AdTech Must Grow Up

Digital advertising which has been muddling through adolescence is learning the same lesson amp160Consumers have been admonishing it by blocking adsamp160 PampampG39s Chief Brand Officeramp160Marc Pritchard laid down the law at January39s IAB Annual Leadership Meeting saying quotThe days of giving digital a pass are over It39s time to grow upquot amp160By some estimates digital ad spending has surpassed TV and it39s time to act like itThe latest quottalking toquot for the industry came at the IAB Programmatic Symposium on May 17 amp160At the event the IAB laid out the case of dropping the slang term of quotprogrammaticquot in favor of the more mature notion of quotautomationquot amp160Automation certainly aligns better with other more established industries where efficiency is the focus amp160Programmatic comes with too much baggage for us to convince advertisers that we39ve got this figured outDigital advertising has a way of dropping words once they become problematic amp160Companies were quotnetworksquotamp160until people realized that meant quothigh margin intermediariesquot amp160Networks were replaced by the term Real Time Bidding RTB but soon RTB was associated with open exchanges rife with fraudulent traffic amp160Programmatic soon became the hip term to use but the brand safety issues continued to plague it amp160Hopefully with the move to automationamp160we can leave some of our industry39s bad habits behindReframing as automation hopefully shifts the conversation to something more safe and efficient and signals a more mature focus on resolving the existential issues digital advertising faces amp160In fact the majority of the sessions at the symposium weren39t on programmatic topics per se but brand safety transparency and the quotpost programmatic eraquot amp160The audience followed suit Aamp160town hall session about header biddingamp160turned into a conversation that had littlenothing to do with header bidding amp160It turned into a heated debate about the business models and practices AdTech companies must adopt to stay in business amp160The person sitting next me was disappointed that she didn39t get to hear more about header bidding the reason she came to the conference but found the conversation very educational amp160Maybe we are all ready to fix all of thisThese bigger issues are now the focus amp160Renaming what we do won39t help take digital advertising to the next level of maturity but it is time to grow up and think more about how we currently do things and it isn39t good enough amp160The digital advertising industry has put the IAB in a very difficult spot amp160As I see it the IAB helps bring more advertising to digital by making the case that it is a safe place for advertisers amp160They do this while trying to get us to clean up our act and prevent us from further damaging our credibility with another brand safety PR disasteramp160 All of this while we ask them for more and more complex standards by which to transact between parties with conflicting interests amp160I don39t envy themBut the IAB presses on and inamp160addition to the automation document they announced adstxt which for all its simplicity looks like a great step forward amp160Basically as buyers assess inventory through programming sorry automation means they can check a file on the publisher39s website adstxt that declares what sales channels the site can beamp160bought through preventing spoofers from saying they are aamp160particularamp160site on the exchanges when they are someone else amp160All the AdTech people I39ve checked with so far think this isamp160a very good next step to addressing our brand safety issuesThe symposium ended with a discussion between Alanna Gombert GM of the IAB Tech Lab and Richard Bush Chief Product and Technology Officer at NYIAX amp160They describe how using blockchain a technology used in financial markets is a way to get serious about how we count and track digital media transactions amp160In fact NYIAX which is built off NASDAQ is all about bringing realamp160financial principles to digital advertising Financial exchanges are much more sophisticated and secure than what we39ve built in AdTech amp160Perhaps FinTech offers a view of what AdTech can accomplish once we39ve grown upClick the social buttons above or below to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT | BECOME A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CONTRIBUTOR

AdTech Must Grow Up

Author

Publish date

Channel

Rob Beeler

Don’t’ Back Down; Double Down on DEI Investments - By Jack Myers

More Videos:

SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE MEDIAVILLAGE CONTENT | BECOME A THOUGHT LEADERSHIP CONTRIBUTOR

AdTech Must Grow Up

Enjoying This Commentary? There's More to Love

Rob Beeler

Stay in the know with more from MediaVillage

Don’t’ Back Down; Double Down on DEI Investments - By Jack Myers

Cookies