Leading Operations Online

August 24, 2009 ad exchanges Damian Scragg

It may have been so in the past, but for today’s publishers, exchanges should not be seen simply as a platform for selling your non-guaranteed inventory. They are fast becoming a solution to enable you to further develop your business whilst helping to maximise your sell-through rates and increase your CPMs. At the very least, publishers should consider bringing their existing off-exchange demand partners onto an exchange (whether they are networks or advertisers) to compete for their inventory alongside those on-exchange partners they are working with. This helps ensure they are getting the best yields possible across their entire non-guaranteed inventory. The global nature of the web means many publishers have significant overseas audiences but little idea how to monetize them. Being global platforms, exchanges can provide a solution here, allowing publishers to unlock new revenue streams by selling their international inventory. But why just stop there? Exchanges can help publishers expand their relevancy by allowing them to offer CPC and CPA pricing options, opening their inventory up to even greater demand as well as embracing the performance marketing models that...

Leading The Way on Mobile Advertising (Part II)

August 17, 2009 mobile Hugh Evans

The following is a continuation of a post written by Hugh Evans recapping a presentation at Publisher Forum EU 12 in June.

The real nuts and bolts of what we wanted to cover in our presentation was still to come – the operational challenges that inevitably come along with a new and innovative medium such as mobile. Some are facing us now, and others we know will hit us in the not too distant future. This is a continuation of that list:

Targeting
Targeting is one of mobile advertising’s shining beacons for advertisers. Cookie targeting has its limitations (not all handsets support them, the data can’t always be trusted, etc.), but the operators hold some detailed data due to the direct billing relationship they hold with their customers. This data is, of course, very sensitive and so requires strict legal and ethical governance (opt-outs/ins and transparent Ts...

Solving the Remnant Inventory Problem

August 15, 2009

As an industry, it’s taken us more than 15 years to get a grip on dealing with remnant ad inventory, but I think there’s finally a light at the end of the tunnel. Over the past two or three years in particular, the R...

Leading The Way on Mobile Advertising (Part I)

August 10, 2009 Hugh Evans

This June, a colleague and I were kindly invited to present at AdMonsters’ 12th European Publisher Forum in Prague. We jumped at the chance to speak, and felt we had some important issues to raise surrounding mobile advertising operations; an area so far sparsely covered by any of the major UK bodies.

A little background on Orange and mobile advertising. As an operator we have an obvious affinity with the market, but like the rest of the industry at the moment, we are yet to fully benefit from the great potential mobile has to offer. Indeed we’re merely scratching the surface of what we are ambitiously setting out to do.

We brought mobile ad operations in-house at the beginning of this year and the learnings we have gathered as a result have been both large and frequent. It has been particularly fascinating to experience the differences and similarities between online ad serving and the new-fangled mobile technology. In truth online is still streets ahead, but be assured mobile is catching up quick.

Our presentation kicked off with some top-line facts and figures, resulting from both the IAB, and also a large piece of research into mobile...

The Next Generation Digital Media Agency

August 3, 2009 ad exchanges

We asked Martin Kelly, co-founder of Infectious Media and our keynote speaker at the Network Ad Ops Forum in London July 15th to summarize his presentation: The next big shift in the market is coming and the industry needs to be prepared. Just as auction model platforms have revolutionised and created a huge search marketing industry, so media exchanges are going to do the same for display media. The buy side are excited about these platforms. Generally reticent about technology adoption, the prospect of eating into the network margin in a time when we are being squeezed by our clients is something not to be ignored. Put this alongside the fear of making the same costly mistakes when search marketing was ignored and there's a compelling reason why there's a lot of interest in exchanges. The theory is a sound one and it puts agencies on a collision course with networks as access to inventory management platforms will become widespread in the next 3-5 years. This won't happen overnight and there will be a period of growing pains as agencies rebuild their display businesses around this technology....