illumin

illumin is a demand-side platform that plans, buys and measures programmatic campaigns as consumer journeys for brands and agencies, self-serve or managed.

illumin plans and buys programmatic advertising around how people move through a campaign, stage by stage, instead of judging each placement on its own. It is aimed at three problems brands and agencies face: disconnected tools, late insights and results that are hard to explain. The platform comes from illumin Holdings Inc. in Toronto, which carried the AcuityAds name until June 2023. Canvas is the workspace, where audiences, channels, creatives and budgets sit in one view for a simple flight or a branching plan. Forecasting shows how many people a plan will reach, and how often, before anything goes live. illumin Insights feeds audience signals into activation while campaigns run, and AI recommendations suggest where to change course. The Audience Engagement Map and Pathlight Analysis show where people click, stay engaged or drop away. illumin Impact then measures incremental results inside the DSP with audience holdouts and brand lift measurement. The platform fits brands and agencies that run native, display, video, connected TV, digital out-of-home, audio and social retargeting together and want one place to plan them. Agency teams use Report Builder and its exports to show each client what a campaign did. Marketers moving away from third-party cookies upload their own first-party audiences and activate them on open web campaigns. Two service levels decide who does the work: Self-service keeps the advertiser at the controls around the clock, while Managed service puts illumin's team on the campaign. A common job is a launch that must reach people across phones, desktops and TV screens without showing them the same ad too often, so reach and frequency are set in Forecasting and managed across devices once the flight starts. DoubleVerify brand safety and viewability segments are applied before each bid. Video can run through illumin's SkipStream player, which reports the company's own Share of Attention metric. When the flight ends, the holdout groups in Impact show what the campaign changed, which is why illumin suits teams that judge advertising by the whole path a customer takes.