When Is A Mobile, Private Exchange Relevant To A Marketer's Needs?

Mobile Private Exchange As publishers look to take advantage of the ad exchange model and max out yield of their inventory, one emerging opportunity has been the private exchange (or marketplace, depending on whose terminology you’re using) where a publisher provides exclusive access to buying partners looking to purchase on a per impression basis. In addition to providing better controls around channel conflict, the private exchange model can provide higher CPMs for publishers while buyers get exclusive, “first look” access at remnant inventory among other potential benefits.

So with an eye to mobile and its abundance of inventory today – both direct and remnant – AdExchanger.com asked a selection of industry executives in the mobile space the following question:

“Today, when is a mobile private exchange relevant to a marketer’s needs?”

Click below or scroll down for more:

Sal Candela, Mobile Director, PHD (Omnicom)

“There clearly is an abundance of mobile ad inventory in the market, but running on brand-safe content at scale isn’t always easy.

Typically, mobile ads have been bought directly from publishers, or in aggregate through networks. The challenge is that direct buys don’t offer enough scale and most networks are ‘blind’, meaning marketers only get a sample of where the ads are running.

With the emergence of private exchanges in mobile, marketers and agencies now have a simpler way to reach their audience in premium environments. These private exchanges can be very beneficial as they provide the benefits of a network – one point of contact for coordination and less time dealing with paperwork – with the bonus of running on an approved list of properties that meet brand requirements.”

Dave Gwozdz, CEO, Mojiva

“Private exchanges give publishers a control mechanism for a limited set of buyers. In return, these buyers are assured of the type of content they want, at a real time market price. In order for these to work in mobile, the inventory needs to be: (1) optimized for mobile devices (smartphones, tablets, etc.), (2) correctly identified by content type; and (3) have enough scale by OS , device type, or geography to make the marketers efforts worth it. Then, and only then, does it begin to make sense.”

Scott Spencer, Product Management Director, Google

“Marketers are looking to reach the the right audiences, and private exchanges are a powerful way for them to access high-quality inventory across all formats, including mobile. Though we and others in the industry are helping publishers leverage this model for their mobile inventory, the good news is that much more inventory is coming online in 2012. For instance, we think there is a huge opportunity for publishers in the “consortium” model, in which multiple publishers pool their inventory under one private exchange. This will offer marketers a new level of scale for their buying efforts while enabling sellers to capture new spends.”

Are Traasdahl, CEO, Tapad

“Given the recent success of private exchanges within the online display space, I’d anticipate that it’s only a matter of time before forward thinking premium publishers start scaling the concept more with their mobile inventory as well. From a marketer’s perspective, this is good news. The opportunity to layer 1st and 3rd party data on top of quality content in a controlled, biddable environment should allow smart marketers to unlock significant value. Furthermore, there are clear benefits to publishers as well – higher CPM’s (provided that floor prices are set appropriately), higher fill rates, higher quality advertisers. Technology continuing to move the media buying process forward, more directly connecting buyers and sellers – everyone wins.”

Anne Frisbie, VP & Managing Director, North America, InMobi

“Managing sales channel conflict and maintaining pricing integrity is priority number one for publishers. In mobile today, given the disparity of common serving standards across ad servers, segmentation of devices, and inability of most networks to serve engaging rich media, mobile private (or public) exchanges are currently great in theory and challenging in practice. In mobile, the scale and reliability of a platform matters. Rich media serving across smart devices matters. The sheer global aspect of mobile is another distinguishing feature with PC/desktop.

The mobile industry should not follow in the footsteps of PC/desktop display necessarily, but rather breakout on its own trajectory for technological developments and companies that help publishers and advertisers optimize, gain control, and protect their brands.”

By John Ebbert

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