Yesterday, Yahoo! announced their demand-side platform (DSP) pilot program yesterday in a post co-authored by Ramsey McGrory (VP, North American Marketplaces) and Seth Dallaire (VP, Mid Market Sales) on the Yahoo! advertising blog. In discussing its partnership with five demand-side platforms and its DSP strategy going forward, McGrory and Dallaire wrote:
“The pilot will demonstrate how Yahoo!, in partnership with these industry leaders, can provide marketers with access to the audiences they most want to reach by leveraging insights from buyers, sellers and 3rd party data providers. This pilot will also enable DSPs to establish a more integrated, deeper relationship with the Yahoo! Network and the Right Media Exchange.”
McGrory and Bill Wise, VP/GM, Ad Platforms, Yahoo! discussed the announcement and its implications with AdExchanger.com.
AdExchanger.com It appears Yahoo! is no longer moving forward with its own DSP strategy and Yahoo will look to enable DSP partners. Why the change?
Bill Wise: Our channel sales strategy with DSPs was always two-fold; represent audience-buying for a very select number of large marketers directly, while enabling the broader market. This is similar to working with differentiated ad networks who represent marketers we already work with, but whom offer a layer of technology, data or insight that differentiate the offering.
Various capabilities of the Right Media Exchange are similar to DSP capabilities – such as decisioning, optimization, and analytics technology. We love enabling DSPs that provide unique, innovative technology and services to our client. Either way, we collectively leverage Yahoo!’s science, art and scale to deliver on the promise of audience-based buying.
AdExchanger.com: Why did you choose these 5 DSPs (Invite Media, Mediamath, DataXu, Turn and X+1) to co-develop DSP best practices?
Ramsey McGrory: Yahoo! has built relationships with leading DSPs through the Right Media Exchange and through existing agency relationships. Our initial partner list was based on agency feedback and deep discussions with the DSPs in the space. We will add more partners in the future.
AdExchanger.com: When will the real-time bidding (RTB) feature come to RMX and Yahoo! inventory? Will Yield Manager be phased out or is it getting “upgraded” with RTB?
Ramsey McGrory: Yahoo! has been testing non-hosted RTB quietly for over the past year with several partners, through the RMX platform. Through the DSP program, we are expanding the number of buying partners testing it.
Bill Wise: We are also in the process of adding publishers from the Right Media Exchange for RTB testing. Yield manager is a critical piece of this, so no change there.
AdExchanger.com: Using RTB, DSPs will be able to map user cookies across buys across ad exchanges such as RMX and DoubleClick Ad Exchange. Is interoperability between exchanges still important?
Bill Wise: It is our hope and intention for RTB to become a standard between exchange’s dynamic supply sources– the industry needs it. Standardizing the way RTB happens is important, and we need to come together to ensure we don’t have too many different ways of performing this kind of integration.
Ramsey McGrory: It’s not trivial and we’re currently not consistent in how as an industry we do it. Regarding interoperability between exchanges, RTB sprung up in part as a response to there not being interoperability between exchanges, so RTB in essence allows for interoperability.
By John Ebbert
