Apple is now letting advertisers tap into its iTunes Radio network to push ads targeted at specific listeners without having to go through the company’s iAd sales team. Instead, advertisers now have the option to make use of the recently automated iAd Workbench tool, which has been enhanced to include Customer Match, a newly developed targeting capability. Customer Match is a sophisticated and secure targeting tool that complements the programmatic element added to iAd last November. 

According to Advertising Age, Apple only recently strengthened its iAd Workbench tool by developing a programmatic ad buying system. Once that was put into effect, the company began work on a targeting tool, which later became Customer Match.

Customer Match uses “customer phone numbers and email addresses that can be cross-referenced anonymously against marketers’ data,” Ad Age explains. “It offers advertisers custom segmenting of Apple’s users, based on its IDFA mobile identifier” through an automated process.

With these new tools readily available, advertisers can trigger specific iTunes Radio listeners to deliver a message that is both relevant and appropriately suited for the intended audience.

“This is a 100 percent owned and operated channel from Apple,” said Tanuj Joshi of MediaMath, an iAd programmatic partner. “It gives us more unique data points and better scale.”