• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, April 22, 2014

Yieldex -- a company that has spent the better part of a decade on the supply side of the equation by providing revenue management analytics to digital publishers -- has set up a business unit on the buy side. 

The company on Tuesday announced the launch of a programmatic direct platform, YieldexDirect.

“While the industry has been talking about programmatic direct, Yieldex has quietly built a platform that has executed thousands of buys from hundreds of advertisers," stated Tom Shields, chief strategy officer of Yieldex. “Our years of expertise with direct sellers from top publishers have gone into creating this platform that dramatically increases the efficiency of direct transactions between large buyers and sellers.”

The company has tapped Tom Quinn as general manager of YieldexDirect for Advertisers. Quinn joins Yieldex from Merkle, where he served as chief revenue officer of digital services.

Yieldex says it has already partnered with multiple trading desks and demand-side platforms (DSPs), including MediaMath. Advertisers can access the platform through those partners or by working with Yieldex directly. Comcast Spotlight is highlighted as one of the first buyers to use the platform.

Yieldex also claims to be the first programmatic direct platform to adhere to the common API standards agreed to by Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft.

It doesn't match the definition of "foreshadow" precisely, but this is of note because when Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft announced their agreement to create a common set of API specs back in September 2013, Yieldex was singled out as a supporter of the initiative. At the time, Shields stated the standards would help premium publishers use programmatic without shedding their “premium” labels.