Iggy Fanlo is CEO of AdBrite, an online advertising exchange.
How’s business at AdBrite? Is the exchange model working?
IF: The ad exchange model is very strong. We’re seeing incredible results from our targeting algorithms (black boxes). The addition of third party (open architecture) data and targeting algorithms is being implemented and the early results there are also very encouraging.
Are you starting to see demand-side buying platforms hooking into you? What’s the future here?
Yes. It’s quite new, but we have more than a dozen real time bidders that are integrating and even more lined up for our advertiser API due in October.
Please discuss your real-time bidding (RTB) solution. And, how do (or will) advertisers take advantage of this opportunity?
It’s essentially the next generation of search engine marketing. RTB allows ad buyers to examine important real-time variables, like time of day, day of week, user actions, etc and include them in their ad buying decision making process. Any advertiser that can achieve the latency requirements is welcome. Having said that, we believe strongly that in the AdBrite exchange any ad buyer either manual or through our advertiser API will have the benefits of real time bidding. Since we offer the addition of many 3rd party data sets as well as 3rd party algorithms and finally optimize across all of those dimensions, all advertisers get the benefits of RTB even without being an RTB [bidder].
When will brand awareness dollars come online?
Great question. I’m obviously a believer that online is a great venue for brands. My personal opinion is time. As the folks that makes buying decisions for brand dollars become more comfortable with online media, they’ll allocate more and more to online.
What is AdBrite doing to improve brand safety for its clients?
Several things. First, we implement both an internal and third party service to control for fraud. Second, we review every publisher and every advertiser for content quality. Third, we divide our publisher base into 4 tiers of quality. Finally, since we are one of the very few truly and completely transparent exchanges, any advertiser can create their own custom network/buy of whichever sites fit their own quality criteria.
Please discuss your recent agreement with the Fair Syndication Consortium (FSC). How does it work? When do you think you and FSC will start seeing revenue?
It’s still an ongoing discussion, but we are very excited about the ability for third party to easily access and re-publish legally content. In the best case, it becomes the iTunes of digital content.
Are there too many ad networks? How will ad networks need to adjust in the future?
A fair question. I generally answer it the same way each time. For any business to sustain itself it must create/add value and it must charge both a market price and one that is no more than the value created. So networks that are simply standing in between buyers and sellers and adding no more value than that and charging upwards of 40-50% of the gross ad spend will have difficulty in the future.
What strategies would you be putting in place if you were in charge of a digital media agency today?
I’d be focused on a few things.
- 1. This is the most important by far. I’d require ALL of my publishers to enter into a transparent and auction-based system; i.e. an exchange. I want all of my buys to be market driven, not negotiated. That negotiation is be definition skewed in favor of the seller who has all the information of where others are buying.
- Building a capability to buy across all exchanges. A tool to efficiently allocate spend across all available inventory.
- Focusing a lot more energy on creative.
Is AdBrite able to help with attribution for its clients? Is attribution still a black hole – especially cross-channel and not just digital?
Absolutely. But the onus in on advertisers. They will need to offer access to conversion pixels or other action based pixels that are important to them. In addition, the industry will need more ability to integrate offline and online data so that online influence can be properly attributed to offline behaviors.
Follow Iggy Fanlo (@iggyfanlo) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.
