In an industry-first, we are reshaping our taxonomy (i.e., our data classification hierarchy) to offer a more granular and relevant view into digital advertising today. It's a system designed by the modern marketer, for the modern marketer.
This reimagined taxonomy is available in all Pathmatics products: Explorer, Connect, and Custom.
We are releasing our transformed taxonomy in phases, so you can benefit from it as soon as possible. It also means we can iterate based on your feedback so it's as powerful as it can be.
Classic taxonomy
Historically, ads have been taxonomized into a three-layer data hierarchy. For example:
- Categories are the first layer in the hierarchy: the top-level Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) category that an advertiser falls into.
- Advertisers are the second, representing the highest-level company — the parent company if a company has subsidiaries.
- Brands are the third layer, representing brands or child companies that exist beneath the Advertiser. An advertiser may own multiple brands.
Supercharged taxonomy
Our transformed taxonomy exceeds the classic three-layer hierarchy, with deeper layers of both brands and categories.
You will more easily be able to research specific brands and products, perform better apples-to-apples comparisons among brands, and drill down to more than a single layer of categories.
Our taxonomized categories
So far, we have released our taxonomy across the following categories: Auto, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), Financial Services, Food & Dining Services, Gaming, Health & Wellness, Media & Entertainment, Shopping, and Travel & Tourism.
For more details, and definitions of our categories, see our Taxonomy Definitions →
Why it's so valuable
It's the first of its kind!
- Like Pathmatics, our reimagined taxonomy is digital-first — the first data classification system designed by the modern marketer, for the modern marketer. Both informed by well-established tech giants and a direct response to feedback from our customers, our new taxonomy is customized to meet the needs of real, top digital media decision-makers today.
- Our approach to cleaning up legacy data classification systems has led us to a simpler, more accurate, and more relevant view of the digital advertising ecosystem.
And better for you:
- More granular brands means seeing ad spend and placement for individual products in a brand family (e.g., Olay Daily Facials, Olay Body Bar, and Olay Total Effects uniquely reported within Olay). And showing more layers of brands hierarchically will enable spend, impression, and creative count totals to sum up more intuitively (e.g., each Olay product will be represented in the user interface as belonging to the Olay brand family).
- More granular categories means drilling down into specific categories and viewing the more granular brands within those categories (e.g., Olay's products will be classified as facial cleansers, body soaps, lotions, etc).
- Our reimagined taxonomy will enable you to more quickly and easily get the answers you need about individual brands, families of brands, and true competitive sets.