AdExchanger.com asked ad industry executives: “What’s your take on Google announcing yesterday that it is now selling guaranteed ‘premium’ inventory from publishers on the Google Display Network?”
Curt Hecht, CEO of VivaKi Nerve Center, a Publicis company
“VivaKi has been advocating a reserved marketplace with Google dating back to our original partnership announcement in 2008. The focus being Google providing the technology to allow us to drive more automation between seller and buyer. While all of the details aren’t clear from what was shared last week, we see their private ad slots as a key area related to our needs.
While our spending continues to grow in the spot marketplace, clients and publishers still desire the controls and forecasting offered in a guaranteed market around context, price and performance. So, for Google to continue to expand revenue in display it makes sense they would move in this direction.
Specific to display, we see a very fluid and dynamic marketplace with tons of choice for our clients. However operational challenges with the increased complexity offer plenty of room for technology to make easier for all parties to manage the market in the way best to grow their business.
Google being more competitive in all forms of inventory and sales methods whether automated or direct seems like a necessary path to being competitive in a fragmented market. We are testing similar approaches with Yahoo! as well and will be focused on more automation with all of our partners in both the spot and reserved marketplaces.
We don’t see this move as threatening to agencies, while this announcement will make it easier to forecast and buy leveraging Google, the continued media fragmentation and entry of new technology into marketing only increases the need for our guidance with clients and our media and technology partners.”
