EMEA > Nordics

Simon Halstead is the Director, Microsoft Advertising Exchange, EMEA at Microsoft. Here he discusses the Microsoft Ad Exchange roll-out in the Nordics, and RTB adoption in the region.

Can you provide an update on the rollout of Microsoft’s exchange proposition across EMEA outside the major markets such as UK, France, Germany and Netherlands?

Microsoft rolled out its Ad Exchange in 10 European Markets over the course of the last 12 months. We opened our premium inventory supply to real-time bidding in Sweden, Norway and Denmark in October 2011, and are currently also active in other European markets — UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, and Spain.

We have enabled significant volumes of our discretionary/non-guaranteed inventory (available after premium reserved sales), across premium publishers including MSN and Windows Live.

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Improve Digital released its updated eco-system map last week, and it is messy. Very messy. More new categories, and even more companies. You need to ask yourself if the display market (4.5 billion euro at the last count) in Europe is big enough to support all these companies. In an interesting caveat at last week’s Automated Ad Summit (encroaching on trademark there, perhaps) in Amsterdam, AppNexus CTO, Mike Nolet, presented his own version of the eco-system – the Nolet-scape if you will.

Many of the categories on the Nolet “no nonesense” map were replaced with just two: namely, tech enablers and buyers/sellers. He pointed out to the audience that Google was slowly assembling the complete stack, and that many feature companies would get crushed by this formidable end-to-end stack. In fairness to Nolet he did intimate that AppNexus was taking a similar approach albeit with a more open strategy.

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Admeta‘s Ola Tiverman discusses the state of automated media buying in the Nordics and its offering in the local market.

What inroads are Admeta making into the SSP space in the Nordics?

We offer a white-labelled private ad exchange, as an alternative to the SSP. Our solution is much better suited to premium publishers that are concerned about their own brand and want to maintain a direct relationship with their clients, the advertisers and agencies. We provide RTB demand and external campaigns as an integrated complement to the publishers’ own sales in their private ad exchange.

Can you explain the value proposition behind the Tango Ad Platform? What differentiates it?

WhiteBox Tango is a white-labelled private ad exchange for premium publishers, that allows the publisher to maximise performance advertising revenues while having total control of their brand safety, pricing, products, sales channels, etc. It allows data driven advertising and automated advertising integrated in the internal optimisation. Our core is our automatic optimisation power where we leverage the efficiency of performance campaigns in real-time for each single impression.

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Frank Andersen is Nordic Chief Digital Officer. Here he discusses the group’s move into data-driven media buying in the region.

Would you be able to provide a bit more detail on the Accuen/Annalect Group/Omnicom Media Group proposition across the Nordic region?

Annalect Group is Omnicom Media Group‘s analytics, data and technology division, which among other things handles the Accuen Trading Desk. Our trading desk is a technology stack, combined with skilled people, designed to bring more value to both publishers and advertisers. Our positioning is quite clear. We do not buy cheap remnant media inventory in bulk and resell it. For us, the trading desk is about smarter media buying by applying the latest best-of-breed technologies, data and intelligent audience targeting. With Accuen we simply deliver more value to publishers and advertisers at an impression-by-impression level, and for our clients the trading desk solution is completely transparent in terms of technology, site placements and billings.

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Otto Neubert Block is Managing Director at Emediate. Here he gives insight into the evolving data-driven ad market in the Nordics.

How progressed is the Nordics market from an automated trading perspective?

It’s a simple question to answer – immature. The Nordics are very immature in the automated trading market. ATS Stockholm is the first Nordic conference about the subject. However, seen from a technology provider point of view, let me just give you some of the constraints we face in the market.

First of all, the tools are not available in the market. The supplier approach has been very limited and as such most publishers have had to make their own inquiries and experiences. Trends, reports, tools, best practise, etc. is coming from the US/UK. It takes some time to digest and create new products and strategies.

Industry bodies are just starting to relate to these new tendencies and to describe the ecosystem and the players in the market, as well as analyse the regulatory measures needed to support the online media market.

The banner standards are not consistent. Most Nordic publishers can provide the Universal Ad Package, but the interest from international demand goes beyond these standards.

The demand is predominantly from international DSP’s—and the demand is very low. Domestic media agencies will of course help to grow demand, but the market is in a hen and egg situation (neither supply or demand is available) and we need to constantly evangelise about the new trend.

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We are adding a number of high profile speakers to the ATS Stockholm, which is just now two weeks away. The latest speakers include, Peter Loell, Director, Annalect, Omnicom MediaGroup, Petteri Vainikka, Founding Partner & VP Marketing, Enreach, and Otto Neubert Block, CEO, Emediate. The agenda for the first data-driven advertising conference in the Nordics is now live on the site. Tickets for ATS Stockholm can be purchased here.

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Gustav Von Sydow, CEO & Co-Founder, Burt, discusses the company’s brand analytics tool as well as trends in the Scandinavian display market. Von Sydow is speaking at the upcoming ATS Stockholm event on May 24. Tickets are now available to buy for the Nordics first all day event on data-driven advertising.

Burt product offering, what exactly is it?

We’re a measurement and analytics platform for brands, agencies, networks and publishers. Think of it as web analytics, but developed from the perspective of digital media and brand advertising, rather than e-commerce and direct response.

Web analytics products have historically done an amazing job at optimising the e-commerce model, but they don’t really give publishers what they need know in order to build a strong and viable online business, or get brands to figure out how they can start making digital a compelling alternative to traditional media.

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