DanAds’ Summit 24 was an engaging one-day event packing a large punch of industry experts. Over 180 ad tech professionals gathered to explore strategies for embracing emerging technologies, network, and share best practices. The talks centered around AI, automation, and implementing self-service to enhance growth.
In the heart of midtown Manhattan, DanAds held its Summit 24, a one-day event focused on “Accelerating Advertising.” Panels covered myriad topics centered around this theme, focusing on the future of AI, automation, and core business drivers.
The conference spotlighted innovation, advancement, and what it takes to unite as an industry so everyone can succeed.
Ari Paparo, CEO and contributor, Marketecture.tv, delivered a rousing keynote on the State of Advertising. His discussion focused largely on today’s chaotic advertising ecosystem and questions about how we will consume media in the next five years. He left attendees with the assertion that we need to invest in solutions; we cannot remain passive and hope that things will work out.
Getting Employee AI Buy-In
The biggest buzzword of the day was “AI,” which is no surprise because of its rapid rise in recent years. The topic arose in nearly every panel, leading to discussions on how AI can simplify processes and allow publishers to offer services to more advertisers. However, speakers acknowledged that some workers fear AI will eliminate their jobs.
During a session titled, “Expanding Horizons: Unlocking New Automation Tech for Business Growth” panelists spotlighted the many benefits of AI, including its ability to do low-level tasks like creating spreadsheets and sending emails.
However, AI can’t do everything, and thinking critically is one of its biggest limitations. Humans will still need to check AI’s work and ensure its results make sense for a particular use case or client’s preferences, noted Megan Strelzik, Head of Client Success & Operations for the Washington Post.
This comes down to training workers to best use AI and highlight its value. “Everyone wants to learn, grow, and do more, and automation allows you to have more time free to do that,” she said. “Ask your team what tasks are the most frustrating. If AI can take those off their plate, they will be much more willing to be part of the conversation.” Others on the panel agreed that AI should contribute to worker happiness and support, not replace humans.
AI can also simplify processes to increase efficiency and allow human energy to go where it’s most needed. Emilie Gauthier-Messier, Project Lead, Digital Revenue Optimization for CBC said AI helps sales professionals to see inventory in real time. “I want to be able to understand my options without going through five people. A high percentage of our contracts are smaller advertisers that don’t makeup that much of our revenue–AI enables operations to move from those smaller accounts to focus on the big, super-important buys,” she explained.
In the professional world, Salesforce’s Global Media & Entertainment Industry Advisor Rajat Sharma noted that many younger professionals see AI as a tool they can learn and master to give them a leg up over the competition. Sharma equated this to the advantage that knowing how to code gave workers 30 years ago. Employees are more likely to buy into using AI if they feel their jobs are secure and their careers will progress because of their AI knowledge.
It’s also imperative to think about AI regulation. Bryan Szekely, head of ad strategy for Sigma Software’s keynote, “Compliance Chasing Evolving AI Technologies,” touched on the regulation differences between the E.U. and U.S. and even the differences in how we define AI. He advised companies the right time to establish ethical AI practices and transparency is now, before regulations in the U.S. become widespread. He added that many of the largest companies in the U.S. are self-regulating and creating internal policies to keep ahead of regulations.
Digging Deeper to Drive Business Outcomes & Increase Value
The panel, “Supply Path Optimization: Streamlining Ad Delivery for Maximum Efficiency & Sustainability” tackled the question of how our industry can make programmatic the efficient landscape it was always meant to be. Panelists agreed that the industry is plagued by inefficiencies such as distance from the consumer and intermediaries in the supply chain.
While advertisers’ specific goals are unique, many of them share the desire to work efficiently while maintaining brand safety. “We want to give marketers a choice regarding supply path and offer a suite of features that provide customers transparency. For the marketers that want to hit an easy button as it relates to SPO or add a Direct Publisher Solution to their strategy, we do integrate directly with a small set of publishers where we’re getting full access to their supply pipeline,” said Chandra Cirulnick, VP of Global Supply Partnerships, Yahoo.
Xander Kotsatos, Head of Sales for Beeswax added it feels like we’re moving further from the consumer due to disintermediation. For example, CTV is roughly controlled by 20 or 30 publishers with 114 different supply paths to get to that inventory. “It’s at a point where you wonder how to choose which supply paths to listen to.”
Eliminating the supply paths that don’t add value will help make the system more efficient. Additionally, earning the buyers’ trust is essential, noted Jayson Dubin, CEO & President, of Playwire. Playwire recently launched its QPT initiative–quality, performance, and transparency – focusing on these attributes over what Dubin calls “the ad tech shenanigans.”
He shared, “The result was 60 percent fewer requests, 60 percent fewer ads, CPM went up 60 percent, and it was a better outcome for everyone. We want all the DSPs and SSPs to trust us, and we’re being heavily rewarded for that. If they don’t trust you, they’re not going to buy from you.”
We’re all acting rationally in a marketplace that isn’t always rational. Kotsatos said publishers want better yield, which leads them to add SSPs, which offer diminishing yield returns the more that are added. The problem is this thought process is rational on the publisher side considering that adding demand sources increases overall yield while on the buy side, the cost is linear regardless of the return.
“I would argue though that adding more SSPs adds complexity for the publisher, creating the chaos that Ari [Paparo] talked about earlier. There are costs on the publisher side too to run these multiple options, especially if you’re running a frequency server,” said Chief Revenue Officer for Freestar, Heather Carver.
Looking forward, Ivy Hong, Head of Account Management for Adform said we need to unify. “We don’t have a universal language, so when it comes to evaluating and measuring the value of marketing efforts, it’s fragmented. Speaking in a unified language to evaluate those things and measure everything with transparency so I can see what’s truly valuable as a marketer is essential.”
Cirulnick agreed that clients want to see the impacts of different supply path choices. “At face value, there might not be immediate benefits to becoming more direct or selective when buying programs. But we found that when we go a click or two deeper, some of those business outcomes and back-end metrics see substantial differences depending on the supply path and the mix of supply that happens there. So being able to ensure that it is measurable is super important.”
It comes back to building trust and looking at tangible results rather than vanity metrics, added Carver. Working closely together, examining what buyers are buying, and curating inventory to speak to buyers’ business outcomes will all help increase positive results. “That will keep more money on the open internet and hopefully take more money that’s going to some of the walled gardens, and bring more money to premium publishers,” she said.
Tapping Into New Markets with Self-Serve & Automation
In line with the discussions on AI, was some dialogue on automation. During the panel, “The Power of Automated Advertising: Publisher and Advertiser Perspective,” speakers shared their thoughts on the benefits and challenges of automation. They agreed that automation increases efficiency and leads to increased sales opportunities while keeping customer service top-of-mind.
Roku uses self-serve automation to help smaller companies gain access previously only available to Fortune 500 brands. “When we think about self-serve, it’s about easily accessing inventory, but doing that in a way that makes the ads work like bigger brands’ ads,” Dan Lapinski, Senior Ads Manager, Product Marketing for Roku explained. Meta and Google have made it simple for anyone to advertise regardless of their expertise, which is the same user experience Roku aims to deliver.
“We’re working to emphasize the efficiencies within our own resources,” said Alex Campbell, Director, Ad Tech & Programmatic, theScore. He noted one of theScore’s greatest advantages is its high-level customer service, adding that automating some of the more time-consuming processes could increase that service level further and lead to more business.
Discounting smaller companies simply because they don’t have as much spending power can also be a mistake. “Those small and medium-sized businesses represent about two-thirds of the GDP in America. If you’re talking about buying power, accessing that market is even stronger than accessing the Fortune 500 market. You just need to do it efficiently,” Lapinski noted.
The way to do this is by making your self-serve strong enough that companies can control what they want to buy and what they want their dollars to do. This allows brands to control their destiny and publishers to grant access without tying up team members unnecessarily, added Lapinski.
David Dembowski, Senior Vice President of Global Services at Operative said one big perk of automation will be access to direct-to-consumer brands, and publishers should be aware of this segment. “Direct-to-consumer brands are one area I would ask the publishers in this room to consider. They often operate independently with large budgets and there’s no brick-and-mortar. They are highly dependent on reaching new audiences,” he said.
Looking Ahead: CTV & Efficiency
As we near the end of 2024, it is time to envision what the future will bring, and DanAds Summit 24 attendees were indeed looking ahead. Other notable conversations at the Summit centered around evolving technology and the future of programmatic advertising.
In a session about CTV, “Data-Driven Advertising: Automation in CTV, OTT, Linear, and Addressable,” panelists spoke about the public’s easy adoption of CTV and the challenges of getting advertisers to invest in the platform. Pieter Van Den Bergh, Vice President Product and Revenue Development for RTL AdAlliance said one problem the industry has to solve is simplifying the many terms we use to speak about CTV. “We need simplification and unification around terms because we’ve created complexity for advertisers to access our ecosystems, he said “Unification would allow for a better experience and ease of scalability.
Other panelists agreed that simplification for buyers was the best way to move CTV forward and increase efficiency in ad campaign solutions. This includes not only simplification of terms but also unifying audiences to get the most reach.
Efficiency and simplification were also spotlighted during the session, “Supply Path Optimization: Streamlining Ad Delivery for Maximum Efficiency and Sustainability.” Panelists highlighted the importance of transparency and trust in the advertising ecosystem. They also emphasized the role sustainability will play in the future of programmatic, noting that streamlining processes and focusing on quality can increase CPMs exponentially.
To close out the day’s talks, Jeffrey Mayer, MD US & Head of Product at DanAds, showcased DanAds’ latest advancements and roadmap. Mayer outlined core automation tools and enhancements that enable advertisers and publishers to reduce manual tasks, increase efficiency, and focus on strategic growth across various industry segments. His presentation underscored DanAds’ commitment to providing comprehensive support across all business scenarios, reinforcing its role as a complete ad tech solution.
Many changes are on the horizon, which is not unusual for our rapidly evolving industry. The day’s key takeaways included learning best practices for leveraging new technology to scale business and give the best customer service possible, while always working to make processes more efficient for all parties involved.