Ad tech company OpenX has joined forces with Google, moving its entire exchange to the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and becoming the first major exchange to become truly serverless.

The five-year collaboration is aimed at freeing up OpenX’s resources to focus on growth areas such as people-based marketing, video, and connected TV. OpenX and Google began working on integrating the collaboration in 2018 and expect to complete the full transition to the cloud by the end of the second quarter of 2019.

According to OpenX, the benefits of the collaboration include increased speed, scalability, global reach, future-proofing, and people-based marketing.

“Marketing has evolved significantly over recent years, and the old way of operating is no longer sustainable,” said Tim Cadogan, CEO of OpenX.  “As we look at the programmatic market today, we see a sector that has experienced massive growth and adoption, but at the same time has stalled in its ability to deliver real innovation for marketers and publishers.  We believe it is time to take a completely fresh look at the market and place a major bet on building the infrastructure necessary to drive the next wave of innovation. 

“This investment and our work with Google will provide OpenX the flexibility to surge into new markets, adapt our business and billing models, expand our product suite to address the opportunity of people-based marketing and provide our partners the exceptional quality and support they have come to expect.”