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Martin Sorrell Bets Amazon Will Reach $100 Billion In Ad Spend Onboarding Data In Real Time Means Reaching Customers At The Right Time Hearts & Science Calls To Replace First-Price Auction With Reformed Second-Price Model How Marketo Added $3 Billion In Two Years, And Why PE Thinks There’s More To Come ANA Confirms FBI Criminal Investigation On Ad Transparency Fraudsters Are Masquerading As Real DSPs French Startup Teemo Appeases GDPR Regulators, Avoids A Fine Brian O’Kelley’s Departure As CEO Comes As No Surprise To Ad Tech Insiders Brian O’Kelley Steps Down As AppNexus CEO

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Podcast: Consulting The Oracle

by Zach Rodgers // Posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2018 at 10:07 am.

AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. This episode of AdExchanger Talks is supported by StackAdapt.

Among the “Big Three” marketing clouds – Oracle, Adobe and Salesforce – Oracle has been the most active on mergers. The list of its acquisitions is long: Eloqua, Responsys, Maxymiser, BlueKai, Datalogix, Moat, Grapeshot, Crosswise, AddThis. These are divided into two separate holdings: Oracle Marketing Cloud and Oracle Data Cloud.

Today on the podcast we hear from Dave Helmreich, group VP of Oracle Marketing Cloud (OMC). Helmreich notes that each marketing cloud has its own unique strengths: Adobe is the creative giant, while Salesforce rules the customer record.

And Oracle? It’s the data expert, of course.

“We’ve spent 40 years focused on customer data management,” he says. “It’s in our DNA. There isn’t a larger company in the world that has spent more effort, money, time and energy on managing customer data globally.”

In this episode he describes how OMC aims to capitalize on that legacy as client organizations embrace greater accountability.

SAP’s CMO Targets B2B Decision-Makers Beyond The C-Suite

by Allison Schiff // Posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2018 at 9:37 am.

What do an international pop group, the creator of “American Idol,” Cirque du Soleil and actor Clive Owen have in common?

SAP.

“Marketers in the B2B space have to realize one very simple and fundamental thing: We are all human beings,” said Alicia Tillman, SAP’s chief marketing officer. “We as B2B marketers need to speak to a much broader audience.”

Typically, B2B marketing focuses on reaching a handful of decision-makers within a given organization, including – hopefully – that one person who ends up signing the contract.

But numerous people involved in the buying process for enterprise software spend just a fraction of their lives in the office, Tillman said.

That’s why SAP is spending more on event sponsorships and partnering with Cirque du Soleil, which used SAP technology to create an app with interactive content for one of its shows, “Toruk.” SAP is also developing a digital hub for fans of Now United, the latest pop group from Simon Fuller, the impresario behind the “Idol” franchise.

SAP hired British actor Clive Owen as a spokesman last year because he’s relatable and can “humanize” the brand, said Tillman, who became CMO for SAP’s Ariba brand in 2015 and CMO for SAP in 2017 after 11 years at American Express.

“Brand really matters,” she said. “It matters in people’s perceptions and it leads people to decide whether or not they’re going to buy your product and become a customer for life.”

Tillman spoke with AdExchanger.

Magna: Programmatic Video And Mobile Grow Up

by Alison Weissbrot // Posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2018 at 8:00 am.

Programmatic dollars flowing to video and mobile have finally surpassed spend on desktop and banner ads.

This year, mobile made up 53% of global programmatic spend by device, while video ads accounted for 51% of programmatic spend by format, according to Magna’s Programmatic 2018 report. (Magna did not include video inventory on over-the-top devices in these numbers.)

“It’s the first time [mobile and video have] hit that more than 50% milestone, and they’re all going to be higher than that at the end of the forecast period,” said Luke Stillman, SVP of digital intelligence at Magna Global.

Programmatic spend has been slow to transition to mobile owing to the discipline’s reliance on desktop cookies, Stillman said. And while US advertisers have embraced video advertising en masse, YouTube is still the only scaled video source in many emerging markets.

“The trend is clear that banners are on the decline and are less effective inventory,” Stillman said. “It’s a relic of incumbency.”

Overall, the global programmatic market will reach $34 billion this year and grow to $60 billion by 2022. Also by 2022, programmatic will make up 71% of total banner and video transactions as non-programmatic spend shrinks by 4%, Magna predicts.

The Future Of Search Has No Keywords

by AdExchanger // Posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2018 at 12:05 am.

“Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Today’s column is written by Jared Belsky, CEO at 360i.

Since the first clicks on Lycos, AltaVista and Ask.com in the mid-1990s, search has been about keywords. Brands, clients and platforms like Google were built on this model and continue to thrive on it. In Google auctions, for example, brands bid on keywords such as “red sleeping bag” when they want to sell a red sleeping bag to someone who, well, searches for a red sleeping bag.

In reality, there are three problems with this model. First, the person may simply want to research but not buy. Second, the retailer has no idea how valuable the searcher is. And third, the searcher is anonymized, so client data is mostly useless.

Though this model is less than ideal, search by keyword remains the most ROI-positive medium in just about all media-mix models, so few advertisers have anything to complain about. Google is also doing well, and the mousetrap is anything but broken.

So why address these concerns? Because the time for the next great evolution of search is upon us, and there is too much revenue and opportunity left on the floor. There are three tsunami-like forces that will turn search on its head.

Most ANA Members Use An In-House Agency; Twitter's First GDPR Inquiry

by AdExchanger // Posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2018 at 12:03 am.

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

In The House

Seventy-eight percent of ANA members reported having some form of an in-house agency, according to a study of 412 marketers that was released Monday by the trade body. That number is up from 58% in 2013. Forty-four percent of respondents said they had established their in-house agency in the last five years, and 90% said the in-house workload has increased over the past year. “The work being done by in-house agencies is no longer confined to ‘low-hanging fruit,’” ANA CEO Bob Liodice said in the report. Ad Age has more. For agencies to stay relevant, they’ll have to continue servicing clients with “overwhelming benefits ... relative to the benefits a marketer will experience doing the work themselves,” wrote Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser in a note to investors. “An agency optimist might look at in-sourced activity as an opportunity for future revenue if an agency can best produce those benefits.”

A Tangled Web

Twitter is the subject of its first GDPR-related investigation. The Irish data protection authority has initiated a formal inquiry of Twitter's refusal to disclose the web-browsing data it collects via t.co, its link-shortening tool. University College London professor Michael Veale lodged the complaint that led to the inquiry after Twitter refused to disclose the data it stores about him from t.co. Veale recently kickstarted a similar GDPR review of Facebook’s web-tracking data. “Data which looks a bit creepy, generally data which looks like web-browsing history, [is something] companies are very keen to keep out of data access requests,” Veale said. Fortune has more.

FreeWheel Launches Ad Product Suite, Boosts Competition With Roku

by Rae Paoletta // Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 10:30 am.

FreeWheel released the next generation of its ad exchange on Tuesday.

The Comcast-owned ad server built off its legacy ad exchange, enhanced by technology from its acquisition of StickyAds in 2016, for its updated ad product suite, DRIVE. The new exchange is designed to let marketers more easily buy over-the-top (OTT), set-top box video on demand and digital video inventory from any of FreeWheel’s opted-in publishers.

StickyAds gave FreeWheel a more sophisticated ad exchange than the one it previously had. FreeWheel integrated StickyAds’ SSP into its ad server in order to make transacting easier for publishers.

In June, FreeWheel partnered with Nielsen to better measure across OTT. This development, coupled with other new perks, like being able buy inventory in real time, makes DRIVE a better version of what FreeWheel already had. At least, that’s the plan.

“What we’ve seen in the market is there’s an interest in getting aggregate scale,” Neil Smith, general manager of FreeWheel Markets, told AdExchanger. “We want to be a complementary media product [to direct sales] so we can take the complementary demand and position ourselves against the Rokus of the world.”

Hearts & Science Calls To Replace First-Price Auction With Reformed Second-Price Model

by Sarah Sluis // Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 8:00 am.

The switch to first-price auctions last year is causing programmatic buyers to pay more, according to research from media agency Hearts & Science.

In one test, a first-price auction drove CPMs up by more than 50%.

The Omnicom agency wants programmatic to create “clean” second-price auctions to remove the premium that buyers pay. It doesn’t want to revert back to the previous second-price model, which suffers from problems around transparency and bid density, along with a multi-stage auction.

Ben Hovaness, executive director of digital activation for Hearts & Science, said a reimagined second-price auction must meet two conditions.

First, those who run the auctions must be audited to ensure they’re not artificially boosting the clearing price. Second, the industry must resolve the reason why first-price auctions proliferated: header bidding has created an inefficient two-stage auction, where the highest bidder doesn’t always win.

A second-price auction where SSPs pass through all bids and the publisher conducts the auction could solve those problems, Hovaness proposed.

Transformation will take time and collaboration. As a stopgap, Hearts & Science proposes that brands invest in second-price auctions when possible and negotiate private marketplaces with key publishers.

Apple’s Upgraded Intelligent Tracking Prevention May Cause Conversions To Crash

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 12:04 am.

"Data-Driven Thinking" is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media.

Today’s column is written by Simon Harris, head of programmatic activation at Dentsu Aegis Network.

Each fall, Apple releases a new iPhone with the promise that it’s the best iPhone ever.

This year’s iPhones are very much iterative. One of the features that Apple has upgraded is Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP), a feature that first launched last year in its mobile browser Safari. ITP prevents users from being tracked by ad tech businesses across the web, and thanks to some upgrades, the latest iPhones will be the least trackable ever.

These changes will have a massive impact on marketing in the United States because of Apple’s dominance in its home market. Globally, Google Chrome is used by around 55% of mobile internet users, but in the United States, Safari is the dominant force with a 50% share of browsers. Even worse for marketers, most older Apple devices are upgraded to the latest software quickly, as we can see for iOS 11:

Google’s Adam Stewart On Finding The Right YouTube Influencer For Your Brand

by Rae Paoletta // Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 12:04 am.

Contrary to popular belief, video did not kill the radio star. It made them a YouTube influencer.

Advertisers use influencer marketing to reach consumers at a time of increased ad aversion. But the sheer volume of influencers and content on YouTube alone can be overwhelming for advertisers searching for the best fit for their brand.

This is part of the challenge that Adam Stewart, Google’s VP of consumer goods, government and entertainment, tackles every day.

“We focus on [advertisers’] business objectives,” Stewart told AdExchanger during Advertising Week in New York City. “If you’re Netflix, you need to gain more subscribers. If you’re Sony Pictures, you want to get people to the box office. If you’re Ford, you want to get people to drive a car.”

Stewart and his team help facilitate the connections between brands and YouTube influencers. This symbiotic relationship between marketer and influencer is one of the reasons Google invests heavily in the FameBit by YouTube marketing platform. The software helps connect brands with the best influencer for their products. Hollister, NBC and Keurig have used the platform to collaborate with YouTube creators on campaigns.

AdExchanger spoke with Stewart to discuss the YouTube influencer phenomenon.

Guardian Settles Suit Vs Rubicon; In-Housing Road Bumps At Vodafone?

by AdExchanger // Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2018 at 12:03 am.

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

The Hand That Fees

Rubicon Project and the British news publisher The Guardian have reached a settlement in their legal disputes about alleged hidden fees, reports The Wall Street Journal. The suit, filed last year, alleged that the ad tech company charged undisclosed fees to buyers. Rubicon responded with a countersuit saying it was allowed to charge fees and The Guardian was aware of them. Rubicon will pay a confidential settlement that is “immaterial to the company from a financial standpoint,” according to the court filing in London. More. The outcome will (ironically) deprive the industry of some hoped for transparency into allegedly non-transparent SSP practices.

In-House Of Correction

Digiday reports on some friction at Vodafone as the company attempts to take more of its media activities in house. The company manages its search and social campaigns directly, but still relies on agency Wavemaker for programmatic display. There are internal tensions between the digital team and advertising team over which will own and fund the programmatic setup, according to one Vodafone exec. “(The executive) pointed to the spiraling costs of ad tech, talent and publisher relationships as the key sticking point.” Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said in May that managing more of its $263 million digital media budgets will improve its own attribution and could give a better sense of whether it can build a viable ad business under GDPR using customer data. More.