Demand-side platform Invite Media issued a release today about its real-time biddable inventory sources which include AdBrite, AdMeld and PubMatic. Read the release.
Invite Media COO Nat Turner discussed some of the intricacies of online media buying today with AdExchanger.com.
AdExchanger.com: You discuss buying “brand-safe” inventory in your release. How do you determine whether inventory is brand-safe? And is their any special complexity when buying in real-time, spot market inventory?
NT: The beauty of real-time bidding is that there are very few layers between the advertiser and the publisher, which means that if the publisher is amendable to being transparent, chances are a technology like ours can give buyers the option on what they’d like to buy. Today, the “brand safe” category to us is comprised of both our internal ranking and audit that we perform on every site as well as any information that the exchange (or pub aggregator) provides. Our platform also allows buyers to selectively build their own list (or remove sites from ours) if they have a different definition of what “brand safe” means to them.
Generally speaking, what are the differences between buying through an aggregator such as AdMeld or PubMatic and the exchanges like DoubleClick and Right Media? Any differences in transparency, for example?
To us, there are very few differences in buying across the various supply sources. To put it plainly, there will simply be different approaches companies take to aggregating publisher inventory. You’ll have the traditional ad exchanges that we all know and love, but then you’ll also have the aggregators who take a slightly different approach to working with
publishers. Like with any market, you’ll see differences across these sources in terms of transparency, average pricing, etc… Today, we’re seeing a high-degree of transparent and brand-safe inventory across the board and have been pleasantly surprised to see even more come through the aggregators. I think that’s a function of the high-touch support, strong technology, and nimbleness that these companies provide to publishers.
What percentage of the inventory you buy today is real-time bidded? Where do you see this by the end of the year? Can you discuss and quantify the performance difference you’re seeing with RTB inventory vs. non-RTB inventory?
A large majority of the inventory that clients buy on our platform today is via real-time bidding. I’d only expect that to grow, especially as non-RTB exchanges and inventory sources move closer to launching their own RTB integrations. A big part of that trend is that the performance difference of RTB vs. non-RTB is significant. Due to the ability to perform actions such as universal frequency capping, optimization in real-time across multiple sources, and leveraging of increased transparency have consistently delivered performance boosts of 2-3x compared to non-RTB/traditional buying. While there are frankly way too many ways to slice and dice and compare results given all of the factors present in display, there truly is a huge performance increase that can be garnered by RTB.
By John Ebbert
