iMedia Connection

Ad networks are one of the most confusing areas of the digital industry. Here are the answers to seven of your most pressing questions, such as: Can ad networks provide marketers with full transparency, and, are DSPs more cost-effective than ad networks?

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Mobile ad networks and technology vendors have historically been forced to handle ad production work themselves, owing largely the emerging HTML5 technology on which mobile ads are usually based. Some appear keen to avoid that responsibility, however, choosing instead to provide clients with self-service tools to help reduce their role in the production process.

In the past week Medialets and Crisp Media have rolled out mobile campaign management platforms that include the ability for agencies, publishers and advertisers to build large portions of their own creative using simple interfaces and pre-produced ad templates. Earlier this year, Apple too unveiled a drag and drop solution to produce ads to run across its iAd network, having produced ads itself in-house previously.
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Sell-side platform PubMatic has published another whitepaper which says that private, real-time bidded marketplaces are models for which advertisers are more comfortable – and that publishers should pay attention. Among the findings of the PubMatic/Digiday research, “74% of advertisers prefer to use DSPs and ad networks to target audience.” Nearly 70% of buy-side entities (agencies, marketers, agency trading desk) said they’d prefer to be buying via real-time bidding (RTB), too.

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IAB news release, 4/4/11

NEW YORK, NY (April 4, 2011) — To enhance buyer control over ad placement and context, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced today the in-market debut of the Ad Network & Exchange Quality Assurance Certification program, a first-of-its-kind compliance mechanism and the only industry-endorsed certification program that exists today. Only companies that undergo rigorous training, conduct an intensive internal audit and assign a compliance officer to ensure they maintain the IAB’s Quality Assurance Guidelines (QAG) will receive a compliance seal from the IAB. The seal, which can be placed on the company’s website and marketing materials, certifies that the company is adhering fully to the only industry established criteria as outlined by the QAG, finalized in June 2010.

The IAB also announced the first 17 ad networks & exchanges that have completed the training and received the seal:

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Many marketers don’t understand how to plan and optimize integrated campaigns across multichannels, although they want to run cross-platform efforts. To enhance that goal, Compete teamed with parent company Kantar Media — specializing in TV audience segments — to build out audience segments combining Web site and television panelists, Stephen DiMarco, Compete CMO, told Online Media Daily.

The tool, built on the recently released Compete Media Planner, will allow brands to map out thousands of sites where audience segments spend the majority of their time.

Today, advertisers and agencies can use this tool to identify and reach more than 4,000 audience segments online. Publishers and ad networks can use the information to attract potential advertisers by demonstrating how effective they are at reaching those segments.

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Ad networks, for some time considered the poor stepchild of the media buying world, may be enjoying a rebirth by offering new behavioral targeting techniques, hyper-rich media and mobile geo-location capabilities.

“It’s fair to say that, for the b2b world, ad networks are bringing an added level of prospect data to understand the industry someone works in, their level in the organization and more,” said Terrance McDermott, media director with b2b agency Slack and Co., Chicago. “Ad networks now are often the first step in large media buys. They are no longer restrained by just selling excess inventory.”

Ad networks aggregate ad space on numerous websites. Once known primarily as a way for publishers to fill space they couldn’t sell or to place on other websites excess inventory they couldn’t find room for, ad networks are becoming more central to many marketers’ media-buying plans.

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eMarketer, 3/10/11

At present, online marketers in the display, rich media and video advertising space can hardly keep track of advancements in targeting and technology, let alone the seemingly endless parade of new ad networks and exchanges.

One of the latest technologies to test for online advertisers hoping to streamline their ad inventory buying and bidding process is real-time bidding. For networks and publishers, real-time bidding can aid in filling additional site inventory and gaining access to new brands and advertisers.

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The conventional wisdom of late in the online ad industry has been that as ad exchanges rise, ad networks fall.

And as audience-based, data-centric ad buying increases in prominence, the old school, context-driven ad approach is becoming passé.

Yet Google has horses in both races. The company—in a blog post on Wednesday (Feb. 23)—is out to make a case that ad networks and exchanges can coexist, and even thrive. And context isn’t dead at all.

The basic argument of the post, authored by Neal Mohan, Google’s vp of product management, is that an either-or scenario “is the wrong way to look at it,” Mohan told Adweek. “It’s about what an agency or advertiser is trying to do.” Mohan likened the difference between using demand-side platforms to purchase ads in real time via an exchange to an investor managing his own stock portfolio. Meanwhile, using an ad network is like employing a stock broker.

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Apple’s iAds are hitting a rough spot. Across the board, several developers I’ve spoken to confirm that “fill rates” for iAds dropped drastically after the New Year and have yet to recover. The fill rate—what percentage of the ad inventory is actually filled with an ad—for two separate developers plummeted from 18 percent to 6 percent. And in a few instances for some newer apps, none of the ad slots were getting filled, compared to nearly complete fill rates from other mobile ad networks. Others report better fill rates but as one developer says, “They have definitely come down.”

One reason for the dip could be just seasonal. The fill rates and advertising budgets across all ad networks in general take a hit after the holidays. But there seems to be something else going on here as well. “The general consensus among the advertising community is that it is a product they don’t want,” says one mobile ad tech CEO. The iAds business, he suggests, “is hurting.”

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