Rubicon Project's Heather Carver on the Continuing Evolution of Header Bidding
Setting up header bidding is now considered best practice for publishers who monetize their sites through programmatic channels. That wasn't always the case. At the beginning, header bidding was best reserved for those who had the development resources to implement the necessary hacks. As header bidding started to take off, increased guidance was required so that both the buy-side and the sell-side could build tech around it. Rubicon Project's Senior Vice President of Seller Accounts, Heather Carver, shared with me how the evolution of header bidding has led to the de facto standards that we all use today.
Header Bidding's Path to Maturity ... and the Road Ahead
The origins of the publisher strategy called header bidding is something many would debate. What was clear was publishers wanted to change the dynamics of how their inventory was valued. The way to do that was to have multiple sources bid on an impression instead of just one. This created competition, not only between advertisers on a single exchange but between exchanges.
Rubicon's John Peragine: Creating Smaller, More Snackable Ads
People love watching video content on their devices almost as much as marketers love to show video ads to those same people. Viewing habits, however, are changing. On the one hand, people may binge for hours on their favorite shows; on the other hand, they are looking for quick-hit content in video format. This shorter form video needs a complementary ad format. I sat down with John Peragine (pictured), Senior Vice President and Global Head of Video for Rubicon Project, to talk about six-second video ads.
Rubicon's Adam Soroca: Less Is Finally Becoming More in the Programmatic World
Transacting on digital advertising through programmatic channels continues to grow more complex. Many companies are exploring machine learning and more sophisticated algorithms to try to power through all the data required to understand which impressions to buy and at what price. There’s another strategy, however, that more buyers are adopting that may have a significant impact on the ad tech industry as a whole. I sat down with Adam Soroca (pictured above), Head of the Global Buyer Team at Rubicon Project, to understand what Supply-Path Optimization is and why it’s so important.
The Promise Universal IDs Have for Digital Advertising
Reaching the right user at the right time with the right message is the goal of digital advertising. Critical to that goal is the ability for ad tech companies to understand identity through the use of cookies. Unfortunately, it's not easy for these companies to work together without a universal ID for all to use. MediaVillage spoke with Garrett McGrath (pictured below), Vice President of Product Management,Data Services at Rubicon Project about why they are involved with the Advertising ID Consortium and the issues the consortium hopes to address.
Rubicon Project's Ashley Wheeler on Evolving Private Marketplaces
Programmatic has changed how digital advertising is bought and sold -- and it continues to evolve. For all the automation that exists, certain advertisers want to buy inventory on certain websites, but through programmatic channels. Publishers are eager to maintain their buyer relationships, and so companies like Rubicon Project developed the Private Marketplace (PMP) concept to create a win-win scenario for buyers and sellers. Ashley Wheeler (pictured), Vice President, Seller Accounts at Rubicon Project helps explain why PMPs came to be, the impact of header bidding and how PMPs relate to Programmatic Guaranteed (PG).
How Rush Hour Will Become the New Primetime
Automotive advertising will take on a whole new meaning when people in their cars have more opportunities to consume content. To be clear from the start, I already feel like I have enough screens in my van. My kids will watch a DVD in the back, my wife will be on her phone and I'm stuck looking out at the road ahead. I'm not 100% screen-free -- I do check Waze frequently to make sure I'm going the right way, but it's not the same. Sometimes being the driver can be lonely.
AlertMe: Publishers Newest Opportunity Might Be What Happens Next
Let’s not label Millennials and Gen Z as the only groups that have short attention spans. We all do when it comes to consuming content, regardless of age. It happens in part because we are bombarded with choices and our minds can’t keep track of everything we think we need to know. Who hasn’t made the mistake of trying to remember to read an article later only to forget it entirely?
Language of Screens
Consumers don’t think of themselves as consumers – they’re people. They don't think about “content channels.” They watch whatever they want to watch, however they like. Consumers are now in control. More than ever, we should learn to speak more like people if we want to be in the brands, the channels, the websites that are a part of their lives.
Lotame's Ryan Reed on the Connection Between Broadcast and Digital
Poor practices in ad tech have given data usage a bad name. However, using data for advertising is the only way forward. We'll have to be smarter as there's no going back to panels and guess work. But where ad tech meets broadcast there is a problem: The flow of data between broadcast and digital is not well established. Cookies are the standard tactic for digital but that doesn't exist on broadcast. Maybe part of the solution has been in front of us all along. It's not that we didn't see it; we've been staring at it on average five hours a day according to Nielsen. Ryan Reed (pictured above), Director of Innovation, TV/Video at Lotame -- a leading independent data management platform (DMP) -- thinks the television set itself can help connect the two media channels together.
Want to Solve for Brand Safety? Start by Protecting Your Budgets!
Adam Moser is an advertising operations veteran, having worked at MTVN, CBS and NBC. For the past three years he has served as Head of Ad Tech & Platform Operations at Hulu. He is responsible for overseeing the company's day-to-day advertising platform operations and strategic ad tech investments. Since joining Hulu, Moser has been instrumental in maintaining a best-in-class advertising experience across the video platform. His attention most recently has been on changing the conversation about brand safety within our industry, including clarification of the very term. He recently spoke with MediaVillage about these concerns.
Native In-Video Ads Bring a New Universe of Possibilities
I was reading the recent MediaVillage profile of Jodi Chisarick Senior Vice President, General Sales Manager at Twentieth Television, and there was one phrase she mentioned that popped out to me: "native in-video ads." As someone who spends his time immersed in the ad tech world, I'm very familiar with online native video ads like one might see on BuzzFeed, but Chisarick wasn't talking about online -- she was talking about syndicated broadcast television ... and I couldn't understand how that could possibly work.
Brand Safety: Who Goes Out with the Bathwater?
Brand safety has moved from a topic of discussion to a fundamental part of how ad operations does its job. It’s a great shift from an industry that has long talked about doing something (centuries in adtech years) but hasn’t rolled up its sleeves and really started to solve our brand safety issues. The $8+ billion a year fraud problem wouldn’t be so big if there was more doing and less talking.
AdTech Must Grow Up
My 16 year old has picked up a change in my tone when I speak with him. He's starting to drive and my stressing responsibility and focus have grown more intense. He can hear in my voice how serious this is. This isn't kid's stuff.
Watson’s Coming Impact on Digital Advertising
Jeremy Steinberg oversees advertising sales efforts across all consumer platforms and sales channels at The Weather Company, an IBM business, and is responsible for driving overall ad revenue and client and agency partnerships. He’s a well-recognized veteran of the digital media space, having started at Fox News in 2001 before moving to The Weather Company in 2013. I spoke to Jeremy about his role at IBM and how Watson can change digital media, and I asked him to give us a taste of what he’ll speak about at OPS on June 5th.
AdTech is an Interesting Place to Be
Is our new targeted content platform AdTechVillage already a tear-down? Recent media stories are already calling for the demise of adtech: The AdTech Forest is Falling, Online Advertising is Corrupt at Its Core, Brands Need to Fire AdTech. I believe all this discussion about the fate of adtech actually makes it one of the most fascinating topics to watch.
The Lack of Brand Safety in AdTech
Twenty years ago I was an ad operations trafficker for Advance Internet (now Advance Digital) and found myself logged into DoubleClick, scrolling through page after page of banner ads trying to find a specific ad. I had been told that one of the owners of the company had seen an ad they found offensive on one of our sites and it was my job to root it out. There was no easy way to do it then: I simply had to visually look at hundreds of ads, trying to figure out which one was the offender. I had to repeat this process many times, often with limited success.
