ContextWeb's Internet Advertising Blog

Havas' Nathan Woodman in Interview Prior to September 25th Panel (Part 1 of 2)

Today we are running Part One of our interview with Havas' Nathan Woodman who serves as Managing Director of Adnetik. This is part of our series of Q&As with top agency execs on our upcoming panel discussion, "Agency Demand Platforms: Is Everyone a Media Trader?" during Advertising Week this Friday, September 25th at 11:00am until 11:45am.

Woodman joins a panel of agency executives with similar responsibilities including Curt Hecht, President, VivaKi Nerve Center, VivaKi (Publicis); Darren Herman, Founder & President, Varick Media Management (MDC Partners) and Quentin George, Managing Partner, Cadreon (Interpublic). ContextWeb's Jay Sears will moderate a discussion about the "demand platform" strategy of each company.

To attend the event as a guest of ContextWeb and the ADSDAQ Exchange, you can register here. ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is donating $25 for every attendee to GeneratioNext.

We'll be posting Q&A with 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.

Below Woodman tells us about purchasing media from 2,000 publishers, overlaying third party data on purchased media, procurement efficiency and how impression by impression valuation in central to Adnetik.

Your Name:  Nathan Woodman

Your Job:  I am the Managing Director of Adnetik. I am responsible for proselytizing the inevitable shift of control in the networked advertiser space from the supply side to the demand side.

Day to day I am responsible for the design and development of the Adnetik platform plus the training of HD global staff on the execution of impression based trading.

Your Company:

Havas Digital is a global digital media planning, buying and analytics company. Our clients include Orange, Expedia, Virgin Mobile, Sear's, Fidelity, Peugeout, Citroen, Volvo, Reckitt Benckiser, Danon, LVMH, Schering Plough, among many other tried and tested client relationships.

How much digital media spend does your agency control?
Approximately $1.5 Billion globally. We do not break out local market spend.

How many publishers did your agency purchase from last year?

600+ US web properties and 2,000 plus globally. The number of sites creates a back office and invoicing approval burden. However, we strategically believe there is a payoff to the advertiser as the diversity creates many points of competitive leverage therefore sustaining a constant air of casualty planning and buyer nimbleness.

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

Over 60 ad networks in the US and over 150 globally. It is likely that over time we will consolidate ad network buying to maximize reach and minimize competitive bidding. However, as the consolidation would create a "paradox of the aggregate" and possibly artificially inflate price, the membership of preferred ad networks will need to strike a balance between limited partnership and a competitive market.
 
Ad networks that offer transparency and represent unique inventory, unique audience and unique data will always have a preferred place.

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

The % of spend allocated to ad exchanges and ad networks vary widely by market. It is as low of 10% and as high as 40%. The overall trend is up but 40% appears to be the cap.

Describe your demand generation platform, Adnetik.

Adnetik's purpose is to maximize an advertiser's investment in media by trading media and data assets. The execution is dependent on pricing expertise, world wide scale and access to inventory at variable rates.

Adnetik has three central pillars 1) Leverage advertiser data to value impressions 2) Purchase 3rd party data to enhance impression by impression allocation decisions 3) Acquire inventory on a bidded impression by impression basis to ensure that the advertiser never pays more for an ad than it is worth to them.

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?

Ad exchanges are not just complimentary but fundamental to the operation of Adnetik. Adnetik is in the process of integrating out demand with both the ad exchanges and site side optimization platforms. 

You have many large, Fortune 500 clients such as Orange, Expedia, Virgin Mobile, Sear's, Fidelity, Peugeout, Citroen, Volvo, Reckitt Benckiser, Danon, LVMH and Schering Plough. 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?
 
The principle advertiser benefit is procurement efficiency. The advertiser only pays for contact with those customers that are known to return value instead of paying for a bundled media placement.

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?

As stated above, impression by impression valuation is central to Adnetik. The attributes that are used are the combinatorial effect of advertiser, publisher and consumer data point.

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

Yes, many publishers are not willing to release their URL out of fear of direct sales cannibalization and reverse supply curve engineering. It is our POV that the publishers that release their information will receive higher bids for their inventory and in Havas Digital's case they will also receive a much heavier portion of our advertisers' share of wallet.

(PHOTO: The 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?

The valuation of media is a trifurcated exercise. 1) The audience has value 2) The publisher domain and the publisher brand have value and 3) The context has value.

Thus the long tail deserves a place in the media plan but it is not a substitute for your Forbes.com example it rather represents a reach extension strategy. 

Thanks, Nate

Tomorrow Woodman will talk about the Long Tail's place in the media plan and how media is valued in three parts - inventory, audience and context. 

Need to register for this Friday's panel discussion, "Agency Demand Platforms: Is Everyone a Media Trader?" during Advertising Week (Friday, September 25th at 11:00am until 11:45am)?

To attend the event as a guest of ContextWeb and the ADSDAQ Exchange, you can register here. ContextWeb's ADSDAQ Exchange is donating $25 for every attendee to GeneratioNext.  

We'll be posting Q&A with 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.

Subscribe to our Internet Advertising blog, follow ContextWeb on Twitter and join the Ad Exchange Traders Group via LinkedIn.