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David Smith, has spent his career in management consulting, venture-funded technology companies, and media advisory services.  Dave was instrumental in the successful exit of two start-ups, most recently with the advertising yield management technology firm Rapt (acquired by Microsoft, April 2008).  With Rapt, and later with Microsoft Advertising, he built industry-leading publisher solutions sales and services teams. Dave will bring tremendous sales, sales strategy and sales management experience to Improve Digital.
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Ben Crain is a well-known industry expert on inventory, pricing, and yield management in digital media who brings vast knowledge, experience and insight to Improve Digital. Most recently, he has been focused on the technology side of the equation, with Rapt (acquired by Microsoft, April 2008) and later with Microsoft Advertising.  Turning his skills as a practitioner on their head, he was central to the development and deployment of Rapt’s standard-setting suite of advertising yield solutions.

“We are excited to have both Ben and Dave on our Board and believe the addition of these 2 prominent industry veterans will prove valuable as we continue expansion of our business and bring innovative revenue optimisation solutions to the market.” said Joëlle Frijters, Improve Digital’s Chief Executive Officer.

The Improve Digital advisory board is a strong, balanced blend of skills and experience. The board provides guidance and insight in core areas important to Improve Digital.

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Organised and supported by:

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Online display advertising has seen a dramatic evolution in recent times – With the rise of ad networks, exchanges and optimisers, to sit beside sales houses and in-house teams, the current online advertising landscape is far more sophisticated than ever before. It also offers publishers much greater choice.

There are new ways for publishers to trade and new ways to generate additional revenue and cost savings.  But with greater complexity, comes increased challenges such as controlling the quality of campaigns, creatives and ultimately protecting the brand.

So how can publishers take full advantage of what the market has to offer while overcoming the challenges of increasing automation, and commoditisation?  And what further opportunities will the new decade bring?

This forum brings together industry experts to examine the current state of online trading and to look in-depth, through cross-industry panels, at two key issues impacting on publishers:  the changing dynamics of buying and selling media; and the role of audience data in generating publisher revenue.

AGENDA:

2.00 pm      Registration
2.30 pm      Chair’s Introduction and Overview
2.40 pm      Trends in display advertising, Matt O’Neil, President Admonsters Europe

3.00 pm      The changing dynamics of buying and selling media
                          Dave Katz, Head of Trading
                          Topics:
                          * Agency networks – what they are and what they are doing
                          * How publishers can benefit from real bidding buying platforms
                          * Publisher networks – where they fit in

3.20 pm      Panel Debate
                         * Mark Mannino, VP of Supply and Data, MediaMath
                         * Nick Burcher, Head of VNC UK & Products / Partnerships EMEA, Vivaki
                         * Tom Bowman, VP Global Ad Strategy & Operations, BBC Worldwide
                         * Ciaran O’Kane, Editor, ExchangeWire.com

3.50 pm      Coffee Break

4.10 pm       The role of audience data in generating display revenues for publishers,
                          Donald Hamilton,  Partner Precedio and former MD Wunderloop &
                          Kimon Zorbas, VP of IAB Europe
                          * The role of audience data in current and future revenues
                          * Why 3^rd party data is so important
                          * Who owns the data – Digital Agencies, Media Corps and Digital Giants
                          * The legal aspect – UK versus Europe

4.30pm       Panel Debate
                          Panelists:
                          * Kimon Zorbas, VP of IAB Europe,
                          * Steve Dorey, Head of Business Development, Criteo,
                          * Stuart Coleman, MD, Audience Science
                          * Abeed JanMohamed, Head of Agency Sales ESPN Digital Media

5.00pm       Wrap Up

5.10pm        Drinks

Book your tickets at AOP here and join us

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Pubmatic has offered RTB capabilities to publishers and ad networks in the US since early 2009. It is currently rolling out Version 3.0 of the product, which will also be available in the UK and Europe via Improve Digital during the first quarter of 2010. The technology enables online advertisers to reach the right user, in the right place, at the right time, with initial results showing an increase of up to 135 percent on click-throughs and 150 percent improvement in conversion rates. This adds significant value to the publisher’s offering.

‘Understanding Real-Time Bidding (RTB) From the Publisher Perspective’ explains how publishers can channel the potential of RTB through better-performing campaigns, which have a positive impact on all parties involved:

• Publishers adopting RTB make their advertising space more valuable and can therefore charge more for impressions (advertisers that have better performing campaigns can pay more to target the right users)
• Advertisers see increased ROI
• Users see adverts that are targeted at them and their specific interests, so their online experience is better because it is more relevant

The move is in response to the rapid growth of the mobile advertising market.  Among the key findings of the IAB UK’s mobile ad spend figures published in 2009:  £28.6 million was spent on mobile in 2008, a figure almost double the previous year.  Looking ahead, recent study by GroupM forecasts that mobile advertising spend will increase 19 percent to $3,3 billion in 2010.

The combination of mobile and online offering further strengthens Improve Digital’s footprint with premium publishers in The UK and Europe.

Publisher benefits include:

• Ad network representation:  The platform connects to the optimal mix of mobile ad networks according to publishers’ content, audience, and brand safety requirements
• Real-time decision making:  The platform decides in real-time which mobile ad network can best monetise each impression and select the highest paying ad network every time
• Brand control:  The same comprehensive brand control capabilities that protect Improve Digital’s web publishers from unwanted ads, channel conflict, and ad latency issues will also extend to the mobile platform
• Audience insight:  Mobile-specific data points such as device, user location, and user demographics are considered as part of the ad network and exchange selection process to maximise publisher revenue
• One consolidated management dashboard (web and mobile):  Publishers will be able to manage and review comprehensive reporting and analytics from one consolidated dashboard that tracks both their Web based ad sales and mobile ad sales

PubMatic worked with digital media consultant Bennett Zucker to conduct a series of interviews with online advertising executives. The report was unveiled at PubMatic’s Ad Revenue 2009 conference to help premium online publishers better navigate the segments and companies within the 2nd Channel ecosystem as objectively as possible.

The 2nd Channel Ecosystem is comprised of nine primary segments that are driving up the value of premium online publisher ad inventory:

• Media Buying Platforms: Also referred to as “buy side optimisation platforms,” this new segment within online display advertising works directly with ad agencies to improve efficiencies of working with ad networks and ad exchanges, including more precise audience targeting and improved campaign analytics.

• Dynamic Ad Creative Technologies: The companies in this segment have technology that changes an advertiser’s message to change depending on the user that is viewing it, allowing the messaging to be more personalized, and therefore improving campaign performance.

• Data Exchanges & Platforms: Marketplaces designed specifically to buy and sell data allow advertisers to buy specific audiences and publishers to earn revenue from data sales in this marketplace.

• Ad Networks & Targeting Platforms: Ad networks sell inventory that a publisher cannot sell themselves largely due to an excess of advertising inventory. There are several types of ad networks including vertical, behavioral, contextual, rich media, video, and more.

• Ad Exchanges: Ad exchanges offer publishers the ability to turn tough-to-monetize ad impressions into revenue by bringing market liquidity in the form of demand equal to the abundance of supply.

• Ad Servers: While not a new segment, ad servers are mission critical for publishers. Virtually every ad served is a result of multiple ad servers that work together in order to deliver and track ads in milliseconds.

• Ad Revenue Optimizers: Sometimes called ad network optimizers, this segment allows publishers to work with a large number of ad networks at one time. The segment also works with premium publishers to increase ad revenue leveraging various technologies, while also helping to protect the publisher’s brand by keeping unwanted advertisements off of their sites.

• Site Inventory & Sales Management Tools: Companies in this segment are often used to help online publishers package, price, and sell their inventory based on a number of complex variables including price forecasting and yield management.

• Measurement & Analytics: This segment is comprised of several smaller sub-segments including companies that check ad effectiveness through surveys, companies that verify campaigns to ensure the reporting is as accurate as possible, and analytical companies that help publishers to plan for future campaigns.

Download the full report at: http://tinyurl.com/yk52kb9

Download an extract of the report at: http://tinyurl.com/ykqaau3

Without an automated dynamic default technology in place, the only choice is to crate a static chain of networks in which each network has a certain order. This order stays the same for the whole month, week or day. Changing the order each day is an enormous amount of work. Ad network pricing changes constantly, therefore adjusting static daisy chains weekly, or even daily, isn’t enough to maximize yield.

Improve Digital’s Dynamic Default Optimisation©
Improve Digital solved the above problem with its Dynamic Default Optimisation©. Improve Digital implements dynamic default tags across multiple ad networks in realtime. Thing such as default characteristics, pricing trends, volume, frequencies of each network are monitored and measured in real-time in order to define the right ‘mix of networks’ in real time (caroussel versus waterfall).

Dynamic Default Optimization updates the daisy chain in real time, for every impression, which ensures that the impression goes to the highest paying ad network at every moment of the day.

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First launched early 2009, now Version 3.0 live

PubMatic was first to launch RTB in early 2009 and just released version 3.0 with 2nd generation capabilities. By finding the right combination of context and audience, ad networks and their clients are able to uniquely value each ad impression, increasing the advertiser’s campaign ROI, and improving the web surfer’s experience with better targeted advertisements.

Publisher benefits
The publisher benefits are significant and immediate.

1. Increased revenues – Our data shows that publishers experience noticeable revenue lifts because of the increased value of their inventory on top of the average lift of the ad network optimiser itself.
2. Better user experience – users get more relevant ads. Publishers also get transparency on the ad network that is serving the ad.
3. Exposure to more budgets – as more and more utilisation of RTB.

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How it works

Publishers can always opt-out
Publishers always decide what is running on their inventory and how. We’re here to help premium publishers, and they are under no obligation to participate in campaigns, if they don’t feel it is right for them at that moment..

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First launched early 2009, now Version 3.0 live

PubMatic was first to launch Real-time bidding in early 2009 and just releases version 3.0 with 2nd generation capabilities. By finding the right combination of context and audience, ad networks and their clients are able to uniquely value each ad impression, improving the publisher’s revenue, increasing the advertiser’s campaign ROI, and improving the web surfer’s experience with better targeted advertisements.

Ad networks benefits

• Access to an audience of 250 million global unique users via API
• Targeting capabilities including language, screen resolution, and relative position of the ads within a page
• Improved contextual analysis at page level
• ROI improvements of over 100% compared to not PubMatic’s RTB

How it works
For our ad network and demand partners, once they are integrated with us, RTB allows them to bid in real-time for each impression.

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Technical criteria for ad networks and exchanges
Maintaining a good user experience for our premium publishers is of critical importance to us and that includes fast load times for ads. We have servers in multiple locations, which gives us a geographical advantage, but more importantly, we have a minimum speed time that our partners must maintain in order to leverage our RTB. Before a partner goes ‘live’ with us, we undertake several test phases that gradually increase the scale to ensure that latency is not a problem

For our ad network and demand partners, it is less about difficulty than it is about ensuring that our publisher partners have a good experience, and that means our partners need to maintain our minimum technical standards.

Ask your account manager for integration.

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http://www.farneymedia.com/2009/11/18/improve-digitals-janneke-niessen-expects-big-growth-in-rtb-use-throughout-2010/

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