Why An Independent Buy-Side And A Sell-Side Makes Sense… For Both Sides
There has been a lot of discussion of late about convergence between the buy and sell side – with a number of large players trying to build their own end-to-end stack. Here Joe Zawadzki, CEO at Mediamath, argues that an independent buy and sell side is in the best interests of the industry.
There is an interesting question being posed in ad tech right now: should the buy side and sell side be allowed to coexist within the same platform? Put another way, how much does focus and loyalty to a specific class of customer matter?
It turns out, a lot, for at least three big reasons:
Conflict.
In finance, playing both sides is what precipitated the financial crisis of 2008. Investment banks that had CDO factoring capabilities as well as retail clients to buy them – buy-side and sell-side – were at the heart.
They knew what clients wanted and how much they had to spend, their risk tolerances and rating systems.
CEO Trefgarne Says Video Ad Serving Core Differentiates LiveRail From Competitors With Display Legacy
Mark Trefgarne is Co-Founder and CEO of LiveRail, a video advertising technology company.
AdExchanger.com: Let’s start with a little background on you. How did your consultancy lead to video advertising technology?
MT: We started LiveRail about four years ago, which came out of a consulting company that I was running in London. The founding team for LiveRail was all working there. As part of the consulting business, we were helping clients develop and plan their Internet strategy – from small, local businesses to publicly-traded companies. Soon after, we built out some of the applications that we recommended to our clients for their online advertising strategy which included building out their intranet or e‑commerce system.
So, four years ago, when Google bought YouTube, there was a “lightbulb” moment that video was moving online. It was a time when video podcasting became a big deal. It was clear at that point that there was a path to a future in which all TV gets consumed over the web and we thought there was a big business opportunity to help content creators and advertisers.
Sell-Side Platforms Ramp Up, AppNexus, Admeld Highlight Field
Which vendors should publishers trust to help manage the sale of display ads? A new report from Forrester names AppNexus and Admeld as the two top-performing sell-side platforms.
In Forrester’s 34-criteria evaluation, each stood out for their highly granular controls and ability to support an array of sales opportunities.
Strong competitors include PubMatic and Rubicon Project — which, according to Forrester, are aggressively ramping up their development efforts and turning once-distinguishing platform features into standard offerings.
Forrester analyst and report author Michael Greene says sell-side platforms represent a key component of the new ad technology ecosystem.
“Managing multiple indirect sales channels can be an operational nightmare,” according to Greene. “It’s unlikely that sales teams fill 100% of their site’s inventory every month. To fill the gap, indirect sales channels like ad networks have helped publishers squeeze extra revenues out of their inventory, but put logistical strains on an ad operations team. SSPs help aggregate multiple indirect sales relationships and optimize revenue across them.”
Read More: MediaPost
US Companies Face Big Hurdles in ‘Big Data’ Use
Definition of ‘Big Data’ remains murky for some companies
Today’s uncertain economy has companies looking to data to influence decisions, inform strategy and anticipate outcomes. Marketers too are using such data to gain insight into consumer interests and preferences to better their customer retention and acquisition programs.
For many data-conscious companies, the use of “Big Data” has become increasingly important. Big Data incorporates multiple data sets—customer data, competitive data, online data, offline data, and so forth—for a more holistic approach to business intelligence.
Though the term Big Data is becoming more common within the online advertising industry, web data monitoring and collection company Connotate showed just how unclear many companies are on its definition and use.
Though almost half (49%) of US data aggregation leaders defined Big Data as an aggregate of all external and internal web-based data, others defined it as the mass amounts of internal information stored and managed by an enterprise (16%) or web-based data and content businesses used for their own operations (7%).
Read More: eMarketer
