Optimisation for brand advertising is a strategy not often employed by European agencies. Collective Media is now looking to offer brands the type of real-time optimisation solution that is traditionally used in direct response campaigns. In an interview with ExchangeWire, Steven Filler, Managing Director, UK, outlines Collective Media's positioning in the European market, its new video advertising solution and how its supply-side tech can be used as a DMP by publishers looking to manage data.

Can you provide an overview of the Collective offering in Europe?

SF: Collective’s depth of audience data combined with our ability to create a brand-safe content environment is a powerful offering for UK advertisers and publishers. Collective delivers audiences across its premium network of publishers, and through strong partnerships with leading global and UK data partners, Collective’s proprietary technology analyses, optimises and targets 300 million behavioral attributes each day. We provide advertisers with a 360° view of their audiences, enabling them to engage with consumers and deliver messages that respond to their needs.

Collective has been focused on brand budget. How can your tech and your real-time proposition help brand advertisers?

SF: The feedback we get from agencies is that while they can see the need to supplement their existing site buying with some audience buying to deliver audiences cost effectively, the current networks weren’t giving them the brand security required to change their planning. Our technology allows us to pin point audiences and deliver them at scale, but still in great environments and with custom, rich creative units. We don’t expect advertisers to stop buying sites for brand campaigns but agencies see collective as the partner who can complement their existing plans.

Can you provide an overview on how Collective’s real-time optimisation can power brand campaigns?

SF: Traditionally branding campaigns are measured post campaign and will give the client or agency some insight to apply on future campaigns. Collective’s approach is to apply the same daily optimization routine that we apply to direct response campaigns to brand activity. We do this by monitoring ad engagement, and brand metric shifts for specific audience segments in real time and then applying this learning to our audience targeting, site selection and creative messaging.

Can brand advertisers really benefit from automated media buying? Are there any case studies you can share?

SF: Automated buying is changing the face of digital advertising, but the reality is that brand advertisers still need the thought, insight and understanding that only great people can provide, so for Collective it’s about combining the science of automated buying with the art of great planning, account management and creativity.

We hope to release some case studies towards the end of Q1.

Can you give some insight into Collective’s relationship with AppNexus? Are you working with publishers to build out real-time offerings – or is the partnership with AppNexus more about access to dynamic supply?

SF: Appnexus is a longstanding Collective partner. We are leveraging our combined technologies to make it as efficient as possible for brand advertisers to leverage real-time bidding with the audience and ad environment standards they require.

Collective is now licencing its DMP technology to European publishers. Can you give some overview on your AMP technology?

SF: Most DMP suites are only able to reveal what audiences are available. AMP is a unified media and data management platform and the only system capable of handling the 'who' and 'where' assets of publishers and networks to maximize demand and yield of display and video ad inventory. Since AMP is integrated with the ad server, we can also show availability forecasts and detailed analytics on already-delivered campaigns, all the way through to ad/creative/site/placement levels. Once these audiences are identified and set, clients need an integrated method of finding more of them.

How would a typical publisher use AMP to manage and leverage their own data?

SF: AMP brings together all of the components needed to power a media business in one holistic solution, including: revenue/profitability management; audience creation/targeting; audience analytics; on-demand audience extension, and yield optimization to power a media business.

All of these are specifically focused on the needs of premium publishers and networks.

Sitting on top of leading ad servers such as DART for publishers, AMP connects the where (ad serving) and the who (audiences) for both targeting and analytics. We provide tools to ensure visibility into profitability on cost-of-inventory as well as rich media and data costs.

The AMP platform currently powers 15 billion impressions each month and the media businesses of more than 30 premium publishers and networks.

How critical is a DMP in terms of building out a publisher’s data infrastructure?

SF: A DMP makes it possible to organise site data on an impression level, adding enormous depth to a publisher’s own audience data. Publishers can obtain campaign level audience data for post campaign analytics and use it to prove value for advertisers during a campaign, optimising its performance, as well as identify the highest performing customer segments within their audiences to package up audiences for specialised buys.

How is Collective protecting user privacy?

SF: Collective only uses data that is not personally identifiable information, and all of our data partners have been carefully vetted to ensure that users privacy is completely protected.

We are making great strides in this area in the US through our partnership with Evidon and we are committed to leading the way in the UK as well.

Our transparent approach to data to helps agencies understand exactly what data sources we are using to reach their audiences and feel confident that our practices are in keeping with the values of the brands they represent. The “black box” approach that has been most common to date will fail to provide this level of confidence moving forwards.

Is Collective evolving the ad network model in terms of what it can offer publishers and advertisers?

SF: The online advertising ecosystem has completely altered with the emergence of the exchange. Until now, advertisers relied on content to identify audiences. Now they can reach custom audiences at scale, gaining the highest possible value of a single ad impression by delivering reach.

Most networks will be presented with a challenge when trying to move to the exchange model because they lack data and are working with undifferentiated inventory.

Collective can do for the exchange space what we did for the ad network space: elevate the entire business by providing only premium inventory and audience data.

You recently acquired, video platform Oggifinogi, to add to your current offering. Can you provide some insight on how this will help clients in Europe?

SF: The acquisition bundles creative media solutions for agencies and advertisers, offering them turnkey creative production and access to a third party rich media provider. Collective is bringing the right mix of art and science to marketers, combining audience targeting with engaging ad units and providing an additional distribution channel.

The video ad market is now getting a lot of attention form publishers and ad networks. How will Collective be able to service this demand from European advertisers?

Bringing video content management, creative development and ad delivery in house enables us to add value for our existing customers while expanding Collective’s value proposition to traditional TV and video buyers. It also makes it possible for Collective to leverage greater control of margins. Video is a key component across a wide range of in-banner and in-stream ad units, and integration with Oggifinogi makes video uniquely compatible via RTB across Collective's proprietary network and ad exchanges. Given Collective's current focus on brand spend, it’s not surprising that we’re the first to acquire a video and rich media platform. We’re adding value to our entire brand safe ecosystem.

What are we likely to see from Collective in the European market over 2011?

SF: It’s been six months since we launched in the UK and we’re getting great feedback from both direct response and brand advertisers who recognise that our transparency and quality in the data space combined with a premium brand safe publisher network can deliver great results, whether you have a CPA goal or are looking to shift brand metrics.

We will be focused on further enhancing our data capabilities in the UK, as well as rolling out an impressive suite of rich media units through our recent acquisition of Oggifinogi, enabling Collective to deliver genuine data targeting for pre-roll, and measuring all of this activity with a great range of insight tools.

Our unique positioning as the network for the brand conscious client has been as well received in the UK as it has been in the US, and we see no reason why this proposition wouldn’t be embraced in all territories.