Slide deck from the August 2012 Digiday Exchange conference in NYC. isocket Founder CEO John Ramey @jpramey preaching the love about how tech is finally coming to direct ad sales. See more at http://blog.isocket.com
22. 1. The wall is falling. Tech, meet direct.
2. New tools for programmatic and RFPs.
3. Very different inventory than spot market.
John Ramey
Founder & CEO of @isocket
@jpramey
john@isocket.com
Hinweis der Redaktion
isocket overviewNot an informercial. Workshop because big thing changing. Huge topic. Hard to condense. Foreshadow. Address some common concerns, like humans and robots.
Talk about the world today. Most revenue in direct inventory.
Yet conferences etc all focus on remnant tech. At best, separate conferences. Most technology is for C2.
Rearrange LUMA, shows the gap. Can track back reasons why things developed this way, like pub experiment with remnant, but another day.
Silly dichotomy. On one end tech and progress, on the other end important business. We’re trying to tear down this wall. Market passed tipping point. Why we’re talking about it today.
Let’s define C1 and C2, esp since things get warped with words like “Premium”Class 1 defClass 2 is leftover, given to a 3rd party to maximizeC2 is not evil. Apples and Oranges.Some people think everything will blur. Will blend, but the glass ceiling b/n direct and indirect will remain, glass ceiling.B/c the inventory is fund different, and the workflows are fund different, you need different tech. Most attempts are C2 tech trying to move into C1, square peg round hole.PE’s as an example. Toed and pushed ceiling. But not working as hoped. Learned a lot.
Lets talk about tools like isocket bringing tech to direct. Namely programmatic. Simple descry is a pipe direct from your software to theirs. Phone network.RTB not synonymous programmatic. Subset. Def programmatic. RTB designed to do X.Progdir designed to be true to how business is done directly. Humans. Decisions. Relationships. Negotiations. Example of how these two worlds are very different: not an impression level auction.So the way isocket works is we integrate directly into pubs stack. Slice dice price. Into catalog. Already dif from RTB in how the inventory is sourced.Advertisers access catalog in dif ways. Find inventory. Place offers.Offers go to human at pub. Approve/reject. Becomes binding IO. Billing et all fall into place. Trafficked as distinct line item. First true one click experience.How this fits in the pub tech stack. Or rather, channel stack. At top youll have custom.
But what’s in between, the fat middle. Relatively standard units, but direct, better and guaranteed.
Because how this tech built, creates very different inventory pool above spot market. Already see differences from RTB.
Namely when RTB and Direct are together, magic happens. Lets go through some specific examples using one of our great demand partners MediaMath.
Test and scale awesome example. Use spot market to learn. Properties earn their way onto the direct media plan. MM T-One example. Point and shoot. Even automated into the bidder.
Over/under frequency management. Don’t buy RTB already hit direct. Or under delivering bc cant get enough of the good stuff, so move up a tier.
Obv workflow benefits. Lot of people don’t bother. Those who do costly, time, limited. This can supercharge the tool in your box, save time/money, do whats right instead convenient.For all these reasons, Huge opportunity here for DSPs, trade desks, etc. Become more than a line item. As the wall falls, grow the value.
Theres ton benefits for the publisher side too. Namely play in the growing stream of digital money, but while controlling your direct sales and best inventory. Square peg, square hole.First, theres big hole in the stack. It correlates to the cliff in the yield curve. By putting these tools in place, facilitate the way customers want send you money. Certainly better than it falling off cliff into spot. 9 times out of 10, not having this in place for buyer who wants it make go sideways or downward, rarely upward.Result is fixed yield curve.
Humans are super important and wont go anyway. Makes your sales and ops people better. Spend time more human things, less time doing data entry.
Last not least, youre in control. Proper tools purpose built for C1. Everything tied to you and your brand, your controls. And don’t give away inventory, no waste and no change to status quo.
One of biggest threads at the intersection of tech direct is channel conflict. But most pubs are outdated at best and plain wrong at worst.So hyper concerned about the wrong things, and it ends up hurting them. Then make worse by overlooking the things they should be concerned about, like URL targeting in the spot market. Pubs also miss half the def of channel conflict, which is channel friction. Customer want to do biz with you in one channel, but pub forces them into another less desirable.
In other words, CC works both ways. Imagine publisher is a big house. By holding too many shotguns at your front door, sometimes all you accomplish is encouraging people to break in the basement.Story. Department within big advertiser. Direct, desired, wanted to digital ease. GOOD THING! Pub said no for silly political reason. 10 minutes total. Antiquated fear helped no one. Ended up sending those to spot market. Everyone lost. Advertiser went elsewhere.All because customer used the wrong front door. They used the wrong “fax machine”
Lot of ways, pubs like music/movies/books. Similar in producing content, but dif in that they sold directly to customers. But they didn’t adapt to the changing ways their customers wanted to send them money. They thought their value was in the brick and mortar, rather than the content. Got very hurt as result.Good news. Pubs have chance to learn from that, adapt.
Please remember one thing: easier = more business. Could be entire pres on its own. Blog post. Check it.
Buyers pushing for this space. Great. But still some important lessons.One of which is to learn to love the sausage. Because of ad tech wankery and hype, often hear apathy from buyers not want know sausage made. Understandable given all smoke and mirrors, but IMHO a lazy cop out. Understanding can help cut through clutter, have sharper tools in your kit, make better decisions, lower costs, better ROI. For ex, in 2010/2011 surprised by % of buyers thinking RTB inventory was premium.
Good news is the wall is falling. Happening now. Seeing much more chatter and action about it. Terry at ad tech. Lot of people pivoting in, one later today. 2012 will be for PD what 2009 was for RTB, maybe bigger. Exciting, all look forward to it.