GlassView, the world's largest independent video platform, today announced the release of GlassView Smart Gamma. Founded and advised by finance industry veterans and professionals, GlassView looked to trading algorithms that have fueled leading hedge funds for inspiration to maximize media performance.
"In the financial services industry, there are two chief methodologies as it relates to portfolio management, fundamental analysis and quantitative analysis," said James Brooks, CEO at GlassView. "Berkshire Hathaway employs the former with celebrated success. The buy low and hold model has worked well for Warren Buffet, but that model would not necessarily work in media trading. Quantitative analysis, on the other hand, employs a dynamic, algorithmically-driven quantitative strategy. The quant based approach is perhaps best exemplified by famed investor and mathematician Jim Simons, who has delivered 66% annualized returns from 1988 to 2018, which is an astonishing feat, beating even Warren Buffett's model by double. What's more, the quant-based approach absolutely works in media trading!"
GlassView utilizes the quantitative approach to drive performance for its clients. Gamma, a second order derivative, is the rate of change in an options delta move in an underlying asset's price. At its core, it is an important measure in the convexity of a derivative's value in relation to the underlying asset price. While a delta hedge seeks to reduce the gamma in order to maintain a hedge over a wider price range.
This hedge works in advertising as well. Gamma is a measurement of sensitivity to the rate of change in the conversion acceleration, also known as a term called "Jerk," and is based on a number of factors including the price of inventory, traffic to the page and the velocity of conversions.
GlassView has trained its model to identify spikes of conversions that surpass a certain magnitude. Our model then takes the derivative of acceleration to identify the bell curve, and purchases inventory throughout the majority of the curve. By monitoring the derivative of velocity, our algorithm mitigates against diminishing returns by ceasing the purchase of inventory as the curve approaches zero.
GlassView Smart Gamma has proven to be a competitive advantage for many of GlassView's clients. During the beta launch of Smart Gamma, conversions for GlassView's B2B, finance and insurance clients doubled.
Yann Coatanlem, board member of GlassView and CEO of Datacore Solutions, says of the firm's quant based approach, "As former head of Multi Asset Quantitative Analytics at Citigroup and now CEO of Datacore Innovations, I have seen innumerable quant based approaches in my career. Rarely have I seen a strategy and implementation that so effectively enhances performance."
About GlassView
GlassView's mission is to drive performance through video advertising. We work with over 80 of the top Fortune 100 Global Brands, offering access to over 2.6 billion unique users worldwide, and over 280 million unique users in the United States, reaching 98% of the connected country.
Through emotion based targeting and optimization, high frequency trading (SmartGamma™) & delivery across connected devices, GlassView is best known for its performance.
Leadership includes Yann Coatanlem, former Global Head of Multi Asset Quantitative Analytics at Citigroup, David Gerbits, former COO of Pandor, Renaud Dutreil, former Chairman of LVMH North America, who previously held several ministerial positions in the highest levels of French Government; Condé Nast former Executive Stephanie Newhouse; Chien Chung (Didi) Pei, chairman of the China Institute and partner in the legendary Pei Partnership Architects; Beauty and Well Being Founder & Editor Clémence von Mueffling; Jim Porcarelli, Co-founder of MediaCom North America; CBS Revenue & Operations Executive Director Dennis Colon; Candy Pratts Price, previously Creative Director for Vogue.com.
Launched in 2014, GlassView has headquarters in Dallas, with offices in New York City, Tokyo, Singapore, London, and Paris, among other locations.
About DataCore Innovations
DataCore utilizes its next generation Dominant Factor™ methodology to automate construction of investible asset portfolios that afford competitive returns with lower downside risk in difficult markets. Dominant Factor™ Indices are quantitative dynamic portfolios of ETFs selected for their Antifragility.
Dominant Factor™ methodology screens each candidate asset against a set of about 500 DataCore proprietary factors that are based on market observables (these risk factors have been carefully pre-selected, using Artificial Intelligence techniques). It tests for statistically significant non-linear models linking asset total returns and those of the factors within the fitting window (typically, the last 3 years) and retains for the asset only those asset-specific factors that show significant explanatory power. It then constructs asset-specific risk-reward profile that incorporates asset's projected losses in the event of severe crises based on established links and observed long-term behavior of the proprietary factors retained for the asset. Asset selection decision is then based on its risk-reward profile and risk tolerance parameters set for a particular index.
As a result, a sector (industry or geographic) is considered attractive when capital starts flowing into the sector, producing a rally in its components. But, unlike common methods (such as Black-Litterman), which tend to be fooled by speculative bubbles and suffer when these burst out, DataCore portfolios flee away from a sector when the rally becomes nervous, announcing instability and a potential severe downturn. In a way, by its nonlinear approach, the Dominant Factor methodology detects the behavioral effects of traders' sentiment on prices and is able to interpret them, so as to avoid catastrophes. Instead of following the crowd, the system reads its sentiment from its impact on price behavior and acts accordingly. This results in a portfolio that is cautious during the rallies that are fragile, and thus cuts down losses by a significant amount in the downturns. Clearly, the Beta adjusts appropriately according to the market conditions, which is for us the very meaning of "Smart Beta" and "Smart Gamma".
DataCore Innovations is lead by leading Wall Street mathematicians: Yann Coatanlem, former head of Multi Asset Quantitative Analytics, Raphael Douady, Former Head of Quantitative Finance program within the Applied Mathematics and Statistics department at SUNY Stony Brook University, and Robert Frey, former Managing Director at Renaissance Technologies