For example, in the digital advertising landscape, programmatic advertising has revolutionized how advertisements are bought and sold, using technology to automate the process and deliver targeted, data-driven campaigns. This has only been further compounded by the emergence of ‘Header Bidding,’ which offers a more streamlined and efficient way for publishers to monetize their inventory and for advertisers to reach their desired audience. 

A recent study showed that header bidding led to a 23% increase in fill rate and a 20% increase in average CPM. With these benefits and more, it’s no wonder why header bidding has become a popular and essential tool for publishers looking to maximize their monetization potential.

What Is Header Bidding and How Does It Work?

Header bidding, or pre-bid or advanced bidding, is a programmatic advertising technology. It is a real-time programmatic auction where multiple demand partners bid on a single impression. 

Header bidding allows publishers to offer their ad inventory to multiple SSPs (Supply-Side Platforms), ad networks, and ad exchanges to bid before sending the bid call to the ad server. This results in a more competitive and transparent bidding process, as demand sources compete against each other for the same inventory in real-time.

Behind the Scenes:

Header bidding works by incorporating a JavaScript code snippet into the header of the publisher’s website. So, when a user visits a page, this JS code sends out an ad call to all configured demand partners to bid on the available ad units. While the header auction happens, Google Publisher Tag is paused. Once the bids are received, they are sent to the ad server for the second auction round. Based on the configuration set by the publisher, the ad server filters out the winning bid and serves the creative on the user’s page. 

What’s interesting to note here is that all these auctions happen while the page loads on the user’s browser. And as soon as the page loads, the aim is to display the ads at the required places. 

Benefits of Header Bidding

Before header bidding, publishers and advertisers relied on the ‘Waterfall or Daisy-Chaining’ method to buy and sell media. In waterfall, a series of demand partners sent ad requests, each given a priority based on their past performance and the estimated value of the ad inventory. So, if a demand partner sitting at level 1 cannot fill the ad request, the bidding call will go to the next bidding partner sitting at level 2. The bid request will keep on moving down until it is sold off. 

As the bid request trickles down the hierarchy, it often results in a slow and inefficient process, with many ad impressions going unsold. Also, as the partners are arranged based on their past performances, it might happen that a bidder who is willing to bid more but is sitting at level 2 or 3 might never get a chance to bid. The method lacks transparency and limits the ability of publishers to earn maximum revenue.

Header bidding evolved as a replacement for the waterfall method and brought great relief to the users as it allowed:

1. Increased competition: Header bidding allows multiple demand sources to bid on the same inventory simultaneously, leading to increased competition and higher CPMs for publishers.
2. Improved transparency: It provides greater visibility into the bidding process, allowing publishers to understand the value of their inventory better and make informed decisions. 
3. Faster load times: Header bidding enables publishers to load bids from multiple demand sources in parallel, reducing latency and increasing the number of impressions served. The bidding happens during a fixed timeframe. 
4. Flexibility: It allows publishers to make real-time adjustments to bidding strategies, enabling them to optimize for specific inventory and respond quickly to changes in market conditions.
5. Better targeting: Header bidding provides more advanced targeting capabilities as publishers can share relevant data with the demand sources in real-time. This, in turn, allows advertisers to reach specific audience segments and helps publishers increase revenue by providing more personalized ad experiences to the users.

How to Set up Header Bidding?

Setting up header bidding can be complex, but it’s worth the effort. The first step involves the integration of a header bidding wrapper, a piece of JavaScript code that is placed in the header of a publisher’s website. The wrapper communicates with demand sources, allowing them to bid on inventory in real-time. Once the container is in place, publishers can integrate demand partners, such as ad exchanges, SSPs, and ad networks. They will also need to configure the settings to meet their specific needs.

Owing to the technical complexity of the setup, it’s always advisable to look out for a header bidding provider. A good header bidding provider will handle the setup, bring in good demand sources, and offer complete transparency. 

Wrapping up

The benefits of header bidding are numerous, and for publishers looking to maximize their revenue, it is an essential tool in their arsenal. By partnering with a trusted header bidding provider, publishers can access the latest technology, expert support, and valuable insights to help them achieve their revenue goals. 

With the right partner, the benefits of header bidding are endless, and publishers can rest assured that they are making the most of their ad inventory and reaching their target audience with the most effective and relevant advertising. 

The post How Can Publishers Boost Their Ad Revenue with Header Bidding? appeared first on AdMonsters.

In 2021, every major tech firm, holding company, and large brand made carbon-neutral commitments, but putting them into practice is difficult. The number of ways to calculate emissions and the ensuing cottage industry of companies offering to help quickly highlighted the need for standardization across the programmatic landscape. 

 At ALM, IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur repeatedly said, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” To remedy this, Tech Lab has partnered with trade organization AdNetZero, which is working to determine a standardized framework for emissions calculation. 

This essential, complicated, and nuanced task will take time to complete. Because the planet doesn’t have that time to wait, Tech Lab will use proprietary solutions from members who have donated their expertise and already available information on the programmatic supply chain. 

IAB Tech Lab Strategies for Implementing the ‘green Initiative’

Companies can try a few different things to reduce the amount of carbon emitted through our supply chains, the exact amount of which will vary by the myriad ways to calculate emissions. Which party calculates the emissions number and the methodology employed is up to the companies involved in the transaction. The consensus around the carbon number and its calculation are not necessary to drive action around lowering the amount of duplicative and wasteful processing. 

Fewer signals – especially those that result from duplication in the bid stream – means less energy gets used. Said simply, unnecessary duplication of signals equals waste.

The January RTB Supply Path Benchmarking report from consulting firm Jounce media estimates that 45% and 37% of all ad requests for display and video (respectively) do not have sales exclusivity and are re-broadcasted. This creates indirect supply paths, which, when talking about an industry with trillions of impressions being traded daily, is an awful lot of signals being sent and received, all of which require energy. The resulting carbon impact should be carefully evaluated between buy and sell side partners.

We need to lower the amount of data processed in trillions of daily ad requests. The IAB Tech Lab has committed to publishing programmatic best practices alongside their quantified carbon impact from sustainability vendors like Scope3 and Cedara.IO, who are part of the working group. To educate the industry, we will publish benchmarks using existing data on supply paths. In the future, we will update models to include emissions data from Ad Net Zero’s Calculation framework.

The ‘green Initiative’ Pledge 

In today’s economy, it is vital that the solutions we deliver work for everyone — creating a big tent involving any IAB Tech Lab member who wants to be part of the conversation. That includes multiple sustainability vendors, DSPs, Agencies, Publishers, and SSPs, which will ensure that all sides are represented. 

Is this just greenwashing? Maybe for some, but intent doesn’t matter. The demand side has already started biasing media investment toward suppliers actively trying to clean up convoluted supply paths, thereby lowering carbon emissions. IAB Tech Lab is committed to educating the ecosystem, promoting and quantifying best practices, supporting transparency into industry benchmarks, and providing telemetry. 

 In 2023, the green initiative within IAB Tech Lab has committed to the following:

• Creating a working group open to all Tech Lab members to collaborate on different avenues to lower carbon emissions in the programmatic supply chain
• Collating and re-publishing programmatic best practices and the quantified carbon emissions wasted by not following the guidance 
• Expanding into topics that create waste within the programmatic supply chain but have lacked official specification 
•  Iteratively adding benchmarks to the Tools Portal, starting with information already available from ads.txt/app-ads.txt and sellers.json entries and expanding to carbon emissions and more based on input from the working group.

This initiative is more significant than any single publisher, advertiser, ad tech company, or trade group. The passion and intention are evident to anyone looking. But to succeed, the entire advertising ecosystem must commit the time, expertise, and investment required to impact the industry materially. 

Read our dedicated announcement here to learn more about Tech Lab’s commitment to this topic in 2023 and beyond.

The post What Is IAB Tech Lab’s ‘Green Initiative’? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Craig and I recently caught up and we decided to explore the flip side of this equation –

Rob Beeler: What is an example of something that has become easier for ad operations?

Craig Leshen: The process of implementing audience extension campaigns has become much more streamlined over the years and is a terrific way to target ads to users. It’s a type of targeting that has always had enormous potential but continues to be drastically under-utilized. 

Audience extension allows publishers to deploy targeted advertising campaigns to their users anywhere online by identifying them as users of their content. Another way of saying this would be that publishers can sell more inventory to advertisers, targeted to their users, without having to create additional advertising space on their own online properties. 

RB: Sounds like a no brainier; extremely logical. What were some of the factors that made it tough to do in the earlier days of online advertising?

CL: In the past, the allure of audience extension was there, but the process wasn’t regularly used due to the complexities regarding deployment. Publishers could easily apply pixels from their ad systems to their sites to capture their users, but only a few systems were able to use this data. 

Audience extension was also something that sounded fantastic, as does most of the new ad tech in our industry. Talking or thinking about working with it is very different than actually implementing it; if it’s complicated to implement and manage, the number of these types of campaigns will be limited. 

You also have to factor in that there was a sales barrier. The industry was younger and salespeople, for the most part, knew far less about ad technology than they do today. A lot of salespeople had the “stick with what works” mentality because it was an easier sell. Ad dollars were (and always are) fragile, so the idea was to stay within their comfort zone, avoid risk, and not over-complicate the sales process; just bring in the revenue. If the advertisers were not asking for it, it was better not to push for it. 

Sales, ad ops and the systems used to implement advanced campaign targeting all needed to develop further from a technical standpoint to help the number of audience extension campaigns scale significantly across our industry.

RB: How have things changed?

CL: With the rise of programmatic and monetization systems, it’s become far easier to deploy audience extension campaigns. Sometimes these systems do it automatically because audience extension targeting is part of their technology. Understand that if a programmatic or monetization system is running advertising on your site, it could capture data which can label a user as someone who has visited your site, and then continue to target that user based on compiled audience profiles. This allows these systems to offer more to their advertisers, and in turn, earn more revenue for their publishers. 

However, while programmatic and monetization systems can take care of this for publishers, cutting the deal directly with the advertiser will typically net out more to the publisher; it removes the middleman (or “middle-system”). Publishers can use a variety of systems to target direct-sold campaigns to their users across third-party inventory accessible by these systems. 

In addition, as ad technology became more advanced, so did the people who work with it – both ad ops and sales. The sales barrier I was talking about a minute ago has been chipped away at over the years. Salespeople are now more comfortable than ever proposing advanced targeting options to advertisers. They understand advanced ad technologies and targeting methodologies – such as audience extension – that media buyers have budget allocated for, and publisher ad ops teams have the tools and skill sets to effectively and efficiently deploy them.

RB: So publishers have all the resources they need to do this, but many don’t do it. Why are they missing the opportunity?

CL: I don’t think they’re missing the opportunity as much as they just have so many opportunities to choose from when putting together proposals for media buyers. Some might argue that there are more potential buy types, creative types, platforms, screens, devices, or ways to target ads, than there are seats in the Rose Bowl. Ok, well maybe not that many… yet.

That’s definitely part of it, but you also need to consider that with any sort of advanced targeting, you need to spend time learning about it and working with it so you can properly offer it to your advertisers. We put together an infographic which illustrates and details the items publishers should consider when they’re thinking about running audience extension campaigns.

RB: Is audience extension an example of something that has gotten better for ops?

CL: Certain things, such as audience extension targeting, have become easier; they had to so the industry could grow rapidly, and it continues on that trajectory. Many ops functions have become easier as technology improved and grew more advanced. 

However, while some of what was once complex has been simplified, a lot of the newer types of targeting, creative type, and enhanced analytics we can extract from data have not yet reached the point where they are easier to tackle. They’re too new or raw, to be actionable in a streamlined way. 

Ops is hard. “If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” Ok, so I borrowed that quote from “A League of Their Own.” It works.

RB: Give our readers an example of an audience extension campaign.

CL: A few years back, Ford was running ad spots with Derek Jeter in them. Let’s say the Yankees were running these ads on their site. They could have also worked with a system that allows for audience extension targeting to serve more of the Ford ads to Yankees users on other online properties.

If they wanted to further enhance their targeting, they could have worked with a data service provider to figure out which of their users were also automotive enthusiasts, or automotive purchase intenders, and then targeted those specific users when they were on the Yankees website or via audience extension on other online properties.

RB: Awesome. Audience extension combined with the application of additional data to improve campaign performance for the advertiser. Love it! What’s next? What do you think this will lead to?

CL: Here’s something. Why should publishers only do this for their advertisers? They’re running paid ads on their websites, mobile apps, connected devices, etc, but they’re running their own internal marketing ads too. What if publishers decided to have their ad ops team utilize audience extension targeting to run their own marketing campaigns on other online properties?

Let’s keep going…  Why stop at targeting to their own audience? They could also target their marketing ads via reach extension campaigns (delivering ads to users within similar verticals and audience groups, who might not already be known to the publisher), along with a whole slew of other campaign types.

When publishers really start to adopt this, see how streamlined the process has become for ops to take on their own marketing, and realize how much time and money can be saved by spending at least part of their marketing budget this way… Well, that’s one heck of a game changer. “Oh the times, they are a [DISRUPTING].”

#WHAM

The post The Allure of Audience Extension: Interview With Craig Leshen, OAO appeared first on AdMonsters.

But while many in the space lament the lack of transparency in the programmatic bid arena, it’s a bit harder to find technology firms actively working to improve the flow of information between transacting parties. I caught up with Daniel Bougourd, Director of Business Operations, EMEA & APAC, at MediaMath, to hear how that DSP is partnering with The Media Trust to facilitate transparency in RTB transactions, the obstacles in getting there and how premium publishers view data in the programmatic market.

Do the premium publishers you work with have data policies in place?

Publishers and marketers alike have similar needs and objectives when it comes to protecting their data. Fortunately, the MediaMath platform provides safeguards to meet these needs. Increasingly, buyers and sellers are becoming more educated around transacting in an automated and real-time environment thus data policies are being put in place. It is the smart thing to do in order to protect your brand and MediaMath encourages it.

We often advise publishers in how to craft their own polices through our OPEN partnership program. Safeguards within these policies vary widely depending on the publisher but the most common in terms of private marketplaces include prohibiting the collection of PII, maintaining a safe environment when it comes to ad quality and maintaining an written consent when tracking tags are used. Through a combination of terms and conditions, core platform capabilities and integrations with partners like The Media Trust, MediaMath offers a buying platform for marketers that publishers can feel confident in.

Could you describe your relationship with The Media Trust?

The Media Trust is a partner through our OPEN Partnership Program. Our integration with them focuses on keeping publishers’ ad environments safe. Prior to a buyer’s ad being delivered through our platform, The Media Trust scans the creative tags checking for malware and other harmful elements. This ensures a safe experience for the end user while also protecting data from harmful third party calls. The scope of this integration includes all creative within our system and operates across all of our inventory sources globally.

Historically, premium publishers have been concerned about working with demand sources through supply-side technologies because of the lack of control, not just around pricing, but also safety. MediaMath has made a proactive investment in working with The Media Trust to provide the quality and safety experience that these premium publishers require.

MediaMath is differentiating itself by making sizable monetary investments in technology, process and people to help monetize premium publisher inventory through programmatic channels all while creating a safe environment for publishers.

Do you feel like your competitors are making similar investments in this space?

I can’t speak for our competitors but I can speak for MediaMath and what we hear from our buyers. Marketers are asking for an easier way. They want the ability manage 100% of brand spend through a marketing platform. They are asking for workflow automation and efficiency that isn’t just a single channel but goes cross channel to advertise to consumers across all touch points. MediaMath provides this via our platform and is focused on expanding these capabilities through substantial investment.

In the coming months, you will see the release of enhanced capabilities making it even easier for our buyers to purchase “programatic guaranteed” media. This will include the RTB-savvy buyers and trading desks as well as appeal to more traditional marketers.

So at the heart of these initiatives is the effort to facilitate transparency.

For sure. Transparency and control will replace terms and conditions. We want to give our buyers the ability to understand and know the value of the media they are purchasing, and enable publishers to know what they’re selling and understand why and where the buyers see value.

That almost sounds like it’s outside a DSP’s comfort zone.

Actually, we’re completely operating within the philosophy of the company: bring accountability and ROI-level intelligence back to the buyer. The only way to do that is to facilitate this kind of transparency within the transaction to the buyer and seller. Value is achieved by connecting both the buyer and the seller, and providing them with all the information needed to facilitate a sell and a buy simultaneously.

As a technology company, we must discover and promote value through information, rather than reduce value by omitting information. This was the belief MediaMath was founded on, and we’re investing in the technology to further realize that.

The added value, then, is increased spend going through your platform?

Our focus is the value brought to the buyers as in an improved return on investment. The value to the sellers naturally manifests itself in the form of incremental yield. If additional spend goes through our platform, then it is good for the entire ecosystem ~ buyers, sellers and MediaMath. The best analogy for this would be a tour guide. A tour guide enlightens a tour of a magnificent monument for tourists which benefits both the local economy and the visitor’s enjoyment. 

What have been the biggest challenges in facilitating this level of transparency?

Timing and the ever maturing ecosystem. Global RTB spend is estimated to be $5 billion in 2013 (PDF), up from $401 million in 2010. It was a matter of RTB adoption and the overall programmatic approach to marketing. Over time, the traditional players have become comfortable with, and understand the value of automated transactions.

Now we are seeing a tremendous push for not one large marketplace but a serious of smaller private marketplaces in which buyers and sellers have special relationships. This may sound like we have taken steps back however what is different now is the underlying automation, efficiency and speed at which these transactions can be facilitated and managed. 

Do you have any advice for premium publishers dabbling in this space? 

Give programatic premium a trial. Moving transactions out of a manual IO based world into a world of programmatic buying will benefit everyone through increased scale, lower operating costs and increased insight about the inventory. Sellers should speak to buyers about selling programmatically, and speak to one of the many supply side technologies regarding a test.

When selling via an exchange, sellers are not required to sign up all of their placements. You can even take a hybrid approach if you are outside of your comfort zone. This will allow sellers to understand the benefits whilst removing any anxiety they might have regarding revenue risks.

Where do you hope to see this initiative in a year?

I hope to see thousands of global premium publishers communicating in an automated way with MediaMath platform buyers. As the underlying buy-side marketing platform working with exchanges/SSPs, it is our job to facilitate this communication in a subordinate way to the actual business discussions that should occur between buyer and seller.

What’s the biggest obstacle in making that a reality?

I honestly believe it’s primarily education. The market has come a long way over the last five years but we still have a long way to go. This means we need to educate the masses while also making the workflow easier. Focusing on the technology aspects of these solutions only leads to confusion. We should be focusing on the business aspects and benefits that can be achieved for both buyers and sellers. 

The post Facilitating Transparency: Interview With MediaMath’s Daniel Bougourd appeared first on AdMonsters.

Advertisers, in particular, have to wade through a boatload of acronyms, from CPC to CTR in order to get anything done. One major avenue to simplifying the digital exchange process has come through Real-Time Bidding (RTB). As you probably know, RTB allows advertiser to bid on each impression in real time – as it is served.

But how does RTB actually work? By using data. RTB Platforms like Nexage, Pubmatic, DataXu, and Jumptap aggregate user data to provide information to advertisers about the audience each impression will reach. This data is usually behavioral information taken from tracking cookies, and the more specific this data is, the more valuable it will be to marketers.

I spoke with Nexage’s Victor Milligan this week to get a better understanding of how the company is using its mountain of data to provide better analytics for users. Nexage has recently endeavored to improve visibility at the “atomic” level for their RTB platform. Their new program is designed to work at the level of individual auctions and impressions. This would allow users on both the buy and sell side to better understand their own competitiveness, and should increase overall liquidity in the market.

With auction-level visibility, publishers are able to understand how their impressions are valued (compared to other similar publishers) by buyers. On the other side of the exchange, bidders are informed of the competitiveness of their bids against others in their cohort. This is all done without sharing companies’ names or specific information.

This process begins by simply aggregating data. Nexage collects a mountain of data from the 13 billion impressions it manages each month, but must manage this data effectively. The goal, of course, is not to have as much data as possible, but rather to pull the right data – statistically significant data, which can then be placed into a “cube,” an analytic construct that allows Nexage to look at multiple dimensions of data.

Building the “cube” took some time. Nexage uses a technology that’s quite good at generating these algorithms and statistics, a very heavy-lifting, “atomic” tool. On top of that, Nexages uses another tool to do pattern analysis, do the actual analysis of data, elucidate patterns, and visualize the results.

Nexage is then able to look at each of their 500 million auctions per day from publisher, site, whether there’s first-party data, operating system, country, whether there’s implicit demographic data, whether there are associated benchmark prices (typically things like this go for $X), technical data (what SDK is in place, etc.), and other views. By allowing the company to look at any view easily, the cube gives Nexage a lot of information about what’s driving and what’s diluting value.

For example, Nexage has applied this “atomic”-level analysis to a “location cohort” comprised of publishers that provide location-enabled impressions. Nexage was able to analyze how the price bid distribution changed over time in order to understand how buyers value these impressions over time (see graph). Nexage found increases in value in location overall, and at the specific attribute level (lat/long, zip, DMA, etc.). In fact, Nexage found that lat/long is particularly valuable to buyers, which makes sense, as there has been an increase in demand for hyper-local campaigns. 

(Image Source: Nexage)

Once Nexage has generated this kind of information, it is sent back to publishers, who are then able to re-evaluate and optimize their own inventory. The decisions publishers make have been shown to affect demand as soon as the next day. The end result is that publishers get a better CPM value and more revenue, while buyers are able to purchase inventory they really want – the liquidity of the exchange, overall, increases.

By creating an analytic environment that allows the company to handle and process its large volume of data, Nexage is able to feed its users facts, trends, and evidence that are helpful and that can be applied immediately. So, as Nexage has shown, though our bevy of advertising numbers may seem like madness, with the right analytics, we might find the method and the usefulness therein.

The post Turning Big Data into Big Analytics appeared first on AdMonsters.

Publishers see RTB as another mechanism that commoditizes inventory and forces them to surrender control of sales. They’re failing to see that proper implementation of RTB actually gives them greater control, and that it can be used creatively to shape direct-sales strategy.

One common way publishers are doing this is through the private exchange model, which helps publishers set up RTB marketplaces for selling impressions in real-time, while tightly controlling who has access to that inventory.

Publishers have partly been reluctant to adopt RTB technology because it adds additional layers of technology between them and the buyers, giving the publisher less and less control over the ads appearing on their site. Private exchanges solve this problem by building a closer connection between buyer and seller. Because a publisher determines who has access, the publisher has a direct connection to the buyer. Think of the private exchange as a VIP poker room at a casino, where the publisher works the velvet rope and controls the minimum bid at the table by imposing pricing floors on the impressions.

These controls eliminate the fear of real-time buying cannibalizing direct-sold inventory. Private exchanges allow publishers to set aside certain kinds of inventory for pre-selected buying partners, and also assign each advertiser a weight, giving preferred partners an improved chance at buying an impression.

But beyond these basic controls, we’re seeing creative publishers use the technology in new ways to shape their direct-sales strategy, raise CPMs across the board, and combat some common ad-serving issues, especially in video.

One way is through the use of branded publisher networks that aggregate inventory from several sites under the same umbrella. A major video entity with multiple URLs, like a television network, can bucket inventory from multiple sites into one branded exchange, driving higher CPMs. Giving buyers access to premium third-party inventory in this way can lead them to invest even more into RTB because they can achieve greater scale.

Of course, publishers need to maintain a level of transparency with buyers to protect their relationships. This means outlining potential URLs ahead of time, and providing as much information as possible about where the ads ran. Branded publisher networks help advertisers by exposing them to a similar audience across closely related sites. Advertisers make direct buys because they get the peace of mind of knowing those ads will appear in brand-safe environments. It’s crucial for publishers to recreate this assurance within a private exchange model through transparency and by using tools that promise brand safety.

Publishers can further tweak this tactic for distribution deals with third party sites, increasing inventory and offering greater scale within the private exchange without impacting the user experience. This is particularly helpful in video, where publishers are hesitant to add more ad impressions within the video content.

Still, one of the best uses of a private exchange is when smart publishers use their insights to influence their direct-sales strategy. When an advertiser like Ford uses a private exchange to target a very specific demographic, like 25 to 35 year old men, the publisher gains insight into Ford’s campaign. Their in-house sales team can then approach Ford, armed with detailed audience information, and present a plan for helping Ford find its target audience through a direct buy.

RTB shouldn’t be seen as a dramatic, detrimental change to the way publishers sell ads. Rather, each RTB sale should serve as bellwether for publishers looking across the landscape. When publishers employ the right kinds of tools to enable real-time ad sales, they’re not only helping advertisers, but also helping themselves.

LiveRail CEO Mark Trefgarne is one of numerous digital advertising leaders speaking OPS TV, which will bring together the future architects of digital monetization to discuss the intersection of digital video and TV advertising. Register today for OPS TV, which will be held July 11, 2012, in New York.

The post How Publishers Can Leverage Private Exchanges to Solve Ad Problems appeared first on AdMonsters.

Believe it or not, folks, 2012 a big election year hear in the U.S. – maybe you’ve heard something about it on the TV news channels or in the papers? It’s widely speculated that targeted digital advertising will play a large role in this year’s presidential and congressional elections (as well as state and local contests) because there’s nothing political advertisers appreciate more than hitting the exact audience they wanted to reach. But what kind of effect will this expected influx of targeted advertising have on the display landscape?

Expanding on a blog he wrote on the subject last year is Ed Montes, CEO of ad targeting specialist Adnetik, former AdMonsters keynote speaker and a presenter at this year’s OPS Markets on April 18 (part of OPS Week NYC). In addition to sharing his thoughts on how political advertising for election 2012 will change the display landscape, Montes also sheds a little light on the topic he’ll be speaking about at OPS Markets: “The Truth About Retargeting Revealed.”

What kind of effects will the increase in political advertising this year have on the digital advertising landscape from both a revenue and a technological perspective?

One effect may be a tightening of supply as the political buyers may interject some un-forecasted demand into the landscape given the timing of the election, which may pose some challenges to big Q4 spenders. The corollary to this effect is that there may be an increase of election-related inventory available for purchase as the election cycle creates news and increases news consumption.

Clearly being able to forecast and identify desirable or high-value inventory during these cycles becomes more challenging. Our experience in 2010 was that overall demand increased immediately before the midterm elections in swing states led by PAC spending but that it did not have a negative macro effect on inventory availability for the usual big Q4 spenders.

I imagine that this year will behave differently than 2010 given the stakes. I am hopeful that campaigns will take advantage of the technology advances in both audience and content targeting to speak directly with important constituencies but to date it I haven’t seen any single candidate, party, or PAC jump on this potential.

Have we reached the apex of the retargeting obsession?

No. Retargeting is widely used with and without client knowledge. Retargeting provides the strongest signal, or most valuable indicator, of a high-value impression in a last-action attribution model. Unless and until the industry moves away from last-action attribution, retargeting will continue to grow in use and will continue to be abused.

What is the biggest misconception about real-time media buying?

That the inventory available is just remnant, unsold, or low quality. There is quality, high value inventory available via RTB and its growing.

What are the main obstacles to a wider use of audience buying techniques?

Education. The biggest obstacle continues to be a lack of knowledge of audience buying’s capabilities, its potential and its application.

What role will dynamic creative play in the future of real-time targeting?

I think dynamic creative will play a significant role in the future. The power of real-time targeting is the promise of showing the right ad at the right time and paying the right price for it. In that formula showing the right ad is at least a third of the value proposition and that requires dynamic creative.

What was the goal in refreshing the Adnetik website? How can clients and potential clients get more from the website now?

We wanted to present our current clients and prospective clients access to more information about our products and services as well as demonstrate the challenges that media channel and content distribution and fragmentation pose in a digital ecosystem and the evolution of those challenges. It has always been our desire to simplify an increasingly complex environment with our tools and services for media planners and buyers.

Up to date on the latest happenings in the automated trading space? OPS Markets, April 18, 2012 in NYC, will bring digital advertising leaders and ops professionals together to discuss and develop best practices for operational excellence in the evolving automated landscape. Register before April 1 for OPS Markets and save $100, or sign up for OPS Week NYC for a $550 discount on two events.

The post The Election Effect: Q&A With OPS Markets NYC Speaker Ed Montes, CEO, Adnetik appeared first on AdMonsters.

Jay was one of our fantastic speakers at OPS Markets in London and will also be discussing all things RTB at AdMonsters Sydney.

Read the full Q&A below. 

RTB really took off in 2011, what do you see happening in a more mature market place for RTB in 2012?

Are there any areas in which you feel it’s fallen short/not been exploited? RTB has indeed seen explosive growth in 2011, moving from single digit percentages to now representing the majority of indirect sales revenue for many publishers on the REVV platform. In terms of where we see RTB going in 2012, it will clearly be “moving up the stack” as private marketplaces blur the line between what has traditionally been designated premium or remnant. Granular advertiser-level pricing and access controls, combined with the inherent transparency associated with RTB, opens the door for publishers and agencies alike to take advantage safely of increased automation in digital media trading. I don’t really feel it has fallen short, it simply takes time for markets to change trading behaviours and for the infrastructure and processes on both the buy and sell side to mature, and arguably, it’s happening faster here than I would have expected.

Do you see RTB as a long term killer to direct sales teams or do you see them working alongside one another?

Not at all, RTB opens the door for publishers to take budget from category-adjacent and non-endemic advertisers who would may not have historically ever put a publisher on plan, while at the same time enabling the publisher to establish pricing floors for endemic advertisers, protecting yield from their most important clients. RTB and private marketplaces afford the opportunity for the direct sales team to be more efficient and to refine their focus on larger, high-value, creative, and premium sales opportunities with programmatic trading being used collaboratively. It also opens the door for new roles inside the sales organisation: yield managers who can read the bid landscape data to make the most of a publishers inventory. Homepage takeovers, sponsorships, microsites and the like are all the kinds of publisher product offerings that can never be traded programmatically, but the trading of standard IAB ad units, in the manner the industry has historically done, is incredibly inefficient and leaves a tremendous amount of demand pent up on the sidelines. Anyone who has ever written an IO and overseen the process from RFP to collection of payment from the agency can testify to this. If display as a channel is to grow, and publishers are to take advantage of this growth, we have to become more efficient as an industry. Display must be “democratised” as search has been. RTB and real time trading is the mechanic for this change.

Why do you think private marketplaces are so important to publishers in 2012?

Private marketplaces are important for publishers as they open the opportunity to tap budgets that are being allocated to RTB-based sources of demand and initiate the migration to programmatic trading, at the same time protecting their rate card and mitigating any channel conflict.

What can you tell us about The Rubicon Project’s ‘Brand Protection Suite’?

The brand protection suite is a collection of features that help publishers better protect their brand and better manage the quality of advertising on their site. It starts with the harvesting of advertiser creative across the tens of thousands of ad tags live on the REVV platform and constantly cross-referencing advertisers found either on rotational tags or via the advertiser name in bid stream across the block lists of the publishers on the platform. This is done across more than 30 geographical proxies with more than 2,000 new pieces of creative being catalogued and double verified by human eyes each day. In addition to this foundational ad quality database and continual monitoring, Rubicon is able to offer a number of additional capabilities including malware protection, RTB creative pre-approval, and data leakage reporting.  

Quality control in advertising is always an issue – what is Rubicon’s approach to ensuring Publishers are serving to the best of their ability?

This starts in the set-up process with our publishers to fully understand what the ad quality thresholds and block lists are before going live and introducing new demand sources. Then, through the features of the brand protection suite, our technology is able to better the monitor the influx of new campaigns on their behalf. It’s a constant threat that has to be continually monitored and addressed by both technology and human intervention. While no system is perfect, the developments we’ve made to more efficiently manage ad quality are unique to the industry.

What are your predictions for 2012’s digital marketplace? Anyone we should be aware of?

Namely, we expect to see RTB sources of demand claim a larger share of publishers’ indirect sales revenue, north of 75% by the end of the year. I also expect to see more demand coming into the marketplace from the rise of publisher trading desks (PTD), maximising the value of their audience by executing reach extension campaigns, targeting their users off their own sites. Associated Northcliffe and Der Telegraaf are already reaping the benefits of their PTDs and I’d expect some of the publisher with high value audiences and low impression volumes following their lead. Lastly, and perhaps the single biggest movement, will be Facebook as they look to become a network in their own right, enabling the advertisers on their platform to extend the reach of their campaigns outside the Facebook environment.

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