Guest Comment: Platforms for Change

With huge volumes of new webpages being created daily, bringing with them an ever increasing growth in new advertising inventory, there is greater pressure to adopt technologies which can help speed up the online buying and selling process.   

This combination of continual website and advertising expansion, which drives audience fragmentation, makes it increasingly complex for companies to identify, reach and market to their target groups. 

At the same time, those looking to run targeted advertising campaigns, particularly online, struggle in the current marketplace because they have to contend with a very archaic market, requiring a great deal of manual intervention.  Every transaction relies on a great deal of human involvement, and the result is that deals can take a lot of time to pull together.  Unfortunately for the online media sector, it has inherited many of the offline approaches to buying and selling advertising despite the rules, and therefore the requirements, of new media being very different. 

It’s this combination of fragmentation and inefficient practices that is screaming out for technology that can automate the buying and selling processes, simplifying and removing the complexities of doing business in order to drive necessary efficiencies.  

As a result, we are seeing the emergence of new platforms that help automate processes across a host of different markets.  

The launch of MediaEquals this year has introduced an online trading platform for offline media covering press, inserts and display, as well as outdoor.  This platform allows media owners to detail their ad inventory on its system, including price and positioning, thus enabling media agencies and advertisers to log on and purchase ad space or even bid against rivals for ad spots. 

Last year we saw the arrival of Bid4Spots in the UK, which hosts a weekly online auction of radio spots available the following broadcast week. This allows advertisers to gain affordable direct response radio advertising rates by buying last-minute spots at discounted rates, while radio stations can increase their revenue by selling last minute available inventory.

In the online advertising arena, ad exchanges, such as the Right Media Exchange, are gaining much attention.  These transparent automated trading platforms offer a common online, auction-based trading platform, where buyers and sellers of digital advertising can all be inter-connected.  Price is driven by market forces, making the whole process faster, easier and more transparent, helping eliminate barriers to business and removing traditional inefficiencies.

As they are technology platforms, exchanges are by nature agnostic, because it’s the buyers and sellers that control what they buy or sell and who they work with.  The auction system itself creates an environment in which each bidder has equal access to the media, so relationships and budget sizes do not distort the workings of the platform.

Exchanges provide publishers with a mechanism for monetising their inventory as effectively as possible by ensuring there is always a buyer for their inventory; and as the highest bid wins in the auction model, it ensures they achieve the maximum yield for their site based on what the market is willing to pay. At the same time, defining and operating business relationships on a single platform minimises the operational workload through automation, and provides a better understanding of the process, increasing the efficiencies of your ad operations.

For an advertiser, an exchange offers greater access to inventory, strong visibility into and control of pricing, performance and global frequency (to help ensure expanded reach) and more successful campaigns. Additionally, through the auction-based process, advertisers pay what an impression is worth to them, ensuring they never overpay for inventory, which is not always the case for traditional approaches.  

Furthermore, the automated nature of some of these exchanges means the system learns what creatives work best on which sites and sections.  For example, on the Right Media Exchange, campaigns are rapidly optimised and the platform can dynamically alter the bid accordingly, allowing advertisers to capture the most relevant advertising opportunities that come up for auction and achieve their campaign goals.

For any online business, brand sanctity is a real concern, which makes the controls offered by exchanges very important.  Without this level of control, the dramatic level of growth in exchanges would not have been possible.

These new platforms are starting to redefine the very nature of buying and selling media and are a far cry from the traditional manual way of doing things.  One thing for certain is that the media market will only get more complicated in the future.  Therefore, companies need to embrace new platforms and approaches that remove complexities, speed up processes and drive more efficiencies, to continue to improve their bottom line.

By

Roger Williams

Director of International Marketing

Right Media

www.rightmedia.com