Yesterday, Yahoo!’s Right Media announced a new partnership with mega-agency and holding company, WPP Group, that will bring the Right Media Exchange to many of WPP’s top clients. Whether the clients end up using the exchange will be another question.
In the NY Times article about the partnership, WPP Group sees a main benefit of being on the exchange as the data that can be collected about users on behalf of its clients.
Rob Norman, the chief executive of WPP Group’s GroupM Interaction, said:
“Basically, the network gets smarter and smarter the more data points it gets added to it. We believe we’ll be able to do greater customization of campaigns.”
Essentially, through its “in-house” ad network, 24/7 Real Media, Group M will be able to cookie users that visit client sites and begin tracking behaviors. Then, on the Right Media Exchange, inventory will be purchased.
If a user who has visited a client site shows up in the Right Media inventory, the user can be shown ads that are relevant to based on the behavior which has been tracked. A valuable opportunity for advertisers that will only serve to increase publisher yields as inventory becomes scarce.
The one hiccup to this strategy is the privacy concerns around cookie technology, but thus far, the online advertising industry has dodged this bullet.
Given the hysteria around Yahoo!’s near-acquisition by Microsoft and all the madness going on at the executive level, this appears to be a good piece of news for a change. The Right Media Exchange, like all exchanges, needs more clients, more liquidity to realize the opportunity of the efficient advertising exchange model.
