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Euro Round-Up: Publicis And Dentsu Split With Buyback; Google Safari Tracking Muddying The Privacy Debate; And Skype Inventory In The Microsoft Ad Exchange

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

Publicis Buyback Ends Dentsu Partnership

French advertising group Publicis has bought back 18 million of its own shares from Japan’s Dentsu for €644.4m, bringing an end to their nine-year partnership that analysts say has yielded little value.

The companies had been partners since the Japanese agency – the country’s largest marketing services group by revenues – teamed up with Elisabeth Badinter, a member of the founding family and the biggest shareholder in Publicis, to act in concert.

The buy-back strengthens Ms Badinter’s hold over Publicis, the world’s third-largest marketing services group. The daughter of the founder now owns 11 per cent of the shares and 20 per cent of the voting rights.

She will play a key role in appointing a successor to Maurice Lévy, the Publicis chief executive who was due to retire last year but was asked to stay on to see the company through the global economic downturn.

Mr Lévy said the relationship with Dentsu had been “amicable and exemplary” and that he would carry on with the two Tokyo-based joint ventures with the Japanese firm, Beacon Communications and Dentsu Razorfish – in which Publicis owns 66 per cent and 19.35 per cent respectively.

Dentsu said it would book an extraordinary gain of Y2.1bn ($27m) in its consolidated accounts in the financial year to March as a result of the share sale. Its president and chairman will resign from Publicis’ supervisory board.

The ending of the Publicis partnership had been predicted for more than a year after Dentsu sold down a portion of its stake in 2010. Mr Lévy has also stated previously that he needed to preserve funds in case Dentsu decided to sell its stake in Publicis.

Google+ On A Tracking Safari

Google and other advertising companies have been following iPhone and Apple users as they browse the Web, even though Apple’s Safari Web browser is set to block such tracking by default. How have they been able to do it?

By default, Apple’s Safari browser accepts cookies only from sites that a user visits and generally blocks cookies that come from elsewhere. However there are exceptions to this rule, including if you interact with an advertisement or form in certain ways, it’s allowed to set a cookie even if you aren’t technically visiting the site.

Google’s code, which was placed on certain ads that used the company’s DoubleClick ad server, was uncovered by Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer, took advantage of this loophole.

The code was part of a Google feature that allows its “+1” button to be embedded in advertisements which users would click to indicate that they liked the ad. However, Google faced a problem: Apple’s Web browser Safari blocks most tracking by default and is the most popular browser on mobile devices.

To put cookies onto Safari, Google’s ads used an “iframe,” an invisible container that allows content from one website to be embedded within another site, such as an ad on a blog. Through this iframe window, Google received data from the user’s browser and was able to tell whether the person was using Safari. If s/he were, Google then inserted an invisible form into the container. The user didn’t see or fill out the form – in fact, there was nothing to fill out. But the Google code submitted it automatically.

The cookies were temporary; the blank one was set to expire in 12 hours, and the cookie for logged-in users was set to expire in 24. Google said the company tried to design the +1 ad system to protect people’s privacy and did not anticipate that it would enable tracking cookies to be placed on user’s computers.

Google’s Rachel Whetstone said the temporary cookie served to create a “temporary communication link between Safari browsers and Google’s servers”. She said the goal was to ensure that information passing between the user’s Safari browser and Google’s servers was anonymous – effectively creating a barrier between a user’s personal information and the web content they browse.

But even the blank cookie could then result in extensive tracking of Safari users. This is because of a technical quirk in Safari that allows websites to easily add more cookies to a user’s computer once the site has installed at least one cookie. Safari allows this so that sites such as the Facebook and Google+ social networks can install cookies in widgets they place around the Web, as long as the user has visited the original site.

An update to the software that underlies Safari has closed the loophole that allows cookies to be set after the automatic submission of invisible forms. Future public versions of Safari could incorporate that update. Paradoxically, the people who handled the proposed change, according to software documents, were two engineers at Google.

Does anyone really care? The WSJ tried to blow the story up but so far the mainstream media hasn’t really piled in. Maybe privacy fatigue has set in or the realisation that privacy is effectively dead anyway. Maybe. On the consumer front there seems to be little damage, but the fall out with regulators could be disastrous. We as an industry are already up-to-our necks in draconian legislation around privacy. This certainly hasn’t helped the cause for self-regulation.

Are Skype Ads Heading For The Microsoft Ad Exchange?

Microsoft Advertising will begin selling Skype advertising on PCs and mobile devices in international markets, including France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, the UK and on PCs in Russia. Advertisements in Skype will first appear in the U.S., the UK and Germany next month, with initial advertisers including Groupon, Universal Pictures and Visa.

Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5bn deal that closed in October 2011. Microsoft Advertising is still working to determine what kind of advertising works best within Skype. It is now testing in-call advertising with several advertisers and getting feedback on user experience.

In a blog post, Skype assured users its plan was to only show ads from just one brand per day in each market where advertising was sold. It also said the ads would not disrupt users’ Skype experience with pop-ups or banners in the middle of calls.

The announcement will also see the roll out of mobile advertising, with sponsored ads appearing at the top of Skype’s home and message screens. Audio-in-call advertising is a new format being tested for roll out in new markets – ads will appear on Skype’s home and message screens during a one-to-one Skype-to-Skype audio call.

Andy Hart, general manager, advertising and online at Microsoft UK, said, “Skype is an exciting addition to the Microsoft Advertising portfolio. From today, our customers will be able to target more people in new ways, delivering innovative digital storytelling at a vast scale. Skype’s platform supports rich, interactive brand ads at the same time as giving advertisers a broad reach: combined with MSN homepage advertising, brands can now reach 18.4m or 43 per cent of the total UK online audience.”

The real question though is whether or not Microsoft will make these Skype ad impressions available through its ad exchange. That’s a lot of inventory for the European market, and would solidify Microsoft’s position as number one brand inventory source in the automated channel across Europe.

Posted in Ad Exchange, Ad Server, Ad Trading, Agency, Behavioral Targeting, CEE, France, Germany, Marketer, Online Advertising, RTB, Scandinavia | No Comments »

Jason Bigler Discusses Google’s Bespoke Approach In Europe, The Cross-Channel Opportunity And How We Get To $200 Billion In Display

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

Jason Bigler is Director, Product Management at Google and is the point man for all of the company’s display products in Europe. Here he discusses Google’s European display strategy, the bespoke approach that is required, the cross-channel opportunity, and how we get to that $200 billion figure.

We hear lots about Google’s display strategy in the US. Can you give some overview on the approach to Europe’s fragmented display market?

Our general approach actually isn’t very different on the core issues. Publishers look to us to help them maximise the value of every ad impression while advertisers look to us to help them achieve the best ROI on their advertising spend. If we aren’t delivering on either of those core concepts then we don’t have a business in any market.

However in Europe, as you point out, the market is more fragmented and each country can be in a different phase of product adoption. You really have to apply a country-specific lense when examining the best approach. As an example, we are seeing tremendous growth on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange in Europe. Spend has increased more than 130% year on year and the number of buyers and sellers has increased more than twofold over last year. This is going to be a big year for programmatic buying across most of the region. But is it exactly the same in every country across Europe? Not a chance. So in some countries we’re in full commercialisation mode and in others we’re still in the evangelising phase.

Will it be more of a bespoke approach given the huge differences between markets like the UK, France and Germany?

Much of the reason I’m here is to ensure we’re taking into account all of the nuances within each country when it comes to our overall display strategy. So yes, we’re most certainly going to tailor it to individual market needs by applying that country-specific lense I was talking about a moment ago.

Why did you make the move to Europe, and what experience have you of building products for European clients?

It’s certainly a great challenge for me personally. I’ve been in the display advertising technology business for over 10 years now and for a good portion of that time I was at DoubleClick leading our buy-side platform product, DoubleClick for Advertisers. That role was inherently a global role and I spent quite a bit of time in Europe making sure we were building a relevant product for the region. Recently, I also spent time at Collective Media as their head of product and strategy. During my time there, we not only launched Collective UK but we also acquired Web TV Enterprise, a UK-based video ad network. From a strategic perspective I was very much involved in the formation of their approach to the UK market. However, I think more than anything the scope of the role is what drew me back to Google. Our display ads business just hit a $5 billion run rate and as you can probably imagine the contribution from the European region to that number is not insignificant.

You recently released a report on publisher success on AdX. Can you give some insights on how European publishers are benefiting from automated selling compared to other sales channels?

In this particular report we demonstrated that for European publishers who make their inventory available in the Ad Exchange, automated selling beat competing sales channels 1 in 4 times. The competing channels included direct sales, other networks and backfills. And where it won over those alternatives, the revenue uplift was 73% higher. It also ended up delivering a fill rate greater than 90% for inventory where there was no other demand. I think this report demonstrates the importance of having a platform that can dynamically allocate across all types of buying relationships and deliver the best possible yield to the publisher.

How is the Admeld acquisition going to help European publishers? Can you outline some tangible benefits? Does the acquisition result in more Google-powered private exchanges popping across the continent this year?

It’s still quite early in this process to get into specifics here. We expect to be able to make Admeld’s services available to our DoubleClick Ad Exchange and DFP customers over time and to add to our publisher suite the functionality and services that Admeld provides. This will give publishers more control and flexibility in the way they manage their inventory and maximise their returns. However, it’s important to note that we will continue to invest in and evolve the current Admeld offering as we finalise our integration plan.

Google owns a DSP, an ad exchange, an SSP and both a buy-side and sell-side ad server. How do you respond to this “conflict of interest” argument – and the vagaries of the “end-to-end” ad stack?

The reality is we’ve built an open platform that we feel is the best in the business. For publishers, it helps them maximise the value of every single ad impression. For advertisers, it helps deliver the best ROI on their media spend. Long before today’s “app marketplace” plays and “neutrality” rhetoric we’ve had a platform where customers can integrate their own technologies or utilise their own point solutions should they make that choice. In fact, quite a few of our customers have made that choice. It is this inherent openness that makes the “conflict of interest” argument fatally flawed.

Your role at Google covers several channels, including video, display, rich media and mobile. How does this cross-platform perspective help Google’s clients in the European market?

At Google we have plenty of folks who are laser-focused on ensuring each of these channels is a best-of-breed solution, but I think it’s critical that we also have people thinking about how these channels can impact one another, how we can build complementary cross-product offerings, and most importantly, how these combined solutions can benefit our clients. In my role I’m certainly going to be influencing how we develop and commercialize these cross-platform solutions across Europe.

Your boss, Neal Mohan, reckons display could go to $200 billion in a matter of five years. Is this really possible, and how are we as an industry going to get to that figure?

What we know for certain is that there is still a significant imbalance between the amount of time users spend in a particular form of media and its associated ad spend. We’re betting that this imbalance is going to correct itself over the next several years while consumer consumption of digital media will continue to accelerate. As the line between online and offline blur, eventually we’ll see an entire reclassification of spend where there is no more offline versus online, it will simply be digital spend. That’s how we get to $200 billion.

In terms of how we’re going to get there, I don’t think it’s rocket science. Consumer behavior is what is driving the success of the industry and will continue to do so for the next decade. Think of all the types of devices/services we use today that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Think of what will exist a decade from now. That’s what makes our industry such an exciting place to be. Our goal is to help grow the industry to that $200 billion number.

Posted in Ad Exchange, Ad Network, Ad Server, Ad Trading, Agency, Agency Trading Desk, Brand, CEE, Demand Side Platform, France, Germany, Netherlands, Online Advertising, Publisher, RTB, Scandinavia | No Comments »

Edgar Baudin Discusses The Gamned Model, Real-Time Media Buying In France. The Generalist Versus Specialist Argument And The Sapin Law

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

Edgar Baudin is Co-Founder & Managing Director at Gamned. Here he discusses the Gamned offering, the state of the French exchange marketplace, the generalist versus specialist argument and the effect of Sapin legislation on real-time media buying in France.

Is much of the data-driven ad spend in the French market still coming from DR budgets and are brands still avoiding automated channels?

Most of the spending in France is still related to DR campaigns, i.e. acquisition and retargeting. The first group to adopt this technology was composed of merchants who focused on ROI, and that explains why they drive the biggest parts of the investments.

Now that brands have access to transparency and ad verification, they’ve started to switch part of their budget over to RTB campaigns. There’s still a lot of work to be done, informing and educating marketers, for them to increase their budgets and go from the test campaign phase to long-term RTB integration in their media plans. Branding campaigns will need a strong increase in data offering which is a must-have for audience and targeting setups.

Today, trading desks have a key role to play explaining the new paradigm which allows marketers to consider Display Advertising as a much more powerful channel. By enabling total control of frequency and reach, brands can now consider GRP’s in their ad campaigns.

What’s Gamned’s position in the current ecosystem? How do you help advertisers?

Gamned has been a Real-Time Media Desk since 2009 and our clients are advertisers and agencies. One of our strengths is R&D, with six of our 20 employees devoted to developing in-house technology and tools which are at the service of our customers.

Our belief is that real-time trading is not enough: in order to properly benefit from real time advertising, we’ve worked on improving real-time messaging and segmentation. To that effect we have, for example, developed our own dynamic banner technology which enables us to deliver a personalized message to each unique impression which we purchase on exchanges.

Our approach helps advertisers to better understand the benefits offered by real-time advertising, and of course to generate better results.

These results should of course be measured using ROI-related KPI’s on DR campaigns, but also in terms of the teachings of segmentation, data usage and creatives. We work closely with all our customers to define the targets together before launching any campaign.

How are French marketers taking to data-driven media buying? Is there still a knowledge gap among French CMOs?

Some CMO’s consider data-driven buying to be one of the main advantages of RTB buying. “Don’t buy ad space, buy targeted audience”, is the magic motto.

It is, however, very complex to implement data-driven buying as there is no “one size fits all” method.

Most CMO’s will need to define in more detail their tactical and strategic needs concerning data, and to learn how to distinguish more precisely between transactional data, social data, intent data, behavioral data, occupational data and so forth. Gamned has chosen to work very closely with its customers in that department, as we know very well that automated buying by itself is not enough.

We have seen some excellent results when combining first and third party data, with impressive improvements in performance. The volumes are, however, often limited. Ultra-segmentation does work and can teach us priceless lessons, but the scalability of this technique remains difficult.

In your opinion, what are the trends going to be in the French data-driven display market?

In early 2011, the number of unique segmented cookies available was much too limited, but things are finally starting to evolve in a good way. Thanks to the great work done by data suppliers such as Exelate, Weborama or DataVantage, more and more publishers are realising the potential revenue which can be generated by monetizing their data.

Another very effective way to increase volume and relevancy is by leveraging Facebook data from ad campaigns and fan pages, like we have been doing for the past months.

What about the argument of specialists versus generalists in the new exchange eco-system? Do you think there is a need for ad traders with deep domain knowledge in the French market?

This is a recurring question which we discussed at the ATS in Paris last year! From our (pure player) point of view, the RTB ecosystem definitely requires specialists. The environment is changing so rapidly that the only way to efficiently address advertisers’ needs is to offer a proper setup. It’s not just a question of choosing a DSP, buying a bit of third party data and managing campaigns. Our entire trading desk has been developed with the aim of delivering real-time advertising and this is our one and only focus. With one third of our team dedicated to R&D this is the key to our success and efficiency.

How is the Sapin legislation affecting the new exchange eco-system? Is it an issue for new ad traders?

The aim of the Sapin legislation is to fight corruption by giving advertisers total transparency in regards to their ad investments. The entire Sapin process is however technically impossible to implement on RTB buying. As we already guarantee our advertisers full transparency on their media costs and margins, we consider ourselves to be Sapin-compliant. This legislation has however always been considered a complex issue in regards to internet advertising.

Posted in Ad Exchange, Ad Network, Ad Server, Ad Trading, Ad Verification, Agency, Agency Trading Desk, Behavioral Targeting, Brand, Data Exchange, Data Management Platform, Data Strategy, France, Online Advertising, Private Exchange, Publisher, Publisher Trading Desk, RTB | No Comments »

Euro Round-Up: The French Get “Serieux” About RTB; mediascale Reports Strong 2011 Growth; Jemm Goes All-In With AppNexus

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Le Trading Media

In an epic twenty-seven pages on the potential of RTB in the French market, IAB France has outlined an impressive overview of the entire market. The report goes into great detail on the emerging data-driven advertising market in France, with explainations of key constituents in the exchange eco-system. It even includes some Q&As with leading ad execs in France, including recent ATS Paris speaker, Arthur Millet, Directeur Commercial at Amaury Medias Digital. Further insight on the growth of automated buying and RTB is provided by industry heavyweights like Sébastien Robin, Directeur Des OpérationS, at AFFIPERF. You can download the IAB report on the growth of RTB in France here.

mediascale Reports Strong 2011 Growth

mediascale, one of Germany’s leading independent digital agencies, reported a gross income of €5.6m last year – an increase of 17 per cent compared to 2010. The billings for the same period rose 22 per cent from €59m to €72m.

mediascale uses its own cross-platform targeting tool NE.R.O, together with Plan.Net, to develop solutions for clients and agency partners. Julian Simon, managing director of mediascale, is bullish on future growth for mediascale:

Right now we are running about 35 per cent of all campaigns on NE.R.O. By the end of 2012, we want to increase that by 40 per cent or more. This targeting will aid not only in direct sales support but also image and brand communications. It’s more about planning for consumer-relevant criteria such as purchase decision stages, interests and attitudes of the user. There is great potential in targeting, especially for content and creative solutions. The system combines information from the user profile with the matching design, text, product or price for the dynamic creation of promotional materials. Thus, advertising effectiveness and efficiency of the campaigns increase significantly.

The company also opened a new office in Vienna last year to service the fast-growing Austrian market.

Jemm Goes All-In With AppNexus

Jemm Group has chosen AppNexus as its exclusive ad technology platform, the company publicly announced this week.

Julia Smith, Global Communications Director at Jemm, is looking ahead:

By leveraging AppNexus’ technology platform, Jemm is able to deliver a strong proposition to buyers and sellers. We have moved away from a traditional ad network model and are now focused on working with other like-minded players in order to deliver a compelling offer for the publisher market.

Since migrating to the AppNexus platform, Jemm has seen click-through rates dramatically increase. In the first month alone, CTR tripled across campaigns delivered via the AppNexus platform. According to AppNexus’ proprietary reporting, the European market for RTB is growing rapidly, with an average of 25 billion advertising impressions served each month during Q4 2011 via the AppNexus platform. Over the last year the number of global impressions served via the AppNexus platform has increased by 859 per cent.

Posted in Ad Exchange, Ad Network, Ad Server, Ad Trading, Ad Verification, Ad Visibility, Agency, Agency Trading Desk, Analytics, Attribution, Behavioral Targeting, Data Exchange, Data Strategy, Demand Side Network, Demand Side Platform, France, Germany, Marketer, Online Advertising, RTB | No Comments »

Euro Round-Up: Glow Digital Added to AppNexus Market; DoubleClick Sees European Publisher Uplift in AdX; Weborama Experiences 48% Growth in Q4

Monday, February 6th, 2012

This is the first post in our new column Euro Round-up. Please forward all Euro market stories and press releases to press@exchangewire.com.

Glow Machine Now Available In The AppNexus App Marketplace, Adding Facebook Ad Buying In The Ad Stack

If you were to believe the hype machine, Facebook is set to take over the ad world. Glow Digital Media, a European based ad tech vendor, is clearly responding to the market with its new Glow Machine® app for the AppNexus marketplace, announced this week. Glow Machine® integrates Facebook media buys into the AppNexus Console user interface. The new app gives advertisers the ability to access and control FB campaigns alongside display inventory. The goal is to make Facebook Ads more effective through advanced campaign management, automation and optimisation for AppNexus Console users. The app allows existing AppNexus users to buy across the Facebook channel. BannerConnect also launched its first app on the AppNexus marketplace, as the a la carte ad stack grows. The BannerConect app was built for Dutch-based Mark and Mini, who maintain 5 million Dutch online user profiles. It enables buyers in the AppNexus eco-system to enhance their campaigns with this data.

The DoubleClick Ad Exchange Delivers Revenue Uplift to EMEA Publishers

Google’s Ad Exchange, DoubleClick, released a whitepaper this week analysing their positive impact on publisher revenue in Europe. According to their internal report, 88% of display advertisers are planning to buy in real-time going forward. However, content remains critical and 74% of real-time bidding buyers will pay a premium for quality environments. In the survey, buyers also revealed that programmatic channels would see the biggest increase in investment over the next year.

For inventory that would have gone unsold, according to their study, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange demonstrated signiﬁcant success in monetising unsold inventory. For inventory for which there was no other demand, it delivered a ﬁll rate of greater than 90%.

One in every four times inventory goes on sale, the DoubleClick Ad Exchange claims to ﬁnd the best price against all other competing sales channels, both direct and indirect. And in these cases where the Ad Exchange wins, it delivers a price that’s 73% higher than other channels would have delivered.

Weborama: 46% Organic Growth in Q4, As Announced In Their Annual Report

The Weborama grew its business significant in Q4, adding more profiles (200Mn in Europe), more advertisers (adserving, branding and performance) and more publisher partners.

The full year revenue was 22,430 K€, a 46% rise over 2010. This strong growth can be compared to a 14% growth of the French display market (source SRI-Cap Gemini).

French business has been very good, with strong growth on the targeted media side and on the technology side. Rich Media sales have peaked, performance business was strong, as was targeted branding. Adserved volumes have grown substantially: 35 of top 100 advertisers in France are running on Weborama’s Adperf.

Behavioural targeting and the progression of automated ad trading were noted two two major trends of 2011 – and it continues to develop in these growth areas.

During the last quarter, Weborama interfaced its technology with Google’s DSP: Invite Media. Weborama is planning similar partnerships so that other European players (advertisers, agencies and publishers) can easily access and buy Weborama data.

It continues to grow in other markets too – with the Netherlands and Southern Europe highlighted as key markets. In the UK, the acquisition by Weborama of a 50% stake in Hi-Media UK is expected to accelerate the development of operations in targeted media, technology (Rich Media) and data.

Posted in Ad Exchange, Ad Server, Ad Trading, Behavioral Targeting, Facebook Display, France, Germany, Netherlands, Online Advertising, Private Exchange, Publisher, Spain | No Comments »