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Announcing REX: the world’s first kid-safe programmatic exchange
Today (link is external)marks a major milestone in the kids digital media industry. We’re extremely pleased to announce the launch of REX, the world’s first kid-safe, COPPA-compliant programmatic exchange.
COPPA and GDPR forbid profile or cookie-based targeting which has, until now, removed all programmatic options (and hence automation) from the kids industry. Part of AwesomeAds (our kid-safe ad server) REX guarantees that all automated ad requests are 100% kid-safe and COPPA/GDPR compliant.
For the first time ever, REX makes it possible for advertisers across the world to programmatically reach the kids audience in a fully compliant, 100% kid-safe way. The kids space hasn’t had this capability (in any compliant sense) until now. REX genuinely shifts the entire industry forward.
How does it work?
At this point, our engineering team (about a third of the company) is probably the most experienced technical team in the global digital kids’ sector. This was a pretty helpful starting point.
REX acts as a comprehensive kid-safety filter; it removes all non-compliant elements from each ad tag to ensure nothing can track users, before placing every creative through our ad content review process. Only then is it served through our COPPA-certified AwesomeAds platform, earning our SAFE AD watermark.
Explained by our Chief Product Officer, Joshua Wohle: “REX inserts itself between the publisher and the exchange, taking the role of a firewall. It inspects the requests going out, stripping it from any PII before sending it through to the exchange. The exchange then considers the request and buyers can start bidding on the inventory. Once the winning bid is returned to the publisher, REX again intercepts it and removes any trackers that could be collecting PII before sending it on to the publisher. All of this happens in real-time, allowing for a full programmatic flow whilst ensuring compliance to all parties involved.”
In order to bring this unique offering to the kids industry, we’re working alongside Rubicon, one of the biggest programmatic exchanges in the world. They provide real-time bidding and integration with all buyer systems across the globe. Combining our infrastructure in kid-safe technology and our exclusive kids inventory with their real-time bidding architecture, we are able to open up programmatic to the world’s biggest trading desks and DSPs across the kids market.
