The ‘Platforms’ Category
Demand-side platform Turn announced that Scott Howe has joined its board of directors. A former aQuantive/Atlas/DrivePM exec who joined Microsoft as part of the multi-billion dollar aQuantive acquisition in 2007, Howe should provide Turn with deeper relationships with both agencies and marketers among other benefits. Read the release.
Howe discussed his new board duties as well as his own plans and views about the digital ad ecosystem.
AdExchanger.com: Where does the demand-side platform fit in the digital ad ecosystem over the next 1-3 years? Will it become commodotized as a business model?
Every online advertising forecast that’s been released suggests that digital advertising is expected to post continued strong growth, and new formats (e.g. video, mobile, social) are going to grow at an even faster rate. Within that growth, the one common denominator among all advertisers is the need to purchase and evaluate their media effectively. In a world of increasing choice and complexity, the role of the DSP becomes critical. And while most agencies are carefully evaluating options and the competitive space may seem crowded, this isn’t an industry that I would expect to quickly commoditize given the size of the prize for companies who can unlock better advertising performance. In other words, the driving purchase criteria won’t be the cost of the DSP technology, but rather the value the DSP can provide to the overall media plan.
What are your plans - joining a board or two? how about getting into venture capital? Or will the entrepreneurial bug bite?
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Venkat Kolluri is CEO of Chitika, an advertising technology company.
AdExchanger.com: A bit of history first - what pivots has Chitika made in its strategy since it was founded?
VK: There was one major, defining moment in Chitika’s history – that’s when we decided that knowing when NOT to show an ad is the most valuable asset in our inventory. Since then, we’ve been refining and evolving our understanding of when not to show ads. We’ve begun incorporating ideas like technographic segmentation to create something of a click oracle that will tell us whether or not someone is likely to take action on an ad.
Chitika just launched a local ad exchange. Why?
As we evolved our prediction technologies, we found one particular area that we saw as a huge opportunity for advertisers, publishers, and users – the intersection of search, mobile, and local. We found this intersection to have some of the highest intent that we couldn’t serve. Over 100 million monthly local search mobile impressions, and we needed something special that would make everyone involved happy. That’s LAX.
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Mediabank announced yesterday that it has launched a demand-side platform: "M|Buy DSP will be a central console through which national advertisers can order buys on local TV, print, radio, out-of-home, digital, and other advertising." Read more.
CEO Bill Wise discussed his company's DSP and its features.
Please discuss why M|Buy exists and its strategic importance to MediaBank's overall strategy.
MediaBank is a business centered around using data to create actionable insights and greater efficiency for every part of the advertising ecosystem. We’re also big believers in the concept that at root, local advertising, national advertising, and online/offline are all remarkably similar at the core—they all boil down to making effective use of the data and tools to reach the right audience.
At the same time, we saw that local advertising was a very underserved market: there’s not nearly enough clear communication, standardized data, and streamlined processes between ad buyers and ad vendors to make local advertising as efficient as it could be. Vendors have a very hard time making advertisers aware of quality inventory, buyers have a hard time finding the best placements, and there are a lot of middlemen creating a lot of unnecessary “taxes” along the way. M|Buy DSP eliminates those inefficiencies to help the entire marketplace.
Can you take us through how M|Buy is a demand-side platform?
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Yoav Arnstein is CEO of Legolas Media, an online display advertising marketplace.
AdExchanger.com: What problem is Legolas solving?
YA: We are looking to address two main challenges:
- The growing publisher concern and friction created by the current methodologies for trading audiences
- The need for a holistic buy-side audience management platform that will provide both audience auditing and the ability to leverage readily available data assets. These assets include the unique buyer historical campaign data as well as the available 3rd party data in the market.
In what category do you see Legolas Media fitting in the ad ecosystem? Any three-letter acronyms appropriate? (such as DSP or SSP)
Legolas is first and foremost a marketplace. As such, for the sake of the customary pigeon holing, we can be defined as an ad exchange albeit a different one.
The trading floor Legolas created is however, using vastly different methodologies than other marketplaces such as Google AdX and Right Media Exchange.
We believe a marketplace should always aim to find a price point that correctly represents that value of the goods traded. As such, and when applied in our industry, it should allow sellers to accurately leverage all relevant attributes of their inventory. We are confident the Legolas marketplace is finding the right balance between the buyers and sellers' needs.
In what key ways is your company different than an ad exchange such as DoubleClick Ad Exchange or Right Media Exchange?
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Retargeting company TellApart released a new case study entitled, "Can Retargeting Yield Incremental Revenue" with its client, Hayneedle. Download it here (PDF).
TellApart CEO Josh McFarland discussed the case study's results as well as his company's strategic focus around incremental gains through retargeting.
AdExchanger.com: It would seem that "incrementality" is core to TellApart's offering. What does it mean for a conversion to be “incremental?”
JM: The simplest question a marketer uses to define incrementality is: If I turn off this marketing channel, what will happen to my total number of conversions? Or conversely, if I turn on this channel, how many new conversions will it yield? This litmus test applies as equally to keyword-based SEM as it does audience-based advertising. But with retargeting, the question is especially acute as marketers are becoming wise to the fact that these visitors are disproportionately likely to convert anyway. And it’s exactly the right question now, because many vendors have been pulling the view-through wool over clients’ eyes for too long.
In the absence of an effective cross-channel attribution model, is it possible for marketers to measure the "incrementality" of a particular marketing channel? If so, how?
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Yesterday, media buying technology company MediaMind (stock quote: MDMD) offered its stock in the public markets for the first time ever as the company's IPO priced 5 million shares at $11.50 - well below the original $14-16 price range that the company was shooting for a week ago. As of this writing, the stock was trading at $10.76. Read the original prospectus.
J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank Securites, Stifel Nicolaus Weisel, Pacific Crest Securities and ThinkEquity all participated in managing the offering.
With approximately 17.9 million shares outstanding after the offering according to the S-1, today's stock price puts the valuation of MediaMind (formerly Eyeblaster) at around $192 million with first half 2010 revenues of about $37 million. In comparison, ad network and technology company InterCLICK (quote: ICLK) has a market cap of approximately $84 million today and revenues of $36 million for the first half of 2010. Read the press release.
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Mike Sands is President and CEO of BrightTag, a data management platform company.
AdExchanger.com: What problem is BrightTag solving?
Website owners have lost control of the data on their site. They increasingly don't know what data is being collected, what it is being used for or if third parties are in compliance with privacy regulations. The Wall Street Journal and others have recently written about this and it has become a real pain point for website owners. We solve these problems.
BrightTag gives site owners control over the data collected from their sites, protects them from unintended data access, and instantly connects them with services and partners that make their data actionable. We are delivering an independent and holistic data rights management platform that will enable site owners to work with any marketing partner they want in minutes, secure in the knowledge that their data is safe.
Who is the target market today? Where are you seeing particular strengths in your client base today?
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Earlier this week, Turn announced a major update to its demand-side platform, Turn Media Platform v2.5, which "includes a streamlined workflow and automated campaign analyzer." Read the release.
Philip Smolin, GM Platform Solutions at Turn, discussed the update to Turn's DSP as well as his company's approach to service, and industry trends.
AdExchanger.com: Beyond simplified workflow, how important is service to a platform such as Turn's? What's Turn's approach to service especially as it relates to agencies?
PS: Although display advertising is becoming much more technology-centric it still requires a blend of art and science. So regardless of who is providing the staff, knowledgeable campaign managers are required to drive the process.
Our approach is to provide a self-service platform that streamlines a campaign’s complexities into an intuitive workflow for planning, buying, optimization and analytics. For clients who don’t have the staff or plan to build out a ‘trading desk’ core competency, Turn provides fully out-sourced campaign management and consulting services. Other clients are in transition, with Turn providing partial service as they staff up. In addition, we have a Media Services division that’s available to assist agencies with media strategy and buying for publishers who are not currently available via the exchanges.
It’s important to note that regardless of whether their staff or ours is managing the campaigns, the client always has direct access to the platform and 100% transparency into inventory sources, performance and audience segmentation strategies.
Can you see guaranteed (or futures) inventory becoming a part of the DSP model - and Turn's, in particular?
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Dapper announced its new Dapper DisplayDR, as a full- or self-service option, and which offers among other capabilities the ability to transform "a product catalog into an automatically updating, live feed" which can then be used for ad targeting.Read the release.
Dapper CEO James Beriker discussed his company and the new self-service offering.
AdExchanger.com: Why offer a self-service option for Dapper DisplayDR now? Why is the time right?
JB: Our objective has always been to empower marketers to create dynamic ads based on their valuable content - products, offers, and other dynamic content on their site - without the frustration that often comes with the long turnaround times,custom development, and lack of sophistication of most solutions.
Dapper DisplayDR gives marketers and agencies the tools to create better ads that show relevant products and offers matched to user intent -- and makes it dead simple to execute. We feel that putting this in the hands of marketers and agencies, in a consolidated platform that includes efficient media buying and user intent, is a big step towards transforming display advertising into an accountable, efficient marketing channel.
Do you consider Dapper a DSP? How do you define the company?
When we developed our dynamic ad creation solution, we saw a major opportunity in utilizing real-time bidding to assign different bids to each impression based on the products we show in the ad creative. To that extent, we approach media buying the same way a DSP would. However, our true value is in the consolidation of technologies that do efficient media buying, user intent determination, and dynamic ad creative- all on a single platform. There is considerable value in uniting the stack of those powerful technologies. The performance is there, and marketers don’t need to manage several point solutions to run a single campaign.
Dapper DisplayDR sounds like a direct response tool. Does the tool and technology speak to brand marketers? How?
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Chris Lien is CEO of Marin Software, makers of a paid search management application.
AdExchanger.com: How do you respond to some who say that the world of SEM management has been commoditized? How does Marin Software differentiate?
The only way the paid search management tools market will become commoditized is if paid search were to suddenly become less complex. So far that hasn’t happened, and we don’t see this happening. At Marin, we are seeing increasing complexity for advertisers and agencies as they deal with new aspects of paid search, e.g., mobile, local, rich media, etc. In addition, there is a desire to integrate paid search with multiple systems throughout the enterprise, perform custom reporting and analysis, and optimize to unique business goals. So, we don’t see commoditization at all. One of Marin’s advantages is its ability to meet advertisers where they are, adapting to their current business environment and practices rather than forcing them to use a cookie cutter solution. So far that approach has served us well with large advertisers and agencies worldwide.
In general, do you see search engine marketing and display advertising services beginning to merge? Why or why not?
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MediaMath publicly announced the launch of its updated Terminal One platform last week.
GM Anthony Katsur of MediaMath discussed the new platform and how agencies are working with it.
AdExchanger.com: How are agencies working with your TerminalOne platform today?
AK: Agencies and Holding Companies work with Terminal One in three primary ways:
1. Self-service - The agency directly manages their campaigns via the Terminal One interface, leveraging our insights, analytics, bidders, pixel servers and optimization. They have full control over every aspect of campaign creation, targeting, data buying, optimization and analysis. Everything a real time media buyer needs to create and manage a real time trading desk is in Terminal One. Our standard implementation package includes two days of on-site training for all Terminal One operators where we share core operational principles as well as fundamental best practices to achieve the very best performance for every campaign.
2. Facilitated Platform - Take all the core tenets of our self service offering, add a professional Terminal One operator driving the platform on site and you have Facilitated Platform. Facilitated Platform supports clients requiring the direct operation of Terminal One, but either don't have the resources in house or are new to real time media trading. The engagement can be as short as a month or extend for several months, even years if the client so desires. The additional benefit of facilitated platform is that it allows us to share best practices and learnings with our clients on-site, over a longer period of time.
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