There had been rumours last week that DGM was struggling financially, and it seems those industry whispers have now been confirmed. DGM is informing creditors, and has officially gone into administration. Founded in 1999, DGM was one of the leading affiliates in the UK market. The company has a number of blue chip clients, including Vodafone, Tiscali and JD Williams. You wonder why they’ve struggled given the continued online budget shift towards DR and performance marketing. While DGM was going to the wall, two of Europe’s other affiliate heavyweights agreed a merger. Zanox and the UK’s largest affiliate, Digital Window, have confirmed that they are to merge. Not a huge surprise given that Zanox’s owners, Axel Springer and PubliGroupe, already had a majority holding in Digital Window. The deal will create the largest affiliate company in Europe.
Google’s partnership with Omnicom to build out the agency’s trading desk with the view of putting hundreds of millions of display dollars through automated channels (Google’s mostly) could well be a transformational moment for the display market. I could be accused of a certain degree of hyperbole here, but you have to look at the size of this deal and take note of the other significant relationships Google has already established with the biggest media buying agencies. It is slowly bringing the dsplay market under its control. You also need to recognise the significance of how details of the story were released: instead of giving the “scoop” to a trade press journo, it was given to Emily Steel at the WSJ. Google is serious about display, and bringing order to a ridiculously chaotic and opaque market. And it wants Wall Street to know this. Google maybe chasing profit, but in doing so it is pushing innovation in this space. This might be unpalatable for some in our industry who fear change, and would rather keep this innovation at bay. But change is upon us and we, as an industry, must act now.
nugg.ad, a leading European player in behavioural targetting, recently moved into the UK market. ExchangeWire spoke to Ajay Daved, nugg.ad UK & Ireland Sales Director, last week about the company’s targetting technology, its committment to user privacy and the trends in the display marketplace.
The IAB Europe numbers are out for the big display markets in Europe. German display advertising is closing in on one billion euro – and remains the number one in Europe. ExchangeWire had a conversation with Mathias Pantke, Adscale CEO, some weeks ago about growth in the automated German market. He predicted that nearly 15% of all dipslay campaign will go through automated platforms in 2010 – with that percentage likely to rise to 60% over the next four years. It suggests that almost 149 million euro will be passing through platforms, like Adscale, Adx, and Admeld, by year end. Some might scoff at these figures, pointing out they’re a little too frothy. But given that ad nets don’t dominate in the German market the way they do in the UK, it is possible that trading platforms like Adscale will see significant growth in the coming 12-24 months.
Google’s acquisition of Invite Media last week has signalled its intent to dominate the display space. It’s building out an awesome automated infrastructure – but at what cost? Being a media seller and buyer en masse has inherent conflicts of interest. How do you know a player in that situation will not “game” the system, Afterall, margin needs to be made on both sides. I’m not saying that Google would get involved in this practice. But there is concern now emanating from agencies and publishers alike. I think personally the agencies could be in real trouble. They already outsource their ad serving function to either Microsoft or Google – and now the latter owns a DSP. What if Google allows buyers to use search data to power automated buys? Agencies can kiss their proprietary data strategy goodbye. Nobody can win against the house.
Kwame Acheampong is Managing Director and Partner at Httpool. Httpool is an ad network that specialises in the Central and Eastern European markets, offering buying opportunities in these markets to UK agencies and advertisers. Acheampong took time to speak to ExchangeWire this week about the Httpool offering, the display market in the CEE region and the growth of automated trading.
Can you give you an overview of the Httpool proposition?
KA: Httpool is an online advertising provider focusing on emerging markets, especially the Central and Eastern European region. We provide clients with localisation services together with all segments of online advertising in the region – including premium inventory network, performance network, contextual and behavioural network, and search engine marketing. Httpool has 10 years of experience and expertise across the region serving major agencies, global and local clients with digital strategies and planning.
It’s been a busy weekend of news and speculation. The rumour mill is in overdrive among the New York advertising digerati. Peter Kafka has heard from “sources” that Google is about to buy Invite Media – and the number being thrown around is reported to be between sixty and one hundred million dollars. Here’s why I think this deal will not happen? Most agencies are using DFA. Would it not make sense to integrate RTB into DFA and make it easier to buy from other inventory sources? Wouldn’t a souped-up DFA with “DSP” capabilities be cheaper to develop? I suspect that Google are already thinking about this – and we likely to see it very soon. As for these rumours, I have heard similar chit-chat earlier this year of DSP-related deals. M&A speculation is built into the DNA of this industry. I’ll stick my neck out here, and make a bold prediction. Google will likely build out its own DSP capabilities. Invite will likely be bought by one of the big holding agencies that it already has a strong relationship with. But we’ll see if I’m wrong soon enough. The other thing to consider here is whether big holding agencies will want to cede anymore control to Google. How relevant can they remain to advertisers if this happens? In that eventuality I can see most of the holding companies looking to buy a “DSP”.
Martin Kelly is Managing Partner at Infectious Media, an exchange-trading specialist based in London. Martin took time this week to speak to ExchangeWire about the company’s rebrand, the evolution of the UK exchange space and the continued growth of the data market.
You’ve recently went through a rebranding and a repositioning of the Infectious offering. Can you explain the Infectious Media proposition in more detail?
MK: Yes, it’s simple, we make display advertising work for our clients. Clearly there’s a lot more to our business in terms of how we do that but that is our proposition and how we sell our services. We operate exclusively in the ad exchange space and offer these services to both advertisers direct and to agencies. We’ve purpose built both a team and trading platform, Impression Desk, to service this opportunity in the UK and Europe.
Marco Bertozzi is the Managing Director, EMEA, VivaKi Nerve Center. Vivaki is a strategic unit within Publicis Groupe that helps agencies leverage the scale of the group’s media and digital operations to improve campaign performance for its clients. Marco took time this week to speak to ExchangeWire about the Vivaki operation in more detail, the industry’s move to automated audience-buying, and the evolution of the agency model.
There’s much confusion about what Vivaki does? Is it buying platform? Is it a crack exchange trading unit? Can you explain the Vivaki proposition in more detail?
MB: Vivaki is the strategic entity created by Publicis Groupe to leverage the combined scale of its media and digital operations, which represent nearly $60 billion dollars in global ad spend and influence. VivaKi aggregates the marketplace influence of five autonomous brands, including: two global media agencies, Starcom MediaVest Group and ZenithOptimedia; two leading digital marketing agencies, Digitas and Razorfish; and a premiere futures practice, Denuo.
Qunatcast announced yesterday that they are moving into the European. They have hired Philip MacCauley, the former Director of Business Development and Commercial Relations at Yahoo!, to head up the operation. The feeling here in the market is that Quantcast’s arrival is a positive move. There is still a lack of good data in the market for automated buys, and Quantcast’s European lookalike data should give agencies and advertisers better targeting capabilities. No offence to any of the blogs or trade sites reporting on this story, but Quantcast are not exclusively an analytics company. VCs did not hand over fifty-odd million dollars for an analytics solution for publishers. If you were to definition (and that is generally a dangerous game in this industry), I’d say Quantcast is more of a data and audience profiling platform. So how does Quantcast collect and segment data and what is “lookalike”?
There had been rumours last week that DGM was struggling financially, and it seems those industry whispers have now been confirmed. DGM is informing creditors, and has officially gone into administration. Founded in 1999, DGM was one of the leading affiliates in the UK market. The company has a number of blue chip clients, including Vodafone, Tiscali and JD Williams. You wonder why they’ve struggled given the continued online budget shift towards DR and performance marketing. While DGM was going to the wall, two of Europe’s other affiliate heavyweights agreed a merger. Zanox and the UK’s largest affiliate, Digital Window, have confirmed that they are to merge. Not a huge surprise given that Zanox’s owners, Axel Springer and PubliGroupe, already had a majority holding in Digital Window. The deal will create the largest affiliate company in Europe.
Google’s partnership with Omnicom to build out the agency’s trading desk with the view of putting hundreds of millions of display dollars through automated channels (Google’s mostly) could well be a transformational moment for the display market. I could be accused of a certain degree of hyperbole here, but you have to look at the size of this deal and take note of the other significant relationships Google has already established with the biggest media buying agencies. It is slowly bringing the dsplay market under its control. You also need to recognise the significance of how 
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Kwame Acheampong is Managing Director and Partner at 
It’s been a busy weekend of news and speculation. The rumour mill is in overdrive among the New York advertising digerati. 
Martin Kelly is Managing Partner at 
Marco Bertozzi is the Managing Director, EMEA, 
