Proximic recently named Rodney Mayers as their Senior Vice President, Business Development. Previously Mayers was the COO of Adify. In the press release Mayers said, “Proximic has developed some of the most compelling technology I have seen in the online advertising space in a very long time.” We asked Mayers a few questions about his new role, Proximic’s offering and digital advertising.
Q: Tell us a bit about Proximic and their offering.
Proximic provides a non-semantic approach to contextual analysis of content. Our approach, called pattern proximity is language agnostic and allows us to operate in Chinese and German as easily as we do in English. We can offer a scalable, global solution to partners who buy inventory at a global level and add new languages to our system in 4 weeks and we are very cost effective in how we deliver our results. Our results, when tested against other market players have been said to be more robust, accurate and actionable.
Our very deep, contextual page-level data is being used for content ad targeting and optimization, brand protection and audience interest segmentation.
Our Contextual data product helps publishers categorize their content and helps with navigation. Our demand partners like the depth of keyword and category data they get with our solution and the fact that we can overlay their categories and keywords to our data sets and map it all back to IAB Categories for ease of use if they wish.
You can’t do good Brand Protection without having accurate contextual data. Proximic’s second product offering, Brand Protection, isn’t just about “not” being somewhere or negative targeting, but it’s also about helping users of our data get placed next to contextually relevant content. Advertising that is contextually relevant actually looks more like content and less like advertising. Brand Protection has two sides. To only do one is to miss half the solution.
It should also be noted that Proximic’s Brand Protection analysis is done ahead of the ad call, not after the call and goes well beyond simple white-listing and black-listing. Sites and the URLs that represent their pages aren’t static. Seeing those changes in real time is critical to doing brand protection properly. Simple white-listing or black-listing can omit otherwise good inventory and narrow the usable spectrum of available inventory.
Audience Interest Data is our third product offering and this is used by customers to segment user interests based on the contextual signals inherent in their traffic patterns as seen through the URLs they visit.
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Q: What will you be working on in your new role at Proximic?
As head of Business Development my primary focus is working on partnerships that help bring our data products to market. I get to work with partners across the entire spectrum from Publishers to Trading Desks to help them understand how to use contextual data. There is a bit of education that I’ll also be doing because people think contextual means semantic. It does not. Semantic is one approach to deriving context and has its limitations. Partners already understand that contextual is important but they don’t yet know what contextual data means and how best to put it to use. Part of my role is to help them figure that out so they can improve their service offerings.
Q: You were quoted in the release as saying, “Proximic has developed some of the most compelling technology I have seen in the online advertising space in a very long time.” What is it about Proximic that you find compelling?
Proximic’s technology allows it to be extremely fast, scalable, and accurate – that still amazes me at what we can do. People have conditioned themselves to believe that the best approach to deriving context is by using a semantic engine. That is the farthest thing from the truth.
Semantics work well in English, but what do you do for the rest of the world? Internet growth will come from non-US markets, brands are global, and media buying is global. What we can do with Pattern Proximity is fantastic and yes, I think it is very compelling.
Our technology is also very flexible and does not live on top of a rigid taxonomy. Partners can adapt their agents (automated filters) to adjust contextual signals to be culturally relevant.
Pattern Proximity understands changes in context and our adaptive spiders understand what to look for and how to interpret those changes in a URL’s context. UGC content that continually changes is a flag for moderation and may mean a page that would trip other solutions as not brand safe, may in fact show that the URL is brand safe; a nuance that cannot be overlooked.
There is a lot going on within Proximic’s product development group and there are products in the pipeline that solve other very real issues in the advertising ecosystem. This is not your grandfather’s semantic engine. This is a whole new way of solving for context and we believe it represents the next generation for how context should be approached in the display, mobile and video advertising space. Yes, context matters for mobile as well and we’re working on solutions there. Good content, wrong video. Context matters there as well as the ads in the pre-, mid- or post roll. Keep an eye on this company.
Q: What industry experience are you bringing to your new position?
One of my favorite sayings is “God gave us two ears and one mouth, use them in the ratio he intended.” All of my experiences have taught me how to listen. People say that a lot and act as if they have it figured out. I don’t. I practice it every day and it makes me better the next day.
We have customers across the entire ecosystem. When you listen, it’s amazing what you hear because they often use different words to describe the same problem and don’t even realize that it’s the other side of the same problem. If I listen well and get even better, it means I can bring back what the market is asking Proximic to solve for and that continues to keep us fresh and relevant to our partner’s needs.
Those that know me know that I bring all that I am to everything I do. I’ve been around a while and Proximic will benefit from that perspective.
Q: In your experience, what is the hardest problem to solve in digital advertising today? What the most pressing issue in your mind?
That’s a great question. I believe the hardest problem to solve in digital advertising is giving buyers and sellers confidence.
Publishers, and to be clear, organizations that have a business model dependent on publishing, curating and distributing high quality content, need confidence that buyers aren’t out to screw them.
We’ve seen the articles that relegate publishers and their inventory as necessary evils that exist solely to give up their audiences to advertisers. Really? Is that the way to attract the organizations that actually invest in content that people “engage” with on a daily basis? Proximic data products can help because we are truly neutral and provide a solution that can really help publishers gain confidence in the system.
Buyers and by this I mean Brands (with a capital B) have little confidence in the online world outside of major portals. Distribution beats destination. If brands want to continue to be relevant they have to be where their audiences are and that means entering the network world.
Blind, undifferentiated inventory has to be valued lower because of the inherent risk associated with using it. Direct advertising has driven this industry for the last decade. To attract more money into the ecosystem that is not direct response related, we need to give Brand buyers the confidence that the environments they are entering are right for their brand.
The industry is working across the board on a vast array of standards that will bring confidence to the marketplace and I am glad that Proximic is a part of that movement.
Proximic recently named Rodney Mayers as their Senior Vice President, Business Development. Previously Mayers was the COO of Adify. In the press release Mayers said, “Proximic has developed some of the most compelling technology I have seen in the online advertising space in a very long time.” We asked Mayers a few questions about his new role, Proximic’s offering and digital advertising.