In an epic twenty-seven pages on the potential of RTB in the French market, IAB France has outlined an impressive overview of the entire market. The report goes into great detail on the emerging data-driven advertising market in France, with explainations of key constituents in the exchange eco-system. It even includes some Q&As with leading ad execs in France, including recent ATS Paris speaker, Arthur Millet, Directeur Commercial at Amaury Medias Digital. Further insight on the growth of automated buying and RTB is provided by industry heavyweights like Sébastien Robin, Directeur Des OpérationS, at AFFIPERF. You can download the IAB report on the growth of RTB in France here.
mediascale Reports Strong 2011 Growth
mediascale, one of Germany’s leading independent digital agencies, reported a gross income of €5.6m last year – an increase of 17 per cent compared to 2010. The billings for the same period rose 22 per cent from €59m to €72m.
mediascale uses its own cross-platform targeting tool NE.R.O, together with Plan.Net, to develop solutions for clients and agency partners. Julian Simon, managing director of mediascale, is bullish on future growth for mediascale:
Right now we are running about 35 per cent of all campaigns on NE.R.O. By the end of 2012, we want to increase that by 40 per cent or more. This targeting will aid not only in direct sales support but also image and brand communications. It’s more about planning for consumer-relevant criteria such as purchase decision stages, interests and attitudes of the user. There is great potential in targeting, especially for content and creative solutions. The system combines information from the user profile with the matching design, text, product or price for the dynamic creation of promotional materials. Thus, advertising effectiveness and efficiency of the campaigns increase significantly.
After last year’s blockbuster Ad Trader Conference in Hamburg, we are going big this year with some of the most influential ad execs in the industry already confirmed to speak. This year’s theme of the conference will focus on building sustainable relationships between the demand side and supply side in the evovling German data-driven ad marketplace. Germany remains the biggest display market in Europe, but it will not move in the same way as the UK and France in terms of how real-time media buying is adapted.
The sales houses are very strong in the German market, and most remain unconvinced of automated buying. However they realise change is on the horizon, and it is with this in mind that we are looking to bring together some of the biggest sales house players in the market – as well as senior figures from the demand side and the ad tech space – to discuss and analyse the potential of data-driven online advertising in Germany.
2011 was dominated by lots of industry chatter around the potential of automated buying and real-time trading. 2012 is about application and making this new eco-system work.
Martin Kelly is the co-founder and Managing Partner at Infectious Media. Here he discusses the RTB hype cycle and why the nascent media buying methodology is currently languishing in the trough of disillusionment.
2011 was the year RTB hit the mainstream marketing press as agency groups bought in to the concept wholesale. Spend is pouring into the real-time space with predictions for 2012 ranging from 10% to 20% of all online display (which is an incredible adoption rate for a technology just three years old). But, when you ask what the real benefits of RTB are there tends to be a scratching of heads. Impression level bidding, terabytes of data…what does it actually mean for advertisers?
Current benefits of RTB to an advertiser are pretty scant. Centralisation and control of retargeting, along with black box optimisation algorithms are as far as anyone can get, and are all trading and workflow related benefits. If we look at the market against Gartner’s Hype Curve, it feels as though we’re on the way down into the trough of disillusionment as RTB rather than ushering in a new era of display advertising, has merely shuffled budgets from one supplier to another. I’ve sat in quite a few meetings with advertisers recently where they tell me they’ve ‘tried RTB’ but it didn’t really work out and they couldn’t see any discernable difference from all their previous display activity. So is RTB really a game changer?
The PostView is a new coulmn written by senior execs working in the European online advertising industry.
Like it or not we live in world where buying display advertising is still inherently inefficient. The convergent trend is for increased efficiency through ‘owning’ or building the entire stack – the likes of Google, Microsoft and Adobe appear to be accelerating their efforts in this space. However, when you break down what the end result could look like it actually might not be an entirely good thing for the performance industry, or at least some of the key industry players, to work in a world where there is 100% efficiency.
Glen Calvert, founder of Social Targeting company Affectv, on the collective effort required to make the RTB ecosystem a better proposition for brands.
A common theme in the 2012 predictions for our industry was how we increase the budgets that brands dedicate to online, the often quoted ‘bringing TV budgets online’, and it’s set to be one of the biggest talking points in the coming years. If time spent online is greater than time spent watching TV, and continually increasing, then why is there a disparity on how marketing budgets are allocated. There are a number of issues that need addressing, and if tackled collectively, we’re sure to all reap the benefits in the coming years.
The budgets allocated to online for a brand campaign compared to TV is often less, as online often misses the fundamental purpose of a brand campaign. Namely, reporting the reach and frequency it can achieve against the target audience with the correct metrics, the context in which a message can be delivered, the emotional story that can be conveyed through a highly engaging rich experience, and the brand recall/uplift this can accomplish. Currently, online display and video is largely falling short on these criteria.
Souvenez-vous, il y a 10 ans… Pour acheter des espaces publicitaires sur Internet, il fallait passer 125 appels pour savoir qui était en régie chez qui, faire 30 déjeuners avant de se mettre d’accord sur un CPM net net, et passer 380 heures en réunion pour comprendre la logique des grilles tarifaires. Et Ratecard fut. Non que cette base de donnée ait agi sur la variable déjeuner / réunion, mais elle a réglé le problème du « qui est où sur quelle thématique » de façon simple et claire, avouons-le. Vous remarquerez qu’à l’époque, on rêvait déjà de gagner du temps. Avec, en question de fond: comment automatiser tous ces processus d’achats et de ventes, tout en touchant l’internaute susceptible d’être réceptif au message diffusé?
The Ad Trading Summit is coming to Sydney on March 13. The full-day event will be the first major Australian conference to focus on the emerging data-driven display eco-system. Details on ATS Sydney can be found here. A number of senior APAC digital advertising executives have already been confirmed to speak on the day. Speakers for ATS Sydney include:
» Vicky Lyon, Managing Director, SpotXchange Asia Pacific
» Marc Barnett, General Manager, Microsoft Media Network & Advertising Exchange
» Julian Tol, Co-Founder & CEO, BRANDSCREEN
» Marc Lomas, Commercial Director, Cadreon Australia
» Paul Fisher, Chief Executive Officer, IAB Australia
Further details on keynotes, panels and full agenda will be published in the coming weeks. Early bird tickets are now available to buy on the site. Get your ticket today.
It’s probably the last thing you want to be seeing on your first week back: namely, another prediction list for 2012. But given that 99.5% of these lists have been overwhelmingly US-centric, it’s useful to have some European perspective. ExchangeWire will not be held to account for any of these predictions except if all of the following are realised through the course of 2012. Do include some of your own soothsaying in the comments area.
1. Publishers Banding Together To Pool Data & Inventory
Watch out for a sizeable announcement in the first half of the year from a group of large European publishers looking to build their own publisher exchange. This will be the first of many. I expect a similar initiative in Germany, as the powerful sales houses look to close ranks. It won’t be pan-Euro – but instead start out country specific. There have been numerous debates on ExchangeWire in 2011 as to why publishers should/shouldn’t do it. But ultimately it comes down to control. Control over inventory, data and pricing. Publishers are within their right to trade on their own terms. I think a centralised exchange would allow publishers to put in place the right resource to get the best price for their (data-enriched) impressions. Managing premium supply when the marketplace is saturated with brand unsafe inventory could turn out to be a stroke for struggling pubs. European publishers would be wise to steal a move on the market now and partner with a tech provider to build their own exchange. If you think I’ve lost it, how do you explain the MicroYahooAol “partnership”?
Season’s greetings, listeners. Today TraderTalk looks at the 2011 year in full – with some perspective on possible trends in 2012. This edition covers everything from the rise of the trading desk in Europe to ad tech’s growing obsession with acquiring/building the end-of-end stack. ExchangeWire Editor, Ciaran O’Kane, is ably assisted in the end-of-year review by the Guardian’s Tim Gentry, Martin Kelly, Managing Partner at Infectious Media, ValueClick’s Carl White and Eric Ward, Director, Digital Media at goetzpartners. So that you get all future episodes, you can subscribe to TraderTalk here.
Yet another video from the recent ATS London event. This time we have Jason Kelly, Chief Revenue Officer at Admeld, speaking to Anthony Rhind, co-CEO at Havas Digital about the evolving data-driven media buying landscape and the agency strategy. Rhind, one of the most respected and senior digital agency executives Europe, give his analysis on some of the big changes happening in the market and how it will affect the European agency.
Le Trading Media
After last year’s blockbuster 
Martin Kelly is the co-founder and Managing Partner at 
The PostView is a new coulmn written by senior execs working in the European online advertising industry.
Glen Calvert, founder of Social Targeting company 
The Ad Trading Summit is coming to Sydney on March 13. The full-day event will be the first major Australian conference to focus on the emerging data-driven display eco-system. Details on 
It’s probably the last thing you want to be seeing on your first week back: namely, another prediction list for 2012. But given that 99.5% of these lists have been overwhelmingly US-centric, it’s useful to have some European perspective. 
Season’s greetings, listeners. Today TraderTalk looks at the 2011 year in full – with some perspective on possible trends in 2012. This edition covers everything from the rise of the trading desk in Europe to ad tech’s growing obsession with acquiring/building the end-of-end stack. ExchangeWire Editor, Ciaran O’Kane, is ably assisted in the end-of-year review by the Guardian’s Tim Gentry, Martin Kelly, Managing Partner at Infectious Media, ValueClick’s Carl White and Eric Ward, Director, Digital Media at goetzpartners. So that you get all future episodes, 
