20 March 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA
AppNexus Addresses the Challenges of Rich Media in RTB
AppNexus Console customers now have a fully-featured Creative Template capability, the company announced last week.
The challenge for RTB is matching the capabilities of the creative to the expectations of the publisher for that particular placement. In most ad serving environments this challenge is minimised since the same group of people — ad operations, or “ad ops” — generally sets the rules for what can serve, and also manages the development of the creative rendering code. In an RTB environment the seller and buyer are only connected by APIs and protocols.
To address the problem of rich media in RTB, AppNexus introduced the use of a Media Type. A Media Type is set by a seller on a placement and lets the system know what types of creatives are eligible to be served. To ensure expandable ads run properly across sites, AppNexus has mapped hundreds of placements on their platform to specific vendors of expandables, with the goal that an advertiser can buy expandables at scale on AppNexus and know that the ads are going to expand properly.
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16 March 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA 4 Comments
Tom Barnett is the Managing Director at Switch Concepts. Here he discusses the importance of the customisable real-time platform when trading ad inventory at the impression level, the huge potential for publishers to increase yield, and the critical piece the decision engine will play in all automated trades.
It could be argued that the online advertising trade has been stuck in a perpetual bear market since the dot.com bubble burst. That is to say that the overall average clearing price of inventory (ecpm) has been in a fairly steady state of descent. This is not to be confused with the fact that the online advertising market has grown year on year in that time – I am talking particularly about the price at which an advertising impression, in all formats, trades. It is easy to argue that this is a very clever ploy on the behalf of advertisers, which, whilst not entirely untrue, is not the major factor. I think the major factor has been widespread inefficiency in the marketplace.
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12 March 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA 1 Comment
Erich Wasserman is Co-Founder & GM EMEA at MediaMath. Here he discusses the MediaMath proposition in Europe, the new “Open” solution, the “private marketplace” and the Rest Of the World expansion plans.
For those unaware of MediaMath – and I’m sure there are very few – can you give an overview of the MediaMath offering in Europe?
Our focus is firmly on technology adoption. When we expanded to Europe from the US we found that the European market had been serviced primarily by poorly designed, and therefore confusing software, supported by teams whose experience was limited.
We have strived to change that: MediaMath’s TerminalOne DSP is built and optimised for buyers and their needs; our team consists of company founders who built the first agency trading desks and incubated the DSP market. MediaMath takes this market very seriously. Our approach has led to a great deal of technology adoption here and in Europe, particularly in France and Holland, and increasingly in the major markets such as Germany.
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9 March 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA 1 Comment
There are reports in the French media that Le Collective – a loose alliance between some of France’s top publishers – has agreed to set up the first publisher exchange in France. The alliance is made up of TF1, Lagardère, Figaro Médias and Amaury – and represents some of the market’s biggest premium publishers. The idea behind the move is to offer the market a premium channel for automated buys. The French trade press is also reporting that Le Collective has agreed to enter into a partnership with The Rubicon Project to power the new exchange. All unsold inventory will be put into the new Le Collective exchange, but it is not known if the inventory will be open to all buyers on the market – or if it will act as a private marketplace.
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8 March 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA 4 Comments
Richard Sharp is UK MD Media and Head of Trading at ValueClick. Here he discusses the centralising of the retargeting and why ad networks can still add value with their audience and delivery expertise.
From an ad network point of view there is much that we at ValueClick Media would concur with in Doug Conely’s response to Vivaki’s extraordinary piece selling the alleged benefits of centralising retargeting.
It is tempting again to pick over the issues raised, because – as Doug points out – for each and every one there is a very robust and rational counter argument.
We’ve all seen the mechanics of the digital display market and the different players within it evolve at an incredible pace. Agency trading desks are operating like networks, but at the same time progressive ad networks with scale are in fact adding the same kind of strategic added value that agencies are supposed to.
Let’s face facts, the lines of interest have blurred and there are reasonable questions to be asked about how different interests are being represented.
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28 February 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA 1 Comment
Emma Wilson is Managing Director at Harvest Digital. Here she discusses the agency’s trading desk, why ad networks are still important to the eco-system, the evolution of the agency model and competing with the big agency networks.
Harvest set-up its own agency trading desk late last year. What was the motivation behind this? Why would an independent agency, like Harvest Digital, needs its own in-house capabilities?
Harvest is at heart a performance agency and we’re very familiar with auction-models from our large involvement in search marketing. So setting up our own trading desk has been a very natural step.
We announced last year that we were working with Appnexus, but we actually started working with Right Media back in 2008, so we are not at all new to the space.
How does any agency in-house the media optimisation function over the space of three months – when for the last 15 years it has been outsourced to third party buyers?
We’ve been buying and optimising digital media for ten years – which of course is longer than most networks have been in existence. Our trafficking has always been in-house, and at the heart of our approach to media is an ongoing optimisation process once a buy is in place. We have never walked away from a plan once it’s bought, although obviously you do hear about that happening in the market.
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24 February 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA 14 Comments
Andrew Morsy is Sales Director at Struq. Here he discusses the Struq personalised targeting solution, the company’s relationship with agencies and how Struq is staying ahead of the comoditisation of the retargeting market.
Agencies are beginning to adopt retargeting now as part of their model. What is Struq’s view on this adopted agency business model?
Retargeting is critical for advertisers as it converts browsers into paying customers, lengthens customer lifetime value and increases revenue per user. Agency adoption helps educate clients about the power of ad personalisation – that in order to persuade users to buy your product or service, it is imperative you deliver a personalised relevant ad to persuade that user. That has fuelled the adoption of Personalized Video and Personalized Pretargeting (advertisers acquiring new users) by advertisers and agencies.
Can companies like Struq really work with agencies? You clearly have client direct relationships in the ecom space? Aren’t you competition for the agencies?
Agencies are experts at what they do – they are aligned to plan and buy media as effectively as possible for advertisers.
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23 February 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA 4 Comments
The PostView is a new column written by senior execs working in the European online advertising industry.
The supply chain has always been in a permanent state of disruption. From ad networks to retargeting networks to SSPs to the Trading Desks – there has always been demand for a publisher’s inventory. But now, fuelled by the growth of RTB, is it becoming even more competitive and territorial?
The battle lines are being drawn for “first look” at premium inventory, which is going to result in the major disruption of the existing publisher revenue monetisation model.
For those not in the know, the “first look” is effectively a process where publishers pass inventory to a buyer or set of buyers before the rest of the market. Retargeters have profited from this for a while now. Not necessarily in real time, but taking the first ad calls on a lot of premium publisher’s inventory. Ask yourself, when you leave a retailer’s site and continue surfing the web, how quickly do you see a personalised ad? Skip from a well-known ecom site without purchasing and there is a high chance you will see a personalised ad about a product on the first pages of a premium publisher.
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21 February 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA
We are publishing another panel excerpt from the recent ATS London event. The panel in question focused on bringing brand budget into the automated channel. The panel was moderated by ExchangeWire editor, Ciaran O’Kane, and speakers included: Nathan Woodman, COO, Adnetik; Richard Dance, Director of Digital Innovation, Blue Hive; Alex Rahaman, CEO at StrikeAd; Andy Ellenthal, CEO, Peer39; and Bruce Journey, DataXu CRO.
It gave Richard Dance the opportunity to challenge some of the widely held views of our – sometimes – “navel-gazing” ad tech community. He provides some interesting commentary from the brand’s perspective, particularly around the complexities of the current display eco-system. He notes that Facebook has made it easy for marketers, and as such continues to suck up a lot of brand budget. Dance works closely with Ford on their digital strategy. He’s exactly the kind of person that should be canvassed by ad tech companies on where display is falling down. If you can’t sit through the entire panel session, you should skip to 11:25 on the video clip – where Dance suggests the simplicity of the Facebook proposition is one of the key reasons why it is attracting brand spend.
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15 February 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA 2 Comments
Jason Bigler is Director, Product Management at Google and is the point man for all of the company’s display products in Europe. Here he discusses Google’s European display strategy, the bespoke approach that is required, the cross-channel opportunity, and how we get to that $200 billion figure.
We hear lots about Google’s display strategy in the US. Can you give some overview on the approach to Europe’s fragmented display market?
Our general approach actually isn’t very different on the core issues. Publishers look to us to help them maximise the value of every ad impression while advertisers look to us to help them achieve the best ROI on their advertising spend. If we aren’t delivering on either of those core concepts then we don’t have a business in any market.
However in Europe, as you point out, the market is more fragmented and each country can be in a different phase of product adoption. You really have to apply a country-specific lense when examining the best approach. As an example, we are seeing tremendous growth on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange in Europe. Spend has increased more than 130% year on year and the number of buyers and sellers has increased more than twofold over last year. This is going to be a big year for programmatic buying across most of the region. But is it exactly the same in every country across Europe? Not a chance. So in some countries we’re in full commercialisation mode and in others we’re still in the evangelising phase.
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