Real-Time Bidding and the RTB Ecosystem

Real-time bidding (RTB) is the fastest-growing form of display advertising delivery and will significantly impact publisher CPMs and the amount of ad inventory we see from advertisers. The technology has been described as revolutionary and, in a nutshell, it gives advertisers the ability to target messages to the right user, in the right place, at the right time. The goal of RTB is to achieve the highest possible value of a single ad impression by dynamically delivering reach to targeted users on an impression-by-impression basis.  This is a competitive bidding environment in which advertisers attempt to reach individuals based on specific demographics and psychographics, assigning a value to each impression used to reach specific users in real time. This is a brave new world for the publisher, where networks and exchanges will look to take ownership of our users and our data, segmenting our audience in an attempt to deliver the most highly targeted eyeballs for advertisers. We need to take ownership of our users and our data, earning premium CPMs through targeted ad delivery and the use of RTB technology.   To that end, let’s take a closer look at real-time bidding and the ecosystem in which it operates. There are burgeoning industries and players within them that you may have never heard of, so we’ll take a deep dive on this subject and spend time looking at RTB enablers, agency buying desks, DSPs and sell-side platforms, ad networks and exchanges and the data providers that make this all possible.  Sell-side platforms have become real-time bidding technology providers. You can see this in the offerings of two of the major online advertising yield optimizers, Pubmatic and AdMeld. Working with them comes in a couple of flavors. One, layer their product onto your existing ad serving platform and have them deliver RTB ads—over your site or network of sites—that they have sourced; or two, and better yet, take the product to advertisers yourself, using the sell side platform’s technology to target demographically using dynamic bidding. 

Read More: minonline.com

Ad Networks & Demand-Side Platforms

The interactive ad industry is widespread with buzzwords, catchphrases and acronyms. Which new, abbreviated, “next gen” solution will unleash its “game changing” power on the digital marketing landscape? Will Demand Side Platforms (DSP) rule this brave new world? At Epic Media Group, we don’t believe so. With information moving so quickly, it is no surprise that there are so many opinions and a great deal of confusion. Hot topics like data, transparency, real-time bidding (RTB), trading desks, and search re-targeting further complicate the industry landscape for most industry onlookers rather than simplify it – fueling circular conversations that last for months.  Demand Side Platforms are making noise, sure, but just like a trendy new band, the sound may be different to your ear. Simply put, a new genre does not make all previous genres irrelevant. In fact, if you deconstruct the name Demand Side Platform it becomes far less complex than it seems. As our CMO, Mike Sprouse, recently pointed out on this blog, advertisers want online advertising to be simpler and we think that will begin happening in the near future. Simplification begins with our industry’s acronyms.  The term “platform” – a word we use a lot at Epic Media Group – means a plan of action, scheme or design. Platform is also defined as a raised, level surface – like a train platform or a stage. Technically speaking, it is a hardware architecture and framework that allows software to run.  Strong platforms should be designed to support all of a company’s business channels, allow for cross-channel functionality, and leverage massive amounts of data and data analytics to deliver advertiser campaigns across all channels. The “P” in DSP references the capability to place bids, in real time, for impressions available on inventory exchanges with a user interface that provides some degree of reporting. A strong technology platform must encompass a lot of things and is an integral part of any ad intermediary’s business.

Read More: EpicMediaGroup.com

Dead Metrics Walking

I was recently asked about the relative ROI of different advertising channels – from TV, print, and radio, to direct mail, e-mail, and banners, to search ads, social media marketing, and location-based and mobile marketing. In comparing these diverse channels, it became clear that they really couldn’t be compared easily because the types of metrics were all different and measuring different things.  Let’s take a closer look at these metrics, grouped into three buckets: 1) push advertising – approximations of reach and frequency, 2) direct response, and 3) pull marketing – user-initiated ads.

Read More: ClickZ

The Inside Story: An Anonymous Ex-AOL Exec Tells All

When AOL CEO Tim Armstrong joined the company in spring 2009, he announced he’d take just 100 days to figure out what to do to turn around the one-time tech industry leader.  In about a week, it will be a year since AOL celebrated the end of those 100 days with a big party in Dulles, Virginia on July 24, 2009.  It’s been a huge 12 months for AOL since. There were layoffs, a massive voluntary-buyout program, a re-branding, major product-rollouts, and of course, AOL’s December 2009 spin-off from Time Warner.  Also during that time: just about every corporate-level executive left the company – usually to be replaced with an ex-Googler.  Recently, we spoke with one of these former AOL executives to find out what it was really like when Tim Armstrong came to save AOL.  Here’s that inside story.

SAI: How did word break in February 2009 that CEO Randy Falco and president Ron Grant were out?

Former AOL exec: As soon as it happened Ron started calling his team. Word obviously spread incredibly quickly. Rumors started to break that afternoon because [Time Warner CEO] Jeff Bewkes made a surprise visit actually to the AOL headquarters downtown. For Jeff Bewkes to come out of the Time Warner building on the Upper West Side was highly unusual. So I think people were extremely sensitive to what was going on when he was spotted in the building — it’s a very open layout, the office space, so everything’s pretty visible.   Upon Jeff leaving people started twittering and everything else and I think that’s why Ron started picked up the phone so quickly and just started dialing.

Read More: BusinessInsider.com

DoubleClick White Paper: The Value of Dynamic Pricing & Auction Pricing

We’re often asked to quantify the incremental value DoubleClick Ad Exchange can provide compared with publishers’ existing yield management techniques. According to proprietary research conducted in the first half of 2010, the combined effects of auction pressure and Dynamic Allocation in DoubleClick Ad Exchange resulted in an average CPM lift of 136% compared with fixed, upfront, pre-negotiated sales of non-guaranteed inventory.   In a new white paper, we take a step back to explain how publishers are managing yield across their pool of non-guaranteed inventory today, and what steps they can take to create efficiencies and boost overall revenue. Key elements of the white paper include:

• How publishers segment and sell ad inventory. How manual optimization processes often fail to capture all available revenue opportunities
• Dynamic Allocation explained. What it is, how it works, and what it means for publishers’ bottom lines.
• Auction pricing mechanics. Real-time pricing’s core advantages over the use of historical CPMs for non-guaranteed ad space.
• A brief look forward. The potential for DoubleClick Ad Exchange and its ecosystem of publishers, technology providers, advertisers and agencies.

Read More: DoubleClickPublishers.blogspot.com

Startup Lets Web Advertisers Bid For Your Attention

The real dream of any advertiser is to grab the attention of the right person at the right time. A new approach to online advertising, known as real-time bidding, could help make that vision easier to achieve.  Real-time bidding involves auctioning off the opportunity to show an online display advertisement to a specific type of user at a precise moment. A San Francisco-based startup called Triggit recently scored $4.2 million in funding from two venture capital firms, Foundry Group and Spark Capital, based on the promise of its real-time bidding platform.  “Every person has a different value to different advertisers,” says Zach Coelius, Triggit’s CEO. He points to the advertising auction system used by Google for search keyword. People searching for particular keywords are bracketed together as likely having similar intentions. With display advertising, he says, the interests of the person visiting a page is less clear, and it’s more difficult to match an ad to the ideal user. It is increasingly possible to gather information about a user by looking at her browser’s cookies–tiny files that show which sites she has visited. But matching this information to advertising is a still relatively crude process.

Read More: TechnologyReview.com

Google Working On Secret New Ad Format: “Interactive Video Ads”

Google is still casting around trying to find another revenue stream that will carry the company now that search is maturing.  The latest idea?  Interactive video ads.”  Eric Schmidt pitched the idea at Allen & Co.’s Sun Valley conference, Jessica Vascellaro reports:  Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt championed “interactive video ads,” which he said are on the way. Such ads, which could appear anywhere on a Web page, not just inside a video, would be like mini-Web pages. That means they could allow Web users to watch a video, leave a comment and see real-time updates within the ads that are more customized to their interests.  Mr. Schmidt said in an interview Thursday that he has pushed Google’s ad teams to think about the potential for such ads, which he suggested would eventually become prevalent. But he didn’t comment on any specific plans for them.  Sounds like a stretch. 

Read More: BusinessInsider.com

Tech Companies Work To Come Up With Ad Ideas That Click

As media companies voice doubts about whether they can build their digital businesses on advertising alone, technology companies gathered in Sun Valley this week are trying hard to convince them to think more creatively.  In a range of interviews on the sidelines of the conference, Internet companies from ad juggernaut Google Inc. to small upstarts have pumped the promise of new formats that are more effective than banner and search ads, the staples of the digital ad industry to date.  Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in an interview late Thursday that a new killer ad format—which he dubbed “interactive video ads”—is coming. Such ads, which could appear anywhere on a Web page not just inside a video, would allow users to interact with the ads in new and more engaging ways, such as asking users to click on a video to learn more about a product. He said he has encouraged Google’s ad teams to think along those lines, but didn’t comment on any specific plans.  Andrew Mason, chief executive and founder of Groupon Inc., said in an interview that his company—a fast-growing startup that distributes daily deal newsletters—is here talking to media companies about reinventing local advertising.

Read More: WSJ.com