ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space. And in this week’s edition: Facebook's Atlas; Quantcast buys Struq, and Affiperf's 'meta DSP'.  

Closed ecosystem players stack up 

AOL, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and a whole host of others lined up this week to present their wares at Ad Week New York, and although the announcements took place on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, they have global implications. The net effect of which is that the industry appears to be heading towards a future of 'walled garden' advertising ecosystems in a multi-screen world.

The early press coverage of this week centered on Facebook's "rebuilt" Atlas platform which promised marketers people-based marketing” opportunities on both its own properties as well as third-party sites.

Most notably, it also promised a 'cookie-less' way for advertisers to target mobile device users with an entirely new code base that will better enable cross device tracking, as it tracks the social network’s billion-plus users (over half of whom use mobile) based on their log-in data.

With mobile as the key point of differentiation for Atlas, many had dubbed it as a potential rival to Google Display Network (GDN), although the search giant did use the week's proceedings to showcase its cross screen ad formats will optimise dynamically depending on the screen type they are served on.

These ad formats had been available on mobile websites, and will now be available in-app, with a roll out schedule over the next few months. They will be available across the Google Display Network, the AdMob Network and the DoubleClick network.

Both Facebook and Google are reckoned to control 66.8% of total mobile ad spend between them (20.4% and 44.6% respectively), and begs the question is it healthy to have such a large chunk of the mobile advertising market is controlled by two players?

Not to be outdone, Microsoft this week also highlighted its latest wares, including even more premium inventory available on the Microsoft Advertising Exchange (MAX). 

Speaking with ExchangeWire, Simon Halstead, Microsoft Advertising, director, exchange and channel partner management, EMEA, said the stringent measures the company goes to vet inventory on MAX is what sets it aside from alternative exchanges (an issue which has become increasingly high-profile due to several gaffs from firms such as Facebook within the last year).

Halstead also pointed out that inventory in the newly launched version of MSN has been available in beta for some weeks. He added: “We want to refresh it [the Microsoft offering] as an opportunity, and again we are trying to provide premium inventory with quality content across major verticals.”

However, when asked if its point of differentiation would include positioning itself as a third-way to the dominance of Facebook and Google, Halstead stopped short of any commitments.

Microsoft has incredible reach to identify users across screens and devices. But I think the question of a common currency is challenging for everyone,” he said.

“We’re not looking to be that matching agent for the industry, especially as you get into the Balkanisation question [where the one industry fragments into different parts]."

UK-based Struq sells to Quantcast 

US-based Quantcast this week announced the acquisition of UK-based retargeting firm Struq for an undisclosed fee, with Konrad Feldman, Quantcast, CEO, refusing to rule out further buys.

In the latest in a long line of acquisitions, Struq will now become part of Quantcast Advertise, and was apparently the target for acquisition due to its retargeting capabilities, and if ExchangeWire sources are to be believed, favorable terms of sale.

Speaking with ExchangeWire, Feldman said the desire to bring both its own prospecting capabilities, and the retargeting function under one roof was at the behest of its advertising clients, and was unable to rule out further acquisitions.

"As our company and engineering team looked further into the market it became increasingly clear that building effective DCO retargeting is non-trivial, requiring very significant engineering investment and the sort of feedback that only comes from running thousands of campaigns," said Feldman.

"We have an excellent engineering team and upon their evaluation we realised that it was better  to buy a market leader, giving us a proven product and even broader engineering capabilities."

Affiperf launches industry's first 'meta DSP' 

France-based Havas this week announced that it has launched the industry's "first" 'meta DSP', that will let advertisers buy inventory across several demand-side platforms (DSP) from a single point of purchase.

Affiperf, one of the first programmatic offerings launched by an agency holding group, claims the launch was prompted by pre-existing inefficiencies in the process of buying across multiple DSPs.

The group's latest offering aggregates signals sent from the various DSPs using their APIs, and then uses data-modelling to decide where best to buy inventory based on their clients' objectives.

Programmatic to hit $21bn 

The global value of the programmatic media buying market will jump 52% this year to hit $21bn, according to recent figures published by Interpublic Group's Magna Global.

The study indicates that programmatic will represent 42% of all display advertising spend, with the amount of ads purchased through real-time bidding (RTB) valued at $9.3bn.

According to the figures, almost half of the programmatic advertising market this year (in terms of spend) will be driven by US advertisers, with the trend driven primarily by brands in the automotive and FMCG sectors.

Only a third of marketers know they use programmatic 

Figures released this week reveal only a third of marketers are aware their media spend involves programmatic advertising, according to research released this week by the CMO Club.

The statistic after a study which quizzed 225 snore level marketers as part of a guidebook, where the majority of correspondents said they were "somewhat familiar" with how programmatic advertising works, and that three-quarters said they "rely heavily" on their agencies for campaign optimisation".