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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9 March 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA
TRUSTe Expands Privacy Management Product Suite to Address Data Privacy Challenges in the UK
Privacy company TRUSTe has launched a product this week that tells publishers the identities of the tracking companies that drop cookies on visitors’ computers.
The service, dubbed EU Cookie Audit, is aimed at helping companies in the UK comply with new privacy regulations, which are slated to take effect in May. The rules require companies to obtain users’ explicit consent before placing tracking cookies on their computers.
Although the cookie audit is geared toward UK laws, TRUSTe is rolling out the service globally. CEO Chris Babel says the service is needed because many Web publishers don’t realise who else is on their sites. “In the customer meetings that I’ve had in the past three months, every customer or potential customer has been surprised at some of the things we’ve found on their sites.”
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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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7 March 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA 1 Comment
Videoplaza Launches Karbon, Its “Agnostic” Video Ad Management Platform
Videoplaza, a leading sell-side ad management platform for video, unveiled Karbon this week. The technology is the first device-aware ad platform, which means publishers can now monetise their video content across any connected device. Designed to be device-agnostic, Karbon was built from the ground up aiming to solve the challenges faced by publishers and broadcasters in monetising video effectively in a multi device world.
Consumer migration towards multi-device connectivity opens up an opportunity for publishers to monetise across devices and increase their reach, however it also introduces several obstacles. Some of the major challenges publishers face are how to effectively sell an audience across multiple devices, how to keep ad operations workflow simple as new devices are added and the need to invest in future-proof technology that can address new devices as they emerge. Karbon is designed to be a solution to these issues.
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1 March 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA 4 Comments
Is it bad etiquette to respond such a long time after an original opinion piece? I didn’t read this too closely at the at the time but poor Paolo, our Starcom and Zenith rep, has been hassling me to take another look. He thought he was selling business to business online display media under contractual terms. Reading this he felt like he was selling cigarettes to kids in West Africa. Should he? Absolutely not. We’re a serious business operating at global scale with all the strategic, operational, technical and ethical requirements that entails. Many of our competitors feel the same way, I’m sure.
While this article was not directed at Tribal Fusion specifically we are an ad network with views on some of the underlying arguments here. Marco, I saw your comment in the original post about anonymous responders. Let me put it this way: how can a vendor take the risk to debate the opinion of a (potential?) customer publicly? Well, here goes…
Data leakage
Paul & Geoff, we spoke about this 12-18 months ago and my view hasn’t changed. If you think there are people abusing 1st party data then name them. It should be game over for them or let them defend their position. In many ways this is the reverse of publishers complaining that *some* ATDs were bullying them into data deals in the past in return for media spend or that they were harvesting data without the publisher’s permission. Both insinuations are unhealthy to the industry and both sides should name those they believe to be carrying out such practices.
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28 February 2012 in ExchangeWire EMEA
Flexing Market Muscle: 24/7 Real Media Looks To Aggregate Dynamic Supply With New Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Offering
24/7 Real Media, WPP’s marketing technology company, announced this week the availability of real-time bidding (RTB) to UK publishers within its proprietary ad management technology, Open AdStream®.
24/7 Real Media’s new RTB proposition will allow publishers to put their inventory into one ecosystem that dynamically allocates revenue and delivers optimal yield. This capability allows publishers to filter and assign value to biddable inventory based on audience and context.
Nicolle Pangis, President, Europe at 24/7 Real Media, comments: “A controlled approach to RTB improves publishers’ ability to identify the actual worth of each segment of inventory on their site. Similarly, advertisers are guaranteed quality inventory from an auction environment that ensures their messages are targeted effectively and most likely to resonate with online users.”
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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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