Zach Rodgers

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Contact this author at zach@adexchanger.com

Booyah + Rocket Fuel: How One Agency Makes The Most Of A DSP/Ad Network

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

Last week AdExchanger looked at the dynamic between ROI DNA, a performance-driven agency, and its preferred display-trading partner, Run DSP. (Read the story.)

There are many such relationships in ad tech, where a mid-sized agency relies on a key network or platform partner to drive ROI and provide hand-holding to its planners and buyers. You can find another example in the interplay between Denver agency Booyah Advertising and DSP/ad network Rocket Fuel.

Booyah has about 50 clients on behalf of whom it manages roughly $100 million in digital spend annually. Of the half that goes to display, 60% is programmatic. That makes $30 million in exchange-traded media.

Booyah began working with Rocket Fuel three years ago, adding it to media plans alongside traditional ad networks and direct site buys. Booyah President Troy Lerner says, "I didn't even know what I was buying."

As the agency's media buyers got more comfortable with the terminology of DSPs and RTB-focused ad networks, it tried some other similar partners, among them Turn and Invite.

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What Yahoo Sees In Tumblr: A Logged-In, Cross-Channel Audience

Monday, May 20th, 2013

There were two adjectives Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer used repeatedly when discussing the advertising opportunity with Tumblr, which her company agreed to buy for $1.1 billion. Those words: "native" and "aspirational."

It's what you would expect. In its short history of monetization, Tumblr has focused on organic ad formats, tentatively rolling out tools to promote organic posts. Yahoo execs, eager to demonstrate the huge price it is paying for Tumblr, are telling investors to expect ad revenue to go big-time in 2014.

But there's an additional opportunity around ad addressability of the constantly logged-in Tumblr audience – across both web and mobile – that is increasingly valuable in this era of decaying cookies. Mayer hinted at this opportunity.

"I don't want to pre-announce anything today," she said. "It is quite clear that the psychographic profiles on Tumblr are different than we have on Yahoo, which enriches the user base."

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Adelphic Names WPP Mobile Exec Michael Collins To CEO Spot

Monday, May 20th, 2013

Adelphic, one of a handful of companies helping brands and publishers identify audiences across devices, has scored a CEO from agency land.

Michael Collins was the chief executive at WPP-owned mobile agency Joule, which he built from scratch in 2007 into a global mobile-centric marketing agency with outposts in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Collins will help two-year-old Adelphic bring its publisher- and advertiser-facing technology to market. On the supply side, the company works with its publisher partners to profile their traffic and, in the words of cofounder Jennifer Lum, "make each user and ad request much more specific and descriptive by appending data to them to open up many more targeting possibilities."

Among its rivals are Drawbridge, Tapad and AdTruth.

From the marketer perspective, Collins says he tested many "data-enhanced" mobile ad products at Joule and believes Adelphic is one of the few to drive significant performance improvements.

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ROI DNA + Run DSP: Portrait Of A Functional Agency-Network Relationship

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

Five years into the exchange-buying trend, attention tends to focus on what's broken in agency/network relationships. Black-box algorithms, opaque margins, impression fraud, and a tendency to overpromise and underdeliver have damaged trust in digital ads and the platforms that traffic them.

So the story goes. But for many agencies, these concerns are outweighed by the value being generated through display ad vendors.

Consider digital agency ROI DNA and Run DSP, its display ad platform of choice. The two companies have an alliance that dates back three years and continues to gain momentum.

San Francisco-based ROI DNA works with a number of clients and, as its name suggests, is focused on performance-driven marketing. Among its clients are Bay Area startups like DropBox, Ning and Apsalar. The firm offers search, mobile, site development and branding services. Most of its display ad solution outside of AdWords comes through Run DSP.

ROI DNA's Director of Paid Acquisition Julia Kung says not all clients work with Run, but the ones who do dedicate a significant portion of their spend to it. Often the display ad outlay is a complement to the search capability ROI DNA offers in-house.

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Magna: Display Ad Prices Will Remain Low, But There's A Silver Lining For Sellers

Friday, May 3rd, 2013

In a new update to its US ad forecast, Magna has slightly boosted its overall US ad forecast for this year and next, thanks to rising consumer confidence and other signs of life in the US economy. However, digital is the only media channel expected to see notable growth in 2013 (+11.5% in total interactive spend). That's a significant drop from the 14 to 15% growth rate Magna measured in 2012, which is normal as digital commands an ever larger slice of the pie.

"Reaching such high market share – 26 to 27% – [digital spending growth] has to slow down because there is less money each year from print budget or TV budget to be transferred," said Vincent Letang, Magna's Director of Global Forecasting. "The overall pie doesn't grow significantly."

Letang says display and video ad prices will further deflate this year due to surging supply and wider adoption of programmatic mechanisms, according to Magna Global. If there's good news for the sell side, it lies in cost savings linked to selling efficiencies

AdExchanger spoke with Letang this morning.

AdExchanger: Why the display price deflation?

VINCENT LETANG: It's due to two things. One is the explosion of supply. With the basic rules of supply and demand, you can expect the cost per unit to go down when supply explodes and demand doesn't grow as quickly.

Also a factor in the deflation of CPMs is how new trading mechanisms such as programmatic buying effect display, specifically remnant inventory, non-premium websites and commoditized banner formats.

Volume keeps growing but prices don't grow as fast. In some segments and formats, prices go down, and that's how we end up with low double-digit growth.

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Xaxis Grows Revenue As WPP Chases Platform Budgets

Monday, April 29th, 2013

WPP Group has shared some new details on revenue performance and strategy for its Xaxis trading unit.

Xaxis grew its revenue by 28% during the first quarter, said Pivotal Research Analyst Brian Wieser in a research note. WPP had previously stated the business had 2012 media billings of $270 million and a headcount of 200.

The healthy growth rate is in line with at least one other agency trading desk (Interpublic Group's Cadreon grew about 28% in North America last year, AdExchanger hears) and suggests trading desks – two of them, anyway – are humming along even while enduring pushback from some clients.

Wieser said in his note, "We see trading contributing to the increased reliance that most marketers place on agencies given the balanced application of technology integration, best practices and talent agency trading desks can apply."

Xaxis fits into an overarching WPP strategy of becoming a platform partner to advertisers in an age when CIO and CMO budgets increasingly overlap and clients want to simplify their technology approach.

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IPG's Cadreon Gets A Seat At The Grown-Up Table

Friday, April 26th, 2013

Interpublic Group has made changes to its Cadreon trading desk in North America, uprooting it from its previous home in the Mediabrands Audience Platform and repotting it in the Magna Global media investment arm.

As Adweek reported earlier this month, a new entity called Magna Global North America will absorb the trading desk along with search agency Reprise. MAP, meanwhile, will carry on primarily outside the US.

MGNA is led by Kristi Argyilan, who says that by aligning Cadreon and Reprise with Magna's TV, print and radio buying activities, Mediabrands is laying the groundwork for wider automation of media buying, including traditional placements.

"As the platforms become more sophisticated and the inventory is available for more traditional media, we start to get to cross-channel, real-time optimization," she said.

It's natural to wonder if the change was driven by continued client pushback against desks like Cadreon, WPP's Xaxis, Omnicom's Accuen, and Publicis' VivaKi Audience On Demand. But while those pressures are real (The Kellogg Company and Kimberly-Clark are among the brands that have publicly balked, citing concerns about data security or "black box" bidding algorithms) they do not seem to be in play here. There are a couple reasons why.

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