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Omnicom's Spiegel in Interview Prior to July 14th Panel

Today we are running our first in a series of Q&As with panelists from our July 14th Ad Club panel "Agency Demand Platforms: Art vs. Science in a Real-Time World" at The New York Times Center.

Still looking for a ticket for the July 14th panel (8-10am) in New York? Call your rep from ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange to come as our guest or visit the AdClub to register online.

In the first of a two-part Q&A, Omnicom Media Group Digital CEO Matt Spiegel tells us about their $2 billion digital spend, the future of trading platforms, impression based bidding, if there is a future for blind buys and Forbes vs. long tail finance content.

Tomorrow we'll speak with Spiegel about the substitutability of media and find out what he did last Saturday. We'll be posting Q&A with all the panelists and further information leading up to this event, so make sure you subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.

Your Name:  Matt Spiegel

Your Job:  CEO, Omnicom Media Group Digital.

I lead the development of the digitally based solutions our agencies need to be successful over the next 100 years.  In a nutshell, I strategize, develop, execute, evangelize, teach, listen and learn, ideate, and solve problems for today and tomorrow.

Your Company:

Omnicom Media Group is the global media division of Omnicom Group Inc. Its businesses include leading media service companies OMD Worldwide and PHD Network, as well as a number of specialized companies in areas including search engine marketing, branded content production, out-of-home media and others. OMG operates in more than 100 countries with a client list that includes Pepsi, HP, Intel and Nissan/Renault.

How much digital media spend does your agency control?

OMG Digital oversees $2 billion in digital media spending on behalf of its clients.

How many publishers did your agency purchase from last year?

Many. There is no doubt that with the current systems it is very hard to buy from a lot of publishers.  Developing an infrastructure to make this more sustainable is certainly a priority for the industry.

How many ad exchanges and ad networks did your agency purchase from last year? 

Again, many.  Long term it is likely that trading platforms (be them what we today consider exchanges or future models) will be the go to intermediary for most purchases.

What percentage of your media spend in 2008 was allocated to ad exchanges and ad networks?

Going forward we will increase our use of trading platforms that allow us to have transparency, accountability, and flexibility in the way we purchase media. 

Describe your demand generation platform.

Our focus is to develop solutions that help our client's better access the target audiences they are looking for and to provide service and technology solutions that continually learn and optimize against their performance metrics (be them direct response of brand engagement objectives).

Are these demand side platforms complimentary to or in conflict with current ad exchanges such as Yahoo!'s RightMedia and ContextWeb, Inc.'s ADSDAQ Exchange? 

Mostly complimentary; sales side platforms provide the access we on the buy side need to consumers.  Platforms that are truly designed to serve as technology and infrastructure support to the industry shouldn't see any conflict.

You have many large, Fortune 500 clients such as Intel, HP, Visa and Pepsi. What language do you use to describe the opportunity around your demand generation platform to a client? And what scale does this solution have to provide in order to be relevant and capture their attention?

Our clients are looking for continued improvement in their media performance.  We focus on solutions that provide that performance improvement through flexibility, accountability, and targeting visibility.

In an agency demand side platform, how important is impression based valuation and bidding? And what common attributes of an impression do you use to assess value - Context? User cookies? User location? 

Impression based bidding is an important element of the ecosystem.  It is not likely to be the only method of purchase but an important one that provides for real time targeting and creative decisions that are likely to improve performance for the advertiser and therefore translate to increased value for publishers.

In this new real-time world, will there continue to be "blind buys" or "blind network buys"?

Unlikely, so no.

(PHOTO: ADSDAQ Exchange's Agency Trading Desk) Many in the media world have argued over the substitutability of media - that if one can find the same audience looking at finance content on the Long Tail for $7.00 vs. the same audience looking at finance content on Forbes.com for $30.00-then the Long Tail deserves its place on the media plan. Is it reasonable to use content as one valuable common element to look across multiple media vendors and associate campaign value not with the specific media vendor per se but with the specific content of each single impression?

Context is certainly a factor in targeting and audience.  There will be times that it's important to be on Forbes vs. any long-tail finance content and other times that won't matter.  It will be important for Forbes to invent opportunities outside of standard inventory that helps them justify and earn premium CPMs.

As you continue to implement your agency's trading strategy, does it permeate across the agency, requiring new skill sets among employees and new workflow for the purchase and assessment of media? Or is the strategy concentrated in a trading group or division that acts in a service capacity to existing client account groups?

Evolution is natural and will occur much like what has happened in the digitized media space overall.  There will be both specializes and generalists that work together to encourage innovation and integration at the same time.

At the 2008 IAB Annual Meeting, Rob Norman, Global CEO of GroupM Interaction Worldwide said: "Today, we plan and trade on behalf of our clients. Tomorrow and in some places today we also trade on our own behalf where we can create value and deserve our place in the chain... We charge at the moment for the cost of inputs but again if we charge on the basis of the value of the outputs we are perfectly entitled to do that too."

Should it be permissible for an agency to conduct arbitrage? -to purchase media for the "house" and re-sell it to clients, making a spread?

I don't think it is appropriate to ask if something is permissible.  If a client and agency deem there to be an appropriate value exchange, however it is derived, it should be acceptable to others.  There needs of course to be clarity in that process and agreement.

Tune in tomorrow for part two of our Q&A with panelist and Omnicom Media Group Digital CEO Matt Spiegel.

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