How Platform-Based Buying Helps Publishers – Part 1

We’ve heard it all.  Oversupply.  Glut in inventory.  Commoditization.  This exciting new era in digital marketing will be the death of the publisher.  Providers of quality content simply won’t survive.  All people care about is pushing for a lower eCPM and driving the cost down.  Yadda, Yadda, Yadda.  I go to a lot of conferences and attend a lot of panels (basically I don’t turn down free beer) and representatives of the buy-side always seems so charged up while the sell-side looks like they woke up to learn they managed the Pittsburgh Pirates. But it doesn’t make sense.   Digital spending continues to grow, budgets continue to shift online, and display spending is predicted to grow at a strong rate over the next five years.   Meanwhile, the number of people online has plateaued.  More dollars divided by same number of users should equal rising revenue and profits for publishers.  Right?  Well, actually, no, that’s not what is happening.  Publishers are seeing downward trends in pricing and are finding that buyers don’t actually care about them or their site, they simply want to find a specific audience and, barring porn and malware, they don’t care how or where they get it.  And the chorus screams “Commoditization!”  I don’t actually believe there is commoditization of display media.  And while the symptoms of it do exist, I believe this can and will be solved.  Commoditization implies that all individual units of a good are the same and are capable of mutual substitution.   I’ve seen site level performance reports and the data simply does not bear out that all media is created equal.  Rather than commoditization, what we have here is insufficient tools for buyers and sellers to really value impressions.  It all looks the same, or at least I can’t figure out how it’s different, so I’ll assume it’s all the same and not worry about it.  That’s how buyers are thinking.

Read More: DisplayAndSearch.com

Magnetic Makes Search Data Accessible for All Demand Side Platforms

Magnetic (www.magnetic.is) announced partnerships with several leading demand-side platforms (DSPs) today, including Invite Media, MediaMath, XA.net and [x+1]. The Magnetic data marketplace provides DSPs, advertisers and publishers with user search data, which is then used as a key indicator of intent that can be applied for any ad campaign. Other DSP partners include DataXu, Lucid Media and Rocket Fuel Inc.. Interactive media and data buyers interested in accessing the marketplace can visit www.magnetic.is or send email to signup@magnetic.is.

By making search data easily accessible to DSPs, Magnetic is evolving a new class of ‘search DSPs’ and empowering their businesses with the potential of the SEM market:

• “Our partnership with Magnetic offers our clients easy access to search targeting data,” said Nathaniel Turner, Invite Media’s Founder and CEO. “Our Bid Manager© platform gives media buyers a competitive edge through the effectiveness of SEM on highly targeted display media across a massive pool of inventory.”
• “MediaMath is focused squarely on delivering best-in-class technology that enables agencies to better manage day-to-day strategy without always having to contend with execution,” said Marta Martinez, MediaMath’s senior vice president of operations and business development. “Integrating Magnetic’s data into our industry-leading TerminalOne platform further enhances our ability to drive results for enterprise-class clients.”
• “Our CPMatic ad platform now allows large and small advertisers alike instant, easy access to keyword data for their display campaigns,” said Rob Leathern, CEO of XA.net. “Whether they are buying self-service via cpmatic.com or via our account team, every advertiser can leverage their keyword learnings to immediately benefit using search data from the Magnetic marketplace.”
• “We’ve been encouraged by data we’ve applied through Magnetic,” said John Nardone, CEO of [x+1]. “Together, we’ve allowed marketers to identify high-quality prospects who have made their purchasing intentions known. With the precise segmentation capabilities of our online targeting platform, enhanced with Magnetic’s search data, we are making display advertising more relevant than ever before.”

Read More: Magnetic.is

Software Is Media

I’ve made this point in several talks I’ve given recently so for those of you who attended or watched the talks on video aren’t new to this meme. But I thought I’d share it with the AVC community.  As software has moved from running on local machines to running in the browser a number of important things have happened. One of the most important changes is software has become media.  Here’s a definition of media I pulled from TechTerms

“media” refers to various means of communication. For example, television, radio, and the newspaper are different types of media. The term can also be used as a collective noun for the press or news reporting agencies.

Media are the tools that are used to communicate. And software that runs on the web is part of the media landscape. That has certainly been true for things like online publications and online video and they are accepted as part of the media landscape. But I think all software should be characterized and thought of as media.

Read More: AVC.com

Full Details on Twitter’s New Ad Model

With the inauguration of its ad model, Twitter has made its first direct overture to the thousands of companies – big and small – that use it to converse with customers and build awareness. The resulting ad product, “Promoted Tweets,” is both more and less than advertisers might have hoped. More, in that Twitter has promised targeted ads will eventually appear directly in users’ Twitter streams and on third party clients. And less, in that the program will begin modestly, showing up only in search results – where CEO Dick Costolo confessed Twitter’s volume of page impressions is tiny. “It’s a very small piece of the overall traffic,” COO Dick Costolo said yesterday at the AdAge Digital Conference. Additionally, Twitter is still vague on many of the platform’s crucial components – such as how pricing and targeting will work. But in his comments Costolo unleashed enough details to set agency execs’ mouths watering – and in some cases scratching their heads – as they dashed off point-of-view statements to clients. Below is a summary of what’s known, and what’s not, about Twitter’s new ad platform:

Read More: ClickZ

Calculating The True Cost Per Acquisition

I had a conversation with a travel CMO excited at finally having cracked the code on her Display retargeting campaigns (prior to Google offering its own version of this link). Her cost per acquisition/booking (CPA) from this campaign was, let’s say, $18. And, let’s say she makes an average of $36 on each booking. So, great — she’s got it figured out, with a 100% return on ad spend (ROAS). Well, not exactly. While retargeting is a great tactic to get lost leads back to your site, what the vendors won’t tell you is that it’s greatly biased to overemphasize conversions if evaluated on a post-impression (a/k/a view-through) attribution model. Don’t get me wrong — I, for one, am a believer in the post-impression conversion. While Display ads have suffered from declining click-through rates since they debuted in the 1990s, consumers are still measurably affected by them and clearly respond to them to some degree. They may see that great deal to Cancun and go to your site on their own, and a great many consumers do this (there is even evidence that good Display drives search). So, clearly, I believe there is some effect that isn’t related to clicks.

Read More: MediaPost

Rubicon Unveils ‘Permission’ System, Shifts Display Market Control Back To Publishers

In a bid to help publishers regain control over the sale of their inventory through third-party ad networks and exchanges, the Rubicon Project this morning unveiled a new platform that it claims will “balance the digital advertising ecosystem.” The new platform, dubbed “Permission Control 2.0,” is an apparent move to give publishers tools for dealing with the shift toward so-called “demand-side” players who have shifted some of the online display marketplace power to ad agencies and media buyers. Rubicon described the system as a new “infrastructure” that will give publishers “complete visibility and control over which demand partners can sell their inventory, at what level of transparency and at what price.” In a related move, Rubicon said it is simultaneously launching a “real-time bidding” (RTB) beta program with a limited number of undisclosed publishers it claims will enable them to “safely capture all potential ad revenue, from all buying methods.” Rubicon did not disclose details about how the permission control system or the real-time bidding beta work, but said that combined, they would give publishers the ability to see and control “money spent through all industry buying methods – including real-time bidding (RTB), cookies, audience segments, content/contextual segments and site buys – without putting their pricing and direct sales efforts at risk.”

Read More: MediaPost

Rubicon Adds Two Key Hires, Takes Aim At Rivals

Ad technology firm The Rubicon Project on Monday announced two key hires in Ben Trenda as vice president of U.S. Demand, and Eric Matza as director of product marketing. Formerly VP of global partnerships at AOL, Trenda is tasked with growing relationships with ad networks, and other third-party sales channel partners. Meanwhile, Matza — former vice president of product management at email services provider Experian — will be responsible for bringing ad technology and data products to market. Taking direct aim at Google’s DoubleClick ad platform, The Rubicon Project recently hired Allen & Company to help finance expansion and possible acquisitions. The company also issued a “manifesto,” in which it criticized the current leaders in the ad-server technology market [read: DoubleClick] for failing to measure up to its own “publisher-centric” standards. Falling in line, Trenda took the opportunity on Monday to hammer home the idea. “The company does not sell directly to advertisers, so unlike other players in the digital advertising marketplace it doesn’t compete with its publisher clients or channel partners, and it doesn’t black box deals — all parties can safely and profitably get the transparency they want and need,” he said. As vice president of global partnerships at AOL, Trenda worked on agency partnerships, global programs and Latin America. Prior to AOL, Trenda led a West Coast sales team at Advertising.com. He has also held roles in the Strategic Alliances group at Yahoo and before that, in sales at Overture and GoTo.

Read More: MediaPost

5 Reasons Digital Agencies Will Fail

I’m not your typical agency exec. In fact, I never stepped foot into an agency until I started my own. I earned my BA/MA in anthropology and sociology, worked for the original social networks (associations) in the late 80s, and then jumped into the interactive publishing business in 1993. So, perhaps my view on what will make or break today’s digital agency is a bit skewed. Or perhaps it is simply unclouded. In a nutshell, there is far too much focus today on the technology (the “digital”) and not enough focus on providing a communications service (the “agency”). And that’s a dangerous land for any agency to live in, whether it is pure-play search, social, or a true full-service digital shop. Let’s face it: We are not the technologists — we have Microsoft, Apple, and MIT Media Lab for that. But we are the communicators and should be focused on what we do best — the creation and delivery of communication that connects with an audience on a rational and emotional level, ultimately driving revenue for a client. With that in mind, here are the top five reasons certain digital agencies will fail within the next five years.

Read More: iMediaConnection

AdMob’s iPad SDK Coming In A Few Weeks

Mobile ad network AdMob — which is in the process of being purchased by Google — tells us that its first advertising product for Apple’s new iPad should be available to developers in the next two weeks. AdMob marketing boss Jason Spero tells us that his company is currently working on figuring out how iPad ads will look like and how they’ll work. Spero thinks the ads’ appearance may more closely resemble online ads than the small mobile ads that AdMob offers for the iPhone and other mobile phones. But he thinks the back-end of iPad ads may more closely resemble mobile ads than online ads. (He should hope so — he’d much rather have AdMob running iPad ads than Web-focused ad networks like Yahoo or AOL.) Why would publishers give their iPad inventory to a mobile ad network when they could probably get more money from an online ad network? One reason for this is that the iPad does not support Adobe’s Flash plugin, which most Web ad networks use for multimedia ads. So publishers can’t just copy and paste their Web ad code into their iPad apps. Another is that the “after-the-click” activity on the iPad may be different than it is for Web sites, and mobile ad networks seem to understand this better. On the Web, after users click most ads, it just takes them to another Web site. On an iPhone, it could take them to a map, the App Store, a mini-site, somewhere in iTunes, etc. It seems mobile ad networks may be able to offer a better experience here.

Read More: SFGate