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The State Of Evidon: Meyer on Regulation, Extending Into Performance and The Roadmap Ahead

Scott Meyer is CEO of Evidon, an online advertising technology company.

As part of its "State of..." series of articles with industry executives, AdExchanger.com sat down with Meyer to discuss his company, his views on the space, and the state of Evidon today.

Click below or scroll down for more:

• Ad Technology Today
• Evidon In The Ad Tech Landscape
• Strategy In U.S. and Europe
• The Regulatory Environment In Review
• Profitability and Revenues
• Milestones Ahead

AdExchanger.com: Where do you think we are with the online ad tech space today, generally speaking?

SCOTT MEYER: There's totally an inflection point. I've been at this a long time and I think this is the third wave, if you will. There was the first big bubble, and then there was the second one, and you can see that we're reaching another crescendo. The apex of it is still a year to 18 months away. What you're starting to see now is a pattern that has repeated itself in the past, and it will become apparent this year, which is the separation of the great from the merely good.

You're going to start to see companies that are accelerating. And as we've seen, the creation of RTB technology shows how easy it is to get into the market now with the readily available, venture capital.

So, in each category you're going to see who the market leaders are. The other ones are not going to fade away, but they'll consolidate.  That's the big picture thing that I see going on.

What keeps Evidon safe from a world of commoditizing technology?

In order to be the company that we are - doing compliance and transparency - it's very hard to be credible unless you're very cautious to never be seen as going into competition with your clients, right?

That's why we never trade in any form of media or data. We just don't. We've been around for more than two years, and everyone has seen that being a technology platform for compliance and transparency is a great business. No one's worrying anymore about, "Oh, what's the Evidon pivot? What day are they going to show up and say, ‘We're now the Evidon ad network? Thanks for trusting me with all your data.’" Frankly, that was written into our contracts with all of our clients from the beginning and was never an issue.

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What Data Buying Isn’t

"Data-Driven Thinking" is a column written by members of the media community and containing fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Today's column is written by Michael Katz, CEO of interclick, a Yahoo! company.

With all the great data that data providers are making accessible today, it's possible to interact with consumers in ways that were never before possible. The tremendous breadth and depth of available data moves consumer views from one-dimensional to multi-dimensional, helping to paint a much more complete picture. The implications positively impact the entire value chain from the marketer all the way to the consumer. For all the progress however, we’re still very early on and there are still several misconceptions about the successful application of data.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that optimal data consumption is on an "as needed" basis since data is expensive and more data may not add incremental value. Utilizing data for targeting is only one of many applications however. One of the most important and innovative applications of data isn’t for targeting at all but rather enabling marketers to implement more effective customer segmentation strategies.

Many transaction-centric B2C companies rely on effective segmentation to align messaging with business objectives in order to maximize LTV (lifetime value). Successful implementation of segmentation helps these companies define business models, build customer loyalty programs, and further value proposition discussions. The exercise of creating an effective segmentation strategy should result in a comprehensive understanding of the various types of customers as well a coherent plan for achieving business results.

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Balancing Facebook With Sponsored Ads; New Acxiom CRO Delivers Pitch; Turow On Digital’s Credit Score

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Balancing Like And Revenue

A Wall Street Journal article points to the balance Facebook must strike to extract revenue from advertisers while keeping consumers happy. Until recently, brand owners have been able to create their Facebook pages and get in their "Like-ers" daily news feeds whenever the brands post new stories to their pages. But, steadily, brands ability to get in the streams has been diminished algorithmically by Facebook as it looks to make marketers pay for the news feed "pleasure" with "Sponsored Stories" instead. In some ways, this is similar to Google paid ad listings in Google search. The difference is that there are no organic (unpaid) listings "stream" in Facebook which a brand can be the best result (according to Google's rules) for a particular keyword or phrase. This is an individual's curated Facebook experience after all. Yet, it would seem logical that if a user chooses a brand through a "like", it should appear in the news feed - "I'd like to hear from my brand." The reality of Facebook's revenue needs and what the user wants may be diverging slightly, especially as Facebook edges towards an IPO. Given the gyst of the article, Facebook seems to be increasingly telling its users, "You can see your friends, but you can't see your favorite brands unless they pay for it. We have to make money." Users could be OK with that, too. It's a balance.

Acxiom Adds CRO, Pitching Brand Safety

MTV and Myspace sales exec Nada Stirratt has jumped ship for data provider Acxiom where she'll take on the role of Chief Revenue Officer. Read the release. Stirratt tells Ad Age's Michael Learmonth that in regards to today's concerns around data and privacy online - "That's why I'm here so we can be a part of those conversations about the use of data and what marketers should be doing with their data." Leveraging data in the face of the privacy discussion has become part of the sales pitch for the big data providers to marketers who ask, "Are you brand-safe?" Read more.

Display Standards

In New Media Age, Lucy Tesseras explores the standardization of display ad file sizes in the UK. AIS creative director Geoff Gower says don't bother, "It would be nice if it was easier for us to work with one set of standards, but that by its very nature means we'll continue to deliver the same type of ads. Sensible, forward-thinking brands should be looking at bigger, more flexible sponsorship and partnership models, rather than just buying more space and shouting at people." Read more.

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BMO Analyst Salmon Discusses Data-Driven, Digital Ecosystem; Sees More Focus On Sell-Side Ahead

Dan Salmon is an equity research analyst at BMO Capital Markets and covers advertising and marketing services. With earnings season beginning to wane, Salmon shared a few thoughts with AdExchanger on the latest machinations in the data-driven ecosystem including today's announcement regarding Aol selling remnant display inventory through Yahoo!'s Right Media Exchange.

AdExchanger.com: You suggested in your comments to investors recently that Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson could be a good fit for unlocking the value of Right Media Exchange in that he's a product guy. Why?

DAN SALMON: Many investors and industry executives have been skeptical of Thompson's hiring due to his lack of background in advertising and media. While that is understandable, I'd argue that as technology is tied more closely to advertising via IP communications networks, Thompson's background actually brings complementary expertise to Yahoo's "ad people" like Ross Levinsohn and Wayne Powers. As exchange-based, real-time bidding becomes increasingly prevalent – not just in display, but also mobile and online video, and eventually, DOOH and IPTV – Yahoo! should be well served by a leader that understands the nature of product development and someone who speaks the language of the engineering community. Content deals and the hiring of strong salespeople is a constantly fluid element of Yahoo!'s business, but the technology must be a consistent foundation.

When you look at Aol, what are some of the key things you're looking at regarding the success of its display advertising strategy?

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Yahoo!’s Right Media Exchange Adds Aol Remnant Display Inventory

The Yahoo!-Aol-Microsoft deal, which lets each of the partners sell the other's remnant display ad inventory has born its first fruit. Read the release.

New Right Media Exchange North America chief Brian Silver explained to AdExchanger yesterday that Aol now has a seat on the exchange in order to sell it's "Class II" remnant ad inventory. It was a deal originally finalized in December as Silver said that no date had been set for the roll-out of Aol inventory on RMX - "It's entirely up to them along with our guidance."

Regarding on who gets to buy Aol inventory, Silver played the role of agnostic exchange owner and said the publisher is in complete control: "As a seat holder, they control their inventory of who they choose to do business with. So whether or not they decide to link with Yahoo!, or Demand partner B, C or D, it's completely up to them. Or even if they decide to monetize it themselves. They could find some yield in their own ads running across their inventory that's sitting there, which a lot of our partners do as well. So, they just use our tools and mechanisms around that."

Aol appears to have made a choice of Yahoo!'s RMX instead of AppNexus and the Microsoft Ad Exchange. But, it's likely not that cut and dry in terms of deciding which was the best tech or service for Aol inventory. Yahoo! has always seemed to be driving the bus in this still-strategizing, triumverate.

Of interest to Aol's ad network is the ability to continue to buy Yahoo! O&O through Right Media as ad networks and demand-side platforms are rejected by the Yahoo! mothership on RMX. What's unclear is how much Ad.com, the buyer, has to expose in terms of its advertisers on RMX who buy Yahoo! inventory. If it wants to keep buying the high-performing Yahoo! inventory, perhaps it needed to have Aol ante up with some Aol inventory for the exchange.

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AdExchanger: The Facebook IPO

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem...

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NYT’s Paywall Looking Up, About.com Struggles; Social Spend Trend

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Banging On The Paywall

The New York Times reported its Q4 2011 earnings yesterday and the subscriber numbers were at 390,000 - that's 20% higher that Q3. A nice quarter-over-quarter increase it would seem. Did you get/give a subscription as a holiday gift? Ken Doctor of Newsonomics points out, that the subscriber level may sound low when you compare it to the Times' 33 million U.S. uniques, "but it's 34% of its print circulation." Doctor offers his view on the results, "It’s not the [the proof for] saving the newspaper industry, or even the Times, but it’s a strong indication that some readers will indeed pay for digital news access — and that paying for subscriptions opens other doors as well." Read his detailed summary - including a compelling breakdown of digital revs. And, read the NYT's earnings press release. Last but not least, read the earnings call transcript where NYT CFO Jim Folio comments on About.com fortunes in Q4: "Total revenues declined 26% to $26 million in the fourth quarter, with decreases in cost-per-click and display advertising contributed almost equally to the decline. About faced a variety of challenges in 2011, but we believe we are on the right path."

Social Spend Trend

SEM platforms - now cross-channel buying platforms - continue to crank out the trend reports leveraging their customers data. Kenshoo reported yesterday that its social ad spend "customers spent 109 percent more on Facebook in Q4 of 2011 than they did in Q3. While some of this growth can be attributed to seasonality, the increase in global Facebook ad budgets compares favourably to search channels like Google, Bing, and Yahoo which, in aggregate, saw paid search ad budget growth of 27 percent globally on a quarter-over-quarter basis." Read more.

Ad Network Apps

The ad-network-formerly-known-as-Travel-Ad-Network, Travora, is getting into the city guide business among other things. CEO Nan Forte (AdExchanger Q&A) says in the press release, "Through our partnerships with existing and new brands, we are supporting the creation, development, monetization and distribution of travel information products for mobile web and apps." Read more. More evidence of ad networks moving into the content biz and using their "digital native" (love that phrase!) monetization skills. Others doing the same are Valueclick and Specific Media, for example.

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Moving Mobile from Cool to Intelligently Hip

"Now Serving Mobile" is a column focused on the audience-buying opportunity in mobile advertising.

Elizabeth Zalman is co-Founder at Media Armor, a mobile advertising technology company.

In January, I committed my 2012 resolutions to this readership, and my personal favorite was ensuring we hit $1B in spend.  Resolutions are wonderful, but in order to fulfill them, we have to act.

First, a story: about a week ago, I was browsing at the online site of a large luxury goods multi-channel retailer.  I put two dresses into my cart, then abandoned.  I didn’t receive any remarketing ads.  The next day, I went back to the site and bought the dresses, and right after I converted, I began getting messaged on behalf of the retailer.  The ads were dynamically rendered, showcasing the two dresses I had just purchased.  The first few times I saw them, I chuckled, but after a while, I became frustrated because the content of the messaging was borderline absurd.  Even worse, I ended up returning the dresses to the retailer’s brick-and-mortar store, and not twelve hours later, received two more ads.  Eek!

It’s relatively easy to explain this scenario away.  For whatever reason, the vendor serving the ads neglected to close the loop that I had purchased, and the content of the ads was rendered irrelevant.  Then, the offline component of my behavior wasn’t translated to the online, and the content became even more extraneous.

We live an imperfect world with respect to data.  These imperfections become even more apparent when of-the-moment bells and whistles (in this case, dynamic rendering) aren’t fed information appropriate to each individual consumer.  In the story above, the messaging itself wasn’t immaterial; it was the content.

As we look at how money is being invested in mobile advertising, it’s very much focused on these ‘of the moment’ whistles, with extremely limited intelligence feeding the technology:

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Display Advertising Mentioned 8 Times In Facebook S-1; Google Talks Ad Exchange For Euro Publishers

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IPO Opens Facebook Kimono

To the media's relief, Facebook has finally filed its regulatory papers in preparation for an Initial Public Offering and it appears that just about the entire advertising market is in the company's crosshairs. From the S-1 filing: "According to an industry source, total worldwide advertising spending in 2010 was $588 billion. Our addressable market opportunity includes portions of many existing advertising markets, including the traditional offline branded advertising, online display advertising, online performance-based advertising, and mobile advertising markets." So of the $588 billion 2010 global ad nut, Facebook captured $3.7 billion (actually 85% of that is ads) and $1 billion in income -albeit in 2011. For reference, Google made 10x the revs with $37 billion in revenue and $9 billion in net income in 2011. Do I hear $50 billion in Facebook revenues in 2015? Where'd I get that number? The seat of my data-driven pants! The big blue machine is about to get unleashed and pending how much data they let advertisers use, it could get much bigger, very quickly. Read Facebook's S-1 statement. All Things D's Tricia Duryee notes that Zynga is 12% of revenue for Facebook. Read it. Will Zynga get acquired by Facebook soon? Duryee counts 24 Zynga mentions in the S-1. Meanwhile, AdExchanger notes 8 mentions for un-sexy "display advertising." The S-1 states, "Display advertisers run impression-based campaigns on Facebook in order to reach our large user base and because of the amount of time that users spend with us." Technically, they're usually click-based, CPC campaigns. But every CPC has a CPM metric standing close-by. More on the S-1 deets from Bloomberg.

Search Privacy Policy

David Strader looks at the recent Google privacy policy changes on the iCrossing blog. He writes, "Although the policy change means Google will produce more relevant ads you see on Gmail and other Google products, the impact on natural search is still yet to be seen. I believe a lot of this data collection for more relevant search results is already being done and that this announcement is merely Google finally telling its users what Google have been doing for a while now. In other words, Google is making its privacy policy easier for users to read and understand." Read more. Meanwhile, Danny Sullivan says that Microsoft is taking Google to task in newspaper advertisements questioning the recent privacy policy changes. Read it.

Programmatic Challenges

VivaKi Nerve Center CEO Curt Hecht discusses challenges with programmatic buying with Digiday's Brian Morrisey. Hecht says, "Believe it or not, one big challenge is simply getting people to accept it. The pipelines are in place, and technology features are getting more refined to enable customized bidding and buying. But programmatic buying is a dramatic shift that challenges long established business practices." Read more.

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AOL’s Armstrong: We’ll Get Deeper Into The Exchange Space In 2012

AOL's advertising is mostly known for its ad network and targeting tools, but in contrast to rivals Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, it has not been deeply immersed in the ad exchange space. During the company's Q4 earnings call, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong told investors that AOL plans to roll out several products around audience buying and data this year, while keeping its focus on partnerships with the major ad holding companies.

Armstrong didn't provide specifics during a follow-up call with the press. "We have a series of products around the ad exchange space coming out this year," he said. "In fact one is being beta tested right now with a partner. It is designed to help the ad exchanges and players in that space, as well as offer another version of non-reserved inventory for them. We’ll go into more detail this quarter."

Armstrong also pointed to some other longer-term products that will be released within the next six months and through the latter part of the year. "All I can say right now is that I’ve been reviewing them and they will serve as good augments to what’s currently in the market," he said.

For the most part, the closest thing AOL has done in terms of working with third parties in the ad exchange and demand-side platform space has been with Publicis Group's digital hub, VivaKi. That work mostly revolves around video, Armstrong said, though he plans to expand that partnership with that agency unit.

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