APAC > Audience Buying

Fairfax, a leading publisher in the Australian media market, has announced a partnership with Adx to provide audience extension across video inventory to agency partners. The move is being seen a precursor to the emergence of fully-formed publisher trading desk in the region, as local publishers begin to leverage owned and operated sites and proprietary data.

Through Fairfax’s owned and operated drx audience platform, advertisers are now able to serve highly targeted instream video ads across DoubleClick Ad Exchange inventory, to Fairfax’s qualified audiences.

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Matt Hunt is Managing Director, Australia at Adconion Media Group. Here he discusses the evolving Australian digital ad market, the Adconion solution in the region, the commercial challenges posed by new players like DSPs and SSPs, and the unique data-driven media buying solution offered by Adconion.

You’ve worked in the UK for a number of years. How far apart are the two markets – in terms of adoption of digital advertising and proliferation of ad tech solutions?

The first difference is in the level of competition in the ad tech space in the UK. Apart from a heavily financed European tech start up environment out of London and Berlin, all major ad tech companies expanding out of the US do so by launching in the UK. So apart from the existing “traditional” competitors there is also a constant flow of new companies vying for market share. In Australia there is less room (revenue) to fuel the same level of innovation so there are fewer companies, fewer innovative business models and fewer niche specialists.

A second area of difference is in the automated trading and exchange ecosystem and Australia is significantly behind the UK in these areas. The DSP vs Network debate has shaken out and while unsophisticated ad brokers have been marginalised by DSPs, evolved ad networks that deliver real value are thriving based on a simple premise … they have capabilities beyond trading desks and deliver great results. Adconion is one of these thriving networks.

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Hidetaka Fukata is Executive Officer, Head of e-Business Group, at D.A. Consortium Inc. Here he discusses the launch of i-Effect, DAC’s new third-party ad server.

Can you give some background to “i-Effect(TM)” DAC’s new third party ad-serving technology?

Even though Third Party Ad-serving was introduced to Japan over a decade ago, Japanese Advertisers and Agencies have been reluctant to adopt it for a number of reasons, including the fact that the service models proposed by the non-Japanese vendors did not match local business practices; a perception of ad-serving fees being high and, perhaps most significantly, the fact that major Publishers disallow third party ad-serving. As such, the idea of Third Party Ad-serving until recently had largely yet to be accepted.

In recent years, however, Advertisers and Agencies have realized the necessity of allocating their spend on online advertising more effectively rather than just relying heavily on SEO and search ads. They have come to see Third Party Ad-serving as a valuable solution for measuring overall campaign effectiveness. As well, Japanese Publishers have become accustomed to the presence of third party ad-serving.

In line with these changes, DAC has released a third party ad-serving solution called i-Effect^TM, which meet the needs of Advertisers and Agencies in Japan with a flexible service model and pricing. As well as offering core features for managing, tracking and reporting on advertising campaigns, i-Effect^TM also enables auto-optimization of creative and copy. This auto-optimization feature, made possible by the latest ad-serving technology, is essential for maximizing advertising effectiveness resulting in higher conversion rates.

In summary, i-Effect^TM is a tool that can be used for not only evaluating campaign effectiveness, it also delivers the ability to deliver an increase in a campaign’s return on investment.

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Stuart Spiteri is Chief Operating Officer at News Digital Media – and worked previously at Google as the head of platforms for Japan and Asia-Pacific. Here he discusses his new role at one of Australia’s biggest publishers, the challenges/ opportunities that lie ahead and some wider trends from the greater APAC market.

Can you give some overview on the new role at News Digital Media – and some background on your experience in the APAC region?

I joined NDM in December 2011 from Google in Singapore where I was head of platforms across the Japan and Asia-Pac region, looking after the display business including DoubleClick suite of products including Ad Exchange, plus Invite Media.

Prior to Google, I was with Akamai Technologies as MD of their Asia-Pac business for seven years, providing platform-led technological solutions to a broad range of blue chip organisations that included working closely with all major Australian publishers.

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Vicki Lyon is Managing Director SpotXchange Asia-Pacific. Here she gives her synopsis on the recent ATS Sydney event.

The inaugural ATS conference here in Sydney was a resounding success, with several hundred attendees and a great cross-section of industry commentary. From Star Wars analogies to resounding calls for more transparent data, it set the scene for an open and honest dialogue throughout the day.

Some of the liveliest discussions that took place revolved around Real-Time Bidding or RTB.  Advertising agencies are increasingly embracing RTB as they reap the benefits of greater efficiencies and improved campaign results. Many advertising agencies viewed that demand for RTB, particularly in the online video space, will be high this year but more publishers need to come to the party and supply more inventory and transparency.

One of the key points that came out of these discussions was the need for more quality data. This was a concern for both publishers and advertisers, and one of the key questions raised was why 1st party data wasn’t being used by agencies and publishers, none of the 3rd party data providers offer enough to run a quality campaign.

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It was big day yesterday in the APAC market for ExchangeWire as we held our inaugural ATS conference in Sydney. Over 270 attendees from the Australian and APAC buy and sell side came to ATS Sydney. We will be posting video footage and presentations in the coming weeks. Mi9, the new ninemsn ad exchange, was launched officially by Mark Britt, Group CEO, ninemsn, at the event. His keynote outlined the new proposition – and took aim at the biggest player in the Australian market, namely Google, referencing it as “the death star”. Marketing magazine has a run down on the Mi9 presentation here. Outside of the Star Wars references, debate and analysis on the emerging data-driven advertising space was presented by some of the biggest names in the market. The APAC overview panel give some interesting insight on how the key APAC markets are developing around programmatic buying, particularly in China and Japan. There was an excellent interjection at one stage during the open question segment by one of Taobao’s top execs, when he gave the attending audience a break down of the RTB market in China – and it would seem the Chinese automated market is growing fast. Let’s just say he was the most sought-after man in the room after we broke for the afternoon networking session. ExchangeWire would again like to thank all ATS Sydney sponsors, the speakers who give their time on the day, and all those who attended. We look forward to next year’s event.

ExchangeWire is looking forward to tomorrow’s ATS Sydney event. We are bringing together the region’s most senior digital ad execs to discuss the emerging data-driven display eco-system – and it’s likely effect on how media buying is done across the APAC region. The conference is attracting over 250 agency execs, senior marketers, ad tech vendors and publishers. A full list of speakers can be seen here. And you can get the complete agenda here. ATS Sydney is now sold-out, and we are looking forward to a lively day of debate and analysis. The hashtag for tomorrow’s event is #ATSS12, and we encourage everyone to get involved in the conversation. ExchangeWire would like to thank all the sponsors for their support in making this event possible – and also to the speakers who are giving up their time to participate in what is going to be an epic day.

Stephen Hunt TubeMogul’s Asia-Pacific Director talks candidly about the challenges the online video industry currently faces: demand outstripping supply; publishers holding on to unsold inventory to protect its value; and lack of transparency in video advertising and the industry’s absence of regulation e.g ‘fake pre-rolls’. But Hunt argues that the opportunity in online video advertising is huge, and is poised to attract huge amounts of brand budget in the coming years.

If the latest PwC figures are accurate, 2014 will be the year online advertising will surpass TV to become the biggest segment of the media pie in Australia.  A major driver of future growth is forecasted to be brand dollars flowing away from traditional TV into online video and connected TV.

With great power comes great responsibility, however, and the industry needs to create a quality ecosystem worthy of TV’s mantle.  We have the opportunity to be good, but we should strive to be great!

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