Unfortunatley there continues to be a real dearth of European-focused events covering the area of automated ad trading and media optimisation. With the intention of fostering informed debate on the evolution of the display market and indeed online advertising as a whole, ExchangeWire is today announcing details of the Ad Trading Summit 2010. It will be the first dedicated European event of its kind, and will look to attract decision makers form agencies, advertisers, ad traders, ad nets, ad exchanges, ad-tech vendors and publishers across Europe. The best minds in the industry will be brought together to discuss and debate the changing face of the European display advertising market, the increasing influence of automated trading platforms and the explosion of the data economy.

Confirmed speakers for the day include: Mike Nolet, AppNexus CTO and Cofounder; Curt Hecht, President, VivaKi Nerve Centre; Martin Kelly, Cofounder and Managing Partner, Infectious Media; and Konrad Feldman, Co-founder and CEO, Quantcast. Additional details on the speaker line-up and agenda will be announced in the coming weeks. ExchangeWire will also bring you the thoughts and opinions of the event’s speakers in the run up to the actual event on September 23. Tickets are now on sale – but please note that the numbers are limited. Further event information can be found on the Ad Trading Summit 2010 site.

Munich, June 1st 2010. AdScale, the leading marketplace for online advertising in Germany, has announced today the successful conclusion of the financing for its expansion in continental Europe. TIME Investors, a Paris based specialized investment firm providing strategic support to European Telecom, Internet, Media mid-sized companies, is investing more than 5 million euros in AdScale (www.adscale.de) for a minority shareholding and is thus expanding the circle of existing investors, beyond the European Founders Fund and Holtzbrinck Ventures.

Matthias Pantke, managing director and spokesman for AdScale’s management: “We are delighted about the investment of TIME Investors, which is proof of the great potential that AdScale holds in store. The additional financial means, combined with the expertise brought by Time Equity Partners, management Company of Time Investors, will give us the opportunity to further expand Adscale’s product portfolio and geographical reach. We will introduce further advertising formats and booking options to our business model this year. In this way we will strengthen our position as a leading online advertising marketplace in Europe.”

Jean-Luc Cyrot, partner at TIME Equity Partners, management company of TIME Investors : “It is our main goal to operate at the heart of the digital revolution. With a very solid business model, AdScale has experienced stellar growth thanks to an impressive and highly scalable online advertising platform that can be leveraged on a pan-European footprint. And most of all, AdScale is led by an excellent and visionary management team with which we look forward to partnering. The aim of our investment is to substantially support the growth of the company over the coming years.”

Sven Achter, partner at Holtzbrinck Ventures: “AdScale has proven from the very start how well the business model can work in Germany. Within a very short time frame the company has developed into the leading and a profitable marketplace for online advertising in Germany with a triple digit growth rate. We are convinced that the future will belong more and more to the online advertising marketplaces and are looking forward to further expanding the market leadership of AdScale together with TIME Equity Partners.“

About AdScale

AdScale is the leading marketplace for online advertising in Germany, which brings together advertisers, media agencies and publishers. Via AdScale, advertisers, advertising agencies and website publishers buy and sell video, display and text advertisements.

The company offers a portfolio that currently comprises over 3,500 websites of all sizes, which advertisers can book self-contained via a single platform. As a real time and a transparent platform, AdScale offers publishers and marketers a tool for controlling inventory use. According to comScore, AdScale has achieved a reach in Germany of almost two thirds of all internet users (64.9 percent or 35.1 million unique users in April 2010) in the online display sector and delivers nearly 8 billion ad impressions a month in Germany. Advertising spaces are auctioned for every ad impression. As such AdScale achieves fair prices while at the same time creating transparency. Launched in September 2007, AdScale was founded by Klaus von Doemming and Stephan Kern. Since the beginning of 2008 the management has also been reinforced by Matthias Pantke. Further information can be found online at www.adscale.de.

About TIME Equity Partners

TIME Equity Partners advises and manages a 100€m equity allocation granted to TIME Investors by four European entrepreneurs through their joint company Yam Invest NV.

TIME Equity Partners is led by Henri de Bodinat, Jean-Stéphane Bonneton and Jean-Luc Cyrot, who have a strong experience in the Telecom, Internet, Media sectors. TIME Equity Partners focuses on companies with a proven business model and profitability and high quality management team, it provides the funds necessary to finance organic or external growth. TIME Equity Partners is above all a strategic partner for the management, thanks to the proven experience and expertise of its partners, both in investing, consulting, creating and managing Telecom / Internet / Media companies.

Here’s the press release in full:

LOS ANGELES – May 25, 2010 – the Rubicon Project, the digital advertising technology company, has acquired SiteScout, the malware security technology provider, to build upon the technology that drives the brand protection and security layer of its REVV for publishers™ platform. The acquisition is part of the Rubicon Project’s commitment to engineering comprehensive technology that ensures premium Web publishers a safe, efficient and profitable platform through which they can transact with all demand channels for their audience and ad inventory.

Recent malware attacks on popular sites and apps have reduced site traffic by as much as ten percent in a single month, and with that, a parallel reduction in revenue. Across the industry, this represents a net monthly risk of nearly $600 MM, as publishers across the Internet, from Twitter to Facebook to the New York Times, are falling victim to a massive influx and growing complexity of threats related to malware or “malvertising.” Since most malware is distributed through advertisements and content served through legitimate websites, it falls on publishers to protect their brand, revenue, and customers (consumers and advertisers) from these malicious attacks. Publishers who are not proactively protecting their sites create the risk of customers becoming infected through an attack initiated on their site, spend a lot of time and money trying to chase down problems when they occur, and create a bad reputation.

There is currently almost nothing – technology or otherwise – within legacy ad server products that protects publishers, their visitors or their advertisers from malware attacks. As detailed in the Rubicon Project’s manifesto, “Principles of a REVVolution, or the ad server is dead,” the company is committed to offering publishers technology that counteracts these risks, delivering efficient and safe to all sources of demand, and providing protection to consumers. This commitment drove the company’s decision to acquire SiteScout.

“We began to look for the right security partner to help address this growing issue for publishers in 2009, evaluating several solutions in this space to complement our industry-leading brand protection technology,” said Craig Roah, COO and Founder of the Rubicon Project. “In side-by-side tests, in a live production environment with real ad tags on premium websites, SiteScout was hands-down the most effective technology. In addition, the technology is easily integrated with our platform, and the SiteScout team is a perfect fit with our strong company culture. This acquisition will enable us to protect premium publishers with the most effective and highly scalable technology solution to address the very real, very dangerous and fast-growing problem of malvertising.”

“The threats are transient, the bad guys are smart. Solving the problem of malvertising requires serious technology engineered by security experts that runs in the background to protect websites 24 hours per day, 7 days a week,” said Rob Lipschutz, CEO of SiteScout and who is now tasked with leading the Rubicon Project’s Brand Protection offering. “We are excited to integrate our team’s combined 40 years of security experience and SiteScout’s proprietary technology with the Rubicon Project and its digital advertising technology platform, REVV, to ensure publishers have a complete technology solution that enables them to keep digital media free for consumers.”

There are unique risks to publishers, advertisers and consumers from malvertising attacks:

· Publisher risks include: Revenue loss, customer loss, damage or loss of advertiser relationships, negative publicity, damage to brand, lower product sales
· Consumer risks include: Virus-infected computers, compromised privacy, decreased willingness to spend online, financial info theft, identity theft
· Advertiser risks include: Legitimate ads ‘hijacked’ for ill-intended purposes, loss of brand reputation, damage to the very consumers they’re trying to target

The new comprehensive malware protection powered by SiteScout security is available exclusively to REVV for publishers customers as an extension of the Rubicon Project ad technology platform; the SiteScout malware reporting and other product tools are slated to be available within the REVV platform in the third quarter of 2010.

Lipschutz will be tasked with leading the security and brand protection team to continue building technology innovations for the REVV platform. In addition, the Rubicon Project will open a Seattle office in the Pioneer Square district directly across from Qwest Field. The company will take advantage of the rich engineering talent in Seattle, with plans to hire in the areas of engineering, product and security.

Can you give an overview of the AdScale platform offered on the German market?

MP: AdScale is Germany’s leading real-time marketplace for online advertisement. In this marketplace, advertisers and publishers buy and sell display ads, i.e. advertising space. It is possible to define ads and to plan target campaigns, simply and conveniently. As a marketplace for online advertising the pricing in our system is fair and transparent for both sides. For publishers this means that they can control their prices independently and effectively via AdScale. The price level can always be adjusted according to the efficiency of the advertising space. Therefore, the marketers have the full control over each campaign and what price it is running at. Thus, the average price level in our marketplace reflects the actual price level of the German online advertising market.

AdScale is a complete marketing solution for small and medium websites. For large websites with a higher traffic volume it offers an additional and risk-free source of revenue, which can be used parallel to ad networks and direct sales activities.

Agencies in Germany have been described as being very hands-on. Is the Adscale platform much more self-service – or does it have a service layer?

MP: We would say that agency campaigns are 50% self-booked, 50% serviced by AdScale, whereas in the direct advertiser business the majority of the campaigns are handled and booked by the clients themselves – at least 80%.

Is exchange trading getting much traction on the German display market? Do you think agencies are likely to use DSPs like Appnexus and InviteMedia for online display trading?

MP: We believe that last year roughly 5 percent of all display campaigns on the German market were traded via exchanges. The market share of ad exchange campaigns should increase up to at least 15 percent this year. The turnover of all display campaigns booked via online advertising marketplaces will triple in Germany in 2010 (from an approx. 5 percent market share up to 15 percent). Over the next three to four years, 50-60 percent of all standardised online bookings for display and performance campaigns will be processed via online advertising marketplaces and booking platforms. The rest will be sold conceptually and manually by marketers in certain environments.

Agencies are very likely to use DSP’s, but we believe that they will either build them themselves or buy one of the above-named players.

How do you see the exchange model progressing in Germany in 2010? Do you foresee the same trend towards audience-buying that’s happening in other markets?

MP: Definitely! 90 percent of all campaigns running on AdScale are not planned traditionally for editorial content. They are planned for NOT single sides but based on target groups running on aggregated traffic on multiple websites, thus running either in rotation of channel/network mode or fuelled with targeting technologies.

How is AdScale differentiating itself from the likes of Doubleclick Adx, RightMedia and other exchange and SSP (supply side platforms like Rubicon, Admeld and Improve Digital) platforms?

MP: The yield management of AdScale is today already comparable with that of the large US market players. It allows the publishers optimal inventory exploitation.

AdScale is the only marketplace in Germany that has managed to gain critical mass on the supply AND demand side. On the subject of reach/supply, we rank second behind Google content Network (comScore 01/10). In addition, AdScale differs in terms of the quality of the traffic: The booking of 75 percent of the top100 is transparent and not “blind”. In contrast, Google offers mainly long tail inventory for display, bookable only via Adsense currently. 30 of the top 30 German media agencies use AdScale for highly standardized, targeted channel/rotation campaign flights via a proprietary white label agency booking tool. 60 percent of all revenues are generated by agencies, 40 percent via performance-driven direct advertisers, thus displaying the independency and sustainability of the business model. All in all, AdScale serves between 800 and 1,200 campaigns a month, and is growing fast, 20 percent delivered by CPC, 80 percent delivered on a CPM basis. From the roughly 300 million AdImpressions a day we sell up to 50 percent, the rest goes back to the publisher as a backfill option.

Our platform is based on its own proprietary adserving-technology, complementary to all other adserving systems like Dart, Atlas etc. Positioned as an open and transparent marketplace, we believe that the supply and demand side should be able to use all state-of-the-art 3rd party applications for targeting, video adserving etc. in order to increase transaction volumes via the platform. We achieve this through a technical API, which allows both advertisers and publishers to connect their own systems in the most efficient way, e.g. data exports to proprietary billing and buying systems, planning system of media agencies, targeting systems etc.

In contrast to Yahoo’s Right Media and the Doubleclick Exchange, we prolong our platform business value chain by generating demand through AdScales own sales team, especially in the agency market, allowing us to charge on a commission basis, rather than on a license basis. We also extend our value chain by offering to manage and optimize the running campaigns, if required by the direct advertisers.

Are you seeing much brand budget running through the AdScale platform? Or are the campaigns mostly DR-focused?

MP: Both. On small standard IAB’s we mainly see performance driven campaigns, but especially the bigger formats (expandable, tandem, video interstitial….) are showing a strong development within the online advertising marketplace. Although the two formats Pop-Under and Video-Interstital were not launched by AdScale until the end of 2009, together they already made up around 16% of the turnover in January 2010.

Can you name any of the publishers currently trading on the exchange?

MP: All of them are transparent in the system at www.adscale.de.

Has AdScale experience a lot of growth since it was launched last year?

MP: AdScale recorded considerable eight-digit revenue in 2009. Thus, in 2009 we achieved the break-even point and are profitable one year after the start of the operative business. For 2010, we are anticipating a further increase in sales and expect to double the existing sales levels at least. For the German market in the coming year we expect to triple the market share of all booked online advertising campaigns via ad exchanges from five up to 15 percent. As the market leader, we will be able to benefit from this increase disproportionately.

Is AdScale offering inventory through real-time bidding? If not, are there plans to add RTB functionality to the platform in the coming months?

MP: Not yet, but we will add RTB in Q4 2010 at the latest even though we believe that this is a very hyped feature and suits mainly performance-driven direct advertisers. Secondly, RTB is not really a “big thing” in Germany yet.

Can you give an overview of the size of the French exchange marketplace? And the role Improve Digital plays in the market?

MJ: At this moment there is no ad exchange or demand platform in France with significant volumes. Some global players have not yet started in France or if they did, are at a beginning stage. There have been some announcements by the likes of the Doubleclick Adx and Weborama – which declared, during an IAB conference in January, its intention to become an ad exchange – but I have not seen any real traction in the market.

In France, Improve Digital gives publishers the ability to optimize revenues and eCPM’s from ad networks and exchanges – while protecting their premium business and ad quality policy. We have 2 billion monthly impressions in France and believe that this is a significant sign that publishers are opting for an agnostic publisher focussed yield optimiser, such as Improve Digital, instead of working directly with an exchange.

How evolved is the exchange eco-system in France?

MJ: There is more and more demand from publishers for our platform and this trend shows that publishers are ready to work with multiple partners in the form of ad networks. They see our technology as a way to prepare for the future, where publishers monetise their ad space both directly through various sales partners, such as ad networks and Demand Side Platforms.

Existing ad networks still have significant growth opportunity, mainly because of AOL’s decision to close the French office, but there are also new players entering the eco-system, particularly the DSPs. I estimate that the French market is perhaps 18 months behind the UK, but some media agencies are developing their own DSPs to buy automatically unsold impressions from publishers. In France Matiro, founded by two formers top managers of Havas Media (Yann Leroux and Erwan Lepage), are offering advertisers the opportunity to buy unsold impressions directly from their platform. A new question will arise: how will the ad networks evolve in to meet the challenges?

Are publishers now seeing the benefit of using platforms like Improve Digital?

MJ: From December 2009, we began trials with some key publishers like Le Monde, Allocine. Nouvel Observateur. At the moment in France, we work with more than 15 publishers that represent over 2 billion French impressions and we have never lost one customer. Actually we are connecting new French publishers every week. From a publisher’s perspective, the first advantage of our system is increased revenues and eCPMs. From an operational perspective we simplify working with multiple ad networks and reduce operational issues. On a strategic level, our product helps publishers gain control over revenues, ad quality and cannibalisation of premium sales.

What are the significant differences of the French display market compared to the likes of Germany and the UK?

MJ: I don’t know the other markets in-side-out, but from what I heard, the German market is very much dominated by sales houses. In France this is not so much the case and many publishers have their own sales teams. Just like in other markets, the standard IAB ad formats are becoming more of a commodity, with pricing models lowering and moving more towards performance based pricing. Standardization kills the prices, but not necessarily the margins. With our platform, the costs of trading ad space is significantly lower, realising higher margins and making the online media in general more competitive to television, radio and print.

On the other hand this is the exact reason why more and more big publishers develop special ad format or disposals, brand content areas, etc. “Opération Spéciales” or in English, “Special Products’ are the latest trend for the ad development strategy of publishers.

As a “first mover” in the French market, how would Improve Digital sell the benefits using its automated channel to monetise non-premium inventory to publishers?

MJ: When we entered the French market, ad network optimisation was a new phenomenon. Most publishers had never heard of. But if a technology is proven to work, the word spreads quickly and today we have 15 of the top 20 Comscore French publishers as clients. Using the platform is a way for publishers to prepare for the future, as I described before. Media agencies, advertisers will try to find some “Google Adwords” like business model for display. This new attitude is motivated by the “infinite inventory” that characterizes the display market at the moment. We started as a true ad network optimiser, but we are evolving towards a sell-side platform that enables publishers to optimise yield and revenues from all of their ad space, not just unsold.

Are you making any French inventory available through RTB? If not, when are you likely to allow real-time bidding on the platform?

MJ: If the publisher wants to connect to RTB, it’s a matter of opting in. Right now, we offer French inventory through RTB and have multiple global RTB partners live. Technically we are ready to connect French ad networks. As I mentioned previously, the exchange eco system is not as developed in France, and some French ad networks are technically not ready to buy through RTB.

Is the buy-side and sell-side ready for real-time bidding in France?

MJ: I hope that it will be the case with the arrival of new exchange trading specialists like Matiro and others players from the media agencies world. Improve Digital can be considered the first and the largest sell-side platform on the French market.

How do you see the display market changing over the coming months?


MJ: Like a lot of people in the French display market, I think that we are seeing the end of CPM as the key model on display. The IAB ad format will be bought on a performance based model. The fee business model will manage the premium offer. Publishers will have to find some technological solutions to adapt their performance offering for the demand side, advertisers and media agencies.

Will we see France following a similar path to the UK?

MJ: As a lot of international advertisers manage more and more of their marketing budget on a European level, I expect the whole European market to follow a similar path with most ad networks becoming DSPs and most publishers organising themselves through sell-side platforms.

Are we likely to see significant volumes through exchanges and SSPs over the coming months?
With our monthly 2 billion of French impressions, we are already seeing a significant volume, but this is just the beginning. First, because managing unsold impressions has become more and more complex on an operational level; and secondly because of the search to find new monetization opportunity. For this first year in France, Improve Digital has the objective to double every quarter the number of impressions it optimizes.

Let’s start with the Google issue shall we. Rubicon is not impressed with the latest release of DFP. In the week when the company called time on the ad server, Google decided to release an improved version of its creaking DFP. The new release had a better UI, improved yield management functionality and closer integration with the Doubleclick ad exchange. Despite the upgrade, Rubicon still thinks publishers are getting a raw deal. The report hightlights the restrictions on DFP publishers (who use the Doubleclick ad exchange) accessing other third party demand sources as a potential issue for publishers:

Another notable Q1 industry development was DoubleClick’s release of their first significant upgrade to DART for Publishers (DFP), the granddaddy of ad servers, in years. Google, of course, bought DoubleClick two years ago.

This release was positioned as a major upgrade, featuring strengths of Google’s, including interface design, predictive algorithms and processing power, as well as DoubleClick’s experience delivering and measuring ads for publishers and advertisers. Improvements to the platform highlighted in the marketing materials include fewer delivery discrepancies, reduced process complexity, and richer data for yield management analysis by publishers.

Another important feature is DFP’s closer tie-in to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which includes resale channels to Google’s AdSense and other third-party networks. Publishers must use DFP if they want access to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange. And if they use DFP, DoubleClick makes it difficult for publishers to access any other third-party demand sources (other than their own) directly. This forced integration of AdExchange & DFP will not only choke access to additional demand sources for publishers, but it will significantly restrict
innovation across the ecosystem.

Real time bidding could change the online advertising industry. Or it could be the biggest fad of all the time. It matters little that the cost of decisioning at the impression level is astronomical or that there continues to be liquidity problems (based on anecdotal evidence from European publishers) with some of the vendors offering RTB inventory – everyone on the buy and sell side loves “the RTB”. Rubicon is a recent convert real time trading, but adopts a more reserved approach. The report highlights some of the key concerns from the publisher’s perspective around RTB, such as data loss, price erosion and channel conflict. It concludes that publishers will have to partner a SSP to ensure they can trade safely through RTB without jeopardising premium sales channels.

RTB is poised to be the technological innovation that finally fulfills the promises of online marketing, utilising real-time data to reach precise audience targets. But RTB does not effectively protect or benefit the publisher side of the display advertising equation. The link that’s been missing in creating an efficient marketplace through RTB technology is a publisher-side platform (SSP) that addresses all the current risks of RTB as it stands today.

The Rubicon Q1 marketing report can downloaded in full here.

» Interesting chart published by BusinessInsider yesterday. The chart shows the sites serving the most display ads to US users. It is for the US market only, but demonstrates how much ad inventory Facebook has. But let’s be honest about it, it is pretty poor quality inventory. The CPMs ar ridiculously low for a reason. Serving up branding against user generated content is not going to going to add value. From a DR perspective, I hear Facebook is perfomring very well. It’s targeting is the envy of most platforms. I don’t think display is the future for Facebook though. It’s better off looking at the data angle: selling data to ad agencies, advertisers and anyone else on the buy side could be a very lucrative revenue stream for Facebook. But it’s likely the EU will stop that in its tracks, judging by the noise coming out of Brussels today. [Business Insider]

From a European perspective it will be interesting to see what will be made available through RTB. The real problem that exists at the minute is the lack of decent inventory. Publishers are still very hesitant in making ad impressions available in real-time. Concerns still exist around pricing and “cherry picking” by demand side networks. Rubicon is looking to address those concerns head on. And this has to be a positive development. There is a lot of money flowing through DSPs in the US; the same will happen here. Publishers are going to have to partner SSPs or yield specialists in order to unlock the value of their inventory. Publishers need to be ready for the move towards real-time trading. You are already seeing it get traction in the US.

I think the SSPs – Rubicon, Improve Digital and Admeld – are going to play a major role in the adoption of RTB. Presently, the three do not have a great number of premium publishers using their platform. I would say that a lot of the big UK publishers are using the SSPs to sell non-guaranteed international inventory, but very little domestic traffic is flowing through these platforms. With the adoption of RTB I see this changing. As the amount of buyers on the demand side grow, pubs will have to follow the money. They will need technology partners to figure out the RTB market. Some will use DoubleClick Adx; some will use RightMedia and other exchanges; and the rest will work with the SSPs. We are in the early stages of this evolution in display but I think things are going to change very rapidly in the coming months. You can already see it in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and the Nordic regions.

If you are an ad trader, here are the tastier bits of the new Rubicon offering:

- Buy Select: Buy premium inventory by site, channel, audience segment, or cookie with unique targeting factors available for each method;
- DataCore Targeting: Applies the one trillion bytes of data added to the REVV platform each day from a broad array of data sources to ensure the right audience is delivered for each campaign;
- Dynamic Pricing: Factors fundamental market demand, inventory value and publisher-determined rules around transparency and pricing to determine the right price – for buyers and sellers – for each impression;
- Insertion Order Tracker: Execute Insertion Orders entirely digitally, including digital signature capability. Once an order is placed, automated alerts keep buyers up to speed as it moves through the approval process;
- Ad Quality Issue Management: Leverage REVV’s proprietary creative harvesting and ad quality prevention technologies to view and tackle ad quality issues as they arise. Allows demand partners to address then resolve issues directly within the REVV interface to keep campaigns and revenue flowing smoothly;
- Campaign Reporting: Provides a snapshot of every campaign a demand partner is running through REVV for demand, and drills into campaign performance.

LOS ANGELES – April 14, 2010 – the Rubicon Project, the digital advertising technology and data company, has launched Permission Control 2.0, sales rights management and pricing control technology that delivers efficient and safe access to the most sources of advertising revenue for publishers. Permission Control 2.0, within the Rubicon Project’s REVV for publishers™ advertising technology platform, is the infrastructure that gives premium publishers complete visibility and control over which demand partners can sell their inventory, at what level of transparency and at what price. With Permission Control 2.0 now in place, the company is also launching its real-time bidding (RTB) beta program with a limited number of industry-leading partners, designed to ensure publishers will be able to safely capture all potential ad revenue, from all buying methods.

By leveraging the Permission Control 2.0 platform, publishers can view and manage sales rights and transparency across all demand sources (such as ad networks, exchanges, rep firms, other publishers, agency exchanges, DSPs) by geographic region, partner, site and most critically, price. By giving publishers complete control over how their inventory can be sold, and by whom, Permission Control 2.0 also empowers demand partners to gain transparent information about how they can access premium Web inventory on behalf of their advertisers.

By setting Permission Control 2.0 technology in place, publishers are assured they can safely capture money spent through all industry buying methods – including real-time bidding (RTB), cookies, audience segments, content/contextual segments and site buys – without putting their pricing and direct sales efforts at risk.

“The market currently lacks rules around transactions between publishers, demand partners and their advertisers. This lack of clarity around the rules of engagement has led to price erosion, data leakage and channel conflict within the market,” said Craig Roah, COO and Founder of the Rubicon Project. “As we work to create a fair marketplace, we are committed to providing publishers with transparent, efficient and safe access to all sources of demand to best monetize their ad inventory. Our team has dedicated thousands of hours developing the market’s first and only technology platform that ensures pricing protected by publisher-assigned sales rights, which gives publishers power and control over who’s allowed to sell their inventory, and how, around the world.”

Permission Control 2.0 delivers complete transparency, with features for publishers including:

- Global Rights Management: Control how inventory is sold all over the world by assigning sales rights, in addition to protecting pricing by country and region (for domestic and international territories);
- Transparency Settings: Manage the level of transparency at which each demand partner can sell inventory, by geography, site and ad size;
- Pricing Controls: Unlock revenue potential and control the price at which demand partners can sell inventory, by geography, site and ad size;
- Command Central Dashboard: View and manage permissions for all global sales partners and all the ways they can buy in a single dashboard.

Demand-side platforms (DSPs), ad network and exchange partners who have agreed to the unique rules that protect publishers in the Rubicon Project’s RTB beta program include AppNexus, Brandscreen Inc., ContextWeb’s ADSDAQ Ad Exchange, CPX Interactive, DataXu, Invite Media, Infectious Media, LucidMedia, MediaMath, Triggit. In concert with Permission Control 2.0, the RTB beta program makes REVV the only technology solution on that market that facilitates connection with such a large number of partners while ensuring the highest level of publisher protections, driven both by strict business rules and unparalleled technology.

The Improve Digital report was carried out at a recent AOP event with over forty UK premium publishers. Over 51% of respondents thought that RTB could help increase the pricing for unsold ad inventory. It’s a slim majority granted, but that number is impressive given some of the misguided coverage of late in the space. Despite all the misinformation in the industry, publishers remain a practical lot, and are likely to try RTB to see if it actually works. If it does work then they will pile into it. I have no doubt about that.

Another key finding from the report is that 80% of publishers surveyed expect the number of mobile ad networks to increase considerably over the coming three years. This thinking is motivated by the explosive growth of content creation in the space and the subsequent ad inventory that is now available to buy. You can see why the yield optimisers are moving aggressively into mobile. The market is beginning to mature. With Google offering DFP for mobile (and possibly DFA?), you’d expect the media spend to flow into this marketing channel and the number of ad nets to arrive en masse. And who will the publishers turn to manage these multiples of new ad networks? You guessed it: the yield optimisers.

Other noteworthy bits of data include:

- 22.5 percent do not feel that the difference between an ad exchange and ad network is clear
- 62.5 percent work with multiple ad networks to monetise their unsold inventory
- 55 percent did not agree that ad exchanges that enable agencies to book media directly with publishers will – decrease the need for them to have large internal sales teams
- 37.5 percent think that publishers should start their own ad networks to take advantage of performance budgets
- 55 percent do not believe that exchanges will increase the prices for display adverts