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How Marketo Added $3 Billion In Two Years, And Why PE Thinks There’s More To Come ANA Confirms FBI Criminal Investigation On Ad Transparency Fraudsters Are Masquerading As Real DSPs French Startup Teemo Appeases GDPR Regulators, Avoids A Fine Brian O’Kelley’s Departure As CEO Comes As No Surprise To Ad Tech Insiders Brian O’Kelley Steps Down As AppNexus CEO The Trade Desk Is Flying High. Can It Last? Turner Ad Sales Boss Donna Speciale Wants To Blur The Line Between Linear And Digital MediaMath Will Drop Supply Partners That Game The Auction

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FreeWheel Launches Ad Product Suite, Boosts Competition With Roku

by Rae Paoletta // Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 10:30 am.

FreeWheel released the next generation of its ad exchange on Tuesday.

The Comcast-owned ad server built off its legacy ad exchange, enhanced by technology from its acquisition of StickyAds in 2016, for its updated ad product suite, DRIVE. The new exchange is designed to let marketers more easily buy over-the-top (OTT), set-top box video on demand and digital video inventory from any of FreeWheel’s opted-in publishers.

StickyAds gave FreeWheel a more sophisticated ad exchange than the one it previously had. FreeWheel integrated StickyAds’ SSP into its ad server in order to make transacting easier for publishers.

In June, FreeWheel partnered with Nielsen to better measure across OTT. This development, coupled with other new perks, like being able buy inventory in real time, makes DRIVE a better version of what FreeWheel already had. At least, that’s the plan.

“What we’ve seen in the market is there’s an interest in getting aggregate scale,” Neil Smith, general manager of FreeWheel Markets, told AdExchanger. “We want to be a complementary media product [to direct sales] so we can take the complementary demand and position ourselves against the Rokus of the world.”

In June, Roku launched its Audience Marketplace, allowing publishers to sell inventory based on first-party audience data. With DRIVE, FreeWheel is a new entrant into the increasingly crowded – and competitive – world of OTT.

“If you go to buy that aggregate [inventory] from Roku, you’re buying a planet,” Smith said. “If you come and buy from DRIVE and marketplace on FreeWheel, you’re getting the universe.”

Smith said FreeWheel’s DRIVE and relationships with publishers, in addition to its measurement partnership with Nielsen, give it an advantage over exchanges offered by Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire.

Smith said DRIVE has been in beta since the spring but declined to disclose the number of clients using it.

May the best exchange win.

Hearts & Science Calls To Replace First-Price Auction With Reformed Second-Price Model

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 8:00 am.

The switch to first-price auctions last year is causing programmatic buyers to pay more, according to research from media agency Hearts & Science.

In one test, a first-price auction drove CPMs up by more than 50%.

The Omnicom agency wants programmatic to create “clean” second-price auctions to remove the premium that buyers pay. It doesn’t want to revert back to the previous second-price model, which suffers from problems around transparency and bid density, along with a multi-stage auction.

Ben Hovaness, executive director of digital activation for Hearts & Science, said a reimagined second-price auction must meet two conditions.

First, those who run the auctions must be audited to ensure they’re not artificially boosting the clearing price. Second, the industry must resolve the reason why first-price auctions proliferated: header bidding has created an inefficient two-stage auction, where the highest bidder doesn’t always win.

A second-price auction where SSPs pass through all bids and the publisher conducts the auction could solve those problems, Hovaness proposed.

Transformation will take time and collaboration. As a stopgap, Hearts & Science proposes that brands invest in second-price auctions when possible and negotiate private marketplaces with key publishers.

Apple’s Upgraded Intelligent Tracking Prevention May Cause Conversions To Crash

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 12:04 am.

"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Today’s column is written by Simon Harris, head of programmatic activation at Dentsu Aegis Network.

Each fall, Apple releases a new iPhone with the promise that it’s the best iPhone ever.

This year’s iPhones are very much iterative. One of the features that Apple has upgraded is Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), a feature that first launched last year in its mobile browser Safari. ITP prevents users from being tracked by ad tech businesses across the web, and thanks to some upgrades, the latest iPhones will be the least trackable ever.

These changes will have a massive impact on marketing in the United States because of Apple’s dominance in its home market. Globally, Google Chrome is used by around 55% of mobile internet users, but in the United States, Safari is the dominant force with a 50% share of browsers. Even worse for marketers, most older Apple devices are upgraded to the latest software quickly, as we can see for iOS 11:

Google’s Adam Stewart On Finding The Right YouTube Influencer For Your Brand

by Rae Paoletta // Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 12:04 am.

Contrary to popular belief, video did not kill the radio star. It made them a YouTube influencer.

Advertisers use influencer marketing to reach consumers at a time of increased ad aversion. But the sheer volume of influencers and content on YouTube alone can be overwhelming for advertisers searching for the best fit for their brand.

This is part of the challenge that Adam Stewart, Google’s VP of consumer goods, government and entertainment, tackles every day.

“We focus on [advertisers’] business objectives,” Stewart told AdExchanger during Advertising Week in New York City. “If you’re Netflix, you need to gain more subscribers. If you’re Sony Pictures, you want to get people to the box office. If you’re Ford, you want to get people to drive a car.”

Stewart and his team help facilitate the connections between brands and YouTube influencers. This symbiotic relationship between marketer and influencer is one of the reasons Google invests heavily in the FameBit by YouTube marketing platform. The software helps connect brands with the best influencer for their products. Hollister, NBC and Keurig have used the platform to collaborate with YouTube creators on campaigns.

AdExchanger spoke with Stewart to discuss the YouTube influencer phenomenon.

Guardian Settles Suit Vs Rubicon; In-Housing Road Bumps At Vodafone?

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 12:03 am.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

The Hand That Fees

Rubicon Project and the British news publisher The Guardian have reached a settlement in their legal disputes about alleged hidden fees, reports The Wall Street Journal. The suit, filed last year, alleged that the ad tech company charged undisclosed fees to buyers. Rubicon responded with a countersuit saying it was allowed to charge fees and The Guardian was aware of them. Rubicon will pay a confidential settlement that is “immaterial to the company from a financial standpoint,” according to the court filing in London. More. The outcome will (ironically) deprive the industry of some hoped for transparency into allegedly non-transparent SSP practices.

In-House Of Correction

Digiday reports on some friction at Vodafone as the company attempts to take more of its media activities in house. The company manages its search and social campaigns directly, but still relies on agency Wavemaker for programmatic display. There are internal tensions between the digital team and advertising team over which will own and fund the programmatic setup, according to one Vodafone exec. “(The executive) pointed to the spiraling costs of ad tech, talent and publisher relationships as the key sticking point.” Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said in May that managing more of its $263 million digital media budgets will improve its own attribution and could give a better sense of whether it can build a viable ad business under GDPR using customer data. More.

TripAdvisor: For TV Attribution, ‘Correlation Doesn’t Cut It’

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Friday, October 12th, 2018 at 10:00 am.

The CEO of TripAdvisor, Steve Kaufer, has a motto: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.”

Which is why TV had to prove itself before earning a spot on the travel review site’s media plan. Until 2013, TripAdvisor spent most of its budget on digital, mainly because of its measurability.

There’s a lack of “direct, clear, down-the-funnel attribution” models for television, said Tim D’Auria, TripAdvisor’s head of TV media optimization, speaking at an attribution and measurement event put on by Greenbook and Sequent Partners in New York City on Thursday.

In other words, it’s extremely easy to confuse correlation for causation when you’re trying to measure TV, and “correlation doesn’t cut it,” D’Auria said.

More than 455 million people visit TripAdvisor’s site on a monthly basis, which means a lot of its users likely hit the homepage without being prompted.

“If you start putting money into a certain network, you might see folks come to your site, but how do I know how many folks would have come anyway, even if the ad had not run?” said D’Auria.

EMarketer: Buyers Embrace PMPs And Programmatic Guaranteed

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Friday, October 12th, 2018 at 9:29 am.

As marketer concerns about brand safety, transparency and data ownership continue to grow, so do their investments in programmatic guaranteed deals and private marketplaces (PMPs).

By 2020, four out of every five programmatic dollars in the United States will flow to PMPs or guaranteed deals, according to eMarketer’s latest programmatic forecast released Friday.

Brand safety is a big catalyst behind that shift, as are advertisers who want more control over their audience data, said Lauren Fisher, principal analyst at eMarketer and author of the report.

“If marketers want more control over their data, they’re going to choose set-ups where they feel in control,” she said. “They’re not just going put premium customer data in the open market. They’re going to put guardrails in place.”

This year, programmatic guaranteed deals will reach $27.5 billion to account for 58% of all programmatic display spend in the United States, eMarketer predicts. PMPs will grow 21% to reach $13.5 billion, or roughly half of all real-time bidding spend. Meanwhile, the open exchange will grow just 8.9% to $12.8 billion.

Despite the numbers, marketers aren’t shunning the open exchange altogether.

“We’re continuing to see growth in the open market every year,” Fisher said. “Dollars are just moving faster to PMPs and direct deals. That’s reflective of this environment where buyers want more control and a relationship with the seller.”

ComScore’s Second Act: Measuring Premium Video And Getting Closer To Buyers

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Friday, October 12th, 2018 at 12:30 am.

Brian Wiener will present on video measurement at AdExchanger's upcoming Programmatic IO New York conference on Oct. 15-16.

ComScore is getting back on its feet.

After the Nasdaq delisted the company due to a string of financial foibles and leadership changes, the measurement company brought on former 360i Chairman Bryan Wiener as CEO in April. By May, comScore was trading again on the Nasdaq.

Wiener wants comScore to become the independent, cross-platform measurement currency for the advertising industry. It’s the same initial promise of the comScore-Rentrak merger in 2015 that the company “failed to execute against,” Wiener said.

“Measurement has not kept pace with consumer behavior, and therefore trust in measurement has eroded,” he said. “The industry has been waiting for us to launch these products.”

In July, the company teamed up with TV networks including ABC, CBS, Viacom and NBCU, as well as GroupM, to release a campaign ratings product in beta that provides deduplicated measurement across all video platforms.

Measuring premium video across platforms will be comScore’s “north star,” Wiener said.

But whereas comScore has historically been focused on the sell-side, Wiener wants to also get closer to buyers and create a currency that works for both. In September, he brought on his former 360i colleague Sarah Hofstetter to lead the company’s buy-side push.

“Currencies have two sides,” Wiener said. “We need demand from the buy-side and integration from the sell-side.”

He spoke with AdExchanger.

Surviving Social In B2B Marketing

by AdExchanger // Posted on Friday, October 12th, 2018 at 12:06 am.

“Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Today’s column is written by Vinodini Suresh, senior social media strategist at DWA, a Merkle company.

Social platforms have taken a reputation hit this year. Mounting scandals and revelations, such as widespread bot accounts, discriminatory targeting, hacked accounts and mishandling of first-party data, have forced advertisers to take a hard look at their dealings with social platforms.

The platforms responded with a scorched-earth approach: Facebook wiped out an enormous stable of targeting options, and Twitter rooted out millions of bot accounts with little regard for how this might affect platform scale and engagement.

However, the forest fire will clear the underbrush and ultimately strengthen these platforms, allowing greater transparency, sharper focus on the most effective and ethical targeting capabilities and renewed trust from users and advertisers.

As the companies continue to shift and correct, marketers must judge how to move forward in social based on their own performance and needs in the platforms. There are, however, some silver linings and outright wins to look forward to.

The Mainstreaming Of Supply-Path Optimization

by AdExchanger // Posted on Friday, October 12th, 2018 at 12:05 am.

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community.

Today's column is written by Erik Requidan, vice president of programmatic strategy at Intermarkets.

Supply-path optimization (SPO) is sometimes described as a way to reduce supply sources or consolidate multiple supply partners. When you consider how header bidding has exploded, SPO has become a necessity.

Not only does it reduce some of the strain on overwhelmed demand-side platforms (DSPs), it also improves transparency. SPO helps buyers get closer to sellers, which can boost performance and reduce costs and exposure to unsavory practices such as fraud and the opaque fees often referred to as the ad tech tax.

Major agencies, buyers and strategists now plan around SPO and they have a good idea of how to optimize paths. Are publishers ready to have conversations this far up the chain?

What’s SPO again?

I wrote about Brian O’Kelley’s thoughts on how to change the supply chain late last year:

Supply-path optimization (SPO) … refers to the ways that advertisers optimize the path to the advertising inventory they want. Buyers are selecting fewer places from which to buy, with fewer URLs and publishers. While these decisions are based largely on cost, they’re also driven by a desire for transparency and safe, high-quality media. It’s one way that buyers and sellers are moving closer in their thinking and strategic planning, while reducing the number of middlemen in any given transaction.