ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space.

German Advertisers Tipped To Embrace Programmatic, But Warned Of Dangers

This week’s sold out Ad Trader Conference, hosted in Berlin, was pre-empted by market insiders tip the (currently nascent) programmatic market there go through a period of steep growth. But equally those that make the decisions in the market, such as speakers Herzlich Willkommen, BVDW president, demand more from the industry sector.

‘Chaos in the supply chain, lack of transparency are causing advertisers to be cautious towards programmatic,’ he told attendees (via a translator). ‘Take these concerns of advertisers seriously and address them.’

This was further echoed by presenter Yoav Arnstein, LiveRail, general manager Europe and panelist Lothar Prison, Vivaki chief digital officer, explained that he required more transparency over pricing and ad placement if he was to increase spend via programmatic.

“A URL doesn’t tell you much about the content and what content an ad will appear against… We can handle media placement better in a private exchange, in that place you can get your audience in a brand safe environment at the push of a button’

However, it was a presentation by Thomas Serviatus, IPONWEB, head of client services, who arguably stole the show with his presentation lifting the lid on the industry dynamics that allow click fraud to exist on such endemic levels.

In a further Q&A with ExchangeWire, the explained further: “What is needed is some kind of incentivising mechanism that will encourage people to block fraud and turn around the game.”

Read the full frank and revealing Q&A here.

EU Raises Big Question Mark Over Big Data

The phrase ‘big data’ was one of the industry buzzwords, and true to its pace of action the EU this week finally caught up to realising it is an issue, with European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustnix this week publishing a document noting his concerns over potential implications over consumer privacy.

“The evolution of big data has exposed gaps in EU competition, consumer protection and data protection policies that do not seem to have kept up with this development,” reads the document.

Hustnix did not make any warnings over potential action over potentially more stringent regulations in the sector. However, the document goes on to observe: “Thus far, relatively few companies in the digital economy have detected financial advantage in enhancing the privacy of their offerings.”

Earlier in the week, TRUSTe, general manager, EMEA, Ken Parnham, penned a piece for ExchangeWire, noting just how cautious German consumers were about engaging with digital ad services, primarily due to privacy concerns.

UK Digital Ad Spend Surpasses £6bn

The IAB UK this week benchmarked digital spend this week, valuing the market at £6.3bn in 2013, with mobile ad spend doubling to hit £1bn for the first time last year.

The mobile estimate is muddied slightly when you consider that this ‘mobile figure’ includes spend on tablet devices (which are largely used at home or in the office), but the trade body’s study – conducted by PwC – rightly identifies how media consumption is increasingly taking place across a umber of devices. Ironically, this means that as consumers become more and more connected, advertisers are posed with the challenged of fragmentation.

A further breakdown of digital UK ad spend in 2013 is below.

Video becoming a bigger star
Video advertising grew by 62% year-on-year to £324.9 million. Video now accounts for 18% of all online and mobile display advertising.

Consumer goods increases dominance of display advertising
Driven by mobile display and video, the consumer goods sector continued its dominance as the biggest spender on digital display advertising, overall – accounting for 18% in 2013 compared to 16% in 2012.

Digital advertising formats
Boosted by video and social media, display advertising across the internet and mobile grew above the overall (15%) digital rate at 22% on a like-for-like basis to £1.86 billion.

With mobile display growing by 180% on a like-for-like basis to £432.4 million in 2013, mobile now accounts for 23% of total digital display advertising.

Paid-for search marketing increased 14% on a like-for-like basis to £3.49 billion.

Classifieds including recruitment, property and automotive listings, grew 9% like-for-like to £886.5 million – accounting for 14% of digital ad spend.

Conde Nast Warms To Programmatic Native With RadiumOne Deal

RadiumOne this week published a press release announcing it has penned a deal with Conde Nast UK to “extend the reach of its titles’ and sponsorships across programmatic exchanges,” using native ad units, signalling a turn around in its attitude to the channel.

Jamie Jouning, publishing director of Conde Nast title Glamour said: “The ‘Programmatic Native’ approach to content sponsorship allows greater understanding as to how users engage with content as well as harnessing this data. This will provide Condé Nast’s clients with an innovative opportunity to build relationships with users by delivering content at scale in real time – increasing engagement and awareness.”

The deal indicates Conde Nast, which publishes a raft of premium titles including Wired and GQ, has had a change of heart towards selling inventory via programmatic channels, albeit using it to sell native ad units, not ‘regular’ display ad units.

Sources inside the publishing house had earlier told ExchangeWire, that earlier proposals to sell ad units in its tier one titles using programmatic channels had been turned down due to concerns over them leading to an ‘inconsistent reader experience’.

This trend towards publishers increasingly turning their attentions to programmatic was identified in an Association of Online Publishers’ survey last year which noted that three-quarters of its members expected to engage more in real-time bidding (RTB) in 2014 – this is compared to less than half who agreed with the same sentiment in the previous year’s census.