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Havas, ICON, Upstream & ContextWeb discuss “Finding Brand-Safe Inventory in a World of Media Fragmentation”

On Monday, December 8th, at the iMedia Agency Summit in La Quinta, CA, an experienced group of senior online executives gathered together for a panel entitled, “Finding Brand-Safe Inventory in a World of Media Fragmentation.” As audiences continue to move beyond the portals and out to mid and long tail sites, panelists discussed the possibilities in aggregating and reaching their clients’ target customers in such a dynamic marketplace, while juggling the issues of scale and control.

Participants included:

• » Don Epperson, CEO, Havas Digital
• » Jim Meskauskas, VP, Director of Online Media, ICON International
• » Jay Sears, EVP, Strategic Products & Business Development, ContextWeb Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange
• » (moderator) Doug Weaver, CEO/Founder, Upstream Group / iMedia Senior Analyst

Each of the participants provided insights on the different roles played by ad exchanges, networks, portals and branded sites in the growing fragmented world. Roles within the industry have become more and more blurred, as buyers are becoming sellers and sellers are becoming buyers.

Moderator Doug Weaver started off the discussion with addressing this new trend in the industry, as seen by agencies becoming their own networks and essentially, becoming reverse demand aggregators. Speaking on behalf of an agency, a so-called “demand aggregator,” Don Epperson said “We’re working on the benefit of the client and that means that we’re not trying to arbitrage inventory, per se, we’re trying to get the best value for our clients…There’s a lot of value that’s not accruing to the advertiser that we think with the new systems, it will.”

Representing an ad exchange, Contextweb’s Jay Sears addressed the ways in which the ADSDAQ Exchange provides a platform where both buyers and sellers have control. “A lot of our control for the buyer has to do with page level content type and context. And for publishers, a lot of our control has to do with setting the price that you want; setting your clearing price.”

Bob Verrico spoke about the role that traditional networks play in aggregating and centralizing certain operations for mid and long tail sites. Since these sites generally lack the content distribution and infrastructure needed to position their ad inventory to the buying community at large, networks are able to provide a very true de-fragmented approach to buying.

The conversation then led to the underlying dichotomy between control and scale. Jim Meskauskas raised the issue of the bifurcation of the agency model and how to find balance between its two parts – the transactional enterprise and the architecture enterprise. “If we focus too much on the data drive aspect and try to approach advertising from the perspective that all of human behavior and its secret motives can be rendered into machine readable form, we’re going to lose some of the successes that we’ve had in advertising in the past.”

Ultimately, panelists agreed that media planning needs to be approached with the perspective of finding balance between art and science in order to yield the greatest efficiency. The planners and sellers have been and always will be the problem solvers, yet the technology that they use has become an enabler in its ability to automate low value operations. The brains behind sales organizations can now focus on solving unique capabilities and hopefully, in the future, compete based solely upon the things that they do first, best or only.

To view the full video from the panel, please click on the link below:

Part 1:

Click here to see Part 2

 

-- Alissa Ferrino

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