Publisher Ad Tech Trends; Agency Trading Desks - Marketer's View; Math Wars Part Deux

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

Publisher Tech Trends

Inspired by OpenX’s funding announcement and a review of their product line, Forrester Research’s Michael Greene sees emerging trends on the publisher side of ad tech in the next year or two. He writes, “DoubleClick’s DFP still dominates the enterprise ad serving market for publishers, but smaller vendors like OpenX are beginning to make inroads with up and coming publishers and in emerging advertising markets (especially in Asia). It’s going to take a lot to get a publisher to rip out the core of its business by replacing its ad server, but the pressures of managing new, complex products (e.g. audience targeting, exchange-based sales) across more channels (e.g. video, mobile, and tablets) will make this a consideration for many publishers.” Will Google be buying pub side ad tech soon? Tick tick tick… only the shadow (and the bankers and some of the entrepreneurs and a few dozen people at Google) knows. Read it. Also, The Financial Times reports on new OpenX funding and its exchange, known as OpenX Market, which has “revenue” of $50 million. Read more.

More On ATDs

Client advocate Domenico Tassone pens “Agency Trading Desk Myths & Memes Debunked ” on his Tip of the Spear blog. He begins, “While agencies are notoriously silent about their and their client’s businesses (as they should be), two anti-ATD blog posts (The Trouble With Agency Trading Desks and Thumb on the Scale) warranted a response from a different point-of-view…the advertiser. The spin and rhetoric have reached epic proportions and so a debunking of popular myths and memes follow (…)” Read more.

Math Wars

Digiday has ignited an entertaining debate as Simulmedia’s Dave Morgan and MediaMath’s Joe Zawadzki battle in an opinion piece throwdown for the ages. OK, OK. Maybe its not a “throwdown for the ages,” and Morgan didn’t write an opinion piece, but he says in the course of a Q&A that math in the ad tech ecosystem is going too far in the name of the marketer’s best interest as he adds, “My sense is 90 percent of the targeting available today is too granular, redundant and dramatically exceeds the capacity of the markets to exploit.” Schwaaaa!? Zawadzki, obviously still “feeling it” since his opinion piece brawl with Kendall Allen on Ad Age, agrees with Morgan in part but says, “Dave’s not right when he says the space isn’t differentiated or is relying on science too much.” Fighting words!

Ad Networks And Garbage

“Ad networks have allowed garbage inventory from garbage aggregators to lead to garbage click-throughs that make the media buyer look good by driving down the cost per click.” Tell me what you really mean, Gene. Gene Hoffman, that is, who writes this fun statement and then argues that the world is going subscription and virtual goods in a think piece on Ad Age. Hoffman is chairman and CEO of Vindicia, “which provides an on-demand subscription billing solution for digital merchants.” Ah, I get it. Read more.

Evidon And Its Ad Verification Partners

In order to continue to propagate its Online Behavioral Ads (OBA) compliance solution, Evidon’s Kristen Chapman announced on her company’s blog that it has partnered with ad verification companies AdSafe Media, Adometry and AdXpose. Evidon is in competition with TrustE and DoubleVerify among others who look to offer a way for advertisers, publishers and their partners to comply with opt-out capabilities stipulated by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) as part of the industry’s self-regulation initiative. Read more product announcements from Evidon here.

Taking The Search-Display Plunge

On the Search Engine Watch blog, Dentsu’s IgnitionOne (was SearchIgnite) President Roger Barnette preaches the search-display convergence: “Paid search is transforming, morphing, and aligning with display marketing in many ways. For search and display marketers to survive in the same ecosystem, they must start to work more closely together.” Read more.

Economics Of Good Enough

In a post on his own site, GigaOm Founder Om Malik is inspired by the writing of Taboola CEO Adam Singolda who discusses “The Economics of Good Enough” as keys to business success. Malik summarizes, “What many don’t realize is that today’s always-on economy has an entirely new dynamic that involves an always-on, anywhere customer, unpredictable demand, and – most importantly – the limited attention span of customers.” Read how he think this gets translated to businesses.

But Wait. There’s More!