, and Locality’s historical local media intelligence and viewership data. The result for clients could achieve smarter, faster, and more effective local campaigns.

Steve Silvestri, Head of Data Strategy and Innovation – Streaming, at Locality took us behind the curtain to see how it all works.

What specific gaps in the local ad marketplace are you solving that major platforms like Google, Meta, or Comcast haven’t addressed?

While those platforms do a lot of things well, they’re not built for local. What we’ve done is assembled a team who understand the local media landscape and designed a solution that understands the complexities of local markets, things like DMA-level identity, fragmentation between linear and streaming, and the measurement blind spots that exist.

How does the Audience Engine reposition Locality in the competitive landscape of local video advertising?

Audience Engine is a complete modernization and transformation to scaled local marketing intelligence. We have completely transformed and modernized our intelligence solutions, leveraging modern next-generation technology solutions enabling AI-powered planning and insights/analytics capabilities – which enable advertisers and marketers to customize how, why and when to reach their audiences more efficiently and effectively.

Why did you choose to partner with Lovelytics, Newton Research, and Databricks, and what unique capabilities does each bring to the engine?

Lovelytics provides the data architecture that makes the technology run. Newton Research, an AI-powered marketing analytics agent, adds an additional layer of intelligence and automation. Databricks provides the cloud storage we need to make the technology fast and efficient. It handles the massive datasets in real time, so advertisers can move from planning to activation at lightning speed.

How does your use of generative AI differ from predictive modeling already used in adtech for segmentation and optimization?

Predictive modeling helps our clients understand what might happen: which audiences are likely to convert, where to allocate spend, etc. Generative AI takes it a step further letting our clients simulate audience strategies, test creative scenarios, and even auto-suggest ways to improve performance on the fly. In today’s local advertising, we have to go beyond forecasting to create new paths to success. That’s a game-changer for our clients; every dollar has to work harder in local. Additionally, Newton Research brings in Agentic AI, which provides a number of capabilities that are additive to generative AI.

How do you ensure data accuracy, deduplication, and actionable insights when merging first- and third-party data?

It starts with rigorous hygiene. We’ve built pipelines that validate and clean data before it ever touches a campaign. Then we layer on our identity graph to dedupe across devices and formats. Everything is tagged, time-stamped, and traceable. And because it’s all housed in our own environment, we give advertisers actionable insights in real-time thanks to our partners Lovelytics and Newton Research; our clients don’t have to wait until a campaign has ended to see results.

Can advertisers seamlessly extend campaigns across both linear TV and streaming?

Absolutely, and that’s one of the biggest reasons clients are excited about Audience Engine. You can build your audience once, and we’ll deploy it across both linear and digital without skipping a beat. Whether it’s a spot running on a local newscast or an ad in a streaming show, we ensure consistency in targeting, pacing, and measurement. It’s true convergence. Newton’s agents also help us build and extend new audiences on the fly.

How does your engine handle attribution across these formats?

This is primarily enabled by Newton Research; with their intelligent agents, we look at every exposure across every format – linear, OTT, mobile – and tie that back to real outcomes. We use a mix of deterministic logs, ACR data, and modeled attribution to tell the full story. So instead of guessing where the lift came from, we can show it, down to the DMA, device, or even time of day. And that makes a huge difference when you’re trying to prove ROI locally.

How quickly can advertisers expect to move from audience discovery to campaign activation compared with existing workflows?

We’re talking hours, not days or weeks. With traditional workflows, you’d have to hand off to multiple partners, wait for data to be modeled, get approvals – it’s a timely process. With the Audience Engine, once we define your audience, we can push it live instantly. It’s all in one system, powered by Newton’s team of specialized agents, so there’s no lag between insight and action.

How does the Audience Engine specifically help smaller brands maximize ROI compared to national players?

Smaller brands often don’t have big teams or big budgets. Agentic AI makes it significantly easier for small brands to handle complexity at an affordable cost and without a lot of heavy lifting. What we give them is access to tools that used to be reserved for the national advertisers. Any advertiser, regardless of budget or size, receives AI-driven targeting, real-time optimization, and cross-platform measurement that is simplified and cost-effective. With this, smaller brands are on the same level playing field as national players.

Beyond impressions and reach, what new measurement capabilities will advertisers gain, and how do you expect this to change how success is reported in local campaigns?

We’re shifting the conversation from “Did I get seen?” to “Did I drive impact?” With the Audience Engine, advertisers can see conversions, lift, audience engagement, including cross-platform exposure paths.