NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–PubMatic (http://www.PubMatic.com), a media technology company that enables premium publishers to realize the full potential of their digital assets, today announced PubDirect. PubDirect is a new management suite of tools and services powered by PubMatic’s optimization engine that accelerates the publisher’s ability to monetize their guaranteed and non-guaranteed inventory in a private marketplace that covers all demand channels.
“Top publishers struggle to directly offer comprehensive premium and reach solutions to advertisers,” said Rajeev Goel, Co-founder and CEO of PubMatic. “With PubDirect, we are introducing a unified optimization engine and insights for publishers to package in the best way to ensure that they meet the needs of their advertisers and don’t miss new revenue opportunities.”
The PubDirect suite of management tools offers premium publishers what they need to navigate the increasingly complex digital marketplace.

•Unified Optimization Engine allows publishers to monetize guaranteed and non-guaranteed inventory against multiple demand sources with a unified strategy to maximize publisher revenue at the impression level.

•Audience Direct gives publishers the ability to respond to the growing demand for audience buys by helping them to create and manage the variable value of their audience in real time. By combining first-party and third-party data sources, publishers can sell audience- targeted campaigns on a guaranteed basis using their existing ad server relationships.

•Deal Management enables pricing and brand controls and enhanced floor and deal modeling to help publishers do more than examine campaign performance. PubDirect tools and services facilitate action.

•Unified Insights enable publishers to understand their inventory and revenue across guaranteed and non-guaranteed sales channels and delivery platforms. In addition, publishers can identify and package new revenue opportunities and easily access PubDirect via their iPad. This first-ever iPad application allows publishers to conveniently view performance at anytime and from anywhere.
Read more: BusinessWire
The ABCs Of DSPs
To the uninitiated brand marketer, the term demand-side platform, or DSP, can be very intimidating. When one ventures into the nascent world of video DSPs, where the definition often changes from provider to provider, things get even more confusing.

DSPs have made a nice foothold in display advertising, and while they are attempting to provide value to video marketers, the technical differences between display and video are forcing some to stretch their claims.

It’s a bit like getting a massage. One service can differ greatly from the next. A Napa Valley resort might offer stress-relieving hot rock massages, or you could endure some of the torturous, yet effective, sports massages I’ve experienced in my past life as a runner. Of course, the massage hawked on Las Vegas Boulevard is a completely different animal (so I’ve heard). Just as the treatment (and resulting sensations) can vary, so too can the promises of each DSP.

A. Brand Safety By their very nature, ad exchanges offer little transparency into the content or pages where their inventory resides. As a result, DSPs are often unable to utilize brand protection in these environments.

Consequently, most video DSPs that promise “superior brand protection” are really offering “implied brand protection,”aka. placing sites in predetermined buckets. This strategy works some of the time, but we all know that premium news sites, for example, carry professionally made content about natural disasters, violent crimes, and other topics not fit for brand adjacencies.
Read more: MediaPost

Mobile video now accounts for half of all mobile traffic; and on some networks, that number is as high as 69 percent — a testament to the rise of smartphones and tablets as the mobile devices of choice for consumers, and their growing interest in using these devices to do a lot more than just make phone calls.

The data, from quarterly report on mobile data usage out today from mobile analytics firm Bytemobile, also found that Android is generating more mobile ad volume than iOS devices, and that Google now accounted for 75 percent of ad-generated data across all platforms.

Bytemobile says it has collected this data from a cross-section of its mobile carrier customers. It focuses on usage of two main platforms, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

As many have already suspected, tablets are driving significantly more data traffic than smartphones. On Apple’s iOS platform, an iPad user generates three times as much traffic as someone using an iPhone; while on Android, the figure is twice as much when comparing Android tablets and handsets
Read more: TechCrunch
Real-Time Advertising Bidding Offers Publisher Control

As publishers attempt to make online advertising a profitable and engaging business model, real time bidding on Web inventory by prospective clients is becoming more prevalent. Conde Nast launched a private Web ad exchange with AdMeld for select clients in late 2011, and now smaller publishers are getting in the game.

Tech company Casale Media designed real time bidding (RTB) platform CasaleX after several clients expressed interest in the burgeoning model. Andrew Casale, VP of strategy, says the draw of real time bidding lies in publisher control. “There are two extreme models of real time bidding for publishers,” says Casale. “The first is when a publisher has all their inventory in a private exchange, so a human interaction is necessary for a sale to take place.” Another option is for publishers to place online space not sold during more traditional sales efforts on the virtual block. Casale client GateHouse Media, a local newspaper network, sells the majority of its ad space through the RTB platform.

Casale says that valuable space, like homepages, are landing top dollar through the live bidding process.
Read more: Folio

As retailers increasingly embrace mobile to boost foot traffic and drive m-commerce, mobile advertising is expanding as well. To capitalize on that trend, mobile ad network Jumptap has partnered with hyperlocal data provider PlaceIQ and appointed a director of retail to oversee ad efforts in the category.

Through the alliance with PlaceIQ, Jumptap says it will allow advertisers to reach the precise areas most likely to contain members of their target audience, whether luxury shoppers, tourists, students or travelers.

PlaceIQ claims its ad-targeting technology creates a “hyperlocal digital index of the physical world,” by understanding not only what is there, but who is in a place, when, and what they’re doing.

While some of this is static data about a location (down to a city block), much of it is gleaned from user actions, like searches people perform or ads they click on in a given spot at a certain time via mobile devices.

The start-up claims its technology is “privacy-friendly,” since it profiles locations rather than people, without gathering or storing personally identifiable information (PII).In December, PlaceIQ landed $4.2 million in first-round venture funding.

Jumptap works with third-party data providers including Acxiom, TargusInfo, Datalogix and Polk to provide information about consumer demographics from purchase history to income level to what cars people own. That anonymized data helped double click-through rates for retail campaigns in the fourth quarter.

In addition to teaming with Place IQ, Jumptap announced its hiring of Matthew Mulderink as its first director of retail to lead strategy for retail publishers and advertisers. Prior to joining Jumptap, Mulderink was director of strategic accounts at ad optimization firm at Dotomi, acquired last August by ValueClick. He was previously in a similar role at Yahoo, working with retailers including Best Buy, Target and Sears.
Read more: MediaPost
SpotXchange First to Provide Auto- Versus User-Initiated Video Advertising Information to Real-Time Bidding Buyers
DENVER – February 21, 2012 – SpotXchange, Inc., the largest global marketplace of video ad inventory, today announced that it is the first real-time-bidding (RTB) supply source to offer its partners initiation type (auto-initiated versus user-initiated) information for video ad inventory in real time with every bid request.  This information will help SpotXchange’s RTB partners valuate inventory more effectively and make more efficient buying decisions.
There is a significant difference between auto- and user-initiated video ads, which results in two different user experiences.  An auto-initiated ad plays automatically when a user visits a web page, but the video ad does not block the user from viewing intended content.  User-initiated ads must be viewed by consumers before reaching their desired content, such as a video or game.  Because higher levels of consumer engagement are associated with user-initiated video ads, advertisers are willing to pay a premium for them.
Historically, however, user- and auto-initiated placements have been bundled together in brokered deals by ad networks and sold at a flat CPM.   With SpotXchange providing partners with initiation type information in real time with each bid request, SpotXchange’s RTB and direct buy partners can value each placement opportunity independently. This transparency coupled with robust audience data, leads to higher ROI for advertisers and increased yield for publishers, by providing high-quality inventory to the exchange.
Read more: SpotXchange