The ‘Platforms’ Category
Shawn Riegsecker is Founder & President of Centro, a media services and technology firm and makers of Transis, a media buying system.
AdExchanger.com: Can you discuss the pivots in Centro's business model since 2001? And how has it led today's Transis offering?
Centro’s vision is the same today as the day we started. Our whole belief was that, with the fragmentation of media choices, agencies and buyers wouldn’t be able to scale digital via old processes and using outdated tools like spreadsheets, emails, phones and faxes. Great software was going to have to come into the mix to automate the entire process from beginning to end. We figured if we could create automated software that could profitably scale local online, which is one of the hardest and most fragmented parts of the industry, we could help agencies become more profitable by giving them the software to use also.
After years of developing the software, using it and perfecting it internally, it was time to release it to the industry.
What problem is Transis solving?
Planning, placing, tracking and reconciling digital campaigns are a nightmare for most agencies. A 2009 AAAAs report said the cost of servicing a digital campaign averages about 25% to 30% of the media cost compared to 2% for TV. This is unsustainable. The problem is the industry spends around 80% of its time in low-value transactional activities versus highly strategic and creative thinking. Transis automates the low-value activities and gives digital media teams anywhere from 30% to 70% more of their time back to do the important things they like to do and their clients want them to do.
AdExchanger.com: Centro offers a range of services. How do you anticipate the company evolving with Transis? Will it become a sole focus, for example?
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Demand-side platform, DataXu, announced today that it raised $11 million in a Series B financing led by VC firm, Menlo Ventures. Read the release.
DataXu CEO Mike Baker discussed the raise and the services layer with DataXu's offering.
AdExchanger.com: How long did it to take to raise this round? Is the DSP world resonating with venture capital firms?
MB: While DSPs are garnering a fair amount of buzz in the investment community, at the end of the day, seasoned investors know how to peel back the layers and focus on the fundamentals. During our conversations, the common theme we heard was that a proven leadership team -- one that has delivered value to shareholders in the past -- is the #1 attribute that they look for. Differentiated technology and real customer successes are critical, too. No amount of buzz can compensate for weakness in any of these areas.
In the release, it's stated that new funds will be used "to fund new product development, sales and marketing, and international expansion." Can you shed any more light here?
We are actively working on new feature and service extensions for our current DSP platform, as well as distinct, new offerings. I'd rather not divulge too much yet, but in our company's vision, DSP solutions are one component in a broader long-term strategy.
We currently work with 4 of the top 6 agency holding companies, as well as top global brands who have an international footprint. In order to serve these clients (and new ones) in the best way possible, having a global presence is a must.
Please discuss the DataXu services layer. How much of the campaign management is done by DataXu and how much is on the client? How do you see this evolving?
We offer our clients two solutions, in order to meet a range of needs. For those who put a premium on media transparency and want to manage certain aspects of their campaigns themselves, we offer a platform solution. For those who prefer to have us optimize their entire media buy and campaign, we offer a turnkey solution, which I feel is a requirement in a nascent market such as ours. Clients appreciate our flexibility, and if their needs evolve down the road, we would consider other service models, too.
By John Ebbert
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Jay Habegger is CEO of ownership targeting company, OwnerIQ.
AdExchanger.com: How did OwnerIQ begin?
JH: OwnerIQ was born out a few simple insights. Effective advertising is presenting the right message to the consumer that resonates and influences perceptions or compels actions. Our first insight, supported by research, is that knowing about a person’s stuff tells a lot about what the right message is for a particular consumer; we believe that you are what you own. A second important insight is that we could get at ownership information of consumer durable goods in a reliable and scalable way by tagging consumers as they participate in both shopping and owning experiences. To make these two insights actionable we built a software platform that would allow us to manage the myriad of “ownership signals” we acquire on consumers, group these together in meaningful ways for advertisers and acquire media to execute campaigns.
Does it all come down to in-market data? Can behavioral advertising work with a more macro approach such as demographic data?
In-Market data is useful and valuable. Working with our manufacturer partners OwnerIQ is able to deliver some of the most reliable and strongest in-market data for consumer durable goods. But, in-market is far from the entire picture.
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Alex Baydin, Founder and CEO of PerformLine, an online performance marketing company.
AdExchanger.com: Please discuss your background. What key learning’s did you bring forward from Epic Advertising where you were GM to PerformLine?
AB: I have been in Online Advertising for the past ten (10) years, focusing mainly on advertising sales, business development, and product marketing and management. Prior to founding PerformLine, I started at United Online in Business Development, then worked at Quigo Technologies (since acquired by AOL) heading publisher acquisition efforts for their AdSonar contextual ad product, and Epic Advertising as a GM of the Lead Generation division.
Working with AdSonar at Quigo, we quickly realized the correlation between giving publishers a platform to be seen apart from a blind network and their ability to receive fair value for their inventory. My time at Epic was valuable in learning about the non-premium and performance-based network model. There is a great opportunity for monetization in the non-premium network space, but there are also many dimly lit corners that advertisers may not have the tolerance for.
From your perspective, what's broken with the ad network model and how is PerformLine addressing this deficiency?
The trust that existed between advertiser and network is broken. We are telling agencies and advertisers to trust, but verify. We are providing publishers and networks the proof they may need to maintain credibility and bring on an entirely new set of advertisers who may not be buying today because they have concerns about brand safety, compliance and wasted spend. Our platform allows reputable networks to earn fair value for their inventory, instead of having their CPMs dragged down by lower quality networks that have provided advertisers with bad experiences and damaged the trust.
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Frost Prioleau and Paul Harrison are CEO and CTO, respectively, of Simpli.fi, a demand-side platform for search marketers.
AdExchanger.com: Let's look back, first. The last company you both were involved in was Personifi. Can you give us a brief history? And then discuss how your Personifi experience has informed the creation of Simpl.fi?
Harrison: Actually, the last company that we were both involved with was Collective Media which acquired Personifi in 2008. Collective is an ad network and technology company that offers audience solutions to advertisers, agencies, and publishers. Collective was one of the first customers of Personifi’s contextual and behavioral targeting solution, and acquired Personifi in order to integrate Personifi’s targeting platform into Collective’s Ad network Management Platform, which is called AMP.
Collective is the best in the business at aggregating audiences for brand advertisers, so it was a great place for us to see the power of combining great technology with the right market vision and customer service.
As we set out to build Simpli.fi, we drew from lots of good experience and learning at Collective, including:
- Audience targeting is hard work and there is a steep learning curve to get it right.
- Data quality and relationships are very important.
- Audience capture, value and bid technology have evolved significantly over the past couple of years. We feel we’re in our third iteration of this with Simpli.fi
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Late last week, Acquisio announced that it was integrating DART into its paid search platform Though DART is used for paid search, display advertising may be a logical next step for a platform such as Acquisio's. Read the release.
Martin Le Sauteur, CEO of Acquisio, discussed the implications of the DART integration.
AdExchanger.com: Why integrate DART into your search platform?
MLS: Acquisio's clients are agencies and all agencies live in a world where each new client brings its own set of tracking systems. That's why agencies can't afford to be dedicated to just one tracking solution. When it comes to analytics, for example, most agencies have a mix of clients who use Google Analytics, Omniture Site Catalyst, WebTrends or Coremetrics.
When it comes to third party ad servers, the same is true, and their clients will use a mix of them. In this area, DoubleClick DFA is the gold standard. Most of our clients currently use DART to track results from display advertising, but many also use DART to track paid search results. This meant they had to use DART to traffick all their keywords, and each time a change was required, they had to go back to DART, get the trafficking sheet and push it into Acquisio. It was just extremely time consuming and agencies were concerned about losing historical data and having to re-tag all of their clients' websites.
Integrating DoubleClick and Acquisio therefore made sense and dozens of our clients were asking for the integration. Now, agencies can leverage the power of their DART tracking data within the Acquisio SEARCH application, eliminating the need to transfer files, manually encode URLs, or sync data.
As we like to say, our customers drive our road map, and this has been in the works for some time now. We're glad it's finally available.
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Click Forensics announced the "beta version of its display ad verification platform which it says "Protects Against Impression Inflation and Fraud." Read the release.
AdExchanger.com spoke to Click Forensics CEO Paul Pellman about the news.
AdExchanger.com: Please define what you mean by "impression inflation." How pervasive is this issue and how do fraudsters pull it off typically?
PP: Impression inflation is not necessarily fraudulent activity, although that can certainly be part of the problem. We define impression inflation as anything that happens in the ad-serving chain that would mislead the advertiser into believing its campaign delivered more impressions to the target audience than it actually did. A simple example would be a botnet impression that's counted as a human. Another example might be an ad delivered below the fold that's never seen by an actual human being, but the impression is counted and billed. Impressions delivered in the wrong geo or daypart also shouldn't count. Then there are the malicious schemes, such as ad stuffing (displaying multiple ads in the same ad unit for a very brief period), and invisible pages (malware opening pop-unders or 0x0 browsers to pull ads). These methods can inappropriately pad impression counts and invoices, reducing overall advertiser campaign effectiveness. The best ad networks and publishers want to assure advertisers that their campaigns are free from these inflated impression counts and their budgets aren't being wasted.
Do you offer ad serving capabilities, too? Potentially, it would seem Click Forensics could start a media business. Thoughts?
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Hooked Media Group announced in a release that it has launched Yoo-Me, "a premium gaming technology platform" that it hopes will create a compelling, publisher monetization solution given the influence of social media today.
Prita Uppal, CEO of Hooked Media Group, discussed the announcement with AdExchanger.com.
AdExchanger.com: What is broken with the publishing model which Hooked Media is fixing?
Uppal: Today's media consumption on publisher sites is extremely fragmented and not entirely social. This trend has led to diminished traffic, engagement rates and sellable ad inventory. Hooked's Yoo-Mee gaming application helps to reverse this trend by providing publishers access to the benefits associated with social communities. By partnering with Yoo-Mee, publishers are connected to a vast community of players. Publishers visitors, who mostly do not engage with others on the site, can now engage with each other on the site and, more importantly, can invite, compete, challenge and broadcast to and with the rest of the internet community so that people who may not visit the publishers site, now have a reason to come and join in the fun. Through Yoo-Mee, Publisher's receive incremental revenue streams from both advertising, cash tournaments, and virtual currency, but also growth in traffic and user engagement.
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Carnet Williams is CEO and Co-Founder of Sprout, a brand engagement ad platform.
AdExchanger.com: Let's start with the name - how does "Sprout" mesh with what you're doing today? And, what problem is Sprout solving and how does this play out with your announcement about Disney?
CW: The display advertising business is still incredibly young. There is so much room for innovation to sprout. We want to make display ads relevant and engaging. We want to enable brands to plant relationships with customers and nurture those relationships with continuous conversations over time.
Today, we announced Sprout Engage Ads. Sprout Engage Ads allow brands to make stronger connections with their audiences by providing a fun, interactive experience, wherever their audiences travel online.
Our first customer to roll out these ads is Disney, who created Engage Ads for Alice in Wonderland. These ads are designed to take display advertising to the next level by bringing personally relevant data right into a standard Flash ad unit. The ads are 'smart' in that they know when you have engaged with them so you will never see the same content twice. In addition, the ad and the Facebook application is linked so the ads know if you have engaged with the app and vice versa. For example, if you add yourself to the Mad Hatter's Army in the ad, when you come to the Facebook app you will be recognized as being in the army.
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Demand-side platform CPM Advisors announced that it would be leveraging the technology infrastructure of publisher optimizer, Mediageeks. Read the release.
AdExchanger.com discussed the announcement with CPM Advisors CEO Rob Leathern and MediaGeeks GM Jacob LeWinter.
AdExchanger.com: It's interesting that a demand-side tech company is partnering with a publisher-side technology company - and beyond just buying media through aggregators (yield optimizers). What's the takeaway here?
Rob Leathern: The smart players in this space are the ones that can build valuable core technologies but also work with other providers who can help support those efforts with relevant technologies. It's all about driving ROI for the advertiser, using cost-effective best-of-breed technologies that can help support that and not reinventing the wheel. Ad- and data-serving for us is about having the quickest, cost-effective, most efficient delivery infrastructure that can support our key assets in advertiser interface, decisioning, campaign data and budget management, and optimization.
Jacob LeWinter: As Mediageeks built out our global infrastructure we realized our services and technology were beneficial to more than just enterprise websites, and mediageeks evolved to be a leading ad infrastructure company. We now work with publishers, media companies, data platforms, DSPs, and even other supply side platforms who want robust scalable ad technology and solutions. We plan to work with the major players in each of these areas.
Mediageeks has been working with publishers but has not been as well-known as some of the other aggregators - why not?
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WildTangent, with an online games ad network of over 100+ million unique users according to the company, announced a "unique advertising platform, BrandBoost™, which provides brand marketers the opportunity to reward gamers with complimentary game play and virtual items in return for brand engagement." Read the release (PDF).
WildTangent's EVP of Business Development and Marketing, Dave Madden, shared a few insights into the new platform with AdExchanger.com.
What data points do you capture with BrandBoost in order to express brand engagement to brand marketers?
We capture standard ad metrics including click-through data. What’s important to keep in mind is that the user chooses whether or not to engage with the advertisement. It is presented to them as an alternative to monetary payment.
How do you charge for BrandBoost?
We charge on a cost per engagement basis usually in neighborhood of $.10-$.15 which translates into a $100-$150 cpm.
In that consumers are incented to interact with advertising with virtual currency and rewards, does this skew the opportunity at all for advertisers using the BrandBoost ad platform? How do you make the case here for marketers?
Not at all. The consumer is making the choice to view an ad as an alternative to purchasing an item or paying for a game session. The choice to interact is independent and is typically the result of the ad being relevant and targeted. As an example, we are currently running an ad with the popular Percy Jackson movie which runs only in tween-targeted games.
By John Ebbert
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