Full-service digital agency Booyah Advertising has launched a trading desk, led by new hire Matt Thompson, previously with Mindshare in London. The trading desk will employ four people, all in Denver.
Booyah the agency is part of Booyah Networks, which also owns video ad marketplace SpotXchange. Booyah Advertising did $100 million in media last year, according to Thompson, and plans to do $125 million this year, with a focus on national clients in the U.S. including Vitamin Shoppe, Little Tikes, Ancestry.com, and DISH Networks.
Thompson joined three months ago as director of RTB trading. At Mindshare he worked on international digital media campaigns for HSBC and NBA.com.
“We want to pick up on all the opportunities that present themselves in the programmatic space,” Thompson said. That includes building relationships with private exchanges and other “premium programmatic” opportunities. Booyah plans to leverage the video chops of corporate sibling SpotXchange to capture TV dollars as they migrate to video, including video RTB.
But how does a midsize agency like Booyah capture client business that may already reside with a holding company trading desk or an independent desk such as Digilant or Accordant Media? By integrating horizontally, Thompson says.
“We see a disconnect with the current agency trading desk model,” he said. “A big play for us is the fact that we don’t have that siloed kind of approach. There’s no disconnect between our media strategy teams and our trading desk.”
He says Booyah is not coming to RTB cold. The agency has dabbled in programmatic media for about two years, leveraging dynamic creative optimization, retargeting, and Facebook Exchange.
Thompson did not identify clients or technology partners, other than to say Booyah’s launch platform partner is a “top-tier DSP/DMP platform.” A programmatic “center of excellence” will focus on telecom and retail verticals.
