Archive for March, 2010

Agencies: Change is Good

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

Three tips for transforming your agency for today’s technology

In this article, Megan Pagliuca, Senior Director of Professional Services of Yahoo!’s Right Media, writes about how agencies need to get with a data-driven technology program in order to compete in the days ahead.

Data-driven buying should be an integral component of every agency’s media plan, but using a technology platform as a central media trading arm is only the first step in designing a data-driven strategy.  It is important to take a holistic approach and leverage all of the components of a technology platform, such as real-time analytics, buying, and market feedback.  There are three core areas where innovation is essential for any agency to be successful: the development of new skill sets, the evolution of existing processes and the evolution of organizational silos.

To read the rest of the article, click over to AdExchanger.com.

Posted in Agencies | No Comments »



Right Media: New Site, New Blog

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Right Media logo groupI am delighted to announce that Right Media has launched a new web site and blog that reflect both our business objectives and our evolution as a company.  I’m particularly excited that our site now illustrates the new market ecosystem of our industry.  Visitors to the site can learn about Right Media’s capabilities for serving additional customer segments — such as demand-side platforms, ad agencies, and data players.

We invite you to visit our new site and blog often as we’re planning frequent updates about our solutions, insights and events that you won’t want to miss.

— Stephanie Dorman
Senior Director, Platform Operations and Client Services

Posted in Right Media Exchange, Right Media News | No Comments »



Right Media “Eggs-perts” Share Useful Information Over Breakfast

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Dozens of Right Media clients got “eggs-actly” the information they needed at our Eggs & Exchanges breakfast series held on March 2 in New York and March 11 in Santa Monica.

Our first session, Our DSP and Yours, focused on enabling demand-side platform partners to find the maximized advertiser ROI golden egg. Megan Pagliuca, senior director, Right Media Professional Services, outlined the many improvements made to the Right Media Exchange, such as facilitating transparency, integrating with third-party brand-safe vendors, pruning undifferentiated clients, and supporting branding with surveys and other features.

Clients were given a wealth of information about Exchange transparency including that approximately 84 percent of impressions served by Right Media show accurate, targetable validated URLs.  Megan also discussed third-party online brand studies, buyer and seller best practices, and brand safety and emphasized that diligence and creativity were needed to excel with RMX. “If you don’t add value, you get squished,” she said. Megan and Daniel Tse, manager, Right Media Professional Services showed how a top cosmetic brand for the first time was able to measure and monitor purchase intent, which led them to profitably redefine its target audience.

During the second session, A Closer Look at Real Time Bidding, Pedro Ponce de Leon, senior manager, Right Media Solutions Architecture, explained the advantages of RTB for ad networks, intermediaries, publisher aggregators and buy-side platforms.  He also addressed concerns such data collection and rights and whether there’s a risk of eCPM cannibalization on premium inventory.

Even the most hard-boiled clients profited from the eggs-posure to Right Media’s presentation, which came with a tasty and generous breakfast buffet. Right Media clients can watch their e-mailboxes for an invitation to the next one!

Posted in Advertisers, Demand-Side Platforms, Events, Right Media Exchange, Right Media News | No Comments »



Demand-Side Platforms: The Pilot

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Using Yahoo!’s science, art and scale to deliver audience-based buying

Earlier this month at the 4A’s conference, we talked a lot about how Yahoo!’s unique combination of science, art and scale unlocks exciting new opportunities for advertisers. Based on conversations we’ve been having with marketers, agency partners and technology providers, one area that’s in need of further exploration and innovation is in how media is purchased.  At Yahoo!, we’re very focused on finding new ways to research, plan, target and measure digital media so we can help speed the flow of ad spending online. We believe that demand-side platforms (DSP) represent an interesting new way to leverage Yahoo!’s science, art and scale to deliver on the promise of audience-based buying.

As a result, Yahoo! is working closely with DSP leaders, including Invite Media, Mediamath, Data Xu, Turn and X+1 as part of a new pilot program to establish best practices in audience buying for their clients.  DSPs are driving significant innovation in the science and underlying technology of audience-based, display buying for our largest partners.  Some early innovations are focused on identifying and engaging audiences, controlling frequency of ad exposure more effectively and developing real time bidding (RTB) capabilities for buyers.

The pilot will demonstrate how Yahoo!, in partnership with these industry leaders, can provide marketers with access to the audiences they most want to reach by leveraging insights from buyers, sellers and 3rd party data providers. This pilot will also enable DSPs to establish a more integrated, deeper relationship with the Yahoo! Network and the Right Media Exchange.  Many of these DSPs have been members of the Right Media Exchange for years, and through this pilot, they will gain access to Right Media’s real-time bidding (RTB) capabilities.

DSPs have made great strides to provide the largest display media buyers with enhanced technology and services that make digital media more effective overall.  We look forward to exploring this exciting opportunity with our pilot partners, and we will share updates on our progress here on this blog.

There’s a huge audience out there, and it’s going to take a little science, art and scale to really unlock the potential of audience buying.

—Ramsey McGrory (VP, North American Marketplaces) & Seth Dallaire (VP, Mid Market Sales)

Posted in Advertisers, Demand-Side Platforms, Technology | 2 Comments »



Wise Words for the Wall Street Journal

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Right Media’s General Manager Bill Wise was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal last week, touting our “significant” lead over the competition. He also explained how Yahoo’s web sites are part of the Exchange ecosystem and represent a “must buy” for advertisers.

Wall Street Journal subscribers can read the full article.

Posted in Right Media Exchange, Right Media News | No Comments »



The New Real-Time Bidding

Friday, March 12th, 2010

There’s an article in today’s New York Times about real-time bidding that includes Yahoo!’s Right Media.

We are really excited about the momentum we’re seeing in the real-time bidding space.  Right Media was the first marketplace to offer real-time bidding (RTB) in our own marketplace over five years ago (see the story we posted on this last year). We have been testing a new kind of RTB for over the last six months.  In the newer version of RTB, we broadcast bid requests to companies who have a decision engine to return a bid.  While this may not seem like big news, RTB provides some big benefits for buyers, sellers and consumers.

  • Buyers benefit because they have greater control of their bidding across all available inventory.  For example, buyers can control campaign ad exposures more discretely.  When bid requests happen, buyers can assess whether a user has seen an ad and determine whether another ad is appropriate.  Because of the way ad serving happens today, that’s hard to do across all buys.
  • Sellers (e.g. publishers) benefit from less latency and redirects and can monetize their ad inventory more effectively.  Far too often, an internet page loads more slowly than it should in part because of the way the ads are served.  Also, RTB allows for more buyers to bid on ad calls and competition drives revenue yield for sellers.
  • Consumers benefit because the ads will be delivered faster and with less redirecting, piggybacking and all the things that create latency when delivering an ad.  Research has shown the faster you deliver content (including advertising) to consumers, the better their experience is and the more likely they will be to engage.

RTB is a necessary step toward improving the overall digital advertising process, but there’s still a long ways to go until RTB becomes a reality for the entire industry.  Among other things, the companies that provide RTB don’t all do it the same and the infrastructure required is different.  In an advertising world that is part science and part art, we have our best and brightest engineers working to stay at the forefront of the innovation and driving value for all partners in our ecosystem.  Stay tuned, more to come on RTB.

—Bill Wise, VP and general manager, ad platforms

Posted in Ad Networks, Advertisers, Publishers | 1 Comment »