David Kaplan

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The World According To The OPA: Prez Pam Horan Talks NewFronts And Private Exchanges

Monday, May 6th, 2013

The NewFront – the digital world's answer to the TV upfront marketplace – wrapped up last week with a number of high-profile, extravagant showcases of new content from Yahoo, Aol, The Weather Channel and others. At the same time, programmatic buying methods have adopted traditional models of locking in guaranteed sales, months ahead of schedule.

But can digital, with its near-infinite inventory and lack of a fall season or defined day parts, successfully emulate these traditional models?

AdExchanger checked in with Pam Horan, president of the Online Publishers Association, for her take on what's in front of digital sellers these days.

AdExchanger: What do you think of the way the NewFront period has evolved? Is it meaningful in terms of becoming a marketplace that actually generates revenue, in the way that the upfront is for television?

PAM HORAN: Making a direct comparison between the NewFront and television upfronts is always going to be difficult simply because the seasonal structure of TV schedules and the nature of their inventory is so different. I think the NewFront has played an important role in highlighting the depth and breadth of digital content that advertisers can partner with. The impact of it is spread out more than television’s upfront because digital is always generating new content and doesn’t have a “fall season” to front-load.

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Digitas And HuffPost Attempt 'Real-Time' Native Ads

Friday, May 3rd, 2013

At yesterday's Digitas NewFront, Huffington Post executives said they would offer their native advertising content distribution system exclusively to the Publicis Groupe interactive shop's clients.

While billed as "real-time," the self-serve content system will post marketers' content within a two-hour window of receiving the request. "We're bringing our year-old BrandLive service to HuffPost that will allow us to circumvent the usual ad buying and trafficking process to publish 'Sponsored Stories' on the site," said Tony Weisman, CEO of Digitas North America, referring to the company's "brand newsroom" service on stage at the NewFront with Arianna Huffington, chair, president and editor-in-chief of Aol's Huffington Post Media Group.

But aren't native advertising and real-time – even if we allow for a two-hour lag – generally considered mutually exclusive marketing pursuits? Not so, said Travis Donovan, Huffington Post's executive products editor.

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Corrected: At Aol's Newfronts, Lines Between TV And Video Disappear

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013

For all the glitz and glamour that surrounded Aol's Newfronts programming preview on Tuesday, perhaps the most relevant news for advertisers came at the end of the showcase with a mention of the unsexiest of topics: back-office operations designed to support the thousands of hours of digital video, along with analytics.

Following appearances by actors like Sarah Jessica Parker, Hank Azaria and Nicole Ritchie to promote their new Aol video series, the company discussed the new deal with media buying workflow software provider Mediaocean and digital video rights manager FreeWheel, as well as a new deal with Nielsen to provide "TV comparable" ratings for Aol's online video.

FreeWheel is billing this new arrangement with Mediaocean, which is being inaugurated with Aol but will be rolled out across their respective new and old clients over the next few months as its "FourFronts solution."

"There is no such thing as online video," said FreeWheel co-founder and co-CEO Jonathan Heller in an interview with AdExchanger after the Aol presentation. "There is only TV. Marrying our distribution capabilities with Mediaocean and their presence in the buying community makes the point that in order for the video ad buying process to work, it has to be end-to-end. Or it doesn't work at all."

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Self-Serve Twitter Ads No Longer Invite-Only, Now Open To All

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

A year after Twitter opened its self-serve Twitter Advertising system to businesses on an "invite-only" basis, the microblog's Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts products will be open to anyone in the US. Read the release.

This news was mentioned as Kevin Weil, Senior Director of Product for Revenue at Twitter, participated on a panel with Google's VP of Display Advertising Neal Mohan and Facebook's Product Director of Ads Gokul Rajaram at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York.

Weil said Twitter is mindful that the real money is still in TV, making a bid for Twitter's place in alignment with old media rather than against it.

"Twitter is a bridge, not an island," he said. "It can connect with all the market outreach an advertiser already does, especially across TV. About 95% of the social media commentary about TV happens on Twitter. During the last Super Bowl, about half of all the TV ads had hashtags. Our message to advertisers is that Twitter and TV...make each other stronger."

The panel's moderator, TechCrunch's Anthony Ha, then led a broader discussion with the other panelists about the importance of mobile and how the three companies approach devices.

"I tell advertisers, 'If you're building for mobile, you're building for the future,'" Mohan said. "Consumers don't think of silos – they don't think, 'I'm on my desktop, I'm on my tablet, I'm on my phone' – but they do have different mindsets. And we all have to embrace that concept. Advertisers need to be focused on consumer context, not devices."

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Yahoo's De Castro Pledges Guarantees To Buyers Who Shift TV Budgets

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

Yahoo executives talked a lot about "new" ad formats and video-centric programming during its Newfront presentation, but a vague familiarity persisted until the very end of COO Henrique De Castro's presentation, when he made a promise to media buyers: give us a small yet sizable portion of your TV ad spending and we'll guarantee satisfaction.

It was a fairly bold moment – some in the audience laughed at either the audacity of De Castro's offer or the nonchalance of his delivery – amid a series of pedestrian showcases of upcoming video programming.

"Pick one brand on Yahoo," De Castro told attendees who had waited in long lines at the Best Buy Theatre in Times Square. "Call us and tell us you want to shift five to ten percent of your budget to Yahoo. And I will prove that it is the best return on your investment. And if not, I don't want your money. Pretty fair?"

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A Year After OpenX Acquisition, LiftDNA Founder Departs For Investor Life

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

It's been over a year since publisher, ad server and ad exchange OpenX bought publisher ad tech services provider LiftDNA (AdExchanger story). And as often happens in these cases, the founder of the acquired company is exiting.

Vadim Telyatnikov, who founded LiftDNA in 2009, told associates in an email memo obtained by AdExchanger that he is not heading to another startup or established media company; he's decided to create a hedge fund called Admire Capital and a separate incubator and seed funder dubbed Cvetlo.

While Telyatnikov couldn't be reached for additional comment, OpenX told us the integration of LiftDNA "is now coming to its close" under the management of Qasim Saifee, OpenX's SVP for its Monetization Platform, who has been overseeing the process since LiftDNA's acquisition.

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MRC Blesses Google's Viewability Metric. Does That Matter To Agencies?

Friday, April 26th, 2013

Google's offering in the ad viewability space has scored third-party accreditation from the Media Ratings Council.

Google joins others who have wended through the MRC's approval process – the respective viewability products from comScore, Double Verify and RealVu have been approved – so Google does not stand alone. But given its expansive relationship with marketers, agencies and publishers, the MRC's nod at Google's viewable offering is likely to spur more usage of this tool.

"Viewability is the first critical building block; no other metric matters, from a brand's perspective, if the ad wasn't seen by an actual human being," said Neal Mohan, Google's VP of display, in an interview with AdExchanger. "Anything that we build on top of that, such as brand lift, as we announced with our Google Consumer Surveys product, follows from that first step of knowing if an ad has been viewed."

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Still Vexed By RTB Impact, NYTCo Tweaks Paywall And Video Strategies

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

The New York Times Co. CFO Jim Follo reiterated a point he's been making on earnings calls since last year, namely that "premium" digital advertising continues to be challenged by the rise of audience targeting and the infinite amount of digital inventory generated by social media. Read the release.

During the Q1 earnings call, Mark Thompson, the former BBC executive who was named president and CEO of the NYTCo last year, attempted to calm analysts by detailing the early steps of what he called a new digital strategy. That strategy will offer tiered and lower-cost access via the metered paywall and a heightened concentration on video content and ads.

NYTCo appears ready to face the issues associated with automation. This week it hired former X+1 executive Matt Prohaska as its first programmatic advertising director. However, no mention of this new role was made during the call. Instead, Thompson and Denise Warren, EVP for the NYT's digital products and services group, offered a broader outline for turning around the company's ad declines.

"I've spent most of my time since I arrived as CEO of this company working with my colleagues to develop a medium-term strategy for the New York Times," Thompson said. "What you will hear today will not be my last word on the subject of 'strategy' but a significant first step to put the company on the path to sustainable growth."

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