John Whitmore has been hired as Director of Advertising Investment by one of the few agencies wisely transitioning to the “agency as ad trader” model, Media Kitchen’s Varick Media Management.
In today’s MediaPost, Joe Mandese writes:
“Varick utilizes a sophisticated bid management and yield management system to procure online ad inventory much the way big Wall Street firms trade stocks, commodities and options.”
Within the details of the hiring announcement is a Varick MM client list that includes Windstar Communications, Panasonic, NetJets, Bank of NY Mellon, and CIT Group.
Also, Varick tells MediaPost that they’re seeing 3x improvement on display advertising results compared to the industry standard, and a 45x improvement on contextual campaigns. As of right now, we’ll have to take them at their word. But, a case study or two on these impressive numbers, with happy clients in tow, would be a great next step for agency-as-trader PR.
Ad exchanges should love this news as publishers and advertisers continue to learn new ways to monetize ad inventory – whether trading it for their own book or clients as Varick appears to be doing on the advertiser side; or, on the publisher side, where yield optimization companies like Pubmatic and AdMeld offer sophisticated technology to trade remnant ad inventory and increase yield for publishers.
