Josh Jacobs is SVP of Brand Advertising Products & Marketing at vertical content network Glam Media.
What will happen to Glam Media‘s publisher inventory? Does it all get folded into GlamAdapt?
JJ: Glam Media has migrated the more than 3000+ sites in our Vertical Media network to the GlamAdapt platform. Today, GlamAdapt is delivering on campaigns for 100s of brand advertisers, in countries around the world. GlamJapan’s mobile ad solution is also deployed on GlamAdapt. The GlamAdapt platform enables new premium features for all Glam Media publishers, allowing them to drive greater value from their inventory through participation in high impact brand campaigns, and discovering and selling new audiences on their sites.
How is the GlamAdapt platform different than an ad network?
GlamAdapt is an end-to-end ad serving platform that can be used as a replacement ad platform by publishers, and provides buying tools and analytics for agencies and advertisers. GlamAdapt is open to third parties for extension, creating an ad-tech integration platform that allows publishers to seamlessly create custom packaging solutions combining first and third-party targeting data, a broad array of third-party (and GlamAdapt built in) creative solutions, and multiple brand effectiveness and retail ROI measurement capabilities. GlamAdapt’s focus on brand advertising helps publishers maximize the impact and value of their inventory, by moving from impression-based serving to page-based targeting -allowing smaller publishers to participate in large, high value share of voice (SOV) based buys, and take advantage of built in support for high impact ad formats and executions. Through our marketplace services, publisher inventory can be exposed to third-party media buyers and can expose rich media capabilies and publisher data to differentate their inventory and increase its value.
In that you’re targeting brand advertisers, what pricing models will you offer? Any engagement pricing – CPE?
What solutions are you offering for attribution? In other words, how will you report to brand advertisers the effectiveness of their online campaigns across digital channels?
For years, brand advertisers have been looking for consistent ways to measure effectiveness of media buys and up until the launch of GlamAdapt, they had to work with vendor specific, and often poorly correlated, metrics. A core feature of the GlamAdapt architecture is that engagement and interaction are directly linked to ROI for brand marketers. As such, the GlamAdapt platform was designed to close the loop between audience targeting, effective exposure, and brand and retail lift. GlamAdapt achieves this by normalizing all campaigns and creatives to a common set of engagement metrics that can be measured and acted on while campaigns are running. GlamAdapt includes a real-time campaign dashboard that allows campaigns to be analyzed and optimized for performance against engagement metrics by content, contextual vertical, and audience segments. GlamAdapt’s dashboard supports the discovery of new audiences with high engagement rates, and the optimization of campaigns away from audiences that are not meeting campaign engagement objectives. A great example of how GlamAdapt drives ROI via engagement is our partnership with IRI & Dynamic Logic for CPG & Retail brands. As part of this strategic industry solution, GlamAdapt supports targeting based on consumer purchase behavior, and closed loop ROI analysis of post campaign retail lift. Using the GlamAdapt platform, engagement metrics can be correlated to offline sales, providing the analytic basis for brand marketers to shift budget to metrics that better deliver on their marketing objectives.
How does GlamAdapt address creative?
Glam believes that creative plays a critical role in driving engagement and connection within digital advertising. The platform is designed to support advanced creative formats, campaigns that can dynamically adapt to the unique capabilities and placements on individual sites, and offers a standard set of engagement metrics, reporting, and insights across all creative types. Our Engagement Services SDK allows third-party creative providers to integrate their units into the GlamAdapt metrics system, plugging them into our optimization and insights capabilities as equal partners. Creative executions are an exciting area of innovation, with a myriad of great capabilities being delivered by different companies. We were excited to announce the platform with creative partners like MediaMind, Pictela and PointRoll, and will continue to add the roster of third-party creative solutions that are available through the platform.
Will GlamAdapt source inventory through exchanges in addition to its publishers?
Extending Glam behavioral audiences to other inventory sources is part of the value we can provide to our customers, and as such, Glam will source inventory from non-Glam publishers as well as third-party marketplaces.
Can demand-side platforms (DSPs) and ad networks buy through GlamAdapt on a per impression basis? If so, how? Will inventory become real-time bidding (RTB) enabled at some point?
Through GlamAdapt’s Marketplace Services APIs, DSPs and Agency Buying Platforms can gain access to GlamAdapt publisher inventory on an impression or page targetted basis. Working with partners like AdMeld, GlamAdapt is offering premium exchange services to buying platform operators, including capabilities such as real-time bidding, companion ads and takeovers, advanced creatives such as expandables and template-integrated units like OPA pushdowns, and access to contextual and behavioral data for targeting.
Will you offer retargeting for marketers looking to target in-market consumers that they have identified on, for example, Right Media Exchange or DoubleClick Ad Exchange?
The targeting platform of GlamAdapt allows advertisers to not only reach but to also to engage in-market consumers with custom rich media across premium content. To continuously stay in front of the target audience, GlamAdapt is capable of retargeting site visitors, users who were exposed to an ad and most notably, users who have engaged or interacted with branded creative. GlamAdapt supports retargeting for third-party pixels, allowing campaigns to be extended to the GlamAdapt marketplace. Additionally, through our open Targeting Services APIs we have built in support for third-party data sources, like BlueKai, that provide in-market consumer data segments.
What’s your view on the recent purchase of Invite Media by Google? Any concerns?
Anything that accelerates the move to buying digital as audiences is a boon to the industry. Glam Media pioneered the vertical media model, and has built massive scale audiences in contextual verticals that marketers value. To the extent that Invite/Google helps buyers to define and scale buying of valuable audiences, we think this benefits the industry. Our hope is that Google will follow through on its statements that Invite will remain an open platform for multiple supply marketplaces, and that they will encourage innovation and differentiation in supply marketplaces across their toolset.
Do you think upfronts will make sense for digital advertising someday?
Glam Media already works with large brand marketers in an upfront capacity, and we expect to see more upfront buying as budgets move to digital. For advertisers who need to “own” key demographics and events as part of their integrated marketing plans, upfront buying makes sense as it ensures they will have locked in access to high demand audiences and content throughout the year.
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