This week is Internet Week in NYC and Terry Kawaja produced one of the best panel sessions I have attended this year. Companies like AppNexus, Facebook, Google, Weather Channel, Quantcast, Bluekai, Marketshare, Vivaki shared their perspectives on the future of ‘real time.’
One company, one take-away:
Panel 1: The future of real time
1. Terry Kawaja (Luma Partners): In the world of real time bidding, duplication is the problem, not fragmentation. It’s expensive to maintain all of those Demand Side Platform and Ad Networks. Is the solution to create an advertising (interoperable) OS that will standardize how marketers connect to publishers?
2. Scott Spencer (Google): Three years from now, there will be more players in the real time advertising space. There is still a considerable amount of innovation, and many opportunities. I don’t think we have passed the novelty factor and are not ready for consolidation.
3. MIchael Kelly (Weather Network): As a publisher, we will never give up our relationship with consumers. We’ll also never give up our relationship with advertisers. If we need to, we’ll build our own technology.
4. Konrad Feldman (Quantcast): People always get hung up on CTR and ROI, but you have to consider the size of the pie. Larger reach won’t provide the same CTR as smaller reach.
5. Carolyn Everson (Facebook): Facebook marketing is real time. We don’t even use the term ‘display’ with our advertisers. We see Facebook as a broader engagement platform that can amplify the conversations from digital but also TV and print.
6. Michael Rubinstein (Appnexus): I think Facebook has a very promising future in terms of lower funnel consumers. Facebook’s engagement is a viable way to capture intent.
Panel 2: New rules
7. Wes Nichols (Marketshare): Our biggest challenge is that marketing has become like the medical industry. In the medical industry, we transitioned from one general practitioner to multiple specialists and tools. In digital marketing, we are evolving towards a more specialized discipline with its own tools. CMO wants us to figure out how those specialists and tools connect to each other. They want us to fix attribution and optimization.
8. Omar Tawakol (BlueKai): We are seeing an expansion of use of data beyond cookies. Folks are starting to use cookie data to optimize all digital channels, not just advertising.
9. Jag Duggal (Quantcast): Freshness of data is what matters the most.
10. Kurt Unkel (Vivaki): Advertisers have long understood that the benefits of real time are as much about reducing inefficiencies as enabling auction buying.
+1 Bonus
Wes Nichols (Marketshare): The CEO of a global entertainment company wanted dramatic change. We looked at analytics and found 30% of efficiencies. Out of $1Bn spent, only 1% was in digital. The vast majority of money was still spent on traditional media. It’s extremely important to look at all media attribution models to make the case for more digital spend. We moved the company digital budget from 1% to 18% of their total ad budget.
