Video: Yahoo!’s Bill Wise on working with ad networks
Bill Wise, Yahoo! VP of platforms, spoke this week in an OMMA Global panel at Advertising Week about the relationship between ad networks, advertisers and publishers. Bill made the point in the panel that many publishers simply don’t know how to work with ad networks properly, or know which ad networks are best for them. Bill explains that point—and talks about Yahoo!’s new swagger—in this video.
Right Media and Yahoo! are on the scene at Advertising Week in New York’s Times Square right now. To follow events as they happen, check out: Yahoo! AdBuzz on Twitter.
Naturally, Right Media and Yahoo! will be there to offer news, insight and context.
First, look for some big news from Elisa Steele, Yahoo’s EVP and chief marketing officer. In her keynote address at IAB MIXX (Tuesday, September 22 at 9:45 a.m.) Elisa will discuss what’s new at Yahoo! (and there’s lots of it) and where the company—and where digital media in general—is headed.
Next, look for Bill Wise—he’s Yahoo!’s head of display platforms and Right Media’s VP and general manager of Global Exchange—who will be on a panel with the catchy title, “Sleeping with the Frenemy: Ad Nets vs. Web and Mobile Publishing.” During the panel, which happens down the street from MIXX at OMMA Global the same day at 11:45 a.m. (you might have to run if you can’t hitch a ride), Bill and his fellow panelists will provide valuable insights on how ad networks can and must work for small and medium-sized publishers.
And, of course, there will be tons of parties, galas, awards ceremonies and other assorted brouhaha all week. Can’t make it? Follow the action here and on Yahoo! Ad Buzz via Twitter.
The following is an excerpt of an AdExchanger.com article by Frank Weishaupt, Yahoo! VP of North American Marketplaces. For the full article, click here.
One reason I love this business is that it’s always evolving. Change is essential to success in online advertising…especially when it comes to ad exchanges.
As the needs of ad networks, publishers, agencies and advertisers continue to change, exchanges have had to stay ahead of every impression and develop marketing solutions that can help these players improve and differentiate their businesses.
We know these players are already doing part of the work on their own—gathering the data and insights necessary to manage yield and return on ad spend. But it’s not enough. Exchanges provide a larger marketplace that’s needed to efficiently leverage that data and quickly turn it into revenue. There is no better place to do that than in an open exchange ecosystem. Here’s why:
- An open exchange helps participants in the digital advertising ecosystem conduct business with each other in a seamless fashion.
- An open exchange delivers marketers the greatest number of options in how they define and reach their relevant audiences.
- An open exchange helps solve supply fragmentation by offering a complete, multi-level solution for servicing marketers’ needs. A closed network cannot accomplish this… .
…Marketers take note: We get it. Budgets are precious and the market is increasingly fragmented. We know you work with multiple exchanges and we look forward to working with them and integrating with them for our partners. Hopefully, they will follow our lead and embrace openness because the industry will be best served by transparency and liquidity.
—Frank Weishaupt, Yahoo! VP of North American Marketplaces
We love to meet our clients, hear first-hand what’s on their minds and offer solutions to your business needs. That’s why we host a breakfast series for our clients called “Eggs & Exchanges” where we highlight strategies for helping them to increase revenue on the Right Media Exchange.
The next breakfast series will be held in New York City on September 16 and in Los Angeles on September 24. We’re particularly excited about the program:
Session 1: “Servicing Brand Advertisers: A Yield Opportunity” As offline advertising dollars shift online and brand campaigns move to performance, networks and publishers are presented with several opportunities to increase yield. This session looks at how ad operations teams can increase yield by having tools in place to drive better performance results than their network competitors and by providing site transparency to alleviate brand advertiser concerns.
Session 2: “Improving Quality: How to Create Revenue with the Least Risk.” Proper creative management affects all Exchange members. In this session, we will look at the process from the perspective of buyers, sellers and networks as well as share troubleshooting techniques and escalation procedures.
If you’re already a client, we hope to see you at Eggs & Exchanges. If you’re not currently working with Right Media and would like to learn more about us, drop an email to rightmediaevents@yahoo-inc.com and we’ll get back to you.
–Liza Cichowski, Brand Experience Manager, Right Media Exchange
The health and safety of an exchange depend upon its participants
Online security is a problem as old as the internet itself. Despite the ongoing efforts of the computer software and security industries to combat threats such as viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other malicious code, we and other online businesses, find ourselves in an arms race with the perpetrators, who continue to launch attacks with increasing sophistication. Unfortunately, advertisers, agencies, networks, publishers and consumers are becoming more vulnerable to these insidious new threats, which threaten not just the online advertising industry, but the Internet economy as a whole.
What can you do? As frictionless trading between ad networks becomes more and more important, advertisers are looking for innovative ways to maximize their return on investment and publishers are looking to limit the amount of unsold inventory. Liquidity in the marketplace should not come at the expense of quality, and we are committed to balancing the revenue or performance goals of our customers while at the same time helping them to drive a positive user experience. This means that all stakeholders must be even more diligent about whom they do business with and use reputation as one of the determining attributes, instead of relying solely on revenue. If we sacrifice quality, there is a much higher risk of driving away brand advertisers who are turning to performance advertising as a more targeted, measurable and cost-effective marketing strategy.
Since the Right Media Exchange is an open technology platform that our customers—advertisers, agencies, networks and publishers—use to do business more directly and with greater visibility and control, we are not involved in ad creation or in the purchase or sale of online media. That’s why the overall health and safety of our marketplace depends on the efforts of all platform participants.
The Right Media approach Our approach to combating threats to the Exchange includes trying to proactively implement industry-leading safeguards that protect our customers, their constituents and, ultimately, their end-users.
For example, all creatives or ad tags that run through the Exchange are tested by our Creative Tester technology (part of Media Guard) in an effort to detect and ban creatives exhibiting malicious behavior such as viruses and program installs, or that display attributes we consider to be high risk. Creative Tester subjects every creative or ad tag trafficked into the Exchange to a series of tests which simulate an impression, load the creative and record the technical attributes detected during the creative load. When Creative Tester detects certain types of malicious behavior, it automatically deactivates the creative and notifies the Exchange member who trafficked the creative or ad tag.
The Exchange also uses an automated detection program called SCOUR that checks Exchange traffic regularly, searching for patterns exhibited by desktop software and flagging sections that exhibit what, in our opinion, may be malicious traffic patterns. If we detect that some or all impressions from a particular section of a site on the Exchange have been initiated by applications that are prohibited by our policies, they are automatically deactivated (thereby making them ineligible to receive further ads via the Exchange and to generate any revenue for the publisher).
Keeping up the fight Our continued investment in protective measures and the implementation of mechanisms like the ones highlighted above are helping Right Media protect all participants in the Exchange ecosystem from potential harm. However, attackers continuously find new, sophisticated ways to circumvent safeguards and malicious software applications continue to evolve in their behavior and delivery methods. We’re always working to understand these new threats so we can develop tools that can weed them out as quickly as possible.
Although the task at hand is challenging, we believe that by partnering with Exchange participants who are equally committed to eliminating these threats at their source, we can make meaningful progress. Right Media welcomes all thoughts and suggestions on this important issue because we believe that if we work together, we can maintain our leading position as the largest, healthiest and most successful online Ad Exchange on the market.
—Nilesh Zacharias, Director, Policy and Operations