“Ad Agents” is a column written by the agency-side of the digital media community.
Greg Hills is platform manager of media trading agency, Varick Media Management.
As our industry continues to rationalize the way brands buy advertising, we’ve seen plenty of new companies and products pop up. Some provide solutions to old advertising problems, like universal frequency capping. Others deal with fresh challenges, like how to handle tens of thousands of real time bidding requests per second.
Despite the rapid pace of innovation, I think its possible to identify 10 larger trends that will continue to operate for years. Taken together they represent not just a bunch of complementary technologies and organizational challenges, but rather a new school of thought — a new way to to think about, plan, and execute marketing campaigns.
| Old School | New School | |
| Buying Pages |
1 |
Buying Audience |
| Forward Markets |
2 |
Spot Markets |
| Sellside Optimizes For Both Advertiser Performance And Publisher Yields |
3 |
Sellside Optimizes For Publisher Yield While Buyside Optimizes For Advertiser Performance |
| Sellside Aggregates Audience |
4 |
Everyone (Sellside, Buyside, Intermediaries) Aggregates Audience |
| Technology Is Strategic For The Sellside And Tactical For The Buyside |
5 |
Technology Is Strategic For Everyone |
| Agencies Work To Foster Internal Collaboration Between Digital And Non-Digital Buyers |
6 |
Agencies Work To Foster Internal Collaboration Between Buyers Of Display And Buyers Of Site Integrations And HPTO’s |
| Buy Instructions And Optimization Instructions Submitted Via Email Phone & Fax |
7 |
Buy Instructions And Optimization Instructions Submitted Via API |
| Testing Cycles Of 4-12 Weeks For Brand Metrics And Media Performance |
8 |
Testing Cycles Of 4-12 Days For Brand Metrics And Media Performance |
| Agencies Allocate Dollars Manually Based On Publisher’s Reach, Brand Equity And Perceived Value |
9 |
Agencies Allocate Dollars Through Automation, Based On Modeling Of Projected Returns On Ad Spend |
| Agencies Rely On A/B Testing For Learning |
10 |
Agencies Use Exploratory Data Analysis For Learning, As Well As A/B Testing |
