EMEA > Data Exchange

Adnologies announced this week that Damian Blackden will be joining the company as international CEO, as the European buy-side tech provider aims to roll-out its buy-side “stack” solution across Europe. Blackden worked as President, International at Annalect: Omnicom Media Group’s digital, data and analytics business across EMEA, APAC and LATAM – as well as leading digital development at Zenith and co-managing UM’s London office. Here Blackden, alongside Adnologies CEO, Andreas Schwibbe, explains the move, and how the product is going to differentiate itself in a crowded and fiercely competitive European buy-side market.

For those unaware of the Adnologies solution, can you some overview of the solution and the thinking behind your move to the company?

Damian Blackden: They have methodically and intelligently built out the complete ad technology stack at a time when the industry is learning how essential it is to have components work together seamlessly in order to maximise campaign effectiveness, and to remove data leakage. Plus the individual components themselves are very sophisticated. The number of business rules that can be usefully applied meant that they could show me some very interesting case studies. So – it was a very compelling proposition to me, as was the scope to build on their successes in Germany. I’m used to scaling technology and businesses across territories so I can feel the potential.

Read in full →

Tesco is no longer a supermarket selling milk, bread and tins of beans. It is a media and data company. Yes, the home staples will never be replaced in the new digital economy, but the pivots being shown by the likes of Tesco is indicative of real evolution in retail.

In the last week, Tesco snapped up UK based We7 for a relatively modest £10million (although it is still to turn a profit). This adds music to their entertainment stack after previously acquiring Blinkbox.

Read in full →

Jason Bigler is Director, Product Management at Google. In an interview with ExchangeWire, Bigler gives the full run down on the capabilities of the new DoubleClick Digital Marketing (DDM) suite, and what it will mean for agencies and advertisers. He discusses how the DDM solution will offer multi-channel optimisation (except of course, for the moment, social) – as well as a unified buy-side stack that incorporates all of Google’s buy-side features. The launch of DDM in Europe is expected throughout the year in what is likely to be a phased roll-out.

Just for the record, explain what encompasses the Doubleclick Digital Marketing (DDM) suite?

Put simply, it’s a new name for a new platform – a buy-side platform that will unify and fully integrate all digital media buying for marketers and agencies. It includes our upgraded ad server DoubleClick Digital Marketing Manager, our latest bid management solution called DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick Search, and DoubleClick Studio, which now includes Dynamic Creative. In addition, all of these solutions will be fully integrated into Google Analytics for holistic attribution modeling, deduplicated cross-channel conversion reports, and site traffic reporting all in a single UI.

Read in full →

Rajeev Goel and Kirk McDonald to Speak at Cannes Lions’ First Annual TechTalk

Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder & CEO, and Kirk McDonald, President, of PubMatic have been selected to speak at The International Festival of Creativity’s first annual TechTalk program, an interactive, immersive experience centred around innovation in digital media and marketing. They will present on the topic, “What Can We Learn from the Best Consumer Brands: What Content Producers Need to Understand about Connecting with Audiences…and Making Money in the Process.”

Sponsored by MediaLink, TechTalk is a dedicated platform for forward-thinking businesses to demonstrate their pioneering work across the digital-marketing value chain while simultaneously providing a space for these companies to interact with the brand, publisher, and agency delegates at the Festival.

Read in full →

Weborama announced yesterday that it was acquiring Datvantage, a data management solution, for an undisclosed figure. The acquisition might well signal the start of a wider consolidation in the European ad tech space. Here Weborama CEO, Alain Levy, and Datvantage’s Co-Founder, Arnaud Caplier, discuss the deal and how it will augment the current pan-Euro data solution offered by Weborama.

For those not accustomed with Datvantage, please explain what the value proposition; what category do they operate in (exchange, DMP, etc)?

Arnaud: Datvantage is a data exchange: it aggregates audience segments from publishers and offers them to audience buyers (advertisers, agencies and networks) to help them target and optimise their campaigns. The Datvantage platform offers DMP capabilities which enable all stakeholders (publishers, agencies and advertisers) to understand and manage monetisation and usage of their data assets.

Read in full →

RTB and programmatic buying are quite nascent in the Nordics.  At last week’s ATS Stockholm there was much discussion about where to begin and how to edge the region into the forefront of an already established global RTB environment.

INTRO: The day kicked off with an introduction by IAB Sweden (IAB Sverige) CEO, Charlotte Thür who gave us some interesting stats for the Nordics:
- IAB Sweden was founded in September 2008
- For mCommerce sales in select countries in Europe, according to eMarketer.com, Sweden has grown from 1.8% of online sales in 2010 to 7.8% of online sales in 2012

Current ad spend in Sweden is 2.2bn SEK (£19.6m), of which:
- 36% search
- 35% display
- 28% online catalog
- 1% email marketing

Read in full →

ATS Stockholm is the first full-day conference on data-driven advertising in the Nordics. The event takes place on Thursday, May 24 in Stockholm. A number of speakers have already been named and the full agenda will be released next week. Some of the speakers for the day include:

- Jukka Sundquist, Head of Display, Partner, KliKKi
- Johan Pettersson, Digital Director at Starcom Sweden
- Gustav Von Sydow, CEO & Co-founder at Burt
- Simone Skoog, Managing Director Nordics at Criteo
- Josh Mortensen, Founder and Managing Partner at GlibHippo
- Nigel Gilbert, Country Manager, AppNexus
- Kate Owen, Managing Director, Europe, Digital Element
- Oliver Whitten, Commercial Director, EMEA at the Rubicon Project
- Jason Bigler, Director Product Development for EMEA, Google

You can get your tickets today on the ATS Stockholm site. There is limited room so make sure you book your place early.

Edgar Baudin is Co-Founder & Managing Director at Gamned. Here he discusses the Gamned offering, the state of the French exchange marketplace, the generalist versus specialist argument and the effect of Sapin legislation on real-time media buying in France.

Is much of the data-driven ad spend in the French market still coming from DR budgets and are brands still avoiding automated channels?

Most of the spending in France is still related to DR campaigns, i.e. acquisition and retargeting. The first group to adopt this technology was composed of merchants who focused on ROI, and that explains why they drive the biggest parts of the investments.

Now that brands have access to transparency and ad verification, they’ve started to switch part of their budget over to RTB campaigns. There’s still a lot of work to be done, informing and educating marketers, for them to increase their budgets and go from the test campaign phase to long-term RTB integration in their media plans. Branding campaigns will need a strong increase in data offering which is a must-have for audience and targeting setups.

Read in full →