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On Friday, comScore published data from its MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the U.S. smartphone industry during the three month average period ending March 2013. For the reporting period, Apple ranked as the top smartphone manufacturer with 39 percent OEM market share. Google’s Android, however, led as the top smartphone platform with 52 percent [...]
Source:Mobile Marketing Watch
Sylvain Deffay is Country Manager, France at Infectious Media.
The growing involvement of publishers and technology partners has fuelled French programmatic buying progress. StickyAds Video Exchange’s recent integration with TubeMogul’s buying platform has allowed access to French premium video inventory. This is a very positive development for the French RTB market and it is becoming increasingly apparent France will play a key role in the development of programmatic buying across Europe in all digital advertising formats.
As a channel, online video will appeal most strongly to brand marketers and is the fastest growing segment in the French digital market (60% growth in H2 2012). As the Video Exchange only launched recently, I’m eagerly anticipating the next set of growth figures to see the impact that programmatic buying has on this growth. Personally, I am expecting to see stronger numbers than in other markets.
Indeed, such a private environment is the answer video publishers are looking for, with a recent study by AdMonsters and Adap.TV reporting 73% of EU publishers not offering video inventory on RTB due to their fear of pressure on CPMs in open exchanges. However, 30% of publishers surveyed said they will be running a private video ad marketplace within the next 12 months. The continued growth of video, predicted to be 55% of all consumer internet traffic by 2016, will ensure it remains top of the publisher agenda.
On the demand side, early market assumptions may have led advertisers to believe that only low-value or remnant video inventory was being traded programmatically. However, in our experience, this has definitely not been the case. We are currently running campaigns for our clients in the UK, and other European markets, on premium video inventory sources such as Fox, BBC Worldwide and MTV, to name a few, as well as taking advantage of the vast reach on YouTube. In addition, StickyXchange in France hosts inventory from premium publishers like TF1/Wat, Bolloré, Lagardère, Prisma, Microsoft/MSN and many more.
We have managed to get impressive early results from online video via RTB by using this inventory. Our campaigns have proven a cost effective way to reach a client’s target audience with a TV-style message, but at the right time and in the right context for the individual user and with minimal waste.
As promising as this is, few of these budgets are currently originating from TV plans, and a lot remains to be done to make these two channels work together. In terms of buying, a lot of development focus is going into bridging this gap. We can soon expect to have real-time TV schedule data available in DSPs or second-screen offers (applications in mobile devices interacting in real-time with TV schedules).
In terms of planning, online video campaign measurement tools such as comScore’s Validated Campaign Essentials and Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) tool will be critical. Their capacity to deliver comparable TV metrics such as GRPs and TRPs, reach and frequency, make online spend both relevant and accountable for TV advertisers. These metrics have been widely implemented in the UK and we are already seeing 20% of our client spend going through video, with great success.
There is little doubt that the integration of the StickyAds private video exchange into more DSPs is a stride forward for the French programmatic market and another unique feature in the European landscape. Along with the convergence of TV and online video planning metrics, this provides the perfect foundation for a successful year for online video in France.
According to comScore, Taobao Juhuasuan is the no. 2 deal site globally and fast becoming popular in Hong Kong.
<a href="http://www.exchangewire.com/blog/2012/12/13/wire-column-making-RTB-work-for-publishers/simon/” rel=”attachment wp-att-23724″>
Simon Halstead is Director, Microsoft Advertising Exchange and Scale Display, EMEA, Microsoft Advertising
Disclosure – I have worked for agencies, sales house, networks and now work for one of the world’s leading publishers and exchanges. Microsoft have a valued partnership with AppNexus in Real Time Bidding (RTB). All views expressed are my personal opinions, and don’t necessarily reflect Microsoft strategy.
The topic of programmatic ‘premium’ or ‘reserved’ means a publisher, or SSP, needs to clearly define its programmatic goals. There are a number of functions that are currently fulfilled by RTB and the programmatic channel:
- Monetisation of unsold impressions
- Additional revenue not captured by a direct sales team
- Efficient selling processes
- Focusing direct efforts to custom/integrated selling
Currently, a number of publishers are exercising RTB as an additional revenue channel, whilst many are simply utilising RTB as a sweeping function. For a publisher who wants to extract maximum value from programmatic, they will need to redefine and evolve their strategy.
As we approach a programmatic evolution, we need to look to the long-term health of digital and advertising. Especially as we all expect to see more offline media spend move towards data-driven and programmatic trading models. <a href="http://www.exchangewire.com/blog/2012/12/13/wire-column-making-RTB-work-for-publishers/” target=”_blank”>In the recent past, I suggested that 2013 is the year people work out their strategy and approach to programmatic premium, with 2014 being the launching pad for significant premium programmatic trading across reservation and higher funnel execution within RTB.
Today, we are an ecosystem where efficiency of buying, and algorithmic decisions, are driving matching at scale, across a range of sites. Most parties enter the space via a performance offering, and are driving on cost efficiency and retargeting. Many then move up the funnel, utilising data and learnt insight of the consumer journey.
This has encouraged publishers to feed the beast of remnant, to create increasing amounts of inventory to be auctioned, in addition to placements with varied approaches to transparency. Success of campaigns are measured by post-view and last-click attribution, and so volume becomes a significant factor. Over 5.3 trillion display ads were served to US users last year, that’s a trillion more than 2009. (according to comScore). We aren’t discussing effective delivery of an audience, but ensuring attribution is placed for a publisher.
Post-view is an important metric, when considered as a brand recognition uplift indicator, but is corrupted by being tied and optimised to conversion. The last contact claims attribution, regardless of exposure, and so being, the last contact becomes key. Post-view only has value when actually viewed by a consumer, and to ensure greater viewability we all have to face challenges to our current approaches.
Challenge 1: Browser changes in cookie-acceptance and legislative review, in place or underway, in most markets present potential hurdles to the methods of trading and attributing used today.
Challenge 2: Multiple ad placements per page, with high-frequency per user masking true value by oversupply, and softened competition.
Challenge 3: Fair value relative to exposure and impact for an advertiser seen in returns to a publisher.
In order to break the cycle of more ad placements, and more clutter, we should encourage publishers to move towards fewer placements in larger formats either via publishers focusing on native/bespoke solutions, or large standard display sizes such as film strips and billboards. This will enable genuine audience reach and influence.
Imagine I am an advertiser and I want to tell my brand story. I want to leverage data I know about the consumer, that they have consented to share. I want to deliver a rich experience, with a large ad format and a single brand. TV and Radio can deliver this experience – when I am talking to my potential consumers, I want to ensure it is in an uncluttered environment, with a limited number of other commercial messages. I want to drive consideration and manage the conversation and story with the consumer across multiple connections and touch points.
Programmatic can help deliver these experiences, from brand to direct response, with consensual use of data and effective matching. But…
- Am I prepared to pay for this delivery experience programmatically?
- To tell the brand experience, I traditionally make sponsorship and direct buys, and chase attributed conversions via scale. Am I prepared to pay $10-15+ per thousand for an uncluttered, professionally-produced environment?
- Am I prepared to pay a fair value to encourage publishers to reduce multi ad spots and to only serve richer formats?
The trends in brand-focused activity are towards richer native experiences. This can be viewed as a trend towards a more controlled environment of higher-value engagements. Publishers are attracted to native as it creates control, but we need to keep sight of the benefit of efficient trading, using attribution and audience decision. Fewer ads, which are also more visible, maybe even a maximum of two per-page, enhance consumer experience and are better aligned to other media.
Sure, we may have to reset client expectations, technologies may need to rewrite bidding processes to focus less on price, the nature of scale will have changed, but we may have a more balanced ecosystem.
The potential reduction, or redistribution, of ad placements, and in-view ad placements, may bring some scarcity to volume for premium consumer contact, but will ensure better distribution of value. This isn’t about the name or size of the publisher, simply about the quality of consumer engagement, and is as applicable to niche sites with well-defined audiences as to a large publisher. We need to proactively put the consumer at the centre of our decisions, and be respectful, engaging and add value to the advertiser via brand awareness and direct response. As other media drive to greater programmatic and digital trading and delivery, Is it time the industry delivered a clearer proposition.
Effective optimisation decisions are still the drivers behind returns and enhancement with programmatic, but we should all be working to engineer a cleaner ecosystem that brings greater value to both the consumer and the advertiser.
On all sides, we will need to move together. There is significant risk for early movers on the publisher side, although some are already underway in the US. They could gain significant advantage over other publishers, or simply see revenue reduced if the buy-side doesn’t reward and recognise increased quality of exposure.
There is a massive role for programmatic trading and efficiency, but we fail today due to skewed focus on conversion attribution and price efficiency. We need to take a proactive view in putting the consumer at the centre of our decisioning, and be respectful, engaging while also bringing value to the advertiser via brand-awareness and direct response. In order to deliver against these promises, both the buy- and sell-side need to review our expectations around cost, and cost per acquisition. If publishers and buyers fail to change their behaviour, and reconsider quality of exposure alongside scale, then programmatic and display opportunity will be missed.
On Thursday, comScore published new data from the comScore MobiLens service for the three month average period ending in February 2013. As of late February, 133.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones, which represents 57% market penetration. Since November 2012, smartphone ownership in the United States has grown 8%. And judging by today’s update [...]
Source:Mobile Marketing Watch
The German market for digital advertising is currently being shaped by two main developments: the demand for automated media purchasing, as well as efficient campaign control via real-time bidding and targeting. Both are clearly impacting the price level. The prices in 2012 were on average 42% higher than the average price over the past three years. In addition to RTB and targeting, the persistent high demand for large-area special ad formats and video advertising influence this development. This is confirmed by the results in the current adscale Analyzer 1/2013, a study focused on price development in the German online advertising market.
The study, entitled ‘A Regional Focus on Online Advertising’, additionally shows that on average higher CPMs are paid in southern and western Germany than in northern and eastern Germany. The highest average CPMs are found in North Rhine-Westphalia, where the average price for 1,000 advertising contacts is 22% above the national average. Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria follow in second and third place with figures seven and five percent above the average CPM.
Regional advertising business offers tremendous potential
In the latest study, adscale has analysed where the most ad impressions were delivered in Germany, where the highest CPMs were paid, and where the best click rates were achieved. In the price ranking according to cities and communities, the leader comes from Baden-Württemberg: In this price index, Gaienhofen (79% above the national average), a community in the district of Constance, leads the pack. Second place goes to Pewsum in Lower Saxony (76% above the national average), followed by Bad Berleburg in North Rhine-Westphalia (76% above the national average) in third place.
Since many ad impressions are delivered to German urban centres in particular, adscale has additionally examined which German cities record the highest volume of ad impressions per inhabitant. In this regard, Dresden leads the ranking. In Dresden, 56% more ad impressions are generated per inhabitant than the average number delivered to the 20 cities with the highest number of ad impressions. An above-average number of ad impressions is also achieved in Bonn (52% above the city average) and Munich (30% above the city average).
RTB and high demand for branding advertising formats influence price level
When viewed according to advertising formats, video ads and large-area special ad formats achieve higher prices in absolute terms than the IAB standard advertising materials. However, prices are growing even with IABs: in 2012 the advertising prices for standard advertising materials were 43% higher than the 2011 level, while special advertising formats in the same time frame demonstrated a 38% increase in CPMs. One cause for the above-average price increase of standard advertising formats is the trade of IAB formats via RTB.
Click rates, according to advertising formats, also show stabile development: across all ad formats, the interstitial reaches the highest click-through rate (CTR) with an average value of 3.20%. Video ads (CTR 2.42%), layers (CTR 1.48%), and banderoles (CTR 1.47%) have also generated a particularly high number of clicks. Among the standard advertising materials, the medium rectangle emerges with a CTR of 0.13%.
Survey method
The calculations presented in the adscale Analyzer are based on real-time data from the online exchange’s database, which reflect both the supply and the actual bookings made on the exchange. The objective of the survey is to make the online advertising market more transparent, analysing over 13.8 billion ad impressions per month and 44.4 million unique visitors (77.3% of German Internet users according to comScore, January 2013) and a portfolio of more than 5,000 websites.
comScore Releases Overview of European Internet Usage in September 2011: http://t.co/jIpM55U6
ComScore: Facebook Shows Big Gains in Malaysia, Singapore http://t.co/Devc0oKZ
Lawsuit Accuses comScore of Major Privacy Violations http://t.co/N8PGwPJ
AdXpose and comScore: A Gamechanger for Online Advertising Measurement: http://t.co/QwUuZiH
Android’s share of the smartphone market is blowing away all competitors in the U.S. according to comScore: http://t.co/n6Ct32X
In Asia, take comScore data with a huge grain of salt http://lnkd.in/krTDNg
comScore Introduces Device Essentials™ for Measuring Digital Traffic from All Devices: http://t.co/bQQNi3d
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Ad spend
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Source: http://www.eiaa.net
Ad spend
Other advertising and marketing news
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Research
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Source: http://www.eiaa.net
Ad spend
Other advertising and marketing news
Agency updates
E & M-commerce
Media consumption
Research
General industry news
Source: http://www.eiaa.net
Advertising and marketing news
Agency updates
E & M-commerce
Media consumption
Research
General industry news
Source: http://www.eiaa.net
Advertising and marketing news
Agency updates
E & M-commerce
Media consumption
Research
General industry news
Source: http://www.eiaa.net
Advertising and marketing news
Agency updates
E & M-commerce
Media consumption
Research
General industry news
Source: http://www.eiaa.net
Advertising spend
Other advertising and marketing news
Agency updates
E & M-commerce
Media consumption
Research
General industry news
Source: http://www.eiaa.net
Another one of these weekly link updates – enjoy 
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Just another update…
Advertising spend
Other advertising and marketing news
Agency updates
E & M-commerce
Media consumption
General industry news
Source: http://www.eiaa.net/
