ExchangeWire rounds up some of the biggest stories in the European digital advertising space. In this week’s edition: Adform launches 'Automated Guaranteed'; UK marketers find branding measurement challenging; TabMo starts on the UK market; and a last word on dmexco 2015.

Adform releases new platform

Adform adds a new platform to its stack, 'Automated Guaranteed', for cross-screen advertising. "With Automated Guaranteed now part of our platform, we feel that we can offer our clients premium tools in order to make their advertising efficient, transparent, highly creative and ultimately extremely rewarding for all involved parties", says Martin Stockfleth Larsen, CMO of the Danish tech vendor.

Through the platform, clients can set up mobile and video campaigns for mobile and desktop devices. Detailed forecasts and real-time reporting allow clients to optimise their campaigns and provide insights before, during and after campaigns have run.

While Automated Guaranteed is built into the existing Publisher Edge platform for seamless integration of Adform's stack solutions, advertisers can also rely on third-party ad servers, such as DoubleClick, Adtech and Cxense, as well as utilising their DSP and DMP for remessaging and retargeting. Further ad servers are to be integrated in the future.

VisualIQ Study: UK marketers struggle with branding measurement

Measuring the impact of branding versus the impact of direct response continues to challenge UK marketers. That is the outcome of a study conducted by attribution software provider VisualIQ among 150 brand marketers.

According to the study, 83% of marketers consider measuring the impact of branding more challenging than measuring the impact of direct response; while 71% acknowledge that branding metrics are very, or extremely, important to campaign measurement and optimisation.

Only 20% of the participants in the study consider their organisation "very good" at measuring their branding strategies. The main reasons cited for their absence of measurement prowess are lack of advanced measurement tools and/or methodologies (51%) and inability to calculate engagement score metrics (37%).

"As branding initiatives don’t necessarily result in conversion, measuring their success has always been far more tricky than with direct response tactics, as it’s harder to link to real business outcomes", says Vanessa Tadier, general manager of Europe, Visual IQ. "This study has made it clear that the industry has significant work to do in addressing the challenge of accurately measuring the impact of branding initiatives.”

TabMo expands to the UK

French-based mobile video programmatic platform, TabMo, is entering the UK market, headed by Chris Childs, formerly of BrightRoll.

“Brands need a straightforward and failsafe way to connect with the mobile audience who is relevant to them”, says Childs. “TabMo enables this engagement and I look forward to driving its growth in this new phase of its development.”

Targeted at trading desks, TabMo offers a single point of access to a full technology stack, including data suppliers, premium inventory and video creatives. This includes real time access to available mobile inventory, native mobile ad support, lead-generation tools, and geolocation targeting and analytics.

“The UK is a key market for us because of London’s pivotal place in the media buying industry,” says founder Renaud Biet. Privately, TabMo was founded by Biet in France in 2013 and has offices in London, Paris, and Montpellier.

dmexco 2015 – done & dusted

The biggest European – if not global – digital marketing event of the year took place last week in Cologne, Germany. Now in its eighth year, with the mixture of trade expo and conference dmexco drew record crowds: over 43,300, up 36% from 2014. Fresh from ATS London, conference panels and presentations at the show included Sourcepoint CEO Ben Barokas, Luma Partners founder Terry Kawaja and Appnexus CEO Brian O'Kelley.

For the first year, ExchangeWire reported directly from dmexco 2015 with two exclusive editions of TraderTalk TV.  Ciaran O'Kane spoke with founder Hervé Brunet from StickyAds about their new Sticky Direct platform, and Index Exchange's James Prudhomme, managing director EMEA, discussed some sell-side trends having moved to the role from the buy-side.

dmexco 2016 is set for 14 and 15 September, 2016, preceded by ATS London 2016 which will be held on Monday, 12 September.