Brand

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.

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The PostView is a new coulmn written by senior execs working in the European online advertising industry.

Facebook and Amazon could soon bring massive disruption to the multi-billion dollar/euro traditional display marketplace – with display solutions that could even emerge as a serious threat to current kingpin, Google.

We Need Some Context

The two major themes of audience-led buying presently centre around both intent and social. They are so in vogue right now with the entire industry. We see BlueKai selling shopping intent, and the likes of RadiumOne serving up social targeting. Facebook and Amazon could easily become a major competitor to everyone working in these emerging areas of display.

The truth is, buying third-party data is hard to efficiently scale. It’s why these data companies are trying to create relationships with hundreds of publishers. They need consistent volumes of data with as many touch points as possible to build robust, rounded profiles. Facebook and Amazon are the biggest publishers and owners of data in their respective spaces – and sit on the largest, most diverse sets of user data. Up until now it has not been accessible to marketers and advertisers, but that could soon change.

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Wes Biggs is the Co-Founder and CTO at Adfonic. Here he discusses the big opportunity for brands around mobile rich media formats in 2012.

Imagine enabling your brand to interact with consumers in a visually gripping, cinematically inspiring and fully interactive experience, on devices that are already in the hands of the majority of Europeans and North Americans. That’s the promise of rich media on mobile, where an ecosystem is rapidly emerging around the tools, technology and services to create, traffic and measure highly effective interactive campaigns in the mass-market smartphone display advertising channel via ad networks and exchanges.

Mobile rich media encompasses a variety of campaign features, and while the definition (like that of “smartphone”) is not set in stone, the term describes display advertising that moves beyond the traditional static banners and looping animations that have been prevalent in mobile advertising for several years, exploiting the rich features of HTML5 and deep integration in mobile app environments to allow for advertising that is more visually arresting (custom animations or in-banner video), more interactive (banners that expand on-screen when a user taps), and more story-driven. Advertisers and agencies are creating mobile rich media campaigns that not only tie into above-the-line TV and billboard campaigns, but go beyond those by providing brand-building in-ad mini-games, extensive discoverable video and audio content, or direct calls to action including on-device purchase options. Because of this, and because of the mobile medium’s unique targeting capability and consumer dynamics, rich media enables premium performance for advertisers and can provide premium monetization for savvy publishers and app developers.

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Tim Finn is the newly appointed head of EMEA at StrikeAd. Here he discusses his recent appointment, the latest round of funding and the Japanese partnership.

You’ve just joined StrikeAd. What were you doing before and why did you join them?

Prior to joining StrikeAd I was one of the founding team at contextual ad network Vibrant Media. Having spent the last five years building that business in New York, I was able to experience first hand the advances in exchange and Real Time Bidding (RTB) technologies and the profound impact they were having on both the buy and sell sides. When I met the StrikeAd team and they articulated their vision for the programmatic buying of mobile inventory on a global basis it seemed like an opportunity too good to miss.

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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.

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Brainient, a personalised video retargeting solution, announced today it is raising a new round of funding. Here CEO Emi Gal discusses the new raise and the Brainient video offering.

Can you give some overview on the current Brainient offering?

Brainient’s goal as a company is to make video advertising more effective. We measure effectiveness through brand uplift and viewer engagement for brand advertisers, and sales for DR advertisers. We currently have two products in the market to satisfy these two categories:

BrainRolls, an interactive video platform aimed at brand advertisers looking to increase the engagement of their video ads by making them interactive. For example, while watching a BMW video pre-roll a consumer can book a test-drive, download a brochure or watch more videos about the brand right within the video advert. The average CTR on our BrainRolls is 3% (three times higher than the market average), engagement rates (the number of people that play with our interactive elements) range from 10% to 15% and we usually double the dwell time (people will spend 60 seconds on a 30 seconds pre-roll).

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ExchangeWire is partnering with Ratecard.fr to bring readers some high-level overview on the French market in 2012. The first of these specialist pieces is a general overview of the evolving French display marketplace. Below is a detailed eco-system map on the companies active in France – with some French commentary from Ratecard.fr.

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?

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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.