Does Allstate have a DSP? Maybe?
Great catch by The Last Party Cookie, who spotted this Allstate job description:
So… does Allstate have a DSP? If it sounds like a DSP, walks like a DSP, and talks like a DSP, maybe it’s a curation-enabled SSP. (JK—we’re not even sure that makes sense.)
Anyway, we dug around (read: Googled) and here’s what we found:
Allstate owns Arity, a data business that collects and analyzes trillions of miles of driving data to understand how people move—which, unsurprisingly, has raised some regulatory eyebrows. Arity gathers details like driver risk profiles, mileage, commuting habits, and other behavioral data, which it packages into audience segments for ad targeting.
But what do they target through? That’s where the DSP comes in. Enter Transparent.ly, which started out as an insurance-focused ad platform. The history here is interesting:
- Arity was founded by Allstate in 2016 as a mobility data and analytics company.
- Transparent.ly launched in 2018 and was acquired by National General Insurance in 2019.
- In 2021, Allstate acquired National General, bringing Transparent.ly into the fold.
- Since then, Transparent.ly has been integrated into Arity’s services, combining Arity’s data and Transparent.ly’s martech.
Did you catch all of that?
In a press release last year announcing the integration, they said the partnership “helps optimize a marketer’s acquisition efforts through Arity’s ability to generate driving behavior insights on nearly 175 million U.S. drivers.”
Bottom line: Allstate may not have a standalone DSP—or maybe they’re just not calling it that—but between Arity and Transparent.ly, they’ve built a data-driven marketing platform that looks a lot like one.
Why This Matters:
More consumer brands with access to rich data are recognizing the value of building their own advertising businesses—and Allstate appears to be no exception. As third-party data becomes harder to rely on, companies with large first-party datasets are realizing they can monetize that information directly by creating ad platforms or demand-side offerings.
For Allstate, turning driving behavior data into ad-targeting segments and pairing it with their own activation channels opens up a new revenue stream beyond insurance. Arity also made its way into the company’s most recent earnings presentation:
Experts React:
Beyond the initial tweet, here’s some more chatter from The Last Party Cookie’s thread:
Our Take:
This just signals how data-rich companies in traditional industries—finance, auto, health—may start competing with established adtech players by running their own media and adtech businesses. This also speaks to commerce media, though what Allstate is doing here is a bit different. Ultimately, all of these offerings affect how marketers think about partnerships, where they buy media, and who they buy from.
