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

Staying Open While Closing the Door on Harmful Content And Behavior

The following is an excerpt from an AdExchanger.com article by Bennie Smith, Yahoo! VP Exchange Operations/Platform Policy.

Online advertising in the age of media fragmentation does not have to be like a box of chocolates. Both advertisers and publishers should know exactly what they are going to get with every ad impression.

Ad exchanges have played a crucial role in making this possible – by running transparent, fair, and open platforms that have enabled targeted and efficient media buying in the highly-fragmented and ever-expanding media universe. However, the benefits of seamless transactions in an open ecosystem can quickly be eroded (along with your brand equity), if appropriate controls are not put into place.

Threats to the online advertising ecosystem include harmful ad and Web site content, spyware, traffic quality and the emerging and rapidly evolving threat of malvertising (the delivery of malicious code or software via Internet advertisements). These threats have the potential to cause significant harm to all the primary stakeholders in the online advertising ecosystem. Advertisers face the risk of brand erosion and publishers can face user attrition, loss of revenue and public relations risks. Ultimately, consumers are exposed to harmful content and privacy and security risks.

In light of these risks, Right Media remains committed to helping its customers do business in an open ecosystem with greater transparency and control. These issues are not unique to us, but impact the Internet as a whole. In fact, recent malvertising incidents at New York Times and Gawker.com were direct buys and have illustrated the need for every stakeholder in the online advertising value chain to work equally hard and collaborate with each other to address these growing threats.

Our continued investment in protective measures and the implementation of innovative mechanisms are helping Right Media protect participants in the exchange ecosystem from potential harm. For example; in response to new malvertising threats that were observed this year, we made some enhancements to our Creative Tester tool that help us detect and ban creatives that load non-standard file types that can install malicious code by exploiting security vulnerabilities in standard applications that open such file formats; contain an automatic page redirect that is non user-initiated and also identify ads that triggers click streams or click activity without any user interaction. In addition, we continue to educate our customer base about Right Media Exchange tools and policies and how customers can work to prevent the introduction of harmful content, viruses and other malicious code into our ecosystem. By implementing their own controls and being more diligent about whom they do business with, we can work together to preserve our vibrant and secure marketplace.

For the full article, visit AdExchanger.com.

Come meet us in New York and L.A.

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

Marketplace Select helps you avoid surprises with your ads

It’s Monday morning. You have your coffee, your bagel, and your morning meetings ready. Then, the call comes: “What the *#% is my finance ad doing on an adult site?” Well, your Monday and next-quarter budget are instantly undone.

This is exactly why people get nervous working with blind ad networks or exchanges. And it is exactly why brand advertisers can have a hard time making the transition into the nonguaranteed space. Never ones to shy away from a challenge, we decided to tackle this issue on our blog.

Know where your ads are
It’s clear that the way around this problem is transparency and control: transparency from sellers and controls that allow both buyers and sellers to help ensure proper delivery of ads. That’s why we created the Marketplace Select program at Right Media. We aim to create an open, transparent environment where even the most brand-concerned advertisers can have visibility into the content that they are purchasing through the Exchange.

Participation in the program is, of course, voluntary. So we decided to ask who would be willing to share a list of sites with approved partners for transparent media buys. The response has been overwhelming. Most networks and publishers on the Exchange not only don’t mind sharing a list, but care just as much about cleaning up inappropriate content and creating a trustworthy marketplace as buyers. That’s a good thing, because this goal takes cooperation from everyone.

Everyone benefits from a better marketplace, too. As one publisher said, “I can’t imagine anyone saying no. I’d think all Exchange participants would want brand campaigns with higher CPMs.”

Managing ad placement
Marketplace Select enables partners to share, manage, and approve site lists. We also recommend best practices for reducing content risk through, among other things, URL targeting and auditing.

Inappropriate content often shows up because networks have trouble controlling where their publishers place ad tags. To help alleviate this, we worked with Exchange members and derived a targeting solution for Marketplace Select that doesn’t depend on publisher classifications.

This system uses something called validated URL targeting, which lets the Right Media Exchange read the top level domain that an ad call comes from. That way you know exactly where the ads are running, regardless of publisher tag placement. This solution has become the preferred method by most Marketplace Select members and speaks to a growing commitment toward working together to keep the Exchange a viable and safer place to do business.

So, if you’re not part of the program, what are you waiting for? Contact your account manager to get involved. Your buyers will love you for it.

—Maggie Neuwald, Consulting Services
Sean Smith, Engagement Management

Yahoo! talks to publishers about managing multiple sales channels

Yahoo!’s Professional Services team is everywhere these days. Last week we blogged about several events Yahoo! would be participating in, an IAB Professional Development class about Managing Multiple Sales Channels being one of them. The class, led by Marc Grabowski, senior director of network sales, and Jeanne Hwang, director of consulting, helped publishers and networks set up their sales teams to develop ad packages that cross sales channels and maximize their inventory. Luckily for me the class was in San Francisco: No travel required!

Within the first few minutes we heard why attendees had given up three hours of their day to be there. The reasons the attendees gave ranged from getting a handle on yield management to developing streams of new ad revenue to dealing with channel conflict. With this industry changing as quickly as it is, I understood where these people were coming from. Luckily, Jeanne and Marc had a few tricks up their sleeves to deal with these issues. The three biggest takeaways were:

Times, they are a changin’
The industry is undergoing a dramatic shift. Marketers are becoming savvier; they have fewer ad dollars to spend but have more metrics at their fingers than ever before, and they want results. Over the last few years we’ve seen a shift in ad dollars from brand to performance. Roll in agencies’ demand for more transparency, and you can see how this is causing a pain point that publishers and networks must address. Bottom line:Publishers and networks must become savvy sellers of performance advertising.

Just say no
Successful sales teams work with marketers to identify the goals of a campaign but, more importantly, they help determine if the campaign is likely to see success on their site or network. Is the marketer looking for clicks or conversions, and what are those worth? Who is their target audience?Does the creative have a clear call to action?Is the conversion path short?Does it require minimal registration information that is easily provided (Such as a zip code as opposed to a social security number)?Bottom line:If the answers to the previous questions point to a bad campaign, sales teams must learn to just say no.

Differentiate to survive
How do you avoid conflict among channels that are selling the exact same inventory?You don’t—it’s inevitable. If marketers are able to access the same inventory from multiple sales outlets, they can take the lowest price, ultimately degrading the value of your inventory. You can fight slipping CPMs by allowing different channels to sell different slices of inventory determined by targeting, frequencies, properties, and so on. Bottom line:Differentiate what sales channels are able to sell to help avoid conflict.

—Megan Bergtholdt, Engagement Manager

Yahoo!’s Bill Wise talks trash, tackles publishing problems at Digiday

You know it’s a great panel when quips are tweeted:

Yahoo!’s Bill Wise: “I’m smarter than you.”
Time Inc. Media Group’s Kirk McDonald: “You work for Yahoo—how could you be?”

The ribbing was all in good fun, livening up Bill and Kirk’s panel at the Digiday targeting conference’s “The Publisher Roundtable.” But Bill, our GM of Global Exchanges, got the last laugh when the audience caught Kirk apparently stretching his experience in the industry by checking his LinkedIn profile.

In addition to providing a ton of laughs, the conference also tackled some big questions around the industry’s use of data and where the market is moving.

What data is a proxy to valuable customers?
There was no argument that the industry felt that they need to use data to enable accuracy, efficiency and scale. There was also no argument that this is HARD! (Well, duh.) Making data actionable and figuring out which data to use is why hundreds of networks and service providers specialize in only this.

What I didn’t hear enough of was taking into account the consumer consideration cycle and user intent. One panelist did make a great analogy: If there is a 25+ male, high-income, investor on a slide with his kids on a playground, you probably don’t want to choose that time to talk to him about 401ks. The same thing goes for online advertising: you want to target him with a 401k ad when he is in research mode.

Where do we need to go?
What was clear throughout all the panels is that everyone is an intermediary— networks, agencies, and publishers. Networks and publishers increasingly offer agency-like services: Time discussed its branded network, and one of White Pages’ core service offerings is behavioral targeting. We are entering a world of “co-opetition.” Publishers need to focus on syndication to aggregate similar individuals and will likely start selling audiences rather than placements.

—Megan Pagliuca, Director of Consulting, Professional Services