A few days ago, the Admonsters OPS took place in London, gathering several actors of the digital advertising industry, around interesting presentations about the current state of digital advertising industry. Here’s the compte rendu.
Lacks & current limitations of digital advertising industry
Huge administrative costs
Digital online advertising is plagued with substantial administrative costs.
Good points made by RTE’s Conor Mullen on the #AdMonsters panel – Digital is still very expensive to operate, esp. comapred with TV advertsg
— RubiconProject (@rubiconproject) 23 avril 2013
2% of TV ad budget is spent in average on administrative cost versus 27% in online video advertising (to put online & manage the banners)
.@adslot backs up the old adage that digital ad process (still) costs 10x TV ad process #AdMonsters
— Bowen Dwelle (@bdwelle) 23 avril 2013
Complex & hand-operated ad ops process
Automation is much needed to shorten the ad ops process: it takes 47 steps, from end-to-end value chain (i.e from demand side to publishers) to put online banners, it could be reduced to 7 steps with automation, said Brian Fitzpatrick, Adap.tv.
in a 100 billion dollar industry, Excel remains the most used tool for billing purpose. It’s hand operated, not scalable & not automated enough (As the Business insider ironically puts it, Microsoft is dominating 76% of adtech)
CTR, the most common metrics
One of the most common & standard metrics is CTR & clicks, when in fact, studies showed that people that clicked the more were not people with the highest ARPU (Average Revenu Per User), said Ian Lowe, Adslot’s CEO. Optimizing campaigns to reach those with biggest ARPU, instead of reasoning in terms of clicks has led to a 40% increase in revenues.
Top advertising industry’s challenges
Multiscreen
Multiscreen and the additional workload it causes (specific design, test & bug fixing of the mutiple-size creatives) is definitely the top challenge ad ops are currently facing.
“Multi-device is the main nightmare that we (#adops) have right now” #admonsters
— Bowen Dwelle (@bdwelle) 23 avril 2013
Legal
Legal is the main other challenge of advertising. A new regulation of cookies for advertising purpose is being debated/ has just passed, depending on the country. Moreover, one of the very hot topics for publishers is Big Data and how the use of its own first party data can lead towards a better monetization, following the example of social networks. Again, this topic is closely connected to user’s privacy and legal.
Future: what’s next?
Future=RTB. RTB=lower eCPM?
A common fear among publishers is RTB could lead to lower eCPM. Actually, this is not what most publishers have experienced yet.
According to Michael Smith’, from Google Adexchange, the eCPM of “valuable assets” such as premium inventory of most publishers tended to increase but low valuable inventory had tended to lower when the floor price were not properly set or not set at all. By setting floor price, any decrease of eCPM can be prevented.
Premium inventory, which represents 26% of publisher ad impressions drives 88% of the revenue in average in 2011 (according to AdSlot internal data), the other 12% being generated by RTB.
Future= integration of advertising technologies. Was Smart AdServer a precursor?
Online advertising technology landscape has become so complex, with a great number of actors (see for instance the European ecosystem) than ad ops can be reportedly using 8 different tools to manage their online inventory. The market needs integration, that’s one of the top trends in 2013: Google has been integrating DFP, Admeld & Adexchange for instance.
As Pedro from Prisa Brand solutions said, the perfect ad server would be all-inclusive, with an integrated solution for mobile, video, programmatic buying and integrated billing.
I was delighted to observe Smart AdServer’s original commitment that consist in providing publishers with an all integrated platform with only one interface to make things easier has become trendier than ever.
OPS London miscellaneous quotes
“What drives revenue is your inventory, not your technology” by Michael Smith, Google Adexchange
Google discussing making tech work for your marketing strategy – not the reverse #admonsters
— Propeller Group (@propellerites) 23 avril 2013
Data warehouse only stock data, Data management platform can make them actionable too
Yes “@jessdaviesmk: Data warehouse stores data but DMP makes that data actionable, says mediacom’s Rob Webster #admonsters”
— James Sandoval (@checkyourfuel) 23 avril 2013
Topical: 7 out of every 10 digital video content views still don’t carry advertising cmsc.re/kk1nQ” #admonsters #media #advertising
— Chacana (@Chacana) 23 avril 2013
Facebook mobile ads not currently frequency capped says Somo’s Andrew French #admonsters
— Jessica Davies (@Jessdaviesmk) 23 avril 2013
Facebook is said to generate over 500TB of data every day, says Xasis’ Nicolas Bidon #admonsters
— Jessica Davies (@Jessdaviesmk) 23 avril 2013
