• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, May 16, 2012

While offering the prospect of increased sales through automation and greater efficiency, advertising exchanges are still viewed warily by some publishers, which fear that they will commoditize their inventory and undercut their pricing.

To address these concerns, Centro, which operates an exchange selling online inventory from newspapers and other local sites. has partnered with Krux to launch an ad exchange for premium publishers that shields their audience data from third parties looking to reach the audience through different channels, driving down the value of their inventory.

The Centro Brand Exchange created by Centro and Krux incorporates the latter’s data management technology into its exchange software to prevent third parties from gleaning audience data that could be used, for example, to target specific audiences at lower CPMs than the publisher offers through its own online ad sales force.

According to Krux, some 40% of all data collected from publishers is actually being gathered by third-party ad tags without the publishers’ knowledge.

Advertisers and publishers on the private, invitation-only exchange are vetted by Centro, which put in place controls giving both advertisers and publishers the ability to determine what kind of advertising is accepted, at what price, and where it appears.

Advertisers can buy inventory through direct CPM buys with the Centro sales force or through real-time bidding on the exchange, using audience targeting tools including BlueKai, Nielsen, Targus, Datalogix, and Bizo.

According to Centro, its exchange and sales force offer inventory from around 2,000 publishers nationwide, and placed ads for 1,700 advertising clients via 470 agencies in 2011 alone.