AdExchanger.

com 2009 Year-End Report

The Q&A’s
Learn from the Ecosystem

Sponsored by
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

AdExchanger.com 2009 Year-End Report ....................................................................................................................1

AGENCIES ................................................................................................................................. 9
Nathan Woodman of Havas Digital’s Adnetik on The Future of The Media Agency .............................................9

AKQA Considering Media Buying Platforms and Internal Options Says GM Symonds ................................... 11

Ad Exchanges Due To Take-Off In Late 2009 and 2010 in Asia-Pacific Region Says CEO Robbie Hills of
GroupM ............................................................................................................................................................................ 13

Hill Holliday SVP Cahill Says Clients Are Cautiously Optimistic About Exchanges ......................................... 15

UK Slow To Move To Exchanges But Infectious Media Plows Ahead.................................................................. 18

Media Buyers Will Become Media Traders Says Pres Barry Lowenthal of The Media Kitchen....................... 22

Mediabrands’ Brunick Sees Improved, Client Campaign Performance and No Arbitrage In Cadreon’s Future
........................................................................................................................................................................................... 25

Mediasmith CEO David Smith Says Brand Safety Remains Top Concern With Ad Exchanges...................... 30

Neo@Ogilvy COO Smith Says The Advertising Agency Model Needs To Drop -Advertising- From Its Title 32

OMG Has Advertiser’s Interest At Heart Says Omnicom’s Donahue.................................................................... 34

OMG Digital CEO Matt Spiegel On The Future Buyer/Planner ............................................................................... 38

OMG Digital CEO Matt Spiegel On The Agency Model And Buying Platforms ................................................... 40

Razorfish VP Matt Greitzer Says Display Ad And Search Channels To Likely Merge At Agencies When
Advertisers Demand It................................................................................................................................................... 43

MDC Partners and Varick Media Leveraging Data and Ad Exchanges Says Pres Herman .............................. 46

Real-Time Bidding Infrastructure Needed from Exchanges and Publishers Says VivaKi Nerve Center’s Kurt
Unkel................................................................................................................................................................................. 48

AD NETWORKS AND EXCHANGES ...................................................................................... 50

Transactional Advertising Driving Lower CPMs Says 24/7 Real Media Chairman Moore ................................ 50

CEO Fanlo Says Real-Time Bidders Integrating On AdBrite; API Due In October............................................. 52

Real-Time Bidding Coming To AdECN Exchange This Fall Says Microsoft’s Nahum ...................................... 54

Adgregate Markets CEO Wong Says Landing Pages Will Be Unnecessary........................................................ 57

Adgregate Markets Moves Into Mobile Display eCommerce.................................................................................. 59

Adify CEO Fradin Says More Data Exchange and Social Targeting Integration To Come ............................... 60

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Advertisers Are Scrutinizing and Optimizing Says AdReady CEO Finn.............................................................. 63

AdRoll Offering A Targeting Platform To Advertisers Says CEO Bell.................................................................. 65

AdShuffle Aiming To Maximize eCPMs For Publishers And Transparency For Agencies Says CEO Buell.. 68

AudienceScience CEO Hirsch Says Real-Time Bidding Enables True Value in Media ..................................... 70

AOL Platform-A’s Div Bhansali Discusses BidPlace SB and LeadBack.com..................................................... 72

Brand.net Getting Traction With CPG Clients Says CEO Elizabeth Blair ............................................................ 75

Bizo CEO Russell Glass Says Data Driving B2B Demand-Side Optimization, Too............................................ 78

Collective Media CEO Apprendi Says 2009 Is About Audience-centric Buying and Bigger, Richer Media... 81

Are You Ready? Real-Time Bidding Breakout Next Year Says Contextweb EVP Sears ................................... 84

CPX Interactive CEO Seiman Sees Strength In Consumer Goods and DM Clients With Upfront Revenues 86

CPA Is The Only Meaningful Metric To Our Clients Says Dapper COO Aizen .................................................... 88

Online and Offline Data Used Together Yield Best Results Says Datran Media SVP Of Display Knoll.......... 90

Retargeting Continues The Conversation for Brand Marketers Says FetchBack CEO Chad Little ................ 93

Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange Is Officially Launched Says VP Neal Mohan ............................................ 96

AdExchanger.com Q&A With Google DoubleClick Ad Exchange’s Mohan and Spencer................................. 99

Inflection Point Media Seeing Shift Toward Targeted Vertical Ad Network Model Says CEO Hulse............ 103

InterClick Pres Katz On Ad Networks, Exchanges and Agencies ....................................................................... 105

InterCLICK Taps Markets For $12 Million; Pres Katz Says Ad Network Model Is Validated........................... 107

The Contextual and Semantic Targeting of LucidMedia with Ken Barbieri....................................................... 108

Netmining Brings Profiling Solutions Through Ad Network Model Says GM Vegliante ................................. 111

OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan Says Exchange Showing Traction; OpenX Market Doubles In 2 Months........... 113

OpenX Update: On Microsoft ..................................................................................................................................... 115

ShortTail Media Providing Good Ads, Rates, Clients for Publishers Says Pres Jason Krebs ...................... 116

Tatto Media CEO Miao Says Ad Exchange Will Not Be Needed Someday ........................................................ 118

Platform Neutral TRAFFIQ Addressing Premium To Mid-Tail Inventory For Havas Digital And Industry Says
SVP Portugal ................................................................................................................................................................. 120

CSO Schanzer of Undertone Networks Says Online Metrics Today Don’t Support Long Term Needs Of A
Brand .............................................................................................................................................................................. 124

Xtend Media CEO Orzel Says Ad Networks Will Need To Rely On Media Buying Skills To Survive............. 126

3
Yahoo! Right Media VP Taylor Looks At The Future Of Exchanges And Media............................................... 128

Yahoo! VP Bill Wise Discusses Future Demand-Side Platform Plans For Right Media Exchange ............... 133

ADVERTISERS ...................................................................................................................... 134

From The Marketer: Mazda’s Collinson On Brand Dollars Moving Online And Display Advertising ........... 134

VP Federico Says Monster Looking To Leverage Display Ad Exchanges In The Future ............................... 136

ANALYSTS............................................................................................................................. 138
Yield Optimizers Poised To Migrate To Exchange Model Says ThinkEquity’s Morrison and Coolbrith ...... 138

BUYING PLATFORMS........................................................................................................... 141

AdBuyer.com CEO Ogilvie Says Marketers Need Help In Audience, Price, and Messaging.......................... 141

Adchemy CEO Nukala Says Marketers Need To De-Average For Better Return On Ad Spend..................... 144

New CPM Advisors Display Advertising Buying System – CPMatic – Is Now In Beta Says CEO Leathern 147

DataXu Bringing Sophisticated Buying Strategies With Real-Time Bidding Says CEO Baker...................... 151

Invite Media’s Turner Discusses New Self-Service ‘Bid Manager’ for Display ................................................. 155

MediaMath Riding Wave of ROI Accountability Says CEO Zawadzki ................................................................. 158

Permuto Bringing All-Inclusive Ad Platform Says CEO Shamim ........................................................................ 162

Triggit’s Self-Serve Technology Platform Leveraging RTB Says CEO Coelius................................................ 165

Turn GM Philip Smolin Discusses Exchange Trading Desk And Turn Network............................................... 168

[x+1] CEO Nardone Says Predictive Algorithms More Relevant Than Ever With Real-Time Bidding .......... 170

X+1’s Korner On Emerging CPG Display Ad Channel........................................................................................... 174

CREATIVE PROVIDERS AND OPTIMIZATION .................................................................... 175

ADISN Leveraging Data Across The Social Web To Target Display Ad Placements Says CEO Moeck....... 175

Creative Agencies To Storm The Exchange: Rich Brings Reporting On Brand-Focused Goals Says Burt
Corp CEO von Sydow.................................................................................................................................................. 177

Burt CEO Von Sydow On Creative, Media, The Marketer – And Its New Ad Software Play – Rich ............... 181

CEO Trifon Says Eyeblaster Looks Forward To Bringing Exchanges To Brand Marketers........................... 183

EyeWonder CEO Vincent Says Standards Needed For Video Ads Via Ad Exchange Platform ..................... 186

Linkstorm Addressing All Stages Of Purchase Funnel Simultaneously Says CEO Brandt ........................... 188

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PointRoll CEO Tafler Says Publishers Need To Adopt Standards In Order For Video Ad Inventory To Reach
Exchanges ..................................................................................................................................................................... 191

Creative Optimization In Demand as Teracent Revenues Double Each Quarter Says SVP Hall ................... 194

Teracent’s Hall Discusses New Video Creative Optimization Platform.............................................................. 198

CEO Calvin Lui Says Tumri Will Be Involved In RTB and Demand-Side Optimization Ecosystem............... 200

Brand Advertisers Will Drive Efficiency With Rich Media To The Exchange Says Unicast SVP Caleb Hill. 204

VideoEgg Focuses On Performance Pricing Model As Rich Media Ad Network Revenues Double Says CEO
Sanchez.......................................................................................................................................................................... 208

DATA AND MEASUREMENT ................................................................................................ 210

Aggregate Knowledge CEO Martino Announces New Audience Discovery Platform..................................... 210

BlueKai Data Exchange Buyers Doubling Every Quarter Says CEO Tawakol .................................................. 213

BlueKai Data CEO Tawakol On New Certification Program ................................................................................. 215

BlueKai Releases Latest Pulse Index; CEO Tawakol Discusses Intent Capture and Its Time Value............ 216

Brilig Resembles Advertising Data Version of Bloomberg Terminal Says CEO Cimino................................. 218

Comscore’s Josh Chasin Says Panel Important For Accurate Measurement and Overcoming Cookie
Deletion .......................................................................................................................................................................... 221

DataLogix Positioning For Data-Rich, Cross-Channel Future In Advertising Says Pres Roza...................... 225

Demdex CEO Nicolau Says Ad, Data Exchanges, And Data Management Solution As Key To Mining Data
......................................................................................................................................................................................... 227

Digital Element Finding Demand For Granular IP Targeting Says Co-Founder Friedman ............................. 230

Rev Share And Rental Pricing Models Bring Accountability to eXelate Data Exchange Says CEO Zohar . 233

Netezza GM Terrell Says Ad Exchange Model Is Transformative Across Entire Industry.............................. 236

Quantcast CEO Feldman Says Advertisers Need To Use Their Own Data In Order To Define Target
Audiences...................................................................................................................................................................... 239

TARGUSinfo Sees Momentum In Creating Online Audience Segments With Offline Data Says McLenaghan
......................................................................................................................................................................................... 243

Vizu Focused On Brand Lift Instead Of CTR For Ad Campaigns Says CEO Beltramo.................................... 246

DIGITAL TV, VIDEO AND RADIO.......................................................................................... 249

blip.tv Co-Founder Kaplan Says Web Video Offering Opportunity To Brand And Direct Response Marketers
......................................................................................................................................................................................... 249

Addressable Media Only Just Beginning Says FreeWheel Co-CEO Knopper .................................................. 254

5
Simulmedia Bringing Online’s Technology-Driven Optimization To Television Says CEO Dave Morgan .. 256

TargetSpot Bringing Deeper Audience Targeting To Internet Radio Advertising Says CEO Goldwerger... 259

Tremor Media Balancing Targeting Needs With Scale Says CEO Glickman..................................................... 262

Exchanges Will Play Role In Addressable TV Says Visible World President Tara Walpert Levy .................. 265

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING ........................................................................................... 267

The SEM Arrives: Efficient Frontier CEO Karnstedt Discusses His Company’s Move To Display ............... 267

DIGITAL OUT-OF-HOME....................................................................................................... 269

Argo Digital Solutions CEO Kates Says Digital Out-Of-Home Reaching Segmented Audiences For
Advertisers Today........................................................................................................................................................ 269

LEAD GENERATION ............................................................................................................. 272

Reply.com CEO Zamani Says Now Is The Time To Invest In Local Advertising .............................................. 272

MOBILE.................................................................................................................................. 276
Mobclix Bringing Ad Networks And Developers Together Through Ad Exchange Says Co-Founder
Subramanian ................................................................................................................................................................. 276

PERFORMANCE MARKETING ............................................................................................. 278

Dotomi Riding Personalized Media Beyond Behavioral Targeting Says CEO Giuliani ................................... 278

Advertisers Taking A More Audience-centric Approach Says Epic Advertising CEO Mathis ....................... 281

CPL Advertising Invading Brand Advertising Says Pontiflex CEO Lasker ....................................................... 283

PUBLISHER ........................................................................................................................... 286

Associated Content Is A Content Platform – And Not Just For News Says Patrick Keane CEO .................. 286

Vertical Ad Networks Are Different Side of Same Rusty Coin Says CEO Koretz of BlueTie and Adventive288

Forbes.com CEO Spanfeller Says CPMs Under Pressure Due to Move Towards DR Metrics – Not
Oversupply .................................................................................................................................................................... 290

Pandora CRO Trimble Waiting For Brand Advertisers To Start Using Ad Exchanges Before Jumping In . 293

Exchanges, Networks and Optimizers Providing Revenue Streams At Sporting News Says Exec Strauss
......................................................................................................................................................................................... 295

TARGETING TECHNOLOGY................................................................................................. 297

NetSeer On Concept-Based Advertising.................................................................................................................. 297

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OpenAmplify To Provide Categorization, Targeting and Segmentation For Ad Exchanges Says CEO
Redgrave........................................................................................................................................................................ 298

Peer39 Leveraging Semantics to Help Publishers and Ad Platforms Capitalize on Display Ad Inventory
Says CEO Solomon...................................................................................................................................................... 301

Peerset Human Interest Data Providing Psychographic Targeting Capabilities Says CEO John-Baptiste. 305

SOCIAL TARGETING AND MARKETING............................................................................. 308

33Across Predictive Models Segmenting Audience In Ad Exchanges Says CEO Wheeler ........................... 308

HubSpot CEO Halligan Says SMB’s Need Scalable, Efficient Marketing Strategy; Display Shouldn’t Be The
Focus.............................................................................................................................................................................. 311

Lotame CEO Monfried Says Robust Data, Creative Assets and Interaction Needed by Agencies in Social
Media Space .................................................................................................................................................................. 313

Media6Degrees Pancer Says Social Media Companies Need To Focus On Creating Value For Marketers To
Drive Yield ..................................................................................................................................................................... 315

SocialMedia.com Focused On Turning Any Display Ad Into A Social Ad Says CEO Goldstein ................... 318

TRAFFIC TOOLS: SERVING, QUALITY AND ATTRIBUTION ............................................. 320

Ad-Juster Technology Bridging Ad Server Discrepencies Says Pres Lewis.................................................... 320

AdSafe Media Pres Monat Sees Exchanges And Networks Benefitting From Risk Management................. 324

Anchor Intelligence CEO Miller Sees More Fraud Occurring In Clicks Than Impressions............................. 326

CIO Goldberg Says ClearSaleing Is Seeing Benefits of Marketers Being Held More Accountable .............. 329

CEO Pellman Says Click Forensics Preparing For Real-Time Bidding On The Exchange ............................. 332

Click Forensics CEO Paul Pellman On Display And Search Traffic Quality...................................................... 335

Up To 80% Of Campaign Impressions Delivered Incorrectly Says DoubleVerify CEO Netzer....................... 336

Mpire CEO Matt Hulett Says Verification Space Could Change The Ad Industry............................................. 338

Mpire Announces AdXpose Deal With WPP Group And GroupM’s MediaCom, Discusses Risk Management
......................................................................................................................................................................................... 341

TagMan GM Baron Says UK Media Agencies Need Technology Leadership – And Build or Buy Tech ...... 343

BACK OFFICE ....................................................................................................................... 346

INVISION CEO Watkins Says Advanced Television Advertising Tools Becoming A Necessity.................... 346

VENTURE CAPITAL .............................................................................................................. 348

2010 Brings Improvement, M&A Says Index Ventures’ Dom Vidal ..................................................................... 348

7
More Ad Networks Coming, Not Less – Says Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners ........................ 350

Jeff Crowe Of Norwest Venture Partners On The Digital Media Buying Space ................................................ 352

YIELD OPTIMIZATION........................................................................................................... 354

Optimizing AdMeld Style With Co-Founder Ben Barokas..................................................................................... 354

Improve Digital Driving Publisher Yield In Ad Network Saturated European Market ...................................... 356

Pubmatic’s Rajeev Goel Talks Yield Optimization ................................................................................................. 359

Hundreds of Data Points Available With PubMatic’s Real-Time Bidding Says CEO Goel.............................. 362

Rubicon Project On Mediaweek Article.................................................................................................................... 364

YieldBuild CEO Edmondson Says Microsoft PubCenter And Google AdSense Making Beautiful Music
Together......................................................................................................................................................................... 365

Yieldex Q&A With Tom Shields: Optimizing For Publishers with Direct Sales Teams ................................... 367

Thank You and License............................................................................................................................................... 369

8
Agencies

Nathan Woodman of Havas Digital’s Adnetik on The Future

of The Media Agency
Nathan Woodman is the Managing Director of Adnetik, Havas' Digital Trading Network.

AdExchanger.com: Adnetik was described in a MediaPost

article recently as "a trading system which is shifting the
power of online audience aggregation back to advertisers
and agencies from third-party intermediaries like online
advertising networks, and exchanges." Care to add
anything?

NW: I don’t like phrasing the movement as a shift of power,

rather a shift of control. Adnetik and Havas Digital will continue
to buy both media and data from many ad networks. However,
we would like to see pricing and optimization driven by the
advertiser rather than the yield of the publisher. We also
honestly feel that this approach will benefit both the advertiser and the publisher. It will result in both higher ROI for
the advertiser and in turn higher eCPMs for the publisher.

So, is Adnetik trying to become its own ad exchange or network?

We are trying to become expert buyers on ad exchanges and from networks.

Adnetik seems advertiser-focused where as an ad exchange levels the playing field with advertisers and
publishers each maximizing value.

Where does the publisher fit in with the Adnetik strategy?

You are right. Adnetik is advertiser focused. It is the core of being born out of the agency where the primary
responsibility of the agency is to be an agent of the advertiser. So you are right we are focused on representing the
advertiser in exchange/network type transactions.

It is our view that a transaction only occurs when all parties receive benefit. Those parties include the advertiser,
the publisher, the intermediary, the end consumer and the data provider.

For example, if the system is driven by end user data and the end user is unwilling to share their data and opts-out
of data transparency then the known information at the time of the transaction is less perfect and therefore the
advertiser pays less and the publisher makes less and eventually the end user has to see more ads or consume
inferior content.

If ad exchanges and ad networks only place value on the audience and therefore bid the same price for a user on
Joe’s blog as they would on premium publisher X then they are not valuing the brand equity of the premium
publisher and the premium publisher will pull out of the transaction.

It is our position to make sure that each party receives fair value for completing the transaction and that includes
compensating premium publisher for the fair value of their brand.

Is Adnetik currently in operation and, if so, can you give us examples of clients currently using the new
system? Or, provide us metrics that show adoption of the new platform?

9
I can tell you that Adnetik is in operation in APAC, Europe and LATAM and it is in design in North America.

What is the opportunity provided by the advertising exchange model for ad agencies?

The opportunity is addressable buying. If we don’t learn how to do this we will not be in business in 10 years.

What do ad agencies need to change within themselves to adapt to the increasing use of technology, data
and ad exchanges?

Advertising technology has largely been driven by the entrepreneurial company. A start-up provides dedicated
capital and focused management. In order for larger agencies to succeed they need to allocate dedicated stand
alone capital and attract dedicated stand along management to deliver the task at hand.

Agencies cannot expect the current agency management to oversee entrepreneurial technology development
projects for the simple reason that they will get distracted by current agency and current advertiser demands. By
definition current management is not 100% dedicated to a new project.

In order for the projects to succeed they will need to be run by skunkworks type operations that combine the
benefits of autonomy with the benefits of an installed client base.

Who gets disintermediated in the next 5 years - ad networks, agencies, both, someone else, or neither?
Why?

None. Ad networks and agencies both become transaction experts.

Just like in investment banking you have intermediaries with buy side and intermediaries with sell side expertise.
Many of the experts exist within the same company and each trader competes with other traders for the benefit of
the entity that provides the principle capital.

The current ad networks represent the sell side and the agencies represent the buy side. They each compete with
information to extract higher value out of each transaction on behalf of the entity they represent.

I see many ad agencies and ad networks combining expertise in the future and becoming a new type of market
maker and trading house.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger.com) on Twitter.

April 13, 2009

10
AKQA Considering Media Buying Platforms and Internal
Options Says GM Symonds
Email This Post

Scott Symonds is General Manager of AKQA Media, Search &

Analytics.

AdExchanger.com: Are ad exchanges a part of digital media

buying strategy at AKQA? Do you have plans for a media buying
platform either in-house or outsourced?

SS: We are not using ad exchanges currently but would like to as we

build our performance media capability more broadly beyond Search
marketing. We are very interested in exchanges and optimization
companies/technologies that optimize exchange inventory and
performance like Turn and MediaMath. We do not yet know if we
would like to build a strategic relationship with an existing media
buying platform for exchanges, build an extension of our SearchRev
too from Search to Exchange Media, or some combination of the two.

Many companies are busy bringing targeting technology to unlock the data trove of social media. Some of
this data is and will be available in data exchanges. Are you using data exchanges today? Or is it all about
using proprietary, in-house data?

We are interested in using data exchanges. We have met with BlueKai and are generally interested in the category
as well.

Do clients accept the view-through conversion? How is attribution evolving at AKQA and, in particular,
with display advertising attribution?

Unfortunately some clients do not want to accept 'view through' action attribution. We try and counsel clients to
figure out what view-through contribution is right for them. What is their brands general awareness? How much
offline advertising do they have? What is the ratio of display advertising vs. Search? What window of time would
they feel comfortable with? Will they look at a multi-attribute life-cycle perspective on attribution, etc? The evolution
for AKQA right now is to have this discussion and make the conversation and attribution more sophisticated each
time.

What recommendations would you make to online publishers to increase yield/revenues?

Not an expert here. Less clutter. Good placement of ads within content. Use available optimization tools to match
ads and content. Look at meta-servers like Pubmatic and Rubicon Projecct to understand trends and valuations
better.

How would you characterize the changing ad agency model? Does it need to be more entrepreneurial?
Can an ad agency be a technology company - or will it need to be?

Agencies need to be technology literate, but not necessarily technology companies exactly. Agencies that are not
faster thinking and moving will have trouble adapting to the fast evolving marketing landscape given the evolution
and integration of technology, social media, mobile, search, exchanges, etc.

11
What will be the impact of real-time bidding (RTB)? Is this something that AKQA can leverage for its
clients?

Real-time bidding and impression level buying should mean that performance buys gain efficiency and scale and
brand-based buys potentially get more targeted and more effective. AKQA, and all agencies, will at least have to
evaluate the opportunity and figure out how and when to apply it for clients.

Follow Scott Symonds (@scottsymondsakq), AKQA (@AKQA) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

May 26, 2009

12
Ad Exchanges Due To Take-Off In Late 2009 and 2010 in
Asia-Pacific Region Says CEO Robbie Hills of GroupM
Robbie Hills is CEO of GroupM Search businesses across the
Asia Pacific region. GroupM is the parent company to WPP media
agencies including MAXUS, MediaCom, Mediaedge:cia and
Mindshare.

AdExchanger.com: How would you characterize the state of

the online media business in the Asia region currently? Any
affects from the global economic slowdown? Any surprising
strengths?
RH: In one word - Robust. Online advertising in Asia is at varying
stages of maturity depending on the market. Japan, Australia and
Korea are very advanced in both the types of online marketing
that is being implemented and actual dollars being spent on
media. These markets however are the three most affected by the
global financial crisis. The large and emerging markets of China
and India, while not as advanced as others, have been more
resilient in the face of the global financial crisis. We are seeing
increasing spends across the board in all markets but both China
and India are showing really good growth.

Not really a surprising strength for those in Asia (but for maybe
those who are not) mobile advertising and mobile search is very
strong in India, Japan, Korea and increasingly China. This will
continue to be the case.

You head Search in Asia for GroupM, but are you seeing traction with ad exchanges internationally?
Without a doubt. As there is an ever increasing amount of inventory available and becoming more available,
exchanges provide a way for clients and agencies to effectively target and buy it. In APAC we are yet to see the
various exchanges take off, however there is no doubt that they will in late 2009 and 2010.

How do you see SEO or SEM search campaigns and display ad exchanges working together? Do you think
display can provide positive ROI lift to paid search campaigns when used simultaneously?
I do not see exchanges playing a role in the implementation, execution and optimization of Paid Search and
especially SEO. I do, however believe that there is a very strong link between display advertising and search
marketing effectiveness.

In fact, our agencies have conducted data analytic projects for various clients which shows the relationship
between not only search and online display but the interrelationship between search and above the line or
traditional media.

Are brand awareness dollars moving to Search? Or will it always be direct response?
I think there has been brand dollars in search for a while. The large CPG and Auto companies have been using
search for years. Have they been investing correctly? Probably not. I don't think they are looking at search to drive
reach and frequency necessarily but they are using search to drive engagement and awareness.

Unilever and P&G are two examples of companies in APAC (and globally) who are doing just that. They
fundamentally realise that since they invest a great deal of dollars in the communication of their brands they need
to be present in the one place where their customers are looking for them - Search.

13
Where are the challenges in the agency model as digital media evolves?
The main challenge we face in APAC is one that is faced globally in search: talent. Finding qualified search
professionals that understand Search Marketing is a challenge, SEO most especially so. We have great teams in
China, Japan, Korea, Australia, India, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan but finding them has been a challenge.
We look to train as many as we can from an entry level in paid search, but SEO is a skill you usually arrive at from
another job such as web development or copy writing.

How difficult is it for western companies to leverage their specializations in China - whether media
agencies, ad technology companies, ad networks or the like? Or do you need local expertise?
The China experience for many is littered with failed efforts, just ask Ebay, Doubleclick (prior to Google) and
Yahoo. You absolutely need local expertise no matter what service you are selling/providing. China is also the one
country where local companies are beating their more well known western equivalents.

Baidu is way ahead of Google in search for both query share and revenue (I am guessing here). Likewise Taobao
is the dominant ecommerce/auction player.

Companies need to take the time to understand the China consumer as well as the way to conduct business.
Thinking that what works in the US, UK, Australia, etc., will work in China is setting up for guaranteed failure. Do
your research.

Any concern that Google effectively owns paid search? Do you feel handcufffed?
Not at all. Google is a great partner for GroupM in APAC and globally. We work with their teams across the region
in a very collaborative manner.

APAC is also the one market where Google does not dominate. They are a distant second to Baidu in China, a
closer second in Japan to YHOO, not even close to Naver in Korea and the same to Yahoo in Taiwan. They do
have the market sewn up in Australia, India and Singapore however.

We utilize all the search engines across the region and are certainly looking forward to the growth of Bing from
Microsoft over the rest of 2009 and beyond.

Are you using media trading platforms at GroupM for digital media buying similar to Havas' Adnetik,
MDC's Varick Media or VivaKi's Nerve Center? Is it easier to build out internally or outsource?
We obviously don't use trading platforms for search. We do however use 24/7 Real Media's Search technology,
Decide DNA to bid manage, optimize and report on the majority of our clients search campaigns. It is the best tool
for us in APAC as it is double-byte enabled (can handle Asian languages) and has interfaces for Japanese,
Simplified/Traditional Chinese and Korean

Any thoughts on who gets disintermediated down the road, if anyone - agencies or ad networks?
This question often gets asked with Google in mind. I believe that clients will always value an agency as they can
provide a view that is not myopic in nature. We look at communication from all angles not just from a search view
or an ad network view. So, I think agencies are here to stay.

Ad networks is an interesting one, though. Across the globe and certainly in APAC there has been an explosion of
the number of ad networks repping inventory. Often the same inventory. I think there will be either consolidation of
ad networks or disintermediation. I am not sure which. Both Google and Yahoo have their own exchanges and I
am sure there are some that will emerge in China, Japan and India. Disintermediation is certainly possible for ad
networks.

Follow Robbie Hills (@robbiehills), WPP (@WPPonline) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 9, 2009

14
Hill Holliday SVP Cahill Says Clients Are Cautiously
Optimistic About Exchanges
Adam Cahill is SVP, Director of Digital Media at Hill Holliday, a full-service communications agency.

What trends are you seeing from your digital media

clients today?

Two of the more interesting trends are social media

listening and rapid response marketing, and although
clients have been asking for these independently, they’re
actually closely related. Our clients want to use listening to
generate insights that can impact marketing activities. At
the same time, many of our clients have a need to be in
market with relevant messages much more quickly than
they have in the past.

As a result we’ve begun using listening in a very action-

oriented way. We identify opportunities through social
listening and then quickly deploy marketing programs.

Is Hill Holiday pursuing a demand-side buying platform

strategy? Why or why not?

We are. From an operational point of view, being able to

access multiple pools of inventory through one platform
makes a lot of sense. And from a technology point of view,
when you think about real-time bidding and the challenge of making decisions in milliseconds, appending third
party data, etc. it’s hard to imagine how that could be done effectively without a demand-side platform.

What is your view on ad exchanges? And your clients' view?

I’m a big believer in exchanges. My team actually makes fun of me because I talk about exchanges all the time.
But when I look at some of the core characteristics of exchanges - the auction model, data overlays, and real-time
bidding - it’s pretty clear that this represents an opportunity to deliver much stronger results for clients.

Separate from what exchanges have the ability to do, I look at the sheer size of the opportunity. I know you’ve
written about the Think Equity research on this market. If you dig into some of the tables in their May 2009 report
you see that they estimate that 90% of all ad impressions are non-premium, meaning, not sold directly by publisher
sales forces. So exchanges represent a potential entry point into 90% of the marketplace (some day), which is a
big reason I’m so focused on them.

In terms of how clients perceive exchanges, I think you could characterize their reaction as cautiously optimistic.
The biggest issue on their minds is transparency. Without something approaching total transparency, clients will
perceive exchanges as just some new spin on networks.

Does it make best sense for agencies to build, buy or license ad technology in-house? Why?

My view is that licensing, or even more generally, forming partnerships with key, trusted technology providers, is
the way to go. There is just so much innovation going on, with different technology companies approaching
problems in different ways. It’s important to have the flexibility to use the right solution for the right client problem.

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How important is educating the client for digital media agencies today?

I think education is extremely valuable, both to clients and agencies. It’s so hard to find time in the day to day blur
to talk about bigger trends and their implications, and setting aside time for monthly lunch and learns or similar
programs gives you the forum to do that.

It gives agencies the opportunity to showcase their thought leadership skills, it helps clients get up to speed on
important themes, and it’s also actually a great way to learn. When I’m on the hook to teach someone else about a
topic, I often find that I end up learning a great deal in the preparation.

Are creative partners using interactive to its fullest potential? What needs to happen here?

I know there’s a lot of frustration with online creative, but I think it’s a complicated topic to tease out because online
creative takes so many forms.

On the one hand you can point to really fun, noticeable work like the Apple takeovers on the NY Times. At the
other end of the spectrum you have data and optimization-driven creative powered by the Tumri’s and Teracent’s
of the world. In a completely different category you’d have a campaign that people might experience as text that in
their Facebook feed. So how do you look at that kind of variation and say that online creative is good or bad?

I think what people really mean when they make those kinds of comments is that as a viewer online creative
usually isn’t as immediately gratifying as a television commercial.

Two thoughts on what needs to happen:

1. Henry Jenkins coined the term ‘Transmedia Storytelling’ a few years back in Convergence Culture. The
gist of the idea is that there’s an opportunity to tell a story across multiple forms of media. Each of the
media complement each other to tell the overall story, as opposed to a model where each piece of media
is essentially telling the same story over and over. He was mainly talking about movies and games, but a
lot of people (like Faris Yacob in particular) picked up on how this could work for brands as well. If we
entered a campaign thinking about the entirety of the story the brand was trying to tell, and then thought
about what parts of the story could best be told online and in what ways, I think that’s a powerful way to
improve online creative. Because at that point you’re no longer trying to recreate a TV experience, you’re
thinking about complementing it.
2. The second bit is boring. It’s measurement. Today we don’t know nearly enough about the impact that
online advertising has on real-world sales. Once we can know in something approaching real-time the
offline impact of online advertising, we can say factually whether the creative is good or bad. At that point
the judgment is no longer relative to TV but to outcomes.

What do you think of real-time bidding (RTB)? Hype or an important new feature?

I think it’s an important new feature. The exchange space as it exists today is often thought of as "display as
search." When you introduce impression-level bidding and have the ability to pinpoint-target your message and
strip all waste from your program, I think the analogy changes. At that point I think the comparison is no longer just
to search, but also to CRM.

What recommendations would you make to publishers? What would you like to see more of from
publishers?

Total transparency is my answer to both of those questions.

It’s a recommendation because I really believe that publishers can make more money if their inventory is
transparent in the exchange environment. If publishers are going to try to monetize the unsold inventory, it has to
be transparent in order for it to have the highest value to the buyer.

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The reason that I’d like to see this happen is something I mentioned earlier: I think the exchanges represent an
exciting change for the industry, but I don’t believe they will ever take off without full transparency. I think
transparency is what is going to determine whether exchanges ultimately represent an incremental or fundamental
change for the industry.

How will the digital media buying agency model need to change to remain competitive in the future?

I read the Q&A you did with the Quantcast CEO and really liked the way he drew a distinction between property-
based and audience-based planning. I think that’s right. On the agency side we need to be expert at both, and
they’re quite different. Since the focus has historically been on property-based planning, it’s the audience-based
skillset that needs to be developed.

I also think agencies will need to be much more nimble and responsive to the market. We have access to so much
real-time information that can be acted upon, but as an industry we’re still guided by fixed-duration campaigns. I
think we’ll have to break down silos and move toward a model where we have small, empowered, cross-functional
teams making collaborative decisions and executing immediately.

In your estimation, what are key drivers in bringing brand awareness advertising budgets online?

Two things come immediately to mind.

The first is the wider availability of interruptive formats. This is starting to happen, and I think we’ll see more and
more of this, the 15-second spot that a user can’t avoid. These units will give brand advertisers the kind of creative
canvas they’re used to working with, and also be able to guarantee that X million people actually experienced the
ad.

Secondly, I think brands need to continue to get comfortable with social environments. This is where people are
spending much of their time, so if you want to build a brand you clearly need to invest in social. But the challenge
is, how do you best build a brand in a social space?

It used to be that the big concern for advertisers was about losing control of the conversation or being adjacent to
something inappropriate. At this point I think the challenge is more about building programs that have some level of
predictable scale and impact, which is difficult when so much depends on what happens after people experience
the campaign.

Follow Hill Holliday (@hillholliday) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 24, 2009 – 6:16 am

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UK Slow To Move To Exchanges But Infectious Media
Plows Ahead
Email This Post

Andy Cocker and Martin Kelly are co-Founders and

Managing Partners of UK-based, Infectious Media
Ltd.

AdExchanger.com: How does the UK

advertising marketplace perceive exchanges
today? What can be improved?

IM: There's still a lot of misinformation being

peddled in the UK around Ad Exchanges. Some of
this comes from Networks who probably feel that
exchanges threaten their business model, and
some comes from agencies, who again, either feel
threatened, or have tried to trade on exchanges
with limited success.

We also think there is a popular, mis-informed belief

that exchanges only aggregate 'bottom of the barrel'
remnant inventory, and a naivete around the power
and importance of data in the whole exchange
model.

The interesting thing is that now, advertisers are pushing their agency partners to innovate and develop into this
space, and many of them are struggling to do so through lack of understanding and experience.

Collectively the exchanges and their partners need to do more to educate advertiser and agency communities on
the benefits their platforms can offer. We think there has been an over-focus on serving the needs of the publisher
and network community in the UK and existing exchange product and service offering reflect this. It's now time to
re-balance, and address the needs of the advertiser and agency community.

We think the anticipated imminent arrival of Google Doubleclick Ad Ex 2.0 in the coming months, will draw the
whole ad exchange debate out into the open, which will be a welcome opportunity for us all.

What drew Infectious Media to the ad exchange model? How do you differentiate among other digital
agencies?

An efficiency revolution is taking place in digital advertising; the implications of which, should not be
underestimated. Ad Exchanges are the enabling platforms for this revolution in display advertising. It's fascinating
to see the impact these platforms are having on the eco-system of our industry, and how a whole new universe of
associated businesses and services are emerging around them.

We were attracted to the 'ad exchange model' because we believe it represents a transformational opportunity for
media agency businesses and the advertisers they represent. We think we're very well placed to develop a next
generation agency model that sits within this new eco-system and harnesses the power of data across exchange
platforms for the benefit of our clients.

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The trend towards 'real time' targeting, procurement and optimization of audience as opposed to advanced 'over
the phone' site bookings, impacts the agency model on multiple levels. It challenges existing 'value' propositions,
skill-sets and business models, and requires a new data and technology centric infrastructure. We started
Infectious with the philosophy that it's quicker and easier to build a new type of agency from scratch, based on
these new infrastructural and value requirements, than to re-engineer the operations of a large, legacy business.

We believe that in the next 3-5 years, up to 85% of all digital media will be traded across auction model platforms.
As this happens, the old agency value proposition of 'we're bigger, we can buy it cheaper', becomes less
relevant/appealing. In next generation agency models, value proposition is less about 'buying power' and more
about 'processing power', and 'aggregated data' is, (to a certain extent), the new 'aggregated spend'.

At the moment we differentiate ourselves from other agencies on the basis that we are 6-12 months ahead of other
players in the UK and Europe. Most of the advertisers we work with are frustrated at the inability of their existing
'network' agencies to provide the service offering that Infectious does. Of course it's not always going to be like
this, but we believe we're well on the way to developing a strong and specialized enough data and technology
driven offering, to differentiate ourselves in the years to come.

Are you using any buying platforms today - if so, which ones? Where do you buy?

We are continually developing our own proprietary platform called Impression Desk, which integrates smart data
and multi-exchange management solutions. There are several powerful buying platforms out there, but most of
them have been operationally developed for the US market, and whilst conceptually that's fine (from a platform
point of view), operationally a different network, publisher and data infrastructure is required over here. Impression
Desk is our own platform built for the UK and European market and is a bespoke combination of technology,
process and infrastructure.

Right Media currently has the lions share of liquidity in the UK exchange market place, and Google/Doubleclick
has been relatively slow to take off here (although Ad Ex 2.0 looks set to change that). There is also a very heavy
reliance on network buying by media agencies, even though many appear to add little in the way of value.

Impression Desk currently operates across Right Media and Google Doubleclick exchanges, and aggregates
audience from carefully selected networks and direct publisher partners within these. As the market evolves and
the platform develops, we will continue to build in additional supply sources, including Open X and Appnexus,
which we hear are starting to scale in the US.

How's business? Any trends you can share for Infectious Media and the UK online ad market, in general?

Business is great, thanks, and we've been staggered at the speed with which the business has grown in a little
over a year since our inception. There is a real appetite for greater ROI efficiency from advertisers, and growing
disillusionment with existing approaches to online display media targeting and procurement. Advertisers want to
take control of the data they generate and act intelligently on the insights it provides; our platform and approach
allows them to do this. We're really lucky to be working with some of the largest advertisers in the UK now, either
directly, or alongside their existing digital media agencies, and we've proven that our approach works.

Holding companies are pushing new platform strategies such as VivaKi Nerve Center, Cadreon and Varick
Media. Are UK agencies "on-board" with the idea of platforms?

It's a good question. Our experience is that there are a handful of smart senior holding company executives who
realize that they need to evolve their offering in this space. Conceptually they are 'on-board', but there is a big
difference between being on-board, conceptually, and being in a position to operationally roll-out such platforms
across their networks in the UK and Europe. There seems to be a pretty large disconnect between what the groups
are doing strategically in the US vs what's happening on the ground in the UK. It's going to take time for the big
groups to evolve, develop and re-train, and that creates opportunity for smaller more agile businesses like ours. It's
a situation not unlike 6 years ago, when we first saw the emergence of specialist SEM agencies. We're going out
of our way to build an agency business with a very non-traditionally skilled team. We're looking for smart,

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analytical, data and tech capable people, and our last two hires came from analyst backgrounds in the banking
sector.

Like the U.S., the U.K. seems to be loaded with ad networks. Why?

Frankly, much of it is to do with lazy planning and buying on the part of media agency buyers, and their inability to
adopt data and technology driven solutions to aggregate and optimize audience. There are some smart networks
out there, with great technology which adds value and they will continue to flourish, but I'd be pretty worried if I
were one of the networks that simply aggregates supply adding very little apart from a hefty price mark up.

Where is the sweet spot for Infectious Media - brand, DR, video, display, search?

Our sweet spot is in using data to deliver goal-focused advertiser solutions across auction model markets. This
includes both display and search (PPC & SEO) channels, in an increasingly integrated way. The reality is that this
type of data optimized offering currently works best for 'DR/ performance' type objectives, although we're sure that
tracking will evolve to allow near real-time optimization towards more brand-focused metrics in the future.

There's more talk in the U.S. about cross-channel attribution - though it would seem to remain a significant
challenge. Is cross-channel marketing with attribution important to UK advertisers? Or does advertising
happen in silos?

This is as big a question in the UK as it is in the US, unfortunately however we are no closer to a definitive answer.
There's no doubt that at a micro level, different digital media (search, display etc) have a beneficial impact on each
other and there are different ad-serving/ smart tagging solutions that can help to make sense of this such as Atlas
Engagement Mapping or (our fellow Brit mates) 'TAG-MAN' tags which give advertisers real insight and control.
Before these type of solutions existed, many advertisers became overly reliant on search and focused budgets
here which had a negative impact further up the 'funnel' and over time has made search less and less effective.
Whilst it's good that we're getting a better understanding of this as an industry we're only measuring an element of
the wider media mix. On that macro level it's also clear that different media such as TV and Radio have an impact
on the performance of digital media, for instance without brand terms a lot of search marketing budgets would be
much smaller. Econometric modeling can help advertisers to understand the underlying role that different media
play within the mix, but the reality is that this only applies to a very small minority of the very largest (by UK
standards) advertisers and most rely on their agencies media planning capability, which varies hugely in quality.
The most enlightened advertisers we've come across are those that understand the inherent difficulties in
separating out any one element and view performance as an output of their entire budget.

What insights are you providing about the consumer to your clients? Any examples that you can provide?

In the platform trading space, you have to unlearn a lot of the planning methods that have been the foundations of
media planning since it's inception. The insights we work on generating are those that are actionable through the
platforms we are working with. A lot of 'traditional' demographic audience metrics, whilst useful to know, are not
recognized currencies across these platforms. So for example, search is keyword driven and on display
exchanges it could be contextual, or based around recency and frequency of exposure to an ad. We base our
planning around a strong analytics process which takes in data from a number of sources and rebuilds custom
audience segments within the constraints of the platform at the start of a campaign. The reality, however, is that
most campaign insights are produced once a campaign is live and generating useful data.

Follow Infectious Media (@infectiousmedia) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 4, 2009 – 5:38 am

20
21
Media Buyers Will Become Media Traders Says Pres Barry
Lowenthal of The Media Kitchen
Email This Post

Barry Lowenthal is President of kirshenbaum

bond + partners' The Media Kitchen.

AdExchanger.com: Why will measuring

effectiveness as well as understanding how
to monetize "earned" or social media be a
key for advertising in the future?

BL: Measuring effectiveness of social media is critical, if simply because money flows to the most measurable
media. It's why we spend so much money on Nielsen research. Nielsen helps justify the billions of dollars in TV
investments. It's also why more money is flowing online during this recession when marketers are being held
accountable for every dollar they spend.

One of the reasons TV garners so much money from advertisers, is because it's still the best channel to drive
people into the purchase funnel. It's an awareness and familiarity-driving channel. Traditional online and social
media tends to engage customers further down the funnel. As we learn more about how sites like Hulu engage
consumers I'm curious to see where those dollars are sourced from, that is from which channels along the funnel. I
bet they'll come from TV and radio budgets. Proper measurement will be key to support growth of these types of
media.

Will agencies need to become, in part, technology companies in order to compete with and differentiate
from the standalone technology companies and service providers?

All agencies will have to become data-driven. Unfortunately most agencies have no idea how to mine and manage
data nor do they know how to build an infrastructure to easily use data. Today we can precisely target customers
using data; we can use data to better understand consumers; we can better optimize our messaging using data.
But we can only do these things if we know how to manipulate the data and build communication plans that
capture data. And I'm not convinced most agencies do.

We often talk about a time, in the not to distant future, when every creative team will be partnered with a data
analyst who can tell them what's immediately working and why. That's a vision and I'm not sure anyone, either on
the agency side or the technology side, is there yet.

The big difference between the standalone technology companies and the agencies is that the standalone tech
companies really don't understand marketing and the creative professions. They don't understand how to develop
communications that inspire customers. But I'm still not sure whether it's easier for technology companies to
become creative or creative companies to become technologists.

Are you seeing the much-discussed trend that clients are moving to the digital space versus traditional
media due to its accountability or is there still reluctance?

Absolutely. More and more clients are allocating more and more money to digital media. In fact many of our
clients, across categories and demos, are allocating as much as 25% of their budgets to online media. That's a big
increase.

As online media can deliver customers throughout the purchase funnel, the channel will earn even more budgets.

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I'm particularly excited about the growth of online video at the top of the funnel and biddable display via exchanges
towards the bottom of the funnel.

Additionally, social media is exploding. I think we're going to look back at the Susan Boyle YouTube video as a
watershed moment in the social media space. That fact that her video was watched close to 100MM times in the
span of two weeks is extraordinary.

Can exchanges play a part in the transformation of the digital media agency? For example, is the exchange
model a key to addressable media?

We think that most standard display will be bought on the exchanges through companies like Varick Media
Management. VMM offers marketers extraordinarily precise cookie-level targeting very economically. Since VMM
is automated it requires less human resources to execute so the cost of buying display plummets and the benefits
soar.

I think most of the people I have buying digital media will morph into producers, very Mark Burnett-esque. They'll
be spending their time creating and buying premium and unique site integrations. The same thing will happen on
the publisher side. They'll sell most of their display on the exchanges and have their sales teams, which will be
fewer and more experienced, focus on the high-CPM large-scale site integrations.

What can agencies do to bring brand dollars online?

I think the question is really what can agencies do to bring awareness-driving dollars online. All budgets are spent
supporting the brand.

TV is still the biggest awareness-driving medium. TV reaches the most people at any one time. Online continues to
have problems delivering instantaneous awareness. When I reach people online there is still a perception, as a
viewer, that I am being reached and no one else is being reached at exactly the same time as I am. In order to
drive awareness it's important for the customer to feel like he or she is being educated about the brand at the same
time that all of his or her friends are. It's what we call having social currency. TV has always provided brands with
social currency. I think the Susan Boyle phenomena changed that.

There was so much chatter online about her that everyone felt they were participating in the discovery at the same
time. I think agencies will bring awareness budgets online when there are opportunities to reach lots of people
quickly. Social media is the big hope. Social media allows consumers to participate in a conversation while the
issue is happening. Until now, we haven't been able to do that online.

With technological insight in advertising, it appears that the audience is more important than the
placement. Agree?

Absolutely. I always believed that context was king. I always said that context gives a brand meaning and
credibility. When I ran an ad in Vogue my brand had fashion credentials. But now I can deliver a fashion
experience to a fashion-involved customer using rich media so the placement itself is less important. My brand has
fashion credentials because the person I reached is intimately interested in fashion and, as a brand, I knew that.

Additionally using the exchanges the cost to reach a specific audience that has exhibited purchase intent costs
much less than buying direct from the fashion site. When the overall performance of buying audiences on the
exchanges is far superior than buying specific placements the value of context becomes less and less.

When the lift from buying audiences is 2X or 3X, I have a hard time justifying buying placements/context when the
lift is only X.

As a buyer, what would you like to see more of from web publishers? And, what can agencies do better for
publishers?

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Web publishers are in a tough spot and will remain so until they figure out the best way to manage their inventory.
With that said, The Media Kitchen works with some terrific publishers. The best ones are the ones that take the
time to learn our client's business and bring us original ideas.

Looking into your crystal ball, what happens 5 years from now generally speaking? For example, are you
concerned with growing monopolies such as Google's current search ownership, or agency
disintermediation with the advent of increasingly effective self-service models or fragmentation of media
trading experts such as ad networks?

In 5 years the exchange driven businesses that all the agency holding companies are building will be huge. What
we're building now is the advertising industry equivalent of the 20th century brokerage house. My clients are
coming to me for advice on how to buy (and sell) online media in real time (shortly). I am combining the best
creative minds and data intelligence to deliver the best portfolio of results.

When all media is served over the Internet the volume of business that is traded on the exchanges will be
enormous. We will no longer be known as media buyers. Instead we will become traders. I think the last time we
saw this kind of paradigm shift in the advertising business was when we started putting ads on TV, and I think that
shift pales by comparison. What we're seeing now is much much bigger.

Follow Barry Lowenthal (@barryl530), The Media Kitchen (@theMediaKitchen) and AdExchanger.com
(@adexchanger) on Twitter.

May 4, 2009 – 7:36 am

24
Mediabrands’ Brunick Sees Improved, Client Campaign
Performance and No Arbitrage In Cadreon’s Future
Michael Brunick is VP, Media Technology Director at Mediabrands Worldwide, a media buying and planning unit of
Interpublic Group.

AdExchanger.com: In your opinion, what is driving creation of agency buying platform strategies?

MB: Agencies have more control and insight into how media dollars are spent for their clients. They also have
access to more sensitive information and data that can be used for targeting and actual data-driven decisioning
based on real-time ad calls, ad serves, etc.

Cadreon sees itself as being in a better position to execute on the concept of audiences instead of inventory, and
to drive operational efficiency, marketing effectiveness and
business results.

We can also provide an intermediate layer for making better

decisions coming out of what the exchanges can offer.
Cadreon makes use of the exchange platforms, but there
really needs to be that layer of intelligence in the middle to
execute smartly on top of what those technologies can
provide.

What are your thoughts about the idea of arbitrage and

that agencies are getting involved in it?

That's a big one, and it's something that we very much want
to take the high road on. It's also another reason why many
of the agency platforms have come about: there's quite a bit
of margin and arbitrage that occurs in the ad network
business today, which means there's inherent waste within
the system. Networks have provided a great technology
service in being able to aggregate lots of inventory into one
place and execute on top of that, but at a 40-45-50%
margin, that model can't sustain itself much longer. We see
no reason for that middleman to exist if we can do the same
thing with our own technology platform, and then reinvest
that excess margin back into a campaign.

Cadreon will not pre-buy inventory and allocate it out, nor

will we mark up the cost of inventory. There are services we
can layer on top of that purchase execution which provide
greater value and benefit to the client, such as campaign
strategy as it relates to the broader media campaign,
optimization strategy, tagging strategy and implementation, the technology offering, the analytics, the back office.
There are many pieces from a service standpoint that agencies can provide - and there's money to be made - but it
shouldn't be on arbitrage.

What about building a platform versus buying a platform for agencies?

Certain agencies will be better at data management and data aggregation, others at analytics, others at the
concept of buy execution or buy management workflow. It's about finding platforms that fill the gaps of what a
particular group may not be as strong at. From our perspective, there's going to be some build, some bolt and

25
some buy, and we really wanted to create a flexible technology ecosystem that can offer the best of breed solution
in each segment of the business, while at the same time providing us the ability to grow and evolve as new
technologies become available.

When do you see the buying platform strategy "hitting" for clients? When does this become something
clients incorporate as an important part of their marketing strategy?

Today! There is a lot of pent-up demand in the marketplace, and we have been aggressively pushing towards it for
a while now. We have some clients that really get it. A large technology client has run over 60 campaigns through
our system, in a beta-state for the better part of year and a half, and in a fully live state for the past nine months.

Sophisticated digital marketers will understand the value and benefit sooner - the ones that understand the power
of things like tagging and tracking, have very sophisticated websites and website analytics, or use data for
targeting and impression valuation - they'll be the ones that will adopt it first. It may take a bit longer for others that
may not be as sophisticated with the digital space, but the proposition is absolutely compelling to any marketer.

As these platforms grow beyond display and start incorporating multiple types of inventory - we're working to
incorporate mobile, digital out-of-home, digital television right now - as the offerings expand, the client base will
widen as well.

Make the case for the brand marketer using agency buying platforms - and I'm talking about the brand
awareness marketers.

Right. People inherently look at a platform like this and say "performance marketing" or "direct marketing." While
that's very true and Cadreon started in a performance marketing landscape, there are absolutely benefits for
marketers who are looking for broad reach and brand awareness. There are certain things you can do from a
business intelligence standpoint in trying to decide what creatives and what types of buys are going to respond
best. So you can do things like that in a pre-testing environment prior to launching a large campaign and ultimately
save money on things like production costs.

For example, you don't have to build out thousands of versions of a display ad if you're doing creative testing or
you're turning on dynamic creative, which is harder for today's typical digital teams to do. There are also certain
things you can measure within buys, such as embedding in-banner or in-buy surveys to assess brand-lift, which is
very easy to do in a dynamic ad serving environment. Then there are the targeting capabilities - when you're
making a buy and blasting a message out to a lot of people, there are so many who won't want to see a particular
message because it's not relevant to them. When you're doing a home page takeover for example - that is
fantastic for reach, but how much of that is ultimately wasted impressions?

We actually did a comparison on one campaign of the inventory that ran through Cadreon versus a sample-set of
the inventory that was bought on the broader digital buy, and by our estimates 36% of their buy was "wasted": 11%
of the impressions came from outside of the U.S. and 25% of the inventory was off target. A message like that will
absolutely resonate with a brand marketer - using a platform like Cadreon can be more efficient for them.

What strategies should agencies be putting into place to stay relevant in the future?

I would say this answer can be applied to both agencies and ad networks, and ultimately it's an expansion and
refinement of services offered.

In the agency realm, the model used to be about creating a big media plan - that was prepared over the course of
several months - and then let the plan run. Those days are basically over, as sophisticated marketers are asking
their agencies to focus on creating smaller base plans, then changing them significantly over time with continuous
evolution and optimization.

26
Our clients are also demanding new models and new services, so we are looking at expanding our offering to
include new capabilities for our clients that go well beyond media planning and buying to represent full portfolio
management, as well as true marketing and strategic services.

Offering technology-based services similar to those ad networks have today also makes sense. A lot of ad
networks were based on technology offerings originally, and as their core focus on inventory shifts or gets reduced,
there will be opportunities in the technology and data spaces.

What is Cadreon? Is it being pushed out to all of your partner agencies?

The initial plans is to utilize the two large Mediabrands agencies as pipelines and offer it to the clients of those
agencies first. We're working very closely with both UM (Universal McCann) and Initiative - the digital leadership of
both agencies were involved in the initial business planning for Cadreon - to speak with their clients about the new
offering in a slow, steady approach. We'll look at rolling out beyond those agencies at some point, but that is not
our focus right now.

What does Cadreon mean?

There is a Latin or French word "cadre" which means group of people. Since the sell is audiences instead of
inventory, it was a natural fit.

How do you differentiate between yourselves and other agency buying platforms?

There are two big differentiators right now: 1) we're not pre-buying inventory and allocating it out. There are some
agencies that are approaching that model and buying in aggregate to get really cheap rates, then allocating it out
to participants of their platform. 2) we're not operating in arbitrage, either, as some platforms are.

We're also spending a large amount of time tweaking and fixing the algorithm so that the inherent goal is to
maximize campaign performance. In a lot of platforms today, the goal is to maximize margin for the publisher set -
we're investing that margin back into the campaign, so that campaigns ultimately perform even better. We want our
algorithms to be as flexible as possible - offering infinite variability - with unique instances for each client.

Can agencies effectively leverage a client's historical campaign data through buying platforms?

Yes, definitely. There's always going to be value in what's worked and what hasn't - certainly two years ago is
going to be less relevant than two weeks ago - but there's a certain training of the algorithm which makes it
important to incorporate a client's or campaign's historical data. For example, we like to tag a client's site early -
before a campaign even goes "live," so we can get a sense of what types of people are visiting the site and start to
understand their behaviors. Over time performance gets better, so why not leverage the inherent learnings from
data on what has worked and what hasn't? It's also very important to create segmented silos of data for each
client, so that the algorithm can stay pure and a client can be ensured only their data will be used for their benefit.

What's your view on impression-level, real-time bidding? Will this be an opportunity?

Absolutely - we are making decisions on an impression-by-impression basis today. None of the big real-time
bidding platforms are 100%, truly real-time today, although they are all going there and we'll be very happy once
they do get there, provided we have the right decisioning engine to take real advantage of them. The name of the
game will be the ability to evaluate an impression as it's being served and decide what you're willing to pay for it -
then do the same with the next impression, and the next, etc. It's the way we all should be looking to go, and I'm
personally looking forward to when this type of model gets to inventory sources like TV at scale. We will get there -
it's just a matter of time.

Let's seque into attribution - How are you solving cross-platform attribution? Is it solve-able?

27
Yes, it's solve-able. It's certainly been a big challenge and something we've talked about a lot as an industry, but it
doesn't make logical sense for the last click to get credit for everything - you know that people have seen other
messages before. It's just a matter of coming up with the right model to share that value out. The Atlas Institute has
definitely made a great deal of headway in this space, and this is an industry issue - something that we should all
be collectively looking to solve, and as an opportunity to collaborate together. In some way, it's a matter of getting
all the right data in one place so that you can even have the ability to make an accurate evaluation from a stream
of data such as "they saw this TV ad, then they heard this radio ad, then they saw this banner ad..." while layering
in answers to questions as "How long ago did they see it? How far back should we look?" Etc.

Where is the advertising industry with addressable media in digital today?

We are doing it today with display, and to a certain extent with online video, mobile and digital out of home, too. I
think that's where it ends when you're talking about scalable platforms, but we'll get there with things like digital
radio and TV. It's just a matter of the infrastructure being in place to be able to deliver truly addressable media at
scale.

If you were a publisher today, what sort of strategies would you be putting in place to make sure you?re
successful and profitable down the road?

Better information around who my audiences are - who the people are that are visiting my site. It's a great thing
when you have real, rich information around your user base - that will be of value to advertisers and agencies, and
should help provide a better experience for visitors.

I also don't believe that CPMs will inherently "fall" as a result of this type of change in direction. There may be a bit
of a net loss at the beginning as these agency platforms are sorting themselves out. But, over time you're going to
see one brand that will be willing to pay significantly more for a particular audience or impression than another, and
everyone will end up gaining from that model. I think the industry as a whole should eventually see a net gain, we
are just in a bit of a pricing dip right now as publishers are certainly feeling the effects of ever-increasing
fragmentation.

What is going to happen to the creative agency? What can digital media do for the creative side that
they're not doing today?

There are untapped resources in the creative space today, and they are our publishers and media vendors. They
have incredible creative ideas, great access to resources, top-notch producers and fantastic content. If you can
bring in those partners early in the process and give them a sense of what your goals are, they can come back
with really great ideas in the creative space, and those types of activities can typically be thrown on top of a media
plan.

Dynamic creative is also something that is becoming more and more interesting to clients and agencies,
particularly as the demand to execute on the depth and breadth of creative duties increases. We are working
closely with our creative partners to showcase the capabilities and deliver on the true benefits and promise of
dynamic creative.

There are new buying platforms popping up everyday such as MediaMath, Turn and Invite Media. Are you
using these types of platforms? How do you evaluate them?

Yes, we are using those types of platforms today. We made a decision to centralize our offering around a handful
of core providers, and we continue to test and evaluate several others - particularly in other media types such as
mobile, digital out-of-home, video networks, etc. We as a company want to be in a constant state of evolution and
growth, trying out new things so that we can determine the best new capabilities to integrate into our core
platforms. We have a belief in maintaining that flexibility, while focusing on generating predictability in results and
outperformance for our clients.

Can you identify certain data points that use for evaluating buying platforms? Is it the ROI, service??

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For us, it's about how does the campaign perform - which speaks to three things. One is the decisioning engine
itself and the ability to make the valuation of the impression and decision on the ad call - again, at scale. The
second is the use of data in ultimately making that decision. Finally, the quality of the algorithm and the inherent
focus of that algorithm on campaign performance.

What sort of changes do you expect to see in digital in the next 12 months?

If I were to speculate, I would say we will continue to be a large shift of ad dollars to the digital space, but the
actual value of that shift will depend greatly on what you consider to be "digital." Once TV becomes a real, scalable
player in digital media, that will be a true game-changer.

We also see consolidation continuing in the ad network ecosystem. As the agency holding companies venture
farther into that space, they will be managing the demand for those services to a certain extent - and if we are able
to provide a more robust offering at an inherently better value, our clients are going to feel more comfortable
working with us as partners. Clients will also be more at ease providing us with sensitive data that can enable
better targeting and optimization decisions, provided we are taking all the necessary measures to ensure that each
client's data stays private, separate and secure, which we will continue to work very hard on doing.

In regards to the big, broad reach ad networks, I think their business model will evolve further, and the truly good
ones will grow and adapt their businesses into new spaces. The networks we like to work with will provide us with
digital acquisition of inventory in an elegant way - with greater control over that inventory; access to the audiences
we want; and work with us as collaborative partners to help drive results. The vertical ad networks will also remain
- providing deep niche audiences - and ad networks of all sizes will continue to provide a great service and offering
for middle and smaller advertisers.

It's certainly an interesting time to be a part of, and we are excited to be at the forefront of helping solve some of
these challenges for our clients, and for the industry.

Follow Mediabrands (@mediabrands) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 1, 2009 – 7:29 am

29
Mediasmith CEO David Smith Says Brand Safety Remains
Top Concern With Ad Exchanges

David Smith is CEO of Mediasmith, a digital advertising media agency.

AdExchanger.com: What trends can you share with us regarding

the media buying you're doing on behalf of clients today?

DS: There is a lot of change happening in the area of digital media

strategy, planning and message distribution. Please notice that we've
walked away from the term buying as we are increasingly in the
message distribution business. That includes media buys, but also
includes "owned media", a client's own assets, including their web sites,
blogs, newsletters, etc. and earned media. What used to be PR but is
increasingly in the hands of media as it is digital and measureable.

The incursion of social media into the messaging that goes on to

consumers, among consumers and is also driven by consumers back to
the companies they do business with represents a whole different world
than the world of push media.

See my Fastcompany.com blog Media Tech for a look at this visually.

Social messaging is rapidly becoming the majority of impressions that

consumers take in. So we must not only be involved in using social
media for paid messaging, we must figure out how to become part of the
conversation with the customers of our clients, as well as monitor the
discussion in the blogosphere, twitter, social sites, etc. There are a
number of new tools that are being used to do everything from deploy
media (third party content servers) to measure media deployed and also
to measure the consumer conversation. As such, the world of metrics is getting much more complex.

Are ad exchanges changing the digital media plan? Does brand safety remain a concern?

Brand safety is absolutely a top concern relative to ad exchanges. So is content relevancy and the reverse,
adjacency to content that is considered detrimental to the client message. Overall transparency remains an issue.
Exchanges need to implement technology solutions that block malware, negative content and provide greater
transparency. Most of them claim they do this but the effect of their efforts is poor at best according to some
monitoring reports I have seen. For the efficiency and performance parts of our plans, we feel more comfortable
with marketplaces (defined site lists) and transparent networks with proven track records.

Do you see the potential for ad networks to disintermediate agencies?

Not really. They cannot provide the cross media strategic planning capability, account management (so much of
dealing with clients is not the annual plan or buy) or other service issues required by a client as they generally
represent only a small part of the solution. They can be important, depending on the strategy but content remains
the gold standard in targeting against which you layer other services and targeting methodologies. Lastly, the
networks are not equipped to do the kind of cross media or cross vehicle tracking, optimization and reporting
required by clients.

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Are you focused on media trading, yet? And your clients - do they "get" media trading or do they just need
to know that ROI goals are being achieved?

ROI cannot be achieved in a vacuum. If content did not matter, we could run ads on porn sites which are very
cheap and can be very effective. Media trading needs to be improved and made more transparent before it
becomes mainstream for the advertiser concerned with their brand image.

Do your clients accept view-through conversions as a metric?

It really depends on the sophistication of the client. If the client is a marketer, the odds are better. But if they are a
web group driven by Omniture or Web Trends, which do not do well relative to advertising evaluation (view
through, clickthrough and engagement), the are sometimes against it. It is growing in its acceptance though.

Are you satisfied with attribution models currently available? See any potential solutions out there?

Not satisfied at all with the attribution models. They seem to have given us ten times as much data with little to
recommend in the way of proven algorithms by which to evaluate and tweak the data. If someone has a
methodology, we are all ears. Once that gets solved between web and search, we'll need to rope in everything
from newsletters to mobile and digital TV. So there is a long, long way to go.

Has your company been using data exchanges? If so, have you been happy with their performance? Any
insight you can provide on the complexity of implementing a "data-infused" campaign?

We certainly use data relative to our campaigns. In reality the most effective "data infused" campaign is retargeting
using our own cookie pool. This is an efficient way to get that additional frequency needed against someone who
has interacted with our campaign in a contextually appropriate environment. That said, we are about to begin
testing Quantcast for this purpose as well as some social targeting data options. For the right client, there is also
the capability to target current customers with upgrade and additional item offerings.

Do monopolies concern you as it relates to online advertising? For example, there are primarily two major
ad serving companies - DART and Atlas. Do their "parents" pose a risk to the agency? Or has it been
blown out of proportion?

Actually, we look forward to the infusion of capital, innovation and technology updates that Google and Microsoft
can provide DoubleClick and Atlas. Both platforms were in need of serious makeover, in addition to integrating web
serving capability with that of other media, marketplace and exchange backbones, rfp and housekeeping systems,
dashboard for all media, etc. The standalone companies simply did not have the capital to make the necessary
improvements in the category. And there are always a lot of other options out there, including smaller
agency/advertiser oriented ad servers, a new generation of ad tagging (4G) that could eliminate the need to had
third parties serve the ads and more technologies that could leapfrog both services as they are today. Out of
proportion, definitely. BTW-prices are lower than ever.

How can digital media planners and buyers position themselves today for a successful digital media
buying career?

Don't let them put you in a silo. Learn how to be strategic and plan. Question everything, but back it up with
numbers. For example, for more than half of the clients that come into Mediasmith, we provide evidence for them
to refine or even change their target audience. This ads value to your clients and ensures long term employment.

Follow David Smith (@mediadls), Mediasmith (@MediasmithInc) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on

Twitter.

June 16, 2009 – 6:18 am

31
Neo@Ogilvy COO Smith Says The Advertising Agency
Model Needs To Drop -Advertising- From Its Title
Greg Smith is COO at Neo@Ogilvy, a full-service digital
and direct media company and division of OgilvyOne
Worldwide.

AdExchanger.com: What trends are you seeing on

the client-side in 2009? How will 2010 take shape in your opinion?

GS: Clients are discovering ROI, metrics, data. 2010 will look more like 2008 than 2009.

Does media deserve a bigger seat at the strategy table with the client and creative agency? In your
experience, have DR metrics made it (or should they) into the high level, strategic conversations with
clients on target segmentation and brand positioning?

Media and data are more important than creative. The first validates creative, the second represents the largest
investment.

Is placement and context less important than audience? What has spurred the move towards addressable
media?

All work together. For CPA, response rate matters the most. For branding, the right context gets the right audience.

In the future, what challenges must the agency model overcome in order to remain relevant its client base?

Drop the word "advertising" from its title. Marketing is much bigger and consumers are better at avoiding
advertising.

How does the ad exchange model uniquely provide opportunity for advertisers?

It doesn't. Just another way to commodify cheap inventory.

What are your thoughts on demand-side optimization and real-time bidding (RTB)? An opportunity for
advertisers and agencies?

Another tactic, but I'm not sure it's a game-changer.

Is attribution still a challenge? Is the view-through conversion accepted by your clients? Any solutions out
there that show promise for solving attribution - whether internal or external?

We're using more reliable data feeds and advanced analytics to improve measures of direct/indirect attribution. Still
a long way from perfect.

Can you discuss Neo's experience with B3, WPP's trading network? Is this the technology platform
Neo@Ogilvy needs for a future that includes the trading of online media through an exchange?

Can't discuss.

What recommendation would you make to those beginning a career in media? What skills need to be
acquired to insure future success?

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Understanding of numbers, analytics. Good communication skills.

Follow Neo@Ogilvy (@neo_Ogilvy) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 11, 2009 – 7:49 am

33
OMG Has Advertiser’s Interest At Heart Says Omnicom’s
Donahue
John Donahue is Global Director of Business
Intelligence Analytics for Omnicom Media Group.

AdExchanger.com: From your agency perspective,

what trends are you seeing in the marketplace?

JD: Digital up, TV down.

I think we're in a position where the economy is causing

everyone to seize up their budgets. What's going to be
interesting is not what's going to happen in this year on
the agency-side – it will be all about what happens on
the client-side. As marketers go to the CEO and ask for
their budget back a year from now, the CEO is going to
say, "Show me what I'm going to get for it." And, that's
where the role of the agency will get very, very different.

So, the big trends we're seeing are people are

continuing to cut budgets and digital is continuing to
grow because it's a measurable platform. I think digital
will lend itself to not being a media type but more of a platform as we look to digitize other media types in the next
year to 3 years primarily because advertisers are going to demand it in order to get their budgets back.

There's a sense these days that digital needs to fit in with the traditional models of attribution, audience
and buying. Does digital media need to embrace reach, frequency and GRPs in order to receive a larger
slice of the overall media pie?

Digital can benefit greatly from being reach based. Everywhere we look we're looking at – from the point of
segmentation, MRI segmentation, to whatever part of the process – everything is reach based. Digital does need
to embrace it. But does digital need to move toward a TV model? No.

No GRPs, then?

You could translate them, but they're not equivalent. But there's nothing wrong with different currencies. The more
trading currencies, the more opportunity. To shift the TV GRP methodology to digital is, frankly, a bit silly… it's a
completely different experience.

For example, with Hulu, TV.com and experiences where you're sitting and passively engaging on your couch and
you're watching, it's engaging you through your heart more than your mind. This is a completely different
experience from "I'm clicking on the news and there's something intruding into my experience."

When do brand awareness dollars come online and get a larger slice of the media pie?

When the experience is comparable. For me, I'm someone with a computer science degree, grew up in the age of
the Internet and, effectively, grew up a very digital child. I was very active in computer security and the data
warehousing community and landed in the agency world on a whim and I could tell, not being a marketer, that my
experience on TV versus my experience trolling Slashdot and CNN and other places I go are very different. Giving
me the ability to consume content the way TV allows me to consume content will ultimately come to digital as it
continues to embrace video. We just have to figure out how to get more and more premium content - such as the
new episode of show X is going to be on there and people are going to watch it.

34
Do brand awareness campaigns work in standard IAB-sized display advertising?

I think so. Generally speaking, a rich media unit will work more for an awareness campaign whereas a standard
leaderboard, etc., will work great for a CPA or bottom of the funnel campaign. I think there are places for it. But
again, we're talking about someone passively engaging with the media to consume content when they're in a
passive or passion-driven state versus active (think "clicking" and "surfing"). Digital needs to prove itself in that
"passive" light and the content and experience need to get better. It requires a more passive role from the
consumer. When I'm watching TV, I'm open. It's clear in my mind. TV still has the top notch ROI.

So when will awareness campaigns roll into digital? When the experience is up to par. It's experiential.

What are your thoughts on current attribution models in the digital space?

Anyone who has an attribution that is strictly in the digital space is not acknowledging or focusing on the whole
picture.

I was on a panel recently about digital analytics – to me that makes no sense. How are you going to do analytics
without non-digital channels? It doesn't make sense. The fact that we grew up in a world where the traditional
media folks were afraid of digital because it was technology-focused – led to it being run by the "the valley" and not
the TV networks, it landed as a separate practice. It shouldn't be.

Anyone who has a separate digital analytics practice that is ignorant to the other media activities doesn't really get
it. There are specific analytics you need to do within digital on an optimization basis, and that's really digital
operations, to insure you're doing it right in digital optimization. But, analytics without considering what else is
going on across media channels is short sighted.

Who's doing it "right" currently with attribution?

Outside of us? I don't know. Just kidding, but I really don't know. We have clients that are doing some amazing
work in the space but I am not privy to release more information on that matter

So, your attribution models and metrics are a homegrown product? Is that the way it has to be done?

Yes. There is potential to do it on an industry or categorical basis because the way consumers engage with
products is going to align like that. But, there are also massive differences within any category. For example, the
way a consumer engages with telecom is much different than computers even though it's all "high tech."

I don't think there's an opportunity to create the ultimate attribution model, primarily because it doesn't exist. You're
trying to attribute based on consumer behavioral which changes based on what you're offering the consumer - who
has very different buying habits from person to person. A Toyota customer is going to ask different questions than
a Chrysler customer, for example.

Let's talk about agency holding companies starting their own buying platforms. What's occurring there?

What's occurred is that agencies let ad networks go out and cobble together readily accessible inventory – and I'm
speaking about the ones that primarily buy remnant and not "long tail" where they're actually performing a function
that's valuable - and ad networks are/were buying up remnant, and overlaying data and marking it up. And, you're
asking me why agencies (us) are trying to create our own solution? I think it's pretty clear. That's not a "cool"
model. Effectively, the value they're providing is something we can get done with technology plays.

So whether it's Omnicom Digital's CEO Matt Spiegel announcing our solution or it's the WPP, VivaKi or Havas
solution, it's necessary to have a platform because we (agencies) are going to be able to do it better than shifting
off the yield management to ad networks primarily because when we're focusing on increasing yield we're doing it

35
with our advertiser's interest at heart. The publisher, or for that matter, the ad network are doing it with their margin
at heart. That's the best model for the advertiser. If there's a 40% margin existing in ad networks on average, then I
(the agency) should be able to perform that much better than an ad network doing it themselves.

So, these platforms are all about ad networks? Where do ad exchanges fit in here? What's your view on ad
exchanges?

Ad exchanges are ultimately valuable if you're buying direct inventory. I'm not a big fan of buying re-packaged
inventory on ad exchanges from the networks.

I think data-driven buying is extremely valuable. Being able to list a piece of inventory and slice it by a series of
DNA attributes is ultimately of value to me because I should understand what DNA attributes are impacting an
advertiser.

It's necessary for agencies to embrace exchanges, but we're still in the area of inventory scale and quality not
being up to par. But, in the same token, there's opportunity for us to do well for our advertisers and embrace it.
There's definitely a place for exchanges.

What are your views on demand-side optimization and real-time bidding (RTB)?

That would be awesome.

So RTB is my dream world in that it allows me to ride micro-trends, eliminate waste and it gives me opportunity. If
agencies get it right, RTB will allow us to solely control yield because we'll have an actual understanding of what is
going on. I think agencies are terribly smart and have learned from the past and what happens when you don't
control yield.

The challenge for the agencies will be the people. If you look at the standard agency model, it's marketing people
creating technology plays. The marketing strategists should focus on what they do best…strategy. The fact that
digital is not run by technology people in the agencies is a little odd to me. It's a technology play. Understanding
how we can leverage RTB, for example, will depend on leadership and real-time bidding will force that card
meaning it's not all about experience, it's becoming important to understand the technology.

Any players in the world of exchanges with RTB that has your "eye"?

One of the things Omnicom Media Group prides itself on is neutrality. We're going to stay completely agnostic.

I'm just trying to get your sense of the current market of exchanges with RTB.

RTB is still in the womb. It's not really there, yet. I think there are opportunities to do it, but not at scale right now.
RTB will be a great enhancement to ad exchanges. One of the biggest things I'm worried about right now with ad
exchanges is that ad networks become data networks - primarily where people are repackaging information and
marking it up for agencies to act against in. One of the biggest things I'm worried about right now is ensuring that
we don't empower someone who has effectively shifted the ad network model to a data network model since they
smell that the ad network model has fallen off.

What is Omnicom doing about its own platform?

If you look at the Behavioral Insider article on June 24, our CEO, Matt Spiegel, was clear that we're engaging in a
platform. We haven't as of yet gone out and made an acquisition of any sort of technology play. For now we remain
neutral and will have the advertiser's interest at heart as opposed to some sort of technology driven arbitrage
opportunity. We could go out and buy technology today, but it might be second-tier technology tomorrow and that
would be an awful situation for our advertisers. We're looking to embrace technology, create platforms and focus
on the service business.

36
Let's talk about addressable media. Is it all about audience these days and placement doesn't matter?

Oh, that's rubbish. It's about the right target, the right place, the right message, in the right context.

It's plain wrong to think it's black or white – for example, behavioral targeting or contextual – that's insane. It's
about having all the targeting options together, and this will show the best results. Audience is important and we're
setting up deals to capitalize on audience data that is out there across a wide range of providers – again with a
neutral approach. But, it's not solely about audience.

What tips do you have for those just getting started in the media agency business so that they can build a
successful career?

It's critical to understand the role of technology and operational strategy. However, it's important to understand that
media is the ultimate platform to understand how consumers are engaging, and re-empower the conversation with
the marketer. Strategy is always king.

Any roles that might give them the right experience?

It's cross-media-type roles – digital, non-digital. Also, multi-national roles that provide understanding of
international media buying such as buying cost per day in China.

They should build a data practice – understand how to view information and gain insight from it. But, don't get
caught up in data for data's sake. Understand technology, as I said. And, understand every step of the strategy
and planning process.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 14, 2009 – 6:13 am

37
OMG Digital CEO Matt Spiegel On The Future
Buyer/Planner
Matt Spiegel is CEO of OMG Digital. This is the first part of a two-part interview.

AdExchanger.com: Can you characterize what the buyer/planners of the future will look like? It would
seem they have a math skillset and are focused on consumer insights - not just looking over an ad
network plan and reporting the click-through rate.

MS: Absolutely. I think the concept of a money manager - an

investment manager - is a really good one here. To me, this is
where the search and display worlds are coming together.
You'll take many parts of what you have in traditional
planner/buyer roles in display and marry them to the skills you
have in the search buyer/analyst.

In display today, much of the work is done pre-buy. And in

search, most of the work is done post-buy. I think those skills
come together. So, it's beyond simple site analysis, with
audience compositions - the new role includes really good
insights into who is the target audience and where do they
exist.

Now, the data will exist for us to be able to really look at a

granular level and say, "Who do I really want to reach? And
what are the behaviors that I think are indicative or my target
audience?"

Separately, pre-planning can be tied to in-market buying on a

real-time basis, or near real-time and, ultimately, move the
dials and the money from one site to another, from one
audience to another, from one placement to another, all in ways that improves performance.

Performance can be tied to direct response metrics or brand metrics. If you're going to be able to optimize the
money, spend it most efficiently to gain the best performance, you will have to be comfortable with data.

Specifically, you have to be comfortable with taking raw data, and then be able to tell a story from it such as
identifying trends in the data that suggest future performance or future opportunities.

So, yes, the buyer/planner will need to gain skills in math and finance, if they don't typically have it already.

Right. Let's drill down on that. If someone was considering starting a career in media, how should they
prepare? So, it would seem math and finance skills are important.

Yes, that's certainly a piece of it. I do think, though, what we get lost in - and I'm as guilty as anyone else - is we
that think about the new almost instead of the old. I don't think that's right.

It's more additive, than it is replacement. We're not going to become an industry which is solely science - there's
going to be art and science. Art is still going to be relevant because math equations, for example, can't tell you that
a client is launching a new product and they have inventory to move.

38
As an industry, we need to make sure we don't go too heavily into science and forget the art. So, from a young,
media career candidate's perspective, if you're saying, "I want to be in the media business," as in the media buying
business, I would say they will absolutely need skills in and the ability to understand data and make decisions from
data, but also recognize that this is still a creative medium.

You have to be able to understand business beyond what basic statistics can tell you. You have to be able to judge
and have a certain level of intuition about how a client, how a marketer, actually goes to market and makes money.

And that isn't just about buying media. That's about a much broader set of skills around product packaging,
customer service and PR. I'm not saying you have to be experts in those things. But, if you don't have some sense
on how your role fits into that bigger pot, you're not as valuable as you could be.

October 16, 2009 – 7:14 am

39
OMG Digital CEO Matt Spiegel On The Agency Model And
Buying Platforms
Matt Spiegel is CEO of OMG Digital. This is the second part of a two-part interview. The first is here.

AdExchanger.com: Given the speed of technological innovation today, some might say that media
agencies will need to be more entrepreneurial, but they're going to have a hell of a time because they're
just not built like that. What's your reaction?

MS: No big business moves as fast as any small business.

That's just the nature of having scale in your business. So at a
certain level, new startups are going to have the advantage of
being able to take a look at the new and get there sometimes
faster than we can as a big holding company. However, we
have the advantage of when we move, we can move really big
and move really strong. So our job isn't necessarily to be
anyplace first, but to be there a close second if we're not going
to be there first. And when we get there, to bring our size and
scale to the marketplace.
Will any of the big agency companies be the most
entrepreneurial startup environments? Probably not. But that
doesn't mean that we're dinosaurs. We've got plenty of
opportunity. And I think folks like myself, sitting in the agency,
are going to be a tribute to that reality.

I think what's great that we do at Omnicom is we incubate a lot

of the entrepreneurialism. So again, we won't be as quick and
nimble as a five person startup, but we're pretty nimble for a
large agency.

Regarding scale, why are demand-side buying platforms

making sense in the agency world?

There are a couple of reasons. The first is control.

One of the things that we know happens today is that agencies turn to a lot of ad networks, and those ad networks
take a fairly large commission for providing us access to reach some type of audience. Great, that's a been a
valuable exchange for us from a buy-side perspective for many years. The challenge, though, is that we don't have
a lot of visibility into what those decisions are that those ad networks make for us. We tell them targeting, and
certainly rules, and we decide from a broad perspective what we're buying.

But when it comes into, "Hey, listen, I need better performance, Mr. Ad Network. Change something," we don't
really see what happens there. We don't' really get a lot of reporting out of the ad networks. It's more like, "You're
running this many impressions, you got this many clicks, you've got this many transactions."

Now, none of that's bad, but that doesn't really help us from a future-state perspective. It keeps us very reliant on
ad networks.

So, the exchange technology enables us to become a more direct buyer of that inventory, because now it's on a
technology platform that we can directly tap into. When we do that, all of the sudden we have much more visibility
into what's going on. We can see the audiences we're buying, we can see the contextual relevancy that we're
buying.

40
And, we now make the decisions on how to optimize the dollars in a much more visible and transparent way. This
this idea of control, is directly linked to visibility.

I think another reason that demand platforms make sense is the need and want for buyers to bring to the table
much better, more advanced targeting. Again, now with the exchange technology enabling us, enabling the
industry to separate inventory and targeting criteria, it allows us from an agency perspective to look more broadly
with clients' data and with historical performance data, and judge what types of audience and context we need to
buy against.

And so as that happens, certainly as strategic advisors to our clients, we've got to be in a position to house that
information. And "house" I use loosely. I don't necessarily mean technically house. But, we have to have that
information -and at our fingertips.

If we're going to be these investment managers, if we're going to have people sitting behind terminals moving
money around, then we have to have a direct access to that information which makes those decisions. And the
way to do that is to create a buy side platform.

How do you make the pitch about utilizing your buy-side platform for your clients display ad campaigns?

Generally speaking, our view is that what we're uniquely good at is leading marketing strategy and marketing
exeuction. Our job on behalf of our clients is to improve their media performance. And we know how to do that -
strategically - through data analysis, through our creativity, through our understanding of their business. We also
know that to do that we have to leverage technology.
But, we don't we don't need to build it. So, let me use this search analogy again. We can't be good search buyers
without bid management tools. There are a ton of bid management tools in the marketplace and we, from a search
perspective, have not built our own bid management tool and don't plan to.

I look at the demand platform space as the exact same thing. There are plenty of technology companies that are
out there spending millions of dollars in inventing and creating technologies that manage the direct access to
media, the realtime bidders, the algorithms. Great, love that. And we want to leverage that in a very deep and
integrated way. And as a big buyer we'll be able to have unique partnerships with some of those companies.

We say to our clients, "Our job is to improve your media performance. What we're going to do is develop a service
layer that has people that understand data and optimization, that are leveraging technology on your behalf."

And ultimately we say, "Let's take a look at where your best performing media source is and decide where your
media dollars should go." Certainly, in many cases the low hanging fruit is to compare ad network buys to that of
the inventory that we can acquire on more open trading platforms like the exchanges."

And we're seeing lift. And so I think that's the message to clients, and clients love it.

What are you hearing from clients in terms of pushback? Brand safety?

The brand safety conversation is certainly out there. But I don't think that for most marketers it is any different than
the brand safety issues that already exist. For examples, we don't have any clients that want to run on prohibited
content (gambling, adult content, etc.). Well, with ad networks this issue has been addressed. Now, we'll have to
address that same thing within the exchange space. I think there are good tools to protect brand safety. But clearly
the industry needs to continue to evolve, which is something we will continue to monitor.

There's another level of brand safety which is important to discuss. What I mean is marketers getting comfortable
with the fact that as a marketer you’re not running on a branded site. That's a large part of a "brand safety"
conversation, I believe. It's really more a comfort level with the idea that for purchasing an ad unit there’s no
difference between the number one site in the sports category, a well-branded site, versus a site called SportsPro
that you may have never heard of before but enables you to reach your very specifically defined target audience.

41
I think that there's already a level of comfort for direct marketers - which is no surprise. Look at who came into
search first. The first people on search were direct marketers looking for transactions, and it was wildly successful
and they spent more money. What happened next? The brands followed.

I think you'll see a similar trend in this buy-side trading platform space. You're going to have the direct marketers
go first, and they will be most concerned about transactional and easily measured performance. They are already
comfortable with the idea of, "I don't care if I run on the top branded site or the 20th site, I just care about
transactions," with, again, a certain level of brand safety.
The brand advertisers - clearly will come later, once they see the performance gains reported by more direct
focused marketers. But to reiterate, and back to your main question, I'm pretty impressed with where we stand
already with brand safety tools.

Can you see clients begin to take their media buying in-house - especially as some of these buying
platforms become commoditized and available to all?

I think you can break up the marketplace into three, maybe four sections. I believe you'll have some really big
clients that really have a culture of data optimization and decide to do a lot of their media buying in-house. And by
the way, this exists today.

I think then you'll have your next segment of big clients that'll continue to turn to the big agencies. And, yes, I think
all the big agencies are well-positioned to have unique access into some form of buy-side trading platform. I don't
think what will make us unique versus the others is that technical infrastructure. I'll come back to this point in a
moment.

Then you'll have smaller clients which will use more independent agencies, midsize agencies. Those agencies will
probably not have custom-built platforms or custom things on top of their platforms like larger agencies will. But
they'll know the space pretty well and they'll help that next level of clients.
And then you'll go further down-market and you'll have clients that go directly to Google and self-serve, much like
you have today.

So I think all those things will happen. And, none of it's bad for the industry. None of it's bad for us. We just have to
make sure we'll work with the right clients that have the need for our skills and access, beyond what you could get
buying directly and bringing the media buying in-house.
In terms of competitive differentiation, what I think is critical is going to, again, be the tying of planning and insights
into buying and optimization. Where we have to win - and we're focused on winning - is being able to take that data
which is available whether it's planning data, research data, performance data and/or client transactional data, and,
working with our team of experts in research and analytics and insights, come up with a consumer communications
plan which outperforms the competition. And then our ability to execute on it will be important, but, yes, plenty of
people will be able to execute on a well designed plan. Do we think that we'll have proprietary opportunities?
Absolutely. But, we know what we have to win at is the combination of the art and science.

Our science has to be top notch, but if we don't provide the art to it, then clients won't find the value. And again,
simply having a platform which enables these things isn't in and of itself interesting over the longterm.

October 19, 2009 – 6:42 am

42
Razorfish VP Matt Greitzer Says Display Ad And Search
Channels To Likely Merge At Agencies When Advertisers
Demand It
Matt Greitzer is VP of Search Marketing and Head of ATOM Systems at Razorfish.

AdExchanger.com: What can you tell us about momentum in Razorfish's ad exchange practice? Any year-
over-year comparisons that you can draw?

We've only been in market for about nine months, so it's too early for year-over-year comparisons, but we've seen
consistent month over month growth since launch. Initially
demand was strongest among pure-play direct response
advertisers, but recently we've started to see real interest
from more traditional brand advertisers who are intrigued
by the insight and targeting capabilities they can access
in the exchange environment. So overall I would say the
momentum is strong and getting stronger.

Why are demand-side buying platform strategies

taking hold for agencies?

A confluence of events are driving this change, but most

significantly among them are the emergence of ad
exchanges as a major inventory supply source.
Previously if an agency wanted to aggregate demand and
make that actionable they had to take an upfront position
in inventory. Most agencies aren't comfortable taking
upfront risk so they couldn't scale these efforts. The ad
exchange channel allows for massive inventory
aggregation while limiting the risk of getting stuck with
unsold inventory, so the economic barriers are easier for
an agency to clear. Beyond that, there is a desire to
reverse the trend of declining media commissions, an increasing demand for insight and repeatability in display
media buying, and a number of technology players who've emerged in the last 12-24 facilitating agencies' entry
into this space.

Tell me about ATOM Systems. What is it? How did it begin?

ATOM Systems is Razorfish's buy-side demand platform. Our service offering is pretty simple: we aim to provide
the performance and scale of an ad network with the client-focus and insight of an ad agency. We have a small
team based out of our New York office and to date we are live with over twenty clients. At present we operate
exclusively for the Razorfish client base. Interestingly, ATOM Systems began as an exploratory exercise to figure
out what the heck was going on with the development of ad exchanges and what this would mean for our
business. Joanna O'Connell on our team, who was a Media Supervisor at the time, was involved in this effort and
saw the potential for revolutionizing the way display media is bought and optimized. I was interested from the
search marketer's perspective of micro-segmentation and targeting, and together the two of us got enough buy-in
from our senior management to let us run with it. We launched our first pilot campaign in November of last year
with the ready, shoot, aim approach. By January we had a solid business plan, strong client demand, and were off
to the races.

Let's talk about billing.. the dark alley of the agency world. Traditionally, holding companies/media
agencies need to contract with each media source such as an ad network or a publisher when making a

43
buy. Now, the agency is moving to demand-side platform world where different media sources are being
bought on the fly in a real-time, spot marketplace. Can agencies adapt? How is Razorfish going to solve
this issue?

Some of the exchanges work like a clearinghouse, so there is no need to sort through publisher invoices. For those
that don't, to date we have been working with platform providers to provide that service for us. Our accounting
department was acutely aware of how painful this process could be, so we have sought to avoid it as long as is
practical. Eventually we may have to take some of this on ourselves which will be a resourcing issue, but
something we think we can support given the additional value we are driving through the ATOM business. We did
this in past, too, when we built DRIVE so it's not totally foreign to us.

What do you see as the impact of Publicis' purchase of Razorfish as it relates to the ad exchange practice?
Will it fall under the umbrella of the VivaKi Nerve Center, for example?

I know Publicis has been doing some interesting things in the space through the VivaKi Nerve Center. Beyond that
there isn't much I can say at this point, but maybe we can do a follow up post-close!

Does search marketing merge with display at some point? How many more case studies on display
positively impacting search campaigns do search engine marketers need?

I thought this would happen much sooner, but it hasn't. Interestingly enough, I still don't see the search marketing
community embracing the ad exchange channel, so now we are in a position where we potentially have three
different disciplines all executing against the same goal. I'm not sure this is a bad thing as long as there is tight
collaboration on the tactical side and a uniform approach to data and analysis. Neither of these things are easy to
do, or do well, but we are working hard at Razorfish to make sure we aren't creating new silos.

Ultimately, I think it's advertisers who drive this. The minute they demand integration the agency world will respond
to that. To date they haven't done so, at least not consistently.

What are you doing to educate your clients in this increasingly automated media trading world? Any
pushback from clients due to fears about brand safety, etc.?

Our client base tends towards the quantitative side of the business, so they are naturally receptive to the
opportunities the exchange landscape presents. The industry is so new and so dynamic that to date we have been
pretty successful simply educating our clients about the key players in the space and the new capabilities at their
disposal. We do have a few clients, those in the direct mail space or with rich offline customer segmentation
schemes, who have been especially aggressive and have helped us to conceive of new executions. That's an
interesting dynamic because the space is so new if you can demonstrate buy-side demand the platform and data
providers will often customize to meet the need. The space won't always be this malleable but right now there is a
huge amount of testing and experimentation going on and I think we've been at the forefront of that.

In terms of pushback, brand safety is the single biggest obstacle. In almost all cases we have been able to come
up with some kind of program to alleviate brand concerns, but scale can be limited. This is probably the biggest
barrier to growth in the exchange industry. Full site transparency would be the best solution, but since that isn't
likely we see a pressing need for some kind of independent auditor who can vet inventory quality. Entrepreneurs,
take note.

Should agencies build, buy or license ad technology in-house? Why?

Given the early stage of the industry and the pace of innovation in the space I think the licensing option is going to
be preferable in the short term, and you've seen most agencies adopt this approach. Longer term, assuming the
agency has the cultural DNA and the tolerance for investment I think building in house is an option, as is buying
(which is just an accelerated version of the build strategy). We may evolve to a place in the industry where the
technology (i.e. API connections, real-time bidding capabilities, etc.) is commoditized but the decision making

44
behind the optimization decisions are in-house and proprietary. This would more closely mirror the evolution of the
financial services industry so if you buy that analogy it's a compelling view of the future.

Is real-time bidding through exchanges and demand-side platforms a feature that will be a game changer?
When does it "hit" for clients in your estimation?

I think real time bidding is an exceptional feature enhancement with myriad befits for advertisers, but I wouldn't call
it a game changer. The real benefit of the exchange environment is already manifest with biddable supply, at
scale, in a spot market format, combined with the ability to decouple data and inventory. RTB just allows buyers to
make better use of these benefits. It's like HDTV versus regular TV. Not game changing, but much, much better.

Is creative taking full advantage of technology? If you were running a creative agency right now, what
strategies would you put in place to ensure a successful future?

Exchanges aside, I think there are some very innovative creative/technology collaborations and from what I've
seen the creative community is often first to embrace new technologies in the testing and experimentation phase.
We've done some really interesting and innovative things with advertising on the iPhone, for example, taking
advantage of the motion sensors built into the device to create an interactive creative experience for the customer.
If you are talking about exchanges specifically, I think there is much more we can do to align our targeting efforts
with our creative strategies and executions. Doing this in a cost-effective way can be a challenge, but the upside
will be huge.

Looking towards the future, there is always going to be a strong market for relevant, high quality creative that
connects with the consumer. Creative agencies who are doing this well have nothing to worry about.

Follow Matt Greitzer (@mattgreitzer), Razorfish (@razorfish) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 28, 2009 – 6:51 am

45
MDC Partners and Varick Media Leveraging Data and Ad
Exchanges Says Pres Herman
Darren Herman is the Founder and President of
Varick Media Management, the audience and
media platform backed by MDC Partners, one of
the world's leading advertising holding
companies.

AdExchanger.com: Varick Media

Management appears to be gaining traction
according to your press release in January.
Any updates?

DH: Our heads have been down at VMM

focusing on building our business in every
conceivable metric including revenues, staff,
relationships, performance, and client wins. It
seems as the press release we issued in January about the early VMM success really opened the door to some
big named brands and agencies that have become our clients over time. Since we're a relatively small organization
trying to manage growth, we have to be picky with the clients that we work with in order to deliver top notch service
and we have been really fortunate with the client base that we've been serving over the past 8 months.

Have you seen a change in your clients' thinking as the economy has shifted into low gear in the past
year?

I actually would disagree with that question - our clients thinking has remained strong and it's been the job of both
us and their agencies to push their thinking along. If there is a great time to steal market share, that's now... when
most brands have their head between their legs and are focusing on not interrupting the status quo. At VMM, we've
been working with some forward thinking MDC and non-MDC agencies to help them with a few things (not
mutually exclusive): audience research, media/copy testing, and performance display campaigns. Most of our
clients find VMM to be a leader in performance (both fiscal and conversion) so at a time when budgets may be
tight, but thinking may be grand, VMM fits multiple roles within any media plan.

Do you consider Varick MM, in part, a technology company, or do you see it evolving into a technology
company in any way?

There is this sudden rush for advertising agency holding companies to build technologies to help make sense of
this new digital landscape but the biggest issue I see from years of building digital media companies is that most
technology companies fail at building technologies. How do agency holding companies who have concentrated in
the advertising business for so long think that they can succeed at the very first time they build technologies?
Hmmm....

For VMM, we believe that technology is an enabler to maintain the core asset: the client relationship. Clients come
in two formats to VMM: agencies and brands directly. There is a core piece of technology that VMM will own which
essentially is a "hub," but VMM has many relationships that will deliver specific tools and technologies that are not
built by VMM.

MDC Partners described Varick MM as "an advertising hedge fund," initially. Still true? If so, this makes
Varick a "trader" of media in the marketplace - potentially buying AND selling media. Is Varick MM selling?

We had terrible timing with the launch of "advertising hedge fund," as this was right before the 2008 Financial

46
Market Collapse. I'd say that we have lessened up on the verbiage of "hedge fund," but that doesn't mean that
we've stopped offering the buying, selling, and trading of impressions.

How does the ad exchange model uniquely provide opportunity for advertisers?

There are many attractions to the ad exchange model for advertisers. One of the most exciting is to be able to
purchase individual impressions. This means that we are able to score every individual impression that we have
access to and only purchase the ones that we deem are beneficial to one of our clients. Whoever thought that
buying impressions by the thousands was smart?

I also am excited about the ability to bring my own "data" to the exchanges. Not only can I manage and segment
my clients data, but I'm able to append 3rd party data from a whole suite of VMM partners (we call it Intellidata)
and purchase different segments and test.

Instead of creating one media plan that takes months and months to plan which has a fairly static target audience,
we can use the exchanges and VMM to create thousands of dynamic media plans that optimize in near real-time
(real-time in other instances).

What percentage of campaign budgets goes through ad exchanges right now? Where do you see that
percentage in 18 to 24 months?

There is no easy way to answer this question. It's fairly safe to assume that many networks are purchasing on ad
exchanges so that if an advertiser is purchasing media from a network, then there is probability that they are
purchasing media from the exchanges. I also know that many agencies are testing out "seats" on different
exchanges like Adsdaq and Right Media, but most are finding it hard to manage the buying of media and the
operations behind the group, so they are outsourcing it to people like VMM who have full-time yield managers and
teams who are skilled in real-time bidding.

Privacy concerns notwithstanding, behavioral data feed providers like eXelate, BlueKai, Lookery, Media 6
and others have received a lot of attention lately. Is behavioral becoming the most effective form of
targeting? Or the most scalable?

We are excited about the promise of these organizations. Any organization who can teach us more about our
audience segments is interesting to us. VMM has relationships with many organizations in this space and we're
constantly looking to define and execute additional relationships with companies who can help us.

How important is it for a media agency to be entrepreneurial to succeed?

Any company needs to be entrepreneurial to be competitive for the long term,
however, being entrepreneurial doesn't mean that you shouldn't focus.

Do you think certain agencies predilection for keeping data proprietary will hurt them with the exchange
model where transparency is key?
I think that data should remain proprietary as that is what might differentiate companies like VMM from it's peers.
Transparency is abound in some exchanges but in others, not, but it's only a matter of time until the majority of
exchanges are transparent. History typically manifests itself over again and if the ad network business of the mid to
late 90s is any indication of where exchanges may go, VMM is well positioned. Data can remain proprietary but
inventory should be transparent.

Follow Darren Herman (@dherman76) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

April 22, 2009 – 8:47 am

47
Real-Time Bidding Infrastructure Needed from Exchanges
and Publishers Says VivaKi Nerve Center’s Kurt Unkel
Kurt Unkel is Senior Vice President of Publicis'
VivaKi Nerve Center.

AdExchanger.com: What differentiates VivaKi

Nerve Center from other trading platforms in
the marketplace?

KU: To be clear, the VivaKi Nerve Center isn't

just a trading platform. The VNC is group of
digital and R&D experts committed to building
pathways between clients and their most
important audiences across a digital landscape.
Our primary function is to find and scale
audiences that have the best affinity for our
clients’ brands, and who consequently represent
the best opportunity for the marketers served by our agencies.

Our Audience on Demand solution is different from other trading platforms in the marketplace, primarily because
AOD is all about defining, locating and reaching keenly defined audiences across premium outlets. We start with
people and insights, create the right passion groups, secure transparent inventory and build pipelines that clients
can access through a single transaction.

While other platforms promise low costs, AOD is about adding value and driving results. Other platforms offer
“blind” purchases that are difficult to track and monitor. AOD provides transparency—our existing strong media
relationships allows our teams to know exactly what partners are on the plan and how they are performing at the
most granular levels.

We leverage the exchange platforms, but only to buy impressions that meet a campaign's criteria. We're not taking
fixed positions and attempting to squeeze value out of every impression, nor do we want to get into a reseller
relationship.

Can you share a sense of current momentum with VivaKi Nerve Center? Monthly impression levels? Client
campaigns?

The Nerve Center products and platforms are proprietary to our agencies and their clients. We don’t measure
impressions but outcomes. We were very much in a build and test mode throughout 2008, and we are now
enjoying considerable momentum with a growing number of clients.

How does VivaKi evaluate whether a publisher impression is premium?

For us, Premium inventory resonates easily in cross-media channel campaigns. Traditionally this has meant top
branded properties, as we see AOD long-term being about more than just online display. We are already actively
testing AOD on television. So, we see Premium as being that tier of multi-channel media owners who can bring
scale to our audience-centric strategies of the future.

Will ad exchanges play a role in VivaKi Nerve Center?

Ad Exchanges have been and will continue to be a critical component to AOD and other products the VNC is
developing to support our agencies (Digitas, MediaVest, Optimedia, Starcom and Zenith). Whether public or

48
private, the functionalities these platforms bring to the market are critical to making audience-centric media buying
scale across agencies.

How can ad exchanges move to a more premium and remnant future as opposed to remnant-only?

I believe ad exchanges have to change their mindset from seeking low cost, bulk inventory to seeking high value
connections. It’s also a question of media owners providing and facilitating more premium inventory. Consumers
will ultimately push the levers in this market by making choices and engaging with content they find valuable to
them. As consumers choose, so will clients, and the money will follow.

What recommendations would you make to the "Sell" side (publishers)? What would you like to see more
of from the "Sell" side?

In the absence of a universal cookie, we'd like to see real-time bidding infrastructures from all publishers /
exchanges. Inventory is going to increasingly be defined by data attributes associated with the consumer, and in
order to facilitate that in an effective and efficient fashion for all parties, real-time bidding seems most critical.

What are the challenges for media buying agencies as media trading takes off? For example, is it
important for agencies to be entrepreneurial?

The media buying practices inside our agencies are already adjusting their operating models to account for the
acceleration of media trading and many other influences/developments. It is not only important to be
entrepreneurial, it is essential.

When will brand advertising budgets finally come online?

Brand advertising budgets have been online for quite some time and continue to grow, even in this depressed
economy. We're quite excited about how Publicis clients have embraced this to date.

Will VivaKi Nerve Center leverage the Long Tail or will it concentrate on large publishers?

AOD has been primarly focused on brand-name websites to start, as our agencies represent brand-name
advertisers who find synergies and safety in such an approach. But we do believe that for audience-based buying
to work, a bigger pond will give our clients a better chance of finding their audiences. Transparency is and will be a
critical component to this.

How close are we to effective attribution models for the "Demand" side?

The perfect attribution model for the industry is a bit of the Holy Grail. The reality is, each client will define what
form of conversion matters most to them, and that in turn will differentiate and clarify how critical a particular type
of media exposure is to each conversion. Factor in the impact offline media has, and the picture becomes quite
complex.

But that's what makes exchanges so interesting - each client decides for themselves what the relative value is of
an impression however they see fit. Insights and transparency drive that, so we plan to continue our focus in these
areas and help our agencies and clients leverage these powerful platforms.

Follow VivaKi (@vivaki) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

May 6, 2009 – 10:38 am

49
Ad Networks and Exchanges

Transactional Advertising Driving Lower CPMs Says 24/7

Real Media Chairman Moore

Email This Post

David Moore is the Chairman & Founder of 24/7 Real Media, a

WPP company.

AdExchanger.com: Doesn't it follow that there is channel

conflict between ad networks and large publisher sites with
sales teams? What must ad networks do, if anything, to make
sure that publishers do not feel like they're inventory is being
cannibalized?

DM: Sales conflicts never occur with networks if the relationship is

established correctly from the beginning. Some large publisher
sites do not want their name included in the list of sites that
compose the network. This means that their inventory is sold blind and yields a lower return to the publisher. Other
large publisher sites recognize that including their name will generate better advertising returns for them and their
partners. When this is allowed, the network must carefully inform the advertiser that there is no guarantee of how
many impressions are delivered to each site in the network, i.e., that the advertisement is rotated equitably among
all the sites in the network. 24/7 has not had a sales conflict in over 10 years.

Do large media companies need to face the fact that they are never going to get the CPMs they once did
whether online or off?

Large media companies need to understand that all advertisers are incorporating a "transactional" component into
their marketing efforts. As a result, their advertising tends to be more focused on the bottom half of the "sales
funnel". Transactions tend to sell at lower prices on the web as the smaller sites have no other choice for revenue.
The “net-net” is that media prices are falling across all media as the Internet's abundant inventory supply continues
to deliver results at lower prices.

Recently the OPA announced that a limited group of large publishers would begin offering three, new
oversized media units that would only be available through member sites - not ad networks or exchanges.
How does 24/7 Real Media's respond to this?

New creative approaches continue to evolve and we encourage this activity. These publishers are looking to
develop competitive advantage and this is one of their strategies. Overall, if successful, these new strategies will
be embraced by the rest of the industry.

As your fellow panelist, Walker Jacobs of Turner, said at the most recent AdAge Conference, another
complaint from large publishers appears to be the "punch the monkey" ads available on ad networks. How
does 24/7 ensure brand safety?

It is not the responsibility of any medium to weigh judgment on the creative aspects of an advertisement that an
agency/advertiser has produced. Obviously, extreme, X rated or fraudulent advertising is never acceptable to 24/7.

50
Can you share recent momentum with WPP Group's 24/7 Real Media as it relates to product development
and revenues?

Our goal has always been to use our technology to create competitive advantage for WPP companies. That
strategy is working.

How do you see 24/7 Real Media and WPP Group evolving in the ad exchange space?

Exchanges will be an important part of the digital ecosystem and will play a role with 24/7 based on their
importance.

Are there too many ad networks? Or, for that matter, are there too many media agencies? Who gets
disintermediated down the road?

The market place always determines if there are too few or too many players. That will be the case here.

Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider, who moderated the recent panel with Jacobs, Denise Warren of the
The New York Times and Vivek Shah of Time Inc., inferred that large sites are the only destinations with
quality content. How do you respond?

The panel had a hard time defining "quality" content. What is quality content? Is it content that’s expensive? Is it
content written by someone who you know who has a good reputation? Is it an excellent review of a product by
someone you have never heard of before? There are hundreds of other questions that can be asked like this. I
think the industry needs to define what quality content is as there seems to be confusion with the definition.

Do vertical ad networks from major media properties such as Martha Stewart post a threat to ad networks
like 24/7 Real Media?

Any new digital sales offering is competition to a network; however, it also offers opportunities for partnerships.

How do exchanges evolve from the remnant inventory model to a premium AND remnant future?

What is remnant inventory.... other than a bad industry term? There is excellent unsold inventory that has great
value to the advertiser. Through increased audience targeting, this inventory will command higher prices either
through exchanges, publishers or companies like ours.

Follow WPP (@WPPonline) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

April 29, 2009 – 7:48 am

51
CEO Fanlo Says Real-Time Bidders Integrating On AdBrite;
API Due In October
Email This Post

Iggy Fanlo is CEO of AdBrite, an online advertising exchange.

How's business at AdBrite? Is the exchange model working?

IF: The ad exchange model is very strong. We're seeing incredible results from our targeting algorithms (black
boxes). The addition of third party (open architecture) data and targeting algorithms is being implemented and the
early results there are also very encouraging.

Are you starting to see demand-side buying platforms hooking

into you? What's the future here?

Yes. It's quite new, but we have more than a dozen real time bidders
that are integrating and even more lined up for our advertiser API
due in October.

Please discuss your real-time bidding (RTB) solution. And, how

do (or will) advertisers take advantage of this opportunity?

It's essentially the next generation of search engine marketing. RTB

allows ad buyers to examine important real-time variables, like time
of day, day of week, user actions, etc and include them in their ad
buying decision making process. Any advertiser that can achieve the
latency requirements is welcome. Having said that, we believe
strongly that in the AdBrite exchange any ad buyer either manual or
through our advertiser API will have the benefits of real time bidding.
Since we offer the addition of many 3rd party data sets as well as
3rd party algorithms and finally optimize across all of those
dimensions, all advertisers get the benefits of RTB even without
being an RTB [bidder].

When will brand awareness dollars come online?

Great question. I'm obviously a believer that online is a great venue for brands. My personal opinion is time. As the
folks that makes buying decisions for brand dollars become more comfortable with online media, they'll allocate
more and more to online.

What is AdBrite doing to improve brand safety for its clients?

Several things. First, we implement both an internal and third party service to control for fraud. Second, we review
every publisher and every advertiser for content quality. Third, we divide our publisher base into 4 tiers of quality.
Finally, since we are one of the very few truly and completely transparent exchanges, any advertiser can create
their own custom network/buy of whichever sites fit their own quality criteria.

Please discuss your recent agreement with the Fair Syndication Consortium (FSC). How does it work?
When do you think you and FSC will start seeing revenue?

52
It's still an ongoing discussion, but we are very excited about the ability for third party to easily access and re-
publish legally content. In the best case, it becomes the iTunes of digital content.

Are there too many ad networks? How will ad networks need to adjust in the future?

A fair question. I generally answer it the same way each time. For any business to sustain itself it must create/add
value and it must charge both a market price and one that is no more than the value created. So networks that are
simply standing in between buyers and sellers and adding no more value than that and charging upwards of 40-
50% of the gross ad spend will have difficulty in the future.

What strategies would you be putting in place if you were in charge of a digital media agency today?

I'd be focused on a few things.

1. 1. This is the most important by far. I'd require ALL of my publishers to enter into a transparent and
auction-based system; i.e. an exchange. I want all of my buys to be market driven, not negotiated. That
negotiation is be definition skewed in favor of the seller who has all the information of where others are
buying.
2. Building a capability to buy across all exchanges. A tool to efficiently allocate spend across all available
inventory.
3. Focusing a lot more energy on creative.

Is AdBrite able to help with attribution for its clients? Is attribution still a black hole - especially cross-
channel and not just digital?

Absolutely. But the onus in on advertisers. They will need to offer access to conversion pixels or other action
based pixels that are important to them. In addition, the industry will need more ability to integrate offline and
online data so that online influence can be properly attributed to offline behaviors.

Follow Iggy Fanlo (@iggyfanlo) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 11, 2009 – 7:42 am

53
Real-Time Bidding Coming To AdECN Exchange This Fall
Says Microsoft’s Nahum
Email This Post

Jed Nahum is Director of Business Integration for AdECN and led Microsoft's acquisition of AdECN.

AdExchanger.com: Can you provide insight on current momentum and scale at AdECN? And, how is the
Federated platform performing? What's next?

JN: Our federated platform is a real-time bidded exchange that allows

massively scaled ad networks, ad brokers, and publisher brokers to
connect to each other while preserving their ability to utilize their own
proprietary ad serving and targeting technologies.

When the exchange is called on for an ad, the system takes the call
and replicates it to all members – hence the name "federated." The ad
call from the federated system looks just like any ad call our
participants normally get using their own ad servers, and it passes user
information to the them in exactly the form that they’re used to seeing
it. The member then uses their normal valuation process for the
impression and returns an ad and a bid for the exact impression. If the
participant has real time bidding, the bid passed back to us will have
been dynamically determined at the moment of the impression. AdECN
takes that bid along with all other bids and shows the ad with the
highest valuation for that specific impression.

Your question, however, is about momentum and scale. Six months

ago we did some testing on an initial version of the federated system
and, while pleased with the results, we went back to ensure the
architecture was ready to scale. The system that came out of that
process was recently launched only within Microsoft on a small but
growing percentage of ad calls within the Microsoft Media Network. We
are pleased and excited about the results and intend to bring external
participants on board in the Fall.

Is real-time bidding (RTB) an important development in online advertising? Why or why not?

We’re strong believers in the power of real-time bidding and are grateful to you for your particular passion for it. We
see real-time bidding as an inevitable outcome for interconnected networks, because real-time networks apply a
fine grain instantaneous evaluation of the user, placement, context and other factors to truly understand the value
of an impression. Real-time networks have an inherent advantage in that their knowledge is fresher, more discrete,
and, we believe, more accurate - each impression is, after all, completely unique.

Is RTB a solution for all online display inventory?

RTB is a fantastic evolution in the world of online advertising. How that will work with guaranteed, reserved,
takeovers, and even a futures type of market remains to be seen. There will always be a need for guaranteed
blocks of inventory to be sold, though that very well may and can come into the world of auctions for additional
price discovery.

54
Will AdECN incorporate RTB in the near future?

We already do with our Federated system, which is running with only Microsoft today. As mentioned above, we will
be launching the product to a broader group of online leaders and innovators in the Fall. RTB has always been the
objective for AdECN, but when we started 5 years ago the industry was not yet ready for exchanges, much less
RTB. AdECN has always run an auction for every single impression on the Exchange, and now with the Federated
system, the bids into the auction can be made dynamically.

Is AdECN strictly a solution for the buying and selling of online media between ad networks?

Maintaining the neutrality of the AdECN Exchange is important for our model, and as such, AdECN never wants to
compete with its members. Members of the Exchange can be ad networks, ad brokers, pub brokers, and some
agencies. Individual advertisers or publishers are not allowed to trade directly on the exchange, they must come
through a member broker.

How can each of these online advertising space participants benefit from AdECN's services whether
directly or indirectly: direct advertisers, agencies and publishers?

Buyers and sellers greatly benefit from more granular control over what they are buying and selling - down to the
individual impression - and they can do it all in a single, efficient marketplace. AdECN puts the control in their
hands: buyers are able to buy only those impressions that are valuable to them and sellers are able to segment
and control their inventory however they choose.

By bringing together the aggregators of supply and demand in a central marketplace, we will give buyers more
reach and scale than before. They are better able to access the highly-targeted audiences they want and achieve
their ROI goals. As buyers are able to buy more efficiently and with more sophisticated targeting, publisher
inventory becomes more valuable. Sellers also benefit from a large marketplace because of increased demand
and a per impression auction. Advertisers, agencies, and publishers do all of this through their existing ad
networks or member brokers without the burden of building or managing the technology to best leverage the
Exchange, instead they can focus on their own goals.

Yahoo!'s Right Media and Google Doubleclick's AdX appear to have a huge lead on Microsoft and AdECN
in the exchange space. Putting aside any discussion about a Yahoo/Microsoft combination, can Yahoo or
Google be caught?

Absolutely. We believe there is no leader yet, in particular in the RTB exchange world. Neither Right Media nor
Google has RTB yet. With AdECN’s Fall public beta - which, along with the Microsoft Media Network, includes the
top companies in display - we are confident the AdECN Exchange will be the leading Exchange in online
advertising.

What can publishers do to prepare for an increasingly automated environment for the buying and selling
of online media?

Automation represents opportunity for publishers. The number of ways to monetize their inventory will continue to
increase dramatically for the next few years. The growth of data and targeting not only will increase advertiser ROI
but publisher yield as well. In that vein, publishers should think about what kinds of information about their users
they would like to share in order to enable better targeted ads to be served, yielding higher returns for their
inventory. They should develop ways (through exchanges in particular) to enable intelligent buyers who bring their
own targets.

New, demand-focused, media trading platforms are popping up such as MediaMath and Invite Media. Does
AdECN plan to develop its own interface or continue to provide access to inventory for these buying
platforms as it does today?

55
We think of the media trading platforms as "Ad Brokers," basically demand side aggregators and optimizers. But,
whatever you call them, they’re a critical part of the exchange ecosystem, and are perfectly positioned to trade
through our Federated system. X+1, Invite Media, and MediaMath (agency-centric enablers of RTB into the various
pools of inventory) provide leading edge buy-side tools, and AdECN is thrilled to let them focus on their areas of
expertise. AdECN’s focus is on creating an open and efficient exchange that best serves the market.

In regards to search retargeting, is this an opportunity that could open up display advertising? Any plans
for search retargeting through AdECN - perhaps using Bing and the network of Microsoft properties with
display advertising?

We agree that retargeting is a big deal in display. All kinds of retargeting and data are enabled within the AdECN
Exchange, well beyond just retargeting Search. AdECN is a very extensible framework into which even more data
can be brought into the per-impression, RTB auction, but that’s a big topic for another time at a later date.

Follow Microsoft (@Microsoft) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 13, 2009 – 7:36 am

56
Adgregate Markets CEO Wong Says Landing Pages Will Be
Unnecessary
Email This Post

Henry Wong is Chief Executive Officer of

Adgregate Markets, a transactional performance
ad network.

AdExchanger.com: Given you and your

team's experience (AdECN), how important is your familiarity with ad exchanges in the success of
Adgregate Markets?

HW: Given the experience of the management team with AdECN, we understand the value that ad exchanges can
bring to our ShopAds technology and platform in terms of being able to offer advertisers bleeding edge targeting
and retargeting tools to execute performance based advertising campaigns. Adgregate Markets' ShopAds is the
first certified transactional advertising technology to integrate with AdECN; which enables advertisers to use
Microsoft's platform for ad targeting and retargeting, media purchasing and placement, and ad optimization.

Can you describe the challenge Adgregate Markets technology solves as well as a sense of scale for your
business currently?

While the Company is still early in its development, the network is currently getting approximately 40 million
impressions per month, reaching 12M+ uniques monthly, with 1M+ ShopAd embeds currently. Over 500
advertisers currently use the ShopAds platform.

The ShopAds platform enables advertisers to integrate e-commerce into any banner ad campaign to allow
consumers to browse, interact, and ultimately purchase directly within an ad unit. When combined with an ad
network's targeting and retargeting solution for advertisers, ShopsAds can offer a substantial lift to ad performance
by capitalizing on prior data on a consumers' product research and browsing behavior. For example, in an instance
where a consumer researches a product on a retailers' site and then leaves the site before purchasing the product,
an advertiser could use the combined AdECN and ShopAds solution to not only retarget that user with a banner ad
for a discounted price on such product, but also provide the purchasing functionality to capitalize on the impulse
purchase, on whichever publisher site the user is currently browsing.

Providing e-commerce, transactional capability in the banner seems to remove the need for landing pages.
Is this where you see media going?

Long term, yes. In our opinion, landing pages add unnecessary steps into the consumer's clickstream. Our
objective is to optimize the purchase process and reduce the friction that occurs with traditional banner advertising.
ShopAds accomplishes that by bringing e-commerce directly into the ad and by enabling targeting and retargeting
campaigns.

Does Adgregate Markets have any plans to trade or advertise on its own behalf, or is it primarily a
technology services business?

Adgregate Markets is a seatholder on the AdECN exchange, and thus will engage the exchange to find liquidity for
its advertising partners as well as execute performance campaigns on behalf of the ShopAds network.

In addition, Adgregate Markets is offering ShopAds through various channels ranging from agency relationships,
ad networks/exchanges, direct with publishers, and direct with advertisers.

57
Can you talk about how publishers can benefit from Adgregate Markets technology?

ShopAdsTM enables visitors to complete purchases without having to leave the publisher's web site. By retaining
visitors, publishers can now sell ad space that doesn't divert traffic away thus allowing them to increase page views
and more importantly, increase revenue. In addition, affiliate publishers can use Adgregate's CPA marketplace to
search for contextually relevant offers and products for its site.

How do ad exchanges move toward a premium inventory future - and can Adgregate Markets help the
exchange model in this respect?

The value of inventory is often measured by quality and response rate; by enabling ecommerce and rich
targeting/retargeting data, Adgregate Markets increases the opportunity for ad exchanges to better understand
inventory value and close the gap between remnant and premium inventory.

Beyond direct response, does Adgregate Markets offer an opportunity for brand advertisers?

Adgregate Markets is launching a new brand affinity solution, BrandAdsTM, that will enable brands to increase
awareness and reach by allowing advertisers to engage and interact directly with consumers through our
technology. The combination of BrandAdsTM and ShopAdsTM bridges the gap between brand and direct
response marketers, allowing them to share messaging, creative, objectives, and ultimately streamlining online
advertising costs.

How will media buying agencies need to evolve in the future?

Media agencies will need to embrace technologies and solutions that bring greater value to advertisers. They're
still applying an offline strategy towards online media purchases and that needs to change. ShopAds brings a new
dimension and approach towards online banner placement with innovative ecommerce technology and targeting
capabilities.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger.com) on Twitter.

April 22, 2009 – 8:27 am

58
Adgregate Markets Moves Into Mobile Display eCommerce
Henry Wong is CEO of Adgregate Markets, a transactional performance ad network and technology company. The
company announced today that it ran its first mobile commerce campaign with NBC Universal using its ShopAds
technology. Read the release.

Generally speaking, when do you think mobile display

advertising reaches significant scale and what may be
some of the triggers?

US Mobile grew by 68M users according to Nielsen data in September 2009. As the number of users on
smartphones grows, the number of available apps will drive mobile display advertising because the publishers of
apps are monetizing distribution of those apps through display advertising. There's a direct correlation of the apps
available with the number of mobile ads served. Apple iphone has over 115,000 apps just by itself.

Advertisers continue to use multi-channel marketing strategy to make their branding and marketing consistent
among all media and as mobile web grows the dollars allocated to mobile display ads will continue to grow as well.
There's evidence that the industry in recognizing that the mobile advertising is reaching scale vis a vis Google's
acquisition
of Admob.

What are some of the challenges in delivering a display ad to a mobile device (serving, tracking, non-
standard formats across mobile devices?) and how does Adgregate overcome these challenges?

The challenge with mobile advertising is that there are many devices running different mobile operating systems to
support. The beauty of our technology is that, by leveraging our cloud-based technology, advertisers can deploy
ads across various platforms with minimal effort.

December 10, 2009 – 5:13 pm

59
Adify CEO Fradin Says More Data Exchange and Social
Targeting Integration To Come
Email This Post

Russ Fradin is CEO of Adify, a vertical ad network solutions provider.

AdExchanger.com: From what I see on Twitter (@rfradin), you

seem to be working as hard as ever - in spite of the "liquidity
event" when Cox Enterprises bought Adify in April of 2008.
Workaholic?

RF: I am working as hard now as I ever have and loving it. That may
seem counter-intuitive but I think that is because of the hit-driven
Silicon Valley / New York start-up culture. There is always an opinion
that selling your company for a ton of money and providing great
returns to employees and investors is the finish line, it isn't. It is
certainly a fabulous financial outcome for employees and investors and
a wonderful validation of the 2
years of hard work we had put into the
company at the time of the sale, but it is barely the beginning of the
story.

Think about it from the other side – when we started Adify we did it because we believed our idea would provide
the tools and services for a whole new class of media businesses online. We believe the networks on our platform
represent fundamental changes in online media for the better around the world (we have clients in 10 countries
today) – benefiting both Advertisers and Publishers. We've accomplished a lot in our 3-1/2 years of existence but
there is a lot more to do. Why would I want to be anywhere else? I get to run my company with a team I hired and
an idea I've believed in since we started everything with the experience, multi-media assets and support of a terrific
parent company.

I truly believe years from now Adify will be even larger and more successful and that's why I still work at it all the
time.

Can you discuss Adify's revenue and product momentum? Is the direct sales business growing where you
sell client's vertical network inventory? Or is it all about "white label" and providing the tools of ad
network to branded sites?

Adify's Network Builder platform is the core of the business and always will be. Adify has over 180 partners
creating vertical ad networks on the Adify Network Builder platform. Many of these partners take advantage of our
full service offering while some are leveraging our platform for distributed advertising, content syndication,
behavioral targeting and inventory insight. The Adify Media business supports our partners, who can opt-in to
campaigns on a line-item basis. This supplemental revenue assists in maximizing publisher value and smoothing
revenues month to month. Both Adify Network Builder and Adify Media are growing businesses.

How is Cox Enterprises providing new opportunity for Adify and visa versa?

Cox Enterprises is a highly distributed company. Every business unit makes their own decisions about working
with another business unit. To date, we are very pleased that AutoTrader.com, TravelChannel.com, CoxTV and
Cox Cross Media are all working with Adify. There are additional Cox companies currently in preliminary stages as
well. In addition, many of our prospective Network Builder clients are thrilled to partner with a company that has
110 years of history as a high integrity partner.

60
Given the recent downturn in the global economy, any reticence by branded sites in absorbing the initial cost and
setup of a vertical network who instead choose to go with existing ad networks?

The two things are totally different. In this economy, branded sites want to protect their assets and extend them –
by creating vertical ad networks. Many branded sites do not want to offer any of their own inventory to existing ad
networks who are experiencing significant price pressure resulting in lower revenues to the branded site. These
networks are also under pressure from advertisers to provide full transparency leading to significant pricing conflict
between the branded site and the performance networks reselling their remnant inventory. With a vertical ad
network controlled by the branded sites, the branded sites match price to advertiser value and they control the
distribution of their content and brand.

Data exchanges and social media profiling companies are starting to gain traction as advertisers look for
audiences. Has Adify considered how it can bring a data gathering or targeting element to its product line?

Adify Network Builder already offers an extensive behavioral targeting data gathering capability – I believe our
platform is unmatched as far as BT ad serving goes. We are NAI compliant. We also offer extensive geographical
and technology based targeting. The very nature of the publishers within networks formed by our partners results
in content that is very high quality and in-context to the vertical ad network – giving Adify highly reliable contextual
targeting as well.

In addition to all of our homegrown technologies we are always looking for ways to allow partners to plug-in their
secret sauce to Adify Network Builder. We already work with a few data exchanges and social media profiling
companies to allow our customers to leverage other proprietary targeting technologies on-top of our platform. You
will continue to see announcements in the coming weeks and months on this topic.

Where do you see the ad exchange model fitting with the vertical ad network model?

I look at them as different ends of the online advertising spectrum. I fundamentally believe that brand advertisers
will always value high quality, highly contextual, high-impact integrated ad placements alongside quality content.
On the other end of the spectrum are people looking to buy bulk audiences. Both co-exist quite nicely in all forms
of media.

I have said many times that I view exchanges as the natural evolution of the performance ad network. Why buy
from a proprietary performance ad network when you can access enormous pools of remnant inventory from
exchanges and leverage best of breed targeting technologies.

On the other side, I have always viewed vertical ad networks as the natural evolution of the portal. As
fragmentation accelerates, quality content will be more dispersed across the web and brand buyers looking to
reach a quality audience will need vertical networks to help them aggregate the quality inventory.

Could Adify someday provide a vertical ad exchange product which provides transparency and control to
buyers and sellers?

Adify already provides transparency and control to buyers and sellers. Sellers have been setting their price floors,
by ad space, since Adify first launched. Sellers have been reviewing and accepting advertising on a campaign and
line-item basis since we first launched. Buyers have been able to select and see actual delivery and performance
on a site by site and line item basis since Adify launched. The difference between Adify and a vertical ad exchange
is that Adify restricts the publishing sellers to only those accepted by a Network Builder – accepted for quality
content, quality design and minimal ad clutter.

I don't like to talk about what Adify does as an ‘exchange' because the relationships in exchanges tend to be
transitory whereas the relationships between network builders and their publishers tend to be deep, integrated
long-term relationships.

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Google DoubleClick recently announced the "DoubleClick Network Builder." Scared? How does Adify
differentiate itself?

Honestly we were a lot more scared of the idea of DoubleClick Network Builder than we have been by the reality.
Like all pre-launch products, DoubleClick was out in the market making audacious claims about what DNB would
actually do. The reality, at least in the first version, has turned out to be far far less than promised. The product
does not offer anywhere near the functionality of Adify Network Builder or a few other products in the market, for
that matter.

Google will always have an advantage given their growing monopoly over the online advertising market so we'll
obviously continue to pay attention to DNB, but at the moment we have 180+ networks on Adify and as long as we
continue to innovate on both the technology and services side I am not scared.

Follow Russ Fradin (@rfradin), Adify (@Adify) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

May 19, 2009 – 7:37 am

62
Advertisers Are Scrutinizing and Optimizing Says AdReady
CEO Finn
Email This Post

Aaron Finn is CEO of AdReady, an advertising technology company.

AdExchanger.com: Can you update us on current revenue and

client momentum? Has the economy affected your business? Any
surprises or trends you can share?

AF: We keep growing our client base and increasing revenue, and
we’re still hiring to keep up with demand. The biggest change we’ve
noticed with the poor economy is more scrutiny from advertisers on
measuring every expenditure. Fortunately, that plays to our strengths,
since the AdReady platform lets them analyze and update campaigns
on-demand to maximize returns.

As an online media buying platform, it appeared AdReady was

originally targeting the Long Tail of advertisers, i.e. smaller
budgets, self-service, no handholding. With your premium
services, you're tackling larger advertisers and agencies, too.
Why the change?

We still put a large emphasis on the Do It Yourself (DIY) component of

our business. The Premium offering is in response to some of our
larger clients requesting more client service, based on their larger
campaigns. Having an assigned account manager helps them track daily performance more effectively and
optimize campaigns.

What is the revenue model with your agency partners? Per seat, per impression?

We have a one-time setup fee to pay for the development work of building a white-label solution. From here—like
all of our partners and advertisers—we make a percentage commission/mark-up on the media purchased through
the platform.

If you were a publisher, how would you prepare for the increasingly automated nature of online
advertising?

Embrace technology. We built the AdReady for Publishers solution to help publishers get the most revenue
possible out of their inventory and maintain a direct relationship with the advertisers. By using our service, they can
better prioritize customers based on ad spend. Those under a certain spend threshold can work directly through
the DIY interface, while those with larger budgets can work directly with the publisher sales teams. In that way,
efficiencies are improved across the board.

What is your sense of the venture capital community today as it relates to advertising technology? Have
they changed their strategy given the recent economic slide?

Not in our case. Here’s what Madrona’s Tom Alberg said recently, specifically talking about our focus: “We think
there are opportunities in advertising still. Though advertising is down at the moment. Focused ideas around local

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advertising, targeting. We’ve got this company called AdReady, a self-service focus on banner ads. Banner ads
have not been considered a hot area, but this company is already doing well. They’re growing every quarter.”

Is AdReady prepared for real-time bidding (RTB)? Is RTB important in your opinion?

AdReady already participates in a variety of auction-based exchanges and other types of inventory purchases on
behalf of clients. We’re always researching and developing new options to push up ROI for customers. As more
opportunities evolve to use this type of pricing, we’ll definitely look at them and may participate.

Would you characterize AdReady as an ad network or an ad exchange? Can you discuss the transparency
available to buyers and sellers?

We are neither a network nor an exchange—we’re a technology platform focused from the advertiser’s
perspective. We give advertisers all the tools they need to maximize their budgets and manage buys across all
sources of display inventory including networks and exchanges. We give buyers the opportunity to choose their
own media and determine pricing. For sellers, it depends on the product line.

How important is the "ad templates" component of your business model? This seemed to be a key part of
AdReady's strategy originally. Where do you see it going?

Historically, the biggest barrier to display advertising has been the expensive creative process. It’s difficult for
smaller organizations to repeatedly pay an agency $5,000 to $10,000 to come up with a set of banners for a
campaign—and then to wait weeks for them to produce and deliver all seven IAB banner sizes. And even if they
deliver on time, what if they don’t work? It’s hard to analyze and measure performance. With the AdReady platform
and reporting, advertisers can make split-second decisions and immediate tweaks—and our agency offering helps
agencies offer that same value. Creative and reporting will always be key issues, and our templates should keep
helping customers solve a piece of that puzzle.

Attribution is a missing link for display advertising to date as search gets most of the credit at the bottom
of the purchase funnel. How close is online advertising to a solution which can provide proper attribution
to the demand generation of display? Does AdReady provide such a solution?

We track and report on a broad range of data. Customers get full transparency, in close to real-time, about what
creative is performing best and which creative we recommend keeping or discontinuing—and all of this comes at
the direct conversion level and through latent conversions. At the publisher level, you get a full range of metrics to
maximize your ad spend, ranging from Cost Per Click (CPC), to Cost per Thousand (CPM), to total impressions,
and pretty much everything in between. For premium customers, the Account Management team works on their
behalf to maximize returns.

Follow Aaron Finn (@ahfinn), CPX Interactive (@AdReady) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

May 27, 2009 – 7:15 am

64
AdRoll Offering A Targeting Platform To Advertisers Says
CEO Bell

Email This Post

Aaron Bell is CEO of AdRoll, an online co-operative, advertising

network.

AdExchanger.com: What's been happening at AdRoll lately?

Recession effects?

While we've dialed down some of our own costs (ahem –

postponing the order for the office 72” plasma screen to showcase
our world domination metrics), we've actually seen double-digit
monthly growth despite the dour economic climate. This is likely
because Adroll is focused on delivering tangible ROI for brands
targeting hard to reach niche and enthusiast audiences.

In this economy, advertisers are looking for alternatives to premium

ad buys. Adroll offers a cost effective way to access the same
audiences available via premium buys by making sense of non-
premium inventory. Our platform shines in its ability to “roll up”
highly-targeted inventory found on niche sites and blogs. We
determine the best placements for a brand by evaluating traditional metrics alongside peer recommendations we
collect from publishers in the advertiser's “in-crowd”. This data provides us with unique insights as to which sites
are the most relevant and highly regarded within a niche, and allows us to make intelligent media
recommendations that are richer than merely advertising across a vertical or keyword. In fact, we've seen a 3x
greater click-through rate on campaigns run against the highest rated sites vs. a category at large.

Additionally, Adroll allows brands to extend beyond the banner, generating coverage and buzz on relevant niche
sites and blogs through our promotion tools. We've recognized that many brands expend considerable energy
compiling lists of blogs and contacts followed by reaching out to these sites with PR materials. Leveraging our
recommendation technology, Adroll makes it easy and cost effective to pinpoint and communicate with sites and
blogs appropriate for your brand.

How do you position AdRoll - as an ad network, vertical ad network(s)? What challenge is the company's
product solving?

With more inventory opening up and becoming consolidated through various means (exchanges, yield optimizers,
etc.) the key problem for ad buyers is how to tap into this expansive pool and make use of it effectively. Today
"non-premium" inventory represents 90% of available display inventory, but represents only 18% of the spend.
Sure, a lot of this inventory is junk, but a lot of it is also high quality and attracts the most highly targeted
audiences.

We like to think of our model as a "targeting platform." Adroll excels at making sense of display advertising
inventory by combining traditional quantitative metrics (eg. past performance, ad space placement and size, etc.)
with qualitative judgments sourced from the peers in a site's category. We've built the technology to make this
scalable. Our holistic inventory recommendations have proven invaluable for advertisers who want to efficiently
reach the right audience on the right sites. As an example, we've worked with a number of high end men's fashion
brands. We are a natural partner for them because they see that their advertising does best when it appears on the

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hippest fashion blogs. In contrast, their ads do not perform as well on sites categorized as "fashion" by a semantic
engine or shown to an out-of-context user merely identified as in-demographic or a frequenter of fashion sites.

What's your view on yield optimizers like PubMatic, Rubicon Project, AdMeld, YieldBuild, etc.? Are they
partners or do you view them as a threat to AdRoll?

Everyone's favorite can of worms these days. To the extent that yield optimizers evolve from outsourced publisher
ad ops, and develop viable technology for advertisers, then these services are potential partners for us. If you
optimize for publisher eCPM, and don't consider the value and quality you're delivering for advertisers, then you're
building something inherently unsustainable. Dollars will eventually fly to quality. It happened with eCPM-focused
ad networks placing CPL/CPA ads a few years ago, and it will happen again. However, if they do evolve into real-
time advertising marketplaces, then what makes them different from the established ad exchanges that already
exist? At that point, the whole notion of “ad network optimization” is a bit of a red herring used to acquire inventory.
That said, this optimization pitch resonates with publishers, even if the mechanics don't entirely make sense.

Can any publisher participate? What is your target publisher market?

Yes, the idea is that any publisher can participate, but as with advertisers, we're best suited for publishers who are
focused on a niche or specific interest area. We provide a place for publishers to establish their identity and status
in the online advertising ecosystem, and attract relevant advertisers by providing greater insight into their site's
audience. For example, AdExchanger could build a profile and establish its place as a top influential online
advertising site and attract more advertising dollars.

Any publisher can join Adroll, establish their identity, and rate other publishers in their niche. We understand that
the value of a publisher's inventory can't be captured purely based on number of clicks, traffic volume or cookie
data. Thus, the rating process is designed to capture the qualitative aspects of what makes a site good for
advertising.

And on the advertiser side, who's a good fit and why?

Adroll helps advertisers who want to target specific niche and enthusiast audiences on the sites that their potential
customers love. This tends to apply to smaller brands that sell niche products, but certainly can apply to larger
brands as well. For example, we work directly with a natural foods startup that sells bake-at-home snack mixes,
while we're also working with a large agency on a campaign to announce Atkins' new line of baking products.

In addition to advertising, we find many of our brands are interested in "grass roots" outreach. Since we've already
established the best sites and blogs for the brand, we provide an ecosystem and easy to use communication tools
that make this process scalable, transparent and effective.

What's your view on ad exchanges?

Ad exchanges represent a sea change for the industry in that they create exciting opportunities for new types of
businesses, and also render some existing business models obsolete.

Exchanges are interesting to us because our expertise is making sense of online advertising inventory and making
it easy to buy. Our view is that the more sites we can access, the better job we can do providing the best bundles
of niche sites for our advertisers. As such, ad exchanges represent a fantastic opportunity for us to apply our
unique targeting methodology to larger pools of inventory and make it useful for advertisers. It's not hard to create
vanilla categories or channels of similar sites, but that doesn't necessarily show you the best sites in those
categories depending on your goals (e.g., most relevant to the category, best ad response rates within the
category, etc.) That's where Adroll excels.

AdRoll's ability to offer audience targeting across the Long Tail would appear to be a good fit for an
exchange - or plugging directly into buying platforms. Thoughts?

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That's exactly what we intend to do, and why the trend towards open exchanges is so exciting for us.

How do you manage brand safe experiences for advertisers? Do

brand awareness campaigns "work" on AdRoll or is it a DR opportunity only?

Our job is to scrutinize non-premium (e.g., medium to long tail) sites, and determine which sites represent the best
opportunity for advertising, and which don't. Because Adroll collects tens of thousands of “in-crowd” opinions on
this inventory set, we have a unique view as to which sites are the most appropriate for brands. We also provide
advertisers with transparency regarding the sites where they are seeing the most traction.

We work with advertisers who seek to strike a balance between brand awareness and response. We help brands
target relevant sites that people trust, and in turn, this approach delivers great response. We believe these go hand
in hand.

Any thoughts on how real-time bidding (RTB) and demand-side optimization may impact online advertising
and AdRoll, in particular?

Real-time bidding allows us to get more sophisticated with our ad decisions, incorporating down to the URL and
per user information into targeting. It will also allow us to optimize campaigns more efficiently.

Please explain AdRoll's revenue model. Do you support text ads, standard display, rich media and/or
video?

We keep a commission on the ad sales that run through our system. We also provide a set of free features:
publisher profile/media kit, ad builder, and the communication tools that allow advertisers to interact with the site
owners they advertise with.

In terms of formats, we currently focus on display ads including rich media and in banner video units.

Other than using AdRoll, of course, what recommendations would you have for publishers looking to grow
a successful and profitable website?

Many small to medium size publishers have a targeted, valuable audience, but just don't have enough visibility and
scale to efficiently attract brand dollars. These publishers often turn to a remnant solution, where their inventory is
sold relatively anonymously and primarily valued for the clicks received. We recommend publishers find ways to
raise their profile by banding together with similar sites and advocating for domain and URL transparency for
buyers wherever their inventory may be on the market.

Aside from that, the best thing publishers can do is to focus on their content and try to keep an advertiser's goal in
mind when laying out ad units. Now that the largest ad networks and ad servers are selling publisher's inventory to
the highest bidder, there's less to be gained by meticulously optimizing a daisy chain or trying to swap through
dozens of ad networks.

Follow AdRoll (@AdRoll) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 6, 2009 – 5:54 am

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AdShuffle Aiming To Maximize eCPMs For Publishers And
Transparency For Agencies Says CEO Buell
Email This Post

Ruben Buell is CEO of AdShuffle.

AdExchanger.com: How has AdShuffle evolved

since its inception? What opportunities is
AdShuffle seeing today that it didn't see when
AdShuffle began in 2005?

RB: AdShuffle started out as a real-time ad serving

solution for publishers in 2005 and has grown into
a fully integrated real-time advertiser and publisher
solution that can easily be managed under one
login. We built AdShuffle on a real-time
architecture, so users could manage all their buys
and inventory in real-time and run reports in real-
time. Then we expanded to real-time automated
creative optimization, then landing page
optimization and then to integrated remarketing
and targeting within our own custom targeted
creative sets technology. We continue to push the
boundaries of real-time analytics, leading the
industry.

AdShuffle was founded on the idea that buying,

selling, serving and measuring advertising online
should be easy. The single greatest comment we
hear from our customers is that their previous ad server was too complicated and didn’t deliver results. AdShuffle
solves that. We built AdShuffle as one simple solution for both advertisers and publishers. And AdShuffle’s
ongoing mission is to continue to make everything as easy as possible and to break down some of the process
barriers that currently exist in the industry.

What's your view on the demand-side platform (DSP) trend? How does it relate to AdShuffle's business
model?

Demand-side platforms are agencies’ response to the lack of transparency in the industry. This lack of
transparency is one of the core problems inherent in the online advertising industry.

Agencies were frustrated by their inability to see what was going on with their buys, and they felt that the only
solution was to do the work themselves. AdShuffle is solving this problem for them. We’re developing products
and processes that provide that transparency, so agencies can focus their energies less on the technology and
more on their clients.

What's in the DSP trend for publishers?

Demand-side platforms apply negative pressure to publisher pricing, eroding their inventory value in an already-
tight advertising economy. AdShuffle gives publishers a way to maximize their eCPMs, helping them identify which
advertisers and networks work best for them, and which do not.

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How do you compete with free ad serving capabilities such as those of OpenX with AdShuffle's EasyPay
product?

OpenX is a very limited solution for publishers new to advertising. AdShuffle serves both publishers and
advertisers with a flexible, yet robust full-service solution that maximizes both eCPMs and marketing spend,
helping them to be more profitable.

Please define AdShuffle's core competencies - beyond "a global leader in ad serving and marketing
technology." Who's in your competitive set?

AdShuffle is a full-service, real-time ad serving platform for advertisers and publishers. AdShuffle incorporates
everything under one login allowing users to easily manage buying and selling media without having access to two
systems and learning two different systems.

AdShuffle’s strengths include providing advertisers and publishers with real-time reporting, automated creative and
landing page optimization, remarketing, advanced targeting (using what we call “targeted creatives sets”),
campaign management and more.

Our competitive set includes larger players in ad serving, including Google’s DoubleClick and Atlas, now part of
Microsoft advertising platform.

How have your previous roles at Wells Fargo and H.D. Vest Financial Services prepared you for the ad
business? Any challenges?
At Wells Fargo and H.D. Vest Financial Services, our focus was on maximizing what we provided for our clients
and what they could in turn provide for their customers. We worked on systems that provided real-time data and
these systems could not fail or they impacted a client’s purchase or sell of a customer’s stock or mutual fund.
Coming from the financial services industry, we have no tolerance for failure within our systems and data and
that’s coming from a different mindset than most people in this industry.

We also developed extremely creative ways to provide our clients with top-notch technology and services, which
they in turn could provide to their clients. We’ve leveraged that background in real-time trading and stock quotes
to bring real-time data to ad serving. Without having worked in the financial services industry, I’m not sure we
would have had as much knowledge on the financial side of our clients business as we are as fortunate to have
today. We understand finances and what it really means to have a return on your investment, which is what every
single one of our clients wants.

Coming from the financial services industry, we didn’t accept the status quo of the online advertising industry. We
constantly ask, “why is it done this way?” and then respond with “we can do it better.” And from the responses we
get from clients, we are doing it better.

Is "real-time" really necessary for effective optimization? Can effective optimization be implemented
without real-time feedback whether its conversion data, audience data, etc.?
Real-time is absolutely necessary. Finding out an ad or a landing page isn’t working as quickly as possible saves
advertisers from wasting money on the wrong ad or the wrong location. You also don’t know what’s working at
certain times of the day if you don’t have real-time data. Without real-time data and optimization what do people
do over the weekends? Typically wait until Monday to find out a buy didn’t work. Imagine how critical it is for
advertisers to be able to run buys on the weekend and know they are performing effectively because of real-time
information and results.

Optimization cannot be effective if it’s not in real-time. You will be without a doubt throwing money away. If you
settle for optimizing once a day or only several times a week, you are basically saying that it’s okay to throw away
30-40% of your marketing budget.

December 13, 2009 – 7:23 pm

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AudienceScience CEO Hirsch Says Real-Time Bidding
Enables True Value in Media
Email This Post

Jeff Hirsch is President and CEO of AudienceScience.

AdExchanger.com: Do you agree that audience has

become more important than placement? If so, what
have been the key drivers?

JH: I absolutely agree that the reaching right audience is the most important component of any advertising.
Contextual placements are often a proxy for reaching a specific audience. In addition, placement in context on
premium sites is inventory supply limited, and with the need for campaign efficiency greater than ever, audience
targeting is a vital resource to marketers.

Behavioral targeting is an effective form of online advertising. But - privacy concerns aside - where are the
areas that can be developed or improved with BT?

We are able to create the most accurate audience segments, targeted to great detail; however the challenge to
marketers is being able to efficiently match creative and messaging with each specific audience segment in a
timely manner. Another area that can be improved is the analysis of the massive amounts of data (strictly
anonymous of course) available to gain consumer insight on an individual level. Through deeper analysis we can
target consumer with relevant messaging customized to their particular stage in the buying process and reach
them anywhere on the web.

How effective is porting offline data (such as Datran or Aperture) to online campaigns today? Is
AudienceScience using offline data on behalf of its clients?

This practice looks to be very effective; more data to incorporate into a segment can only improve targeting
accuracy and scale. However, we do not engage in this methodology yet as we are still weighing the consumer
privacy issues.

How will media agencies need to change to keep up with ongoing innovation in the online ad industry?

Media agencies will need to implement technologies and practices that give them a deeper understanding of their
client's audiences. This advanced knowledge will empower agencies to deliver campaigns that reduce waste and
increase ROI.

Where should publishers be looking to improve yield in the future?

They should expand the boundaries of their site and not allow themselves to be limited by data or inventory.
Publishers have spent years developing monetization strategies around their inventory . They need to spend the
same energy developing strategies around the value of their audience. By doing so, they can dramatically expand
their revenue opportunities.

Does AudienceScience participate in data exchanges or ad exchanges? Or will it create its own data
exchange?

We find value in working with any quality source of inventory or data. Our value proposition is to find audiences
anywhere and any technology that offers us the ability to do so in a brand safe environment is important to us. We

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do not foresee building our own exchange as our core focus is on the qualitative construction and targeting of
comprehensive audience segments.

How will demand-side optimization and real-time bidding (RTB) affect AudienceScience?

For AudienceScience as an entity that creates high value audiences and then targets those audiences on
inventory we buy, RTB is a welcome development. We are looking for specific users that we want to target, and
being able to bid on only those impressions we want is more efficient and benefits both buyers and sellers. Doing
this on a per impression basis in real time enables us to determine the true value of the impression to us, and by
extension to our advertiser clients, using all of the data available to us. We are better able to do demand side
optimization.

Any trends you can discuss as to what part of the purchase funnel behavioral advertising is affecting
today? Are brand awareness campaigns growing with BT or is it still direct response-focused with brand
still a ways off?

We have seen success with brand awareness campaigns. Behavioral targeting has an effect throughout the sales
funnel, because it does not rely on context or placement, and can tailor messaging and creative specific to
audiences no matter which stage of the funnel they are in. It can be a powerful branding channel; unfortunately,
automated brand measurement methodologies are still very limited.

Follow Jeff Hirsch (@jkhirsch), AudienceScience (@pubmatic) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

May 13, 2009 – 7:18 am

71
AOL Platform-A’s Div Bhansali Discusses BidPlace SB and
LeadBack.com
Email This Post

Div Bhansali is director of self-service products for Platform-A, and serves as product manager for Platform-A’s
self-service display advertising solutions, BidPlace SB and LeadBack.com. Div came to Platform-A by way of AOL
/ Advertising.com, where he served as Product Development Director.

AdExchanger.com: What is Platform-A's BidPlace SB and tell us

about BidPlace's product pipeline?

DB: BidPlace SB is Platform-A’s new banner advertising solution for

small- to mid-sized advertisers. Platform-A is known for offering large
advertisers fully managed advertising campaigns across the largest
banner ad network on the Web. BidPlace SB is the first Platform-A
product specifically geared towards giving smaller advertisers access
to that same high-reach network.

BidPlace SB is all about targeting, performance and control. Our

targeting options are the broadest and most diverse of any self-
service product, and combined with our unparalleled reach, they give
advertisers the chance to achieve both accuracy and volume in lead
generation. We’re an excellent performance option because
advertisers can pay per click and set their own prices. And we offer
control via on-demand reporting at the account, campaign and banner level. We encourage our advertisers to test
different targeting combinations and banners to find what works best for their needs.

BidPlace SB is the first product in what will become a BidPlace suite of products. This summer, Platform-A will be
rolling out BidPlace Professional, which will give larger advertisers a chance to combine self-service campaign
management with full account support.

Is BidPlace SB an advertising exchange? If not, will there be an ad exchange appearing in the near future
from Platform-A?

In my mind, BidPlace SB isn’t an advertising exchange (yet), because the advertiser can’t select the specific site(s)
where they want to advertise. Right now, we’re a true advertising network, which means users are trading the
transparency they would expect from an exchange for our superior value and reach.

At some point in the future, I expect BidPlace SB to offer both – a network for advertisers who want to target a
specific audience, and an exchange for those who want to target specific sites or placements.

It looks like BidPlace SB is for advertisers only. How can publishers participate?

Larger publishers can learn more about monetizing their inventory within our network by visiting Platform-A's
Publisher Solutions section (http://www.platform-a.com/publisher-solutions). Platform-A also has a self-service
solution for smaller publishers, called PubAccess (www.pubaccess.com), which allows niche publishers to earn
CPM or revenue-share payouts on their inventory. And of course, I encourage publishers of all sizes to try
BidPlace SB and LeadBack.com to build their unique visitor base and bring them back to their sites.

What does BidPlace SB do to ensure brand safety?

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Well, the best way to ensure brand safety is to start with a network that has the highest-quality publisher sites.
Platform-A conducts a rigorous screening process for all of our publishers, thoroughly checking applicants for
inappropriate site content and/or behavior (auto-downloading applications, for instance).

The same applies on the advertiser side. Our Network Quality team checks every BidPlace SB advertiser, as well
as their specific ad campaigns, to make sure they meet our content and creative guidelines.

Where does BidPlace SB get its inventory? Would you characterize it as remnant?

BidPlace SB relies on Platform-A’s Advertising.com network for our inventory. As far as whether it’s “remnant”, like
any ad network, we buy inventory that varies greatly in its content and style. Some of it monetizes a lot better than
others, but obviously we wouldn’t be achieving 91% reach across the Web without including a lot of very high-
value inventory.

What is LeadBack? Does it work with BidPlace?

LeadBack is Platform-A’s self-service retargeting product. Advertisers can sign up at LeadBack.com to show ads
to people who have already visited their site. When the visitor leaves the site and goes to other sites in our
Advertising.com network, LeadBack.com shows them that advertiser’s banner ads to bring them back to the
original site. The theory behind LeadBack.com is that the best leads any online marketer has are the ones who
have already visited her site. We know they’re interested, and LeadBack.com turns that interest into conversions.
And best of all, LeadBack.com only charges for clicks back to the advertiser’s site, not for impressions.

Right now, LeadBack.com and BidPlace SB are two separate products. In the future, we may look to integrate
them to some extent, to simplify campaigns and reporting for our clients who use both products.

Is there minimum pricing and budgets for LeadBack and BidPlace SB?

BidPlace SB has a minimum daily budget of $10, and pricing starts as low as $1 CPM or $0.25 CPC. The more
targeted the campaign, the higher the minimum price. And clients have full visibility into our pricing for all targeting
options, so they can find the balance of targeting and value that’s best for them.

LeadBack.com currently works on a campaign budget minimum of $200, but an advertiser can run through that
budget as quickly or as slowly as their clicks allow. The larger their site population (i.e. the number of people who
have already visited their site), the more clicks they should get via LeadBack.com.

Any plans for APIs from Platform-A with or without BidPlace SB?

That’s a great question. We’ve had significant demand for API’s for BidPlace SB from agencies and SMB partners,
and we hope to be able to offer external API’s within the next few months.

Are there any upcoming shows or events at which people can learn more about BidPlace SB or LeadBack?

Yes, Platform-A will have a booth presence at ad:tech in San Francisco on April 21-23, and we’ll have BidPlace SB
and LeadBack.com materials available there. We’ll also be at Affiliate Summit East in New York in August, along
with our sister company, buy.at, which is a leading affiliate marketing network.

Who do you see as key competitors to BidPlace and LeadBack?

In the banner advertising space, BidPlace SB competes against Yahoo! and Ad Brite, among others.
LeadBack.com competes against retargeting.com and Fetchback.

Where online can one learn more about BidPlace and LeadBack?

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You can check out bidplacesb.com and leadback.com to learn more about the products. Also check us out on
twitter (bidplacesb and leadback) for product updates and news.

What do you see as the advertising exchange's role in the future?

I expect advertising networks and exchanges to have a very bright future. From a publisher standpoint, any site
that isn’t monetizing at 100% sell-through can benefit from a network or exchange, especially partners with a
reputation for working to protect publishers’ brands. Meanwhile, advertisers are gaining one-stop access to site
placements that they may not have been able to negotiate independently. Advertisers have a great deal of
leverage in the current marketplace, and can use that strength to achieve exceptional value via exchanges and
networks. I see this as a win-win for the industry.

In your opinion, how do exchanges move from a remnant inventory model to a premium and remnant
model?

The key is to better address what each side of the exchange equation wants. Advertisers are looking for
transparency – not just at the publisher level, but by site, URL, and even placement. The more visibility they
receive from an exchange, the more confident they feel about investing in a consistent spend with them. The goal
here is to attract advertisers of every type, large and small – like Google has done with AdWords.

Publishers, meanwhile, are looking for avenues where they can safely and productively sell their premium
inventory. If they could get the same payout rates and degree of brand protection from selling on an exchange as
via direct sales, they would obviously reduce their overhead and move towards an exchange-only model. But most
publishers aren’t there yet. The potential game-changer here is control. If an exchange gave the publisher full
control over pricing, advertiser blocks, and how their inventory was tiered, publishers would have a hard time
saying no. (Especially if a much more diverse audience of advertisers was flocking to the exchange, thanks to the
transparency mentioned above.)

If exchanges become willing to relinquish the sense of influence over the inventory buying and selling process that
they currently have, and cede that transparency and control to their clients, I think premium inventory can
absolutely fall within their grasp.

Follow BidPlace SB (@bidplacesb), Leadback (@leadback) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

April 6, 2009 – 8:02 am

74
Brand.net Getting Traction With CPG Clients Says CEO
Elizabeth Blair

Email This Post

Elizabeth Blair is CEO of Brand.net.

AdExchanger.com: Can you give us a sense of business

momentum currently at Brand.net? Any surprises?

EB: We've been trafficking campaigns for 12 months. Our target

market is the Ad Age 100 and to date we're right on target, with the
majority of our revenue coming from that group. On the "surprises"
front - we've had more and earlier success than we would have
anticipated with the CPGs; 7 of the 10 biggest have worked with us
already. Also, budgets have been larger than we forecast, each
quarter average order size has been over $100K. What all of this
tells me is that the biggest Brand advertisers want to use the web
as a - eventually the - mass media for Branding. When the internet
finally offers them the ability to do that well, scalably and efficiently
(as it has done for years for direct response (DR) advertisers), their
Brand budgets will move online.

How do you define "premium" inventory?

The word "premium" is at best imprecise and misused. We see

agencies and end clients focused on "quality", which in the modern
era requires two elements. First, (a) top comScore sites, where
publishers continue to invest in delivering a very high-quality user
experience and users recognize and reward that with their visitation and engagement. Second, (b) the page-by-
page experience itself. Over the past five or six years, you have seen virtually every publisher aggressively thread
UGC throughout the content (professional edit) experience. Often this occurs as user-posted comments below
articles. The stated goal is to increase engagement - the unstated goal to increase page views - whatever the
reason it has dramatically complicated the purchasing experience for Brand advertisers just as they were gearing
up to move more Brand advertising online. Brands are very sensitive about inappropriate text and/or images
appearing on pages where they place ads, especially so if their ad is directly adjacent to that content. Our
SafeScreen product, launched in Q109, allows us to do page level content filtering - which gives advertisers
"cleaner" experiences than if they bought directly from those publishers. This is not a trivial problem (nor an easy
one to solve technically); we've already screened out over 25 million impressions that came from the highest
quality publishers, in the content channels most popular with Brand advertisers. So (a) top sites and (b) safe page-
level environment = quality to us and to our customers.

Where are the brands and their budgets? Do you think brand marketers see digital as direct response-
focused?

Today, 95% of Brand budgets are spent offline - so in TV (even though the most attractive viewers are the most
likely to use DVRs and skip commercials entirely), in print, etc. Brand marketers are smart - they know that
spending 5% of their budget where their target demographic is spending up to 40% of its media time is a recipe for
trouble. Beyond spending too much to reach too few, they flat out are failing to reach the people they need to buy
their toothpaste and shampoo, cereal and soda, movie tickets and DVDs, cars and vacations. I think Brand
marketers see digital as frustrating. They see it working brilliantly for their direct response counterparts - scalable,
efficient and effective. But to buy Brand online the way they need to do it, they have to go publisher to publisher to

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publisher executing individual buys, then frantically try to "pull it all together" to make sure they are achieving their
composition, reach, frequency and pacing goals. It is incredibly difficult to do this even across a couple of
publishers at a time, and even more so to do it all contemporaneously with the offline (read: much larger) portion of
the campaign. The final insult is that even though Brand advertising in the US is almost twice as large a business
in dollars as direct response - and other mass media put the biggest and best, most scalable opportunities in front
of the Brand advertisers - online we tell the Brand guys to get over it and use direct response tools and networks
built for direct response. Again, when the internet finally offers Brand advertisers the ability to do Brand advertising
well, scalably and efficiently, their Brand budgets will move online. That, of course, is what Brand.net is focused on
doing.

How do you assure publisher partners that you are not "cannibalizing" their inventory?

I think what you mean here is channel conflict. I spent most of my career in publishing - first in the magazine
business, then 9 years at Yahoo! I am passionate about great content. No advertising supported major media has
ever supported great content without access to material amounts of Brand spending. So I assure publisher
partners that I won't cannibalize them in a couple of ways. First, I tell them to sell every possible ad impression
they can directly, using their own sales force, indeed right up until run time. To take the highest margin dollars they
can get. But for several reasons (inventory volatility, supply/demand imbalance, etc.) no publisher ever sells
everything and my goal, then, is to be their partner of choice. When they say "who can step in real time and
monetize my unsold inventory" I am there with guaranteed spend from top quality Brand advertisers, with high end
creative and better CPMs than they can get from direct response. This gives them the most money for any excess
inventory which, again, allows them to continue to invest in delivering high quality user experience. Finally, while
my advertisers know I only run on the top comScore sites in each content channel, they also know we don't
disclose what sites they ran on and in what combinations for their specific buys. I am very proud of the great
relationships we have with the best content sites online and I'll continue to do everything in my power to help them
grow their businesses.

Can you see challenges developing in the agency model? Rapidly evolving technology is hard to chase for
a service business, no?

I've seen the advertising agencies evolving their model and their business very rapidly over the past few years, in
response to massive shifts in media usage and, then, the current economic environment layering on top of that.
With these massive concurrent shifts, there has never been a bigger need than there is today for Brands to have a
trusted advisor partnering with them to drive media strategy and buying. That's the role the agencies are uniquely
suited to play. Do agencies need and use technology to do that? Absolutely. But I do think their business sweet
spot, their emphasis, and their business model is going to focus on portfolio management - first, on cross-channel
media allocation decisions, then on monitoring and thus driving best execution by vendors who are best in class
across their disciplines. So the technology they will emphasize is the technology that allows them to do that
portfolio management incredibly well. The big holding companies have and are enhancing those capabilities, and
are actively working with Brand.net and our peers to evaluate which will make their shortlist of preferred provider
partners.

Would you ever consider buying from exchanges? Under what circumstances?

Yes. We do work with exchange technology platforms when our direct relationship with the publisher enables us to
know with 100% certainty what we are buying and using that platform provides operational efficiency for both the
publisher and Brand.net.

What's closer to the value proposition for Brand.net - that you offer brand-safe inventory or you are
experts at building brands on the Web?

We are experts at building Brand campaigns on the web. Let's be clear - we are not a creative agency, and we
don't do cross-media strategy and planning. Once the client and agency decide what the right message is, and that
the web is a big part of where they want that messaging to occur, we step in and get that Brand message out in the
highest quality online environments, with tightly managed campaigns, and clear Brand-focused intra- and post-

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campaign metrics. So offering Brand-safe inventory is certainly a core competency of ours, and a critical element
of our value proposition, but only one piece. It's pulling it all together - efficiently, effectively and at scale - where
we deliver value to the Brands and agencies.

Do you ever provide a site list to buying partners? How do you handle this request and assure brand
safety?

As I discussed above, our advertisers know we only run on the top comScore sites in each content channel, and
they also know we don't disclose what sites they ran on and in what combinations for their specific buys. We may
provide comScore data or examples to help buyers understand what types of sites constitute a "channel". All
Brand.net media runs through SafeScreen, our page-level content filtering system, to assure the safety of our
advertisers' brands.

If you were a young media planner, buyer or seller (network side) in the digital media space, how would
you proceed so that you develop key skills for a successful media career? Any suggestions?

As I said above, I think the elite agencies of the future will be true media portfolio managers, planning and
executing cross-media strategies. So young people should focus on learning strategy and buying top to bottom,
and across multiple media.

May 18, 2009 – 7:42 am

77
Bizo CEO Russell Glass Says Data Driving B2B Demand-
Side Optimization, Too
Email This Post

Russell Glass is CEO of Bizo, a business-to-business ad

network.

AdExchanger.com: Judging from your June release,

Bizo business appears to have momentum. Has B2B
been slowed in the recession or never stopped? What
are you expecting from the economy in the next 12
months?

B2B has been hurt by the recession, but it has kept pace
with the rest of the industry and its projected to take an
increasingly larger share of the overall online advertising
pie in future years. We call it a high-growth $4 billion
business, but I've seen numbers placing it at over $5 billion
for 2009 with steady, 15-20% growth over the next 12
months and beyond.

How is Bizo differentiating itself from other B2B ad

networks? Is it technology or service? Please explain.

We like to think it's both. We work very hard to provide the

best possible service and results to our advertisers, but our
main differentiator is our technology. Our platform collects
data from our B2B publishing partners and other company
information sources, and we then organize and anonymize
that data to create bizographic profiles that include such
features as job function, industry, company size and
seniority level. We're then able to use that data to target
advertising across our growing B2B network without
compromising individual online privacy. It's a proven model
- it provides better results at better rates than competing
offerings - and it's all dependent on the strength of our
technology and the strength of our network.

Why did you spinoff ZoomInfo's ad platform to form Bizo?

We saw a hole in the market that we wanted to go after: bizographic targeting for the online B2B market. Although
there was significant IP that ZoomInfo was able to bring to the table, that wasn't the business that ZoomInfo was in
so it made sense to spin Bizo out into a separate business. It's all about focus for both companies.

For publishers, how do you increase their revenues without cannibalizing sales? Isn't channel conflict
inevitable?

Good question. Our model is highly focused on the publisher. Because our sales are based on audience targeting
vs. site targeting, we never compete with the publisher sales teams who are selling their site brand. In fact, we
have advertisers who ask us for specific publishers, and we turn them over to the sales teams of our partners. At
the same time, we're giving our publishers an opportunity to monetize their audience in new ways, without

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compromising that audience's privacy or user experience. With Bizo, a B2B publisher can extend their audience
reach, monetize audiences off site, and increase the value of their unsold inventory by an average of over 300%.

What's your view on ad exchanges? Using any? If so, which ones work?

We think there is tremendous value and efficiency to exchanges on both the buy and sell side. Bizo currently gets
more than 30% of its audience reach - and a lot of its margin - by buying and arbing supply from the exchanges.
There are issues however, primarily around quality and transparency. Bizo's business is using data to improve the
quality and value of an impression, and we consistently do so - by over 300% on average. The problem with
exchanges is that making a $0.25 CPM impression worth $0.75 or even $1.00 doesn't do much for us. Our
customers in B2B are looking for us to take a $5.00 impression and make it worth $15.00, and they're sensitive to
quality. I believe the exchanges need to improve their quality and transparency across the board to break through.

How will real-time bidding and demand-side optimization affect your business?

It's already affecting our business in a huge way. We're spot-bidding 65% of our impressions today through the
waterfall/default model. In some ways, we've created a loosely coupled exchange of our own through how our
network partnerships are structured. We rarely take ownership of inventory, and we almost always have CPM
floors in place where our publishers can dictate the rules that allow us to be on the top of the waterfall. We can use
this model because of how high our average CPMs are for publishers - well in excess of $3.00 net. With respect to
the demand-side optimization, our data drives demand-side optimization because the business audience is so
valuable, and it's already being used by many of the big optimizers and networks to improve their campaigns.

How does Bizo address the purchase funnel for marketers?

Bizo is a display advertising network, so we're really the most focused on the top of the funnel - how do you drive
demand and awareness for your products. There has been a ton of research of late from comScore, Microsoft,
Yahoo and others that show how effective display advertising is in creating brand awareness and driving the top of
the purchase funnel. Bizo is focused on helping B2B marketers take advantage of this phenomenon in an efficient
way by targeting the specific audiences that they care about for their products and services. Additionally, Bizo has
seen a lot of success with retargeting non-converts across our B2B network of sites, and focusing certain
campaigns on sites where our audience members are showing some purchasing behaviors. These capabilities are
much more aligned with the consideration and purchasing stages of the funnel, although it's not our primary focus.

For targeting, where do you get your data sets? Do you use data exchanges? Do they work?

We get our data through our platform which processes and normalizes data from the 300-plus publishers in our
network and other data sources. We've processed billions of data points and we can now target over 45 million
users in more than 200 targetable segments on a monthly basis. Yes, we sometimes use small business data from
exchanges, but only rarely and for broadly targeted campaigns because it's not as targeted as our data is and it
doesn't tend to work as well. From what we can tell, the data exchanges tend to be the most effective in high-
value, "in-market" categories such as automotive and travel. We make our targeting data available to other ad
networks and exchanges to help them more effectively work with the B2B market, and we will be making some
significant announcements about this in the near future.

How does your revenue model work? Revenue share, transactional, performance, other?

Our advertisers pay us on a CPM, but we optimize to whatever metric they're looking for (actions, loads, time on
site, clicks, etc.). We share revenue with our inventory and data provider publishers who benefit from the higher-
than average CPMs due to our targeting. On average, our publisher partners are getting over $1.50 CPM for their
data and $3.00 for their inventory. If they provide both, it's over $4.50 for the impressions.

What are the challenges of running a B2B ad network versus a B2C ad network?

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There are a few challenges. First, the B2B industry can get very niche - environmentally friendly dry cleaners
would be a good example. There are marketers out there that are looking to reach every EFDC on the planet, and
our goal is to provide them an efficient way to do so. However, scale becomes a problem there. If there are only
50,000 of these guys, there just aren't many impressions to go after, and you can pretty much throw optimization
out the window. The upside is that the CPMs go way up in these niches, and our partners know how to sell to
these buyers. The second issue is that the B2B industry is still well behind the B2C industry in their "move to the
web," which makes some of our sales cycles longer than you'll typically see in the B2C world. That all said, going
after a narrower market can be a huge benefit because we are able to focus and dig deeper to provide successful
solutions than we would otherwise be able to. Also, because we view what we do as an audience-targeting
platform based purely on B2B audience data - as opposed to a typical ad network - we can be much more flexible
with our business model.

Follow Bizo (@follow_bizo) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 17, 2009 – 8:46 am

80
Collective Media CEO Apprendi Says 2009 Is About
Audience-centric Buying and Bigger, Richer Media
Email This Post

Joe Apprendi is CEO of Collective Media.

AdExchanger.com: Any trends/momentum you can share in your

display ad business?

JA: There are two major trends that developed in 2008 and are really
accelerating in 2009. The first is the shift from site-specific to audience-
centric buying among brand advertisers. Agencies/Advertisers are
realizing there are many ways to reach a target audience beyond
conventional site/section targeting. Second, in response to this trend,
there is a greater emphasis among brand-name publishers to create
bigger, richer ad units to increase the effectiveness of ad creative beyond
standard IAB ad sizes. Not only will this continue, it is a critical ingredient
to the success of a display ad campaign.

How is technology impacting the online ad network space?

Ad technology is at the core of the most successful ad networks. Of the

400+ ad networks, 90% of them have no proprietary, differentiated
technology. In fact, many simply provide services on top of existing ad
exchanges. I believe that the market is recognizing the ad network
players who are providing a meaningful platform that increases the
effectiveness of their display advertising spend. This includes audience
targeting, yield management and ad effectiveness analytics.

What will bring the brand awareness dollars online in a way that matches the time spent on the Web by the
consumer?

There are a number of factors that prevent this shift from occurring as rapidly as we’d like, but a few of them are
front and center. It just takes time for the agencies/advertisers to understand how online display/video compare to
‘tried and true’ offline tactics (TV, Print, Radio, etc.). This is an education process. As ‘digitally trained’ media
decision-makers become the majority of buyers, you’ll see more spending coming online. More importantly, we
need to provide a comparable ad format and buy methodology. This is especially true if we expect online video to
steal share from TV/Cable. If the online market could buy a :30 spot based on a Nielsen Rating, we’d be much
farther along here.

Your messaging references Collective Media's ability to offer "full transparency." How do you provide
transparency but prevent channel conflict for partner publishers? What does "full transparency" mean?

This is a great question, because it is the most important component of maintaining strong relationships with our
brand-name publishers. We sell target audiences, not sites. We never sell site specifically or report site
specifically. This way, our publishers can continue to do what they do well while we provide a complementary
‘audience-targeting’ solution to the same agencies/advertisers that they are working with.

Agencies are starting to provide services that ad networks provide and visa versa. Do both models merge
at some point? What will be the key differentiators?

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Yes, they should absolutely be exploring ways to provide ad network technology and services to their clients. In
fact, we operate very much like an agency ad network already. We just happen to service multiple
agencies/advertisers in this regard vs. simply one holding company.

As technology provides real-time insight at the impression level, does it follow that more players, traders,
networks (whatever you want to call them) will jump in rather than less?

As mentioned, if more display spending is moving towards ad network solutions, it’s likely that more players
emerge. I think you’ll see leading diversified media companies, agencies and others step in to offer an ‘audience-
centric’ solution to their advertisers. However, I don’t think you’ll see many more ad networks that offer any
meaningful value beyond just a way to access commoditized ad impressions through ad exchanges. Differentiated
technology, targeting and inventory matter most moving forward.

Can you discuss your AMP® platform and how you're positioning it to publishers and advertisers?

AMP provides a turn-key technology platform for any company that wants to build or manage an audience network.
To do this successfully you need a sophisticated audience targeting engine, ad network administration and
reporting solution. Whether you’re an agency network or publisher network, this applies. A nice feature about AMP
is that it fully integrates with DoubleClick’s DART ad server, so customers don’t need to rethink their ad serving
solution to capitalize on the benefits that AMP provides.

What recommendations would you make to web publishers who are looking to create strategies that
compensate for the recent plummet in CPMs?

They really have to pursue two paths in parallel. First, they need to maximize the value of their site-specific ad
revenue. This involves better ad units, targeting data and inventory management. Second, they need to explore an
audience-centric solution, whether by building their own ad network or partnering strategically with an ad network
partner that can fully capitalize on this market opportunity. It’s not just one or the other - it’s both.

Where does Collective Media's audience targeting data come from? How can advertisers be sure that it is
accurate?

We acquired Personifi®, a leading semantic classification and audience targeting company last year. With this
acquisition, we’ve created the AMP Audience Cloud™, which provides a centralized audience targeting platform
for both contextual and behavioral targeting. We work with multiple third party data providers right now and
continue to ad more based on advertising demand. One of the nice things about our platform is that we not only
target against a myriad of audience segments, but we also provide complete reporting on what audience segments
are working and which ones are not.

How important are audience analytics and what kinds of capabilities are available in this area?
I think this is the most important component of adding value to publishers and advertisers. You need to report on
both data and metrics that are meaningful no matter what the objective. We do this. But beyond this is the
business intelligence that can be extracted from a great analytics tool. This is where research, analysts and service
in general play a symbiotic role in meeting the needs of our customers.

How does Collective use engagement metrics to help enhance how consumers view and interact with
campaigns?
This capability is built into our ad platform. Clearly, clicks and conversions do not tell the complete story of the
efficacy of a display ad campaign. In fact, they can be utterly misleading. This is where other metrics play an
important role, especially for brand advertisers vs. direct marketers.

Will search retargeting in display inventory be a huge opportunity for advertisers and publishers if Google
is able to solve privacy concerns? Has Collective Media had any success with Yahoo!'s search retargeting
product?
It already is. This is a key source of retargeting data for our advertisers today. This coupled with site, email and ad

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retargeting will provide new, innovative data sources for our marketers to better optimize their display ad
campaigns.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 8, 2009 – 5:24 am

83
Are You Ready? Real-Time Bidding Breakout Next Year
Says Contextweb EVP Sears
Email This Post

Jay Sears is EVP, Strategic Products & Business Development of ContextWeb, Inc. / ADSDAQ Exchange who
announced their real-time bidding API recently.

AdExchanger.com: What will demand-side optimization

provide for the advertiser/agency? Can you quantify
performance improvements an advertiser might see in
comparison to futures or reserved bidding/buying?

JS: More control. Very simply, real-time impression level

bidding lets you make decisions at the impression level.
The new agency “demand side platforms” are designed to
interact with exchanges and conduct real-time valuation of
impressions; layer proprietary data held by the agency or
marketer and dynamically allocate impression level media
to specific clients and creative units.

With guaranteed delivery (futures), decisions are made at the campaign level. Because of our name-your-price
model with publishers, ContextWeb have been conducting real-time impression transactions and packaging this
into a guaranteed delivery product since 2005.

Are there any publisher benefits? For example, could real-time bidding turn remnant into premium
inventory?

More advertisers equal more money for publishers. More control equals more premium inventory for advertisers.
The ADSDAQ Exchange AskPrice, where publishers set the CPM clearing rate for inventory, is still the primary
publisher benefit. Real-time bidding is one way for another segment of advertisers to “plug-in” and trade. The more
control (first look, content and context, specific audience, real-time decisioning) you hand the buyer, the more
value they derive from each impression.

How long before real-time bidding and spot market buys achieve scale in the online display ad
marketplace?

Market players—the agency demand platforms (WPP’s B-3, Omnicom’s trading platform, Publicis’ VivaKi,
Interpublic’s platform, Havas’ Adnetik, MDC’s Varick Media Management), the exchange re-sellers (Invite Media,
Media Math), the ad networks—will test and experiment with real-time bidding in 2009. Then 2010 and 2011 are
the breakout years.

Will futures/reserved buying "go away" someday with the exception of sales through a publisher's direct
sales team?

Not a chance. Reserved buying is here to stay. The value of predictability—guaranteed delivery—in a digital media
world than is more and more fragmented—is something advertisers ascribe high value. With our ADSDAQ
Exchange, it is about being additive—facilitating spot buying, facilitating real-time bidding—how else do we make
the exchange most relevant for customers in each market segment.

How does the real-time bidding (RTB) API leverage ContextWeb's existing technology? Is there a
contextual component to the API that buyers can tap?

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Contextual is one of the key impression attributes available in the real time API. Marketers have always associated
value with context. Content is an essential “basis grade’ or high value common denominator that can be used
across billions of sites and trillions of impressions to make media tradable at scale. Content is an excellent entry
point upon which to then layer additional targeting such as geography or behavioral.

Effectively, we have been running real-time, impression based valuation, buying and allocation inside a futures
offering since 2005. Now that the market is a bit more mature and some agencies and other supporting companies
are ready to take part of this control themselves. You will see an entire industry emerge around exchanges, just
like search engine marketing firms grew up around Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.

When will the API be ready for implementation and open for real-time bidding?

Now. We have specifications and a development sandbox available and continue to roll trading partners into a live
environment. Digital agencies, ad networks and other arbitrageurs interested in ContextWeb’s ADSDAQ’s Real
Time API can contact the company and download the technical specifications at http://realtime.contextweb.com.

Will there be any additional infrastructure implementation required with ContextWeb's real-time bidding
API? Co-location, cloud?

No. If your data center happens to far away from one of ours, partners may consider co-location for performance
improvement. We need to keep the entire bidding process around 100 milliseconds.

How have your publishers responded to having their URLs exposed in the API? Is there potential for
channel conflict with your publishers?

Channel conflict is solved by giving a publisher control over URL disclosure. Of 9,000 publishers, a couple
hundred—mostly comScore 250 publishers—request we suppress the URL. In those cases we offer a "PID" or
publisher ID number so a buyer still has the option of tracking that element.

Will all of your publishers be part of the program or will there be an opt-out?

Publishers don’t choose to be part of a futures, spot or real-time program. Publishers can opt-out or block specific
advertisers from appearing in their inventory. It is a must-have feature, but in practice relatively few publishers
actively use this capability.

Follow Jay Sears (@JaySears), Contextweb (@contextweb) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

May 11, 2009 – 7:50 am

85
CPX Interactive CEO Seiman Sees Strength In Consumer
Goods and DM Clients With Upfront Revenues
Mike Seiman is CEO and Founder of global online ad network,
CPX Interactive.

AdExchanger.com: How's CPX Interactive's display ad

business? Any trends that you can share?

MS: Our display business is strong, we are continually seeing

growth not only in terms of revenue but in terms of impressions
served. Obviously, seeing revenue growth in this economy is
becoming less common.

One of the things that makes us more comfortable in these

tougher times is the diversity of our clients. Interestingly, we are
noticing that consumer goods in the $100 and under range are
still selling fairly well in this market, but big brands are pulling
back more and more on spending. It also seems that direct
marketers who’s revenue is generated before they pay for media
are spending more then those direct marketers who have to
frontload their CPA to earn residual money over the lifetime of a
user.

Please provide a bit of background on CPX's use of ad exchanges. Why are exchanges important? Any
exchanges "getting it right" these days, in particular?

We have embraced the model since its inception. We were one of the earliest (and remain one of the largest)
players in the Right Media Exchange. We have also been happy to be beta users in most of the other exchanges
that have popped up. We buy some extra inventory for our network through them all and allow them to buy on us
to increase the cpm we provide for our publishers. It is probably still too early to say if anyone is getting it right as
we don’t really know what right is yet. Ultimately, though, anything that makes the market more liquid is a good
thing.

Has CPX used real-time bidding (RTB) or demand-side optimization yet? Is RTB a "big deal" in your view?

We do use some RTB with a few publishers. I think it certainly helps competitive networks step up their game. As
to whether it is a “big deal”, it can be, but today I don’t think there are enough players using it for it to be a “big
deal” . Someday when you have 20+ networks and hundreds of publishers using it, it will be a really big deal.

Are you using data exchanges? Can data exchanges help the marketer? Any challenges?

We do use some data exchanges like Blue Kai. Whether they help our bottom line really depends on what data we
are buying and how relevant it is to the campaign. Unfortunately, while it can provide decent lift in revenue, with the
cost of the data, it can often end up being a wash.

It would probably be better for us if they pitched their services directly to the advertisers, and the advertiser paid for
the data before they came to an ad network. With the model as it is now, I think ad networks will begin to think
more creatively about how they can create their own data and push the value-add to their bottom lines.

With many trading platforms and services either in stealth mode or already available - such as Invite Media
and Media Math - how will CPX compete? Have you built your own platform to aggregate across multiple
exchanges or have you/will you outsource?

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These kinds of platforms can definitely benefit agencies by providing a window into our inventory, but at the end of
the day it’s all about scale for us so CPX really remains in control of its own destiny. CPX manages over 30+ billion
impressions monthly and 80% of those are direct and not from any exchange. Regardless of what platform an
agency or advertiser uses, they need to come to CPX to buy that direct inventory. We are currently plugged into
multiple campaigns and will shortly be able to provide better granularity across those platforms then these other
service providers.

Is there value in placement? Or, is it all about audience?

There is absolutely value in placement and …yes it is all about audience. Great placement in front of the wrong
audience is irrelevant and bad placement to the perfect audience will be equally useless. Both are truly needed to
deliver real value.

Are view-through conversions an accepted metric by clients/CPX? How does attribution get solved going
forward? Any thoughts on the ability to map to offline, too?

Most of the time, on high priced DM campaigns, view-through conversion is acceptable. Of course, the problem is
the attribution. Our numbers often show 80% discrepancies on view-through conversions, so the question remains,
“who is getting that credit and what value did our impression add to that sale?” I believe that, in the long term, we
will be able to validate that as well as validate offline purchases through online media. Meanwhile, hybrid models
are probably the best way to combat this in the near term, until a better analysis tool is created.

Do ad networks cannibalize publisher inventory? How does CPX prevent "cannibalization"?

Some ad networks probably do cannibalize publisher inventory. We often discuss, at CPX, that publishers tend to
be the forgotten part of the equation in the industry. Their inventory is may be taken for granted and commoditized.
We like to think that CPX is different, though. Carlton Hickman (CPX co-founder) and I were publishers, ourselves,
before we began what became CPX. We have always understood the integral role that publisher inventory plays in
the process and the importance of being able to convince publishers that you truly understand their bottomlines
and speak their language. We have always paid top dollar for quality publisher inventory. Without it, after all, no ad
network has a ‘product,’ so we strive to create the highest ecpms we possibly can for our publishers and ensure
that we are buying competitively.

How do you see digital media buying agencies evolving? What recommendations would you make to the
agency side?

As advertising budgets move more quickly from TV and print to online, traditional agencies are going to have to be
better prepared to play in this part of the industry. Obviously, many large agencies are already successful in the
space and I think we will see more following suite. My suggestion would be that they do their best to truly
understand the factors that make online media buying different from the more traditional models, rather than simply
applying old rules to the newer medium. We have been pretty successful in helping the agencies we work with
along their learning curves.

If you were a young digital marketer, where would you focus your training? Any tips?

At the risk of sounding self-serving, I would truly suggest that any digital marketer seek a better understanding of
how they can leverage the scalable distribution of a quality ad network. There have been (and still are) issues that
must be resolved so that all parties can achieve total comfortability with the process, but the truth is that the
promise of the Internet is really the delivery of scalable targeted audiences. To maximize this strength, digital
marketers must build a partnership with a company that can execute on that promise.

Follow Mike Seiman (@CPXceo), CPX Interactive (@CPXinteractive) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on
Twitter.

May 21, 2009 – 6:53 am

87
CPA Is The Only Meaningful Metric To Our Clients Says
Dapper COO Aizen
Jon Aizen is COO of Dapper, an online ad network.

Please share what trends Dapper is seeing on the client-side in

2009. Any vertical strengths, typical campaigns, deal size, etc.?

Trends are toward performance-only metrics. We're seeing eCPA as

the meaningful metric for our customers, and we're embracing that by
offering it as a pricing option right off the bat. Verticals we're growing
in are travel, where the emphasis on real-time pricing and inventory is
obviously there, and now, Financial Services.

How does Dapper target the purchase funnel for its clients? Are
you in the business of generating interest (top of the funnel), or
fulfilling intent (bottom - similar to search)?

Definitely more down-funnel, especially when we retarget with our

remessaging product. We're able to actually show the exact products
the consumer was looking at before he/she abandoned the
advertiser's website. Beyond that, when we do a RON campaign with
our ImpressionDNA technology that infers intent from every page load,
we're matching that intent with an offer from the search engine of
offers we've created. So it works a lot like search.

Dapper appears to be offering automated behavioral, geo, creative and contextual optimization
simultaneously with ImpressionDNA. Where is the behavioral information stored? It would appear that you
use a combination of cookie data and semantic/contextual scanning to optimize. What is real-time in the
process?

Behavioral information is stored in a cookie as per usual. What's unusual about this is that we're combining (as you
note) these data with contextual / semantic data but also with user location data and past performance. The real-
time part is when we add all this up with the proper weights with each impression to then search the offers we have
from our advertisers. All this occurs in real-time with every impression. An example: an advertiser could be an
online travel agency, selling hotel rooms in every major city in the US. This ad needs a user location and a
possible date range.

That's on the advertiser side. On the media side, we're buying a ton of uncategorized RON media from a lot of the
networks and scanning each page for a match to this "DNA Profile:" location (via geo-IP), date. When an
impression loads that has a valid profile to match the ticketing ad's inputs, we search the OTA site for the right
hotel for this user and voila! For the impressions where we don't find a match, we either find one with one of our
other advertisers or we simply sell it back to the ad exchange. And of course, performance is used as a feedback
loop in this whole process.

With so much power on the side of the algorithm(s), is there anything left for the client to do once the
campaign starts?

Watch the conversions come in. Usually the client gives us feedback to expand the buy if it's something they're
excited about, but because everything is automatic, there isn't much work on their side except to watch the
campaign along with us. Often times we will work closely with our customers to continue the process of innovation
on the ad creative, including optimization techniques for which offers to bring in.

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How does ImpressionDNA benefit the publisher?

It allows for ads on their site that actually look and behave like integrated site features more than ads. Thus,
publishers gain content relevant to their users (think about a travel site with a built-in feature that guesses where
you want to travel and knows your home city) that keeps these users on their site longer. In some cases, it means
that they can sell Dapper Ads to their own advertisers at a premium, but obviously this is only the case with
premium buys. In short, the ad becomes an extension of their content rather than a competitor to it.

Will real-time bidding (RTB) and demand-side optimization impact Dapper?

Yes, absolutely. It makes the whole system even more efficient.

Are ad exchanges a "good thing" for Dapper? Does Dapper want to be an exchange with its impression
level technology?
Exchanges are a crucial part of our process. We're partnered with several, including RightMedia, OpenX, and
AdBrite, and we utilize them to do the whole buying, categorizing, serving up the wheat and selling back the chaff
that powers ImpressionDNA. We actually are far more interested in being an *offer* exchange rather than an ad
exchange: we're building up our own search engine indexing our advertisers' millions of individual real-time offers
and look to those offers as the commodity that we'll be marketing on the web in the long term.

Your site says that offers are matched to the "right consumer through targeting on pre-contexutalized
Dapper media." Some might argue that when media isn't contextual, it stands out more and therefore
performs better. What do you think?
Our data simply doesn't support that. Nor does it our mission: we aren't out to get performance by dissonance (with
all due respect to that approach), we're trying to get performance by harmony. Search works because it matches
intent to a relevant ad, and that's why it's so successful.

Dapper said recently that "conversion performance is the only significant metric that we’re being
measured on lately." Is the CPM dead?
For DR, it is heading in that direction. You might get away with charging CPM to a client and feel like you're
managing your risk pretty well. But, at some point, your contact and his or her boss are sitting in a room and
looking at total conversions compared to total spend. The campaign became defined by CPA whether you like it or
not, and if you're not lucky enough to have dropped a conversion pixel on their site, now you're not even in the
room to see those data and defend yourself. In order to build long-term relationships with our clients, we should be
aligning our pricing model to reflect the success metrics that actually matter to them and determine whether they
call us back for the next campaign or not. CPA pricing also allows companies like ours, whose primary intent is to
bring performance, to capitalize more fully on the upside of our value.

Thinking about your agency partners, how do you think the agency model will need to evolve in the
future?
It's hard to make generalizations across such a large industry, and agencies unfortunately get such a bad rap from
tech companies. They're the human element in all this that understands the customer and the marketing goals of
the campaign, and like it or not they're the filter of all the new technologies, most of which *don't* work, that throw
themselves at their clients on a daily basis. Some agencies take more risks than others; some are more innovative.
One thing that I hope won't drive them too much in the future is fear. When new technologies that have had some
time to pay their dues and really do prove their worth happen to enhance (or even replace) a process that agencies
perform, I hope that agencies continue to run to embrace them and integrate them in their processes.

Follow Dapper (@dapper_net) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 18, 2009 – 7:01 am

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Online and Offline Data Used Together Yield Best Results
Says Datran Media SVP Of Display Knoll
Scott Knoll is SVP of Display Media for Datran Media, a digital
marketing technology company.

AdExchanger.com: What trends is Datran Media seeing from

its digital media clients in 2009?

SK: Datran Media monitors and reports on trends across media

clients and advertisers, including responses to our annual
industry survey. One of the biggest trends we have seen this
year is the need for campaign-based measurement. Media
clients have understood the importance of targeting for a while,
but now they are demanding ways to measure and verify
targeted audiences on a campaign by campaign basis. Rather
than just knowing the number of unique users and click rates,
marketers need insights into the makeup of their audience and
responders. This becomes increasingly important as marketers
shift from targeting specific sites to targeting users on exchanges
based on recent behaviors, characteristics or third party data.

Can you describe momentum for Datran Media this year?

Datran Media continues to grow. As revealed by our steady

stream of press releases and the high volume of media attention
we attract, Datran Media has strengthened our management
team, signed on a blue chip roster of new agency partners and
clients and increased the depth and breadth of the services and
solutions we deliver. Most notably, we launched Aperture
Audience Measurement in early 2009, which I believe will significantly change the way people utilize online media
going forward. Okay I am biased, but I definitely recommend checking it out.

Revenues, deal size, vertical strengths, product interests, etc.?

As a private company, Datran Media does not disclose revenue information. However, we are growing, we are
profitable and the size of our average deal is increasing. We have also expanded our product footprint across
verticals. One key product move you will notice is the integration of our Aperture Audience Measurement and
Reporting across other Datran Media channel offerings like our StormPost email marketing and monetization
platform.

Can offline data compete in effectiveness with online data for online advertising campaigns? Which is
better for audience targeting online?

I believe that online data and data derived from offline sources can each be effective, but we have found that when
used together they yield the best results. Although online behavior can be a great indicator of interest and help to
drive clicks or leads, it doesn’t always do a good job of differentiating between window shoppers and serious
buyers. As online marketing programs are becoming more sophisticated and changing focus from just driving leads
to targeting quality leads and high lifetime value customers, online data by itself is often proving less than
adequate. Let’s face it, anyone with a computer and online access can do a search for “BMW 5 Series” with one
click. Most online data platforms will forever categorize this user (as well as his 100 closest friends on Facebook
and anyone who goes to similar websites) as a target for BMWs and other luxury goods regardless if he has the
legitimate means to purchase the car. Thus this data can be very misleading. Data derived from offline sources

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can quickly help differentiate the true luxury car buyers from those buyers who have more modest spending
patterns. Ideally a marketer will leverage both sources to maximize success.

Data derived from offline sources adds value to online marketing for several reasons. First, it’s not based on
assumptions built on sites visited or self reported data and thus much more accurate. Second, it encompasses a
lot more sources and thus is much broader in scope and applicable for more categories of products and services.
Finally, the offline data companies typically have strong reputations with well established and transparent
methodologies. If you are trying to build a brand image with luxury goods buyers would you rather target users who
recently bought luxury goods in a retail store or target users that surf similar websites to one user who said that
she had a high income in an online survey (in exchange for the chance to win a free ipod)? You get the picture.

With Aperture's focus on data, and Datran's overall concentration on performance marketing, it would
appear that you were ahead of the curve when anticipating the move towards audience targeting vs. site
targeting. What were the reasons for Datran's focus? What refinements can still be made?

Datran Media has always been very successful at performance marketing due to the fact that it realized early on
the importance of data. In fact the name Datran is a play off of the words data and transaction. Ironically, when I
came to Datran in 2007 to build an online display business, I planned to leverage Datran’s unparalleled data, but
performance was a secondary thought to me. I firmly believed (and still do) that most online marketing was too
focused on measuring clicks and conversions and the bigger opportunity was in finding a way to help brands more
effectively reach their target audience online. I felt that if we could show brands specifically who their messages
were reaching through audience targeting and reporting based on “real” data, we could convince them to shift
more money from mass media like television to the web. In short, our goal was to build the best reporting platform
the web had ever seen rather than a solution geared towards performance marketers. Fortunately we succeeded
in creating a revolutionary audience measurement platform that truly helps marketers to understand who is seeing
their messages. At the same time, Aperture also helps performance marketers to understand specific data
elements that are highly correlated with desired actions such as clicks or conversions and to target more effectively
using only the best performing data. So in the end, performance marketers will love Aperture as much as brand
focused marketers and will likely drive much of the growth in the near future. More importantly, when big brand
marketers are ready to shift the really large budgets online, Aperture will provide them with a rich analysis of the
specific types of consumers and households they are reaching with their campaigns and effectively match this with
engagement metrics.

Audience targeting is one part of the optimization pieces. How should a marketer manage the creative
side? Considering its impact on performance against different behavioral, transactional and/or
demographic silos, it's difficult for a marketer to know whether to continue fishing or cut bait, correct?

Traditional optimization compares the relative click or conversion rates of the various creative elements across a
campaign and gives the majority of impressions to the ones that have the highest rates. Using Aperture Audience
Measurement we have found that certain creative ads definitely work better for users with certain demographics,
transactions or behaviors. In the simplest example, an ad with an older couple gets a better response from an
older woman than an ad with a young couple. Whereas this seems like a basic concept, the reality is that it’s not
easy to put this into practice in a scalable way online and most marketers optimize creative in a vacuum and show
the best performing ad to everyone regardless of age or interests. It’s difficult to execute because accurate
audience data and dynamic campaign analytics are hard to find. This is changing rapidly and as tools like Aperture
give marketers creative analysis by behavior, transactions or demographics, marketers are starting to optimize
creative by audience and truly get the right message to the right person.

What takeaways do you have from your days as VP/GM of Marketer Solutions at DoubleClick that you use
today with Datran's display strategy?

I was fortunate to work at DoubleClick for almost six years and spent much of my time introducing new concepts
such as online advertising networks, re-targeting and third party ad serving technology in the US and around the
globe. DoubleClick often seemed to be a little ahead of the curve with its products and our job was as much about
teaching and evangelizing as it was about selling. This took patience, but in the end the strategy prevailed. I find

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myself in a similar role today. Aperture’s campaign based audience measurement is really a first of its kind solution
and provides a marketer with a myriad of insights into who is viewing and interacting with its ads. Seeing this data
for the initial time can be both exciting and daunting for a marketer and often needs to be vetted by research,
analytics, strategy and media planning experts in a single firm. Fortunately, Aperture appears to be the right
solution at the right time based on our successful engagements to date. I know from my past that being first to
market with something significant will pay off with the correct approach and I can thank my experience at
DoubleClick for giving me the roadmap for bringing a new concept to market.

What milestones should we look for that tell us the display ad exchange model has taken hold and is a
significant new tactic for online advertising?

The reality today is despite the fact that everyone is talking about buying and optimizing ad campaigns via
exchanges, online marketers still spend a majority of their money targeting contextually and the much of the
exchange activity is actually driven by ad networks. There are several reasons for this including lack of scale, lack
of quality and transparent inventory, lack of education and the fact that it is simply easier to buy from a site or
network than it is to try and bid through exchanges. New tools are addressing each of these obstacles, which will
help, but until they are readily available exchange buying will still be a niche tactic or a way for networks to quickly
scale up and down. In terms of milestones, I think exchanges start to become significant when more than a handful
of agencies begin buying media direct for their clients.

Is RTB (real-time bidding) and demand-side optimization an important development? How will Datran
Media take advantage of the coming RTB feature?

RTB is definitely interesting to us. Aperture’s targeting solution leverages the multitude of online and offline data
we have to reach specific audiences (e.g. single women with children). Exchanges often provide us with the most
scalable way to find Aperture cookies with specific characteristics. Whereas our data is very predictive, the best
optimization strategy combines other factors such as click history, frequency and placement. Without RTB we can
end up with a lot of waste as we pay the same for every cookie and throw out the impressions that don’t have a
high likelihood of success. RTB effectively allows us to control waste by dynamically bidding based on the
predictive value of a particular cookie.

Your ad network product, NetMargin, has a compliance module call "Brandshield." It would seem that
compliance will be part of the exchange model. Do you see opportunities for compliance providers in the
exchange space whether for conversion tracking, brand safety or other possible compliance data points?

In addition to NetMargin’s Brandshield compliance solution, it’s notable that Datran Media also operates a
compliance company and integrates it across all the solutions under its corporate umbrella. I do believe that
integrating compliance into exchanges is absolutely essential. Internally, we work closely with and look towards our
Chief Privacy Officer to provide guidance on how and what to do to automate and advance compliance across our
product offerings.

How is Datran Media tackling attribution on behalf of its clients? Is accurate cross media attribution
possible or will it be?
Cross media attribution is a complex challenge that won’t be solved in the near term. Most companies I speak with
are still trying to reconcile the results of their display and search campaigns and haven’t yet begun to think about
including offline channels. Our approach has been to try to focus on demonstrating the effect of online brand
advertising on offline sales. We of course can’t do this at the individual level for privacy reasons, but can match
advertising activity at the zip code level to growth in individual retail store sales for specific advertised products. So
far the results have been very helpful in demonstrating the power of online marketing to drive offline sales.

Follow Datran Media (@datranmedia) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 27, 2009 – 7:53 am

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Retargeting Continues The Conversation for Brand
Marketers Says FetchBack CEO Chad Little
Chad Little is CEO of FetchBack, a retargeting company.

AdExchanger.com: From your blog, I see that you've

delivered $64.5 million in revenue for your clients - is that in
the past two years? Care to elaborate in terms of net
revenues to FetchBack, average deal size, type of clients,
etc.?

No – that’s ($64.5 million) a partial record of the total value we’ve

provided over the time period. When we first started the
company we didn’t implement the tracking of this figure.

We’ll charge on a CPM but we prefer to work with all of our

clients on a CPA or Revenue Share basis. The averages depend
on the product offering or lead being generated. It’s safe to say
that it ranges from the low side of 5% to as high as 20% per
sale/lead.

What trends are you seeing in the marketplace?

A continual push to performance marketing. As those in the industry are aware, this is the dominant form of
marketing on the net but given the current conditions it makes sense. Given that, the trend (or should I say issue)
that all marketers are dealing with is the need for a more robust solution for attribution issues. Something that’s
independent of the ad networks and server solutions.

How do you differentiate yourself from companies like Platform-A's Leadback and any ad network that
offers retargeting?

You wouldn’t fly a plane without the proper instruments. You shouldn’t run a retargeting campaign with a simple
click and impression report as your only method of gauging success. Our platform was built from the ground up to
provide advanced ‘actionable’ analytics specific to Retargeting. Excellent stuff – let us know if you would like a
peek under the hood.

Regarding our business model: The best way to explain FetchBack is to use an example of an existing product in
the marketplace. Omniture, Clickable and Atlas all provide a service that makes it easier to manage your paid
search campaign along with improving performance. These solutions are not directly providing the media
provider/publisher; they work on top of it. That’s what FetchBack does. We make Retargeting easier to manage
and more effective for our advertisers. We work across many networks and publishers to increase reach and our
technology delivers the most targeted ad available. At the end of the day it’s the data given to our advertisers via
our analytics found in FIDO that makes the real difference.

Our vision is simple; To be the second most important innovation in online advertising.

Does placement and context matter anymore or is it all about audience?

Regarding our product offering, it has little to no impact. In fact, when the placement of the ad is completely out of
context it only makes the ad stand out more.

Is retargeting a must-have in all digital media campaigns these days? What trends are you seeing in
retargeting's necessity?

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It’s a self-serving question. The answer is yes, retargeting is must have for any marketer to some degree or
another. I also say this after having been in the online marketplace since the mid 90’s. I’ve had a lot of experience
in seeing what works and what doesn’t. This is the only form of online marketing that can work for any size
advertiser other than affiliate and paid search. Marketers spend a lot of money and time driving traffic to their site;
it only makes sense to extend your reach. If offline marketers had the capability to show ads based on a visit to a
store or not – do you think they would do it? Without a doubt.

Any experience with Yahoo!'s search retargeting capabilities? Is search retargeting a big opportunity
potentially? How will FetchBack participate?

No direct experience there yet. Search Retargeting is an excellent tool for driving additional impressions to in-
market consumers. Our mission is purely about driving lost-prospects back to an advertiser’s site, so for the time
being we don’t see participating in activities that are focused on bring people to the site in the first place.

FetchBack calls itself a retargeting company. In that retargeting can be construed as a form of behavioral
targeting, is robust behavioral targeting capabilities a logical next step in FetchBack's product road map?

No, it’s not. I refer back to our mission statement of converting our clients lost prospects into customers. A good
mission statement is much more that just saying what you do. It’s also about what you won’t do. While it’s very
easy in this industry to get excited about additional opportunities; the hard thing is saying no. We don’t see
ourselves competing with the Audience Sciences of the world. It would be very hard to differentiate our self and
provide a unique offering. The other side of that is that it’s very hard for a company that doesn’t specialize in
Retargeting to provide the ROI FetchBack does. If you need heart surgery you wouldn’t go to the family doctor. If
you have a choice of a specialist over a generalist, the majority of the time you’ll choose a specialist and for good
reason.

Beyond DR, how is retargeting useful for brand awareness marketers?

Great question. Back to the question of offline marketers having this type of capability. Even if they couldn’t track
specific conversions, I’m sure they would find tremendous value in simply continuing the conversation. Let me give
you an example of how we use it for FetchBack. Individuals might visit our site for multiple reasons. We’re not
always looking for an advertiser to fill out a contact form during that first visit. As they leave our site and see
Retargeted ads, they’ll notice that our ads that include messages about our latest PR and technology releases. Do
I care if they directly drive an advertiser lead? No. It’s much more about having that top of mind awareness in
someone who has visited our site before and they don’t have to return. That’s invaluable!

An additional example is how one of our advertisers has used a portion of their campaigns to allow channel
marketers to communicate with each other and spur on friendly competition. The channel participants all visit a
specific section of their site, so only the participants receive the Retargeted ads. A top performer in a given time
period can have control over sending messages to other partners via the ads. What a fun way to build a brand if
you think about it.

Why did you stepdown from AdOn Network?

The short answer is I’m a startup junky and always will be. I love creating something from nothing. The long
answer is we started the process of selling AdOn in late 2006 start of 2007. We concluded the sale in 2007. I was
already working on FetchBack at the time and had built out a successful management team that stepped in to lead
the company.

What key learnings from AdOn are you bringing to FetchBack?

They’re too numerous to mention them all. I would say that has been the case for every company I’ve started. The
most important learning is the importance of culture. Our company culture at AdOn was one of the things I was
most proud of. We’ve continued that at FetchBack where we have a ‘home’ for the employees. I can honestly say
that I believe everyone truly loves working here.

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The second most important learning would be what was mentioned before about the need to continually focus on
something you can be the best in the world at and saying no to everything else!

Will ad networks disintermediate agencies?

I don’t believe so, but agencies will continue to search for differentiation and some will purchase networks much
like we’ve already seen happen. While I don’t think networks will disintermediate agencies, I do believe that
companies that can do a better job of managing and producing data have an opportunity to take a leadership
position.

How do publishers participate in FetchBack's retargeting offering?

We only work directly with publishers that have a very large reach, IE Facebook, myspace, etc.

How do they earn revenue?

We manage campaigns directly through them.

What recommendations would you make to young entrepreneurs in light of your own experiences?

Focus.

Corporate messaging such as vision, mission, values are not just exercises to be done at an off-site meeting over
2 days and then placed on a wall. They should really mean something and if they do you’ll know it because you’ll
use them every day.

Culture is a very real competitive advantage. Ask Tony from Zappos.

Follow FetchBack (@FetchBack) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 10, 2009 – 5:40 am

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Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange Is Officially Launched
Says VP Neal Mohan
This is part one of our meeting with Neal Mohan, Google's Vice President of
Product Management and Scott Spencer, Group Product Manager regarding the official launch today of the new
DoubleClick Ad Exchange - read the post from Neal on the Google blog.

Below, Neal gave us a background on the evolution of the exchange at Google and its expected impact for all
members of the advertising ecosystem. For a one-sheeter from DoubleClick on their new, updated ad exchange,
click here.

By the way, no more "AdX", it's just The DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Neal Mohan: "This (the ad exchange) has

been a major area of investment in terms of
the DoubleClick Google integration ever
since our deal closed last year.

It’s one of the key areas where we think we

can add significant value, and the objective
for Google is to grow the overall display
advertising pie for everyone involved. That’s
the big objective behind this.

So, let me take a step back and give it

context so you can see where Google is
coming from.

Today, display advertising is still not really

living up to its full potential despite the fact
that the industry has been around for well
over a decade. My advertiser clients,
agencies and publishers tell me this every
day – of course it’s not a surprise when you
have 1,000s of advertisers, 1,000s of
publishers across 1,000s of ad formats – it
literally takes advertisers 1,000s of hours to
get a display campaign up and running.
Because of that, advertisers simply drop out
because of this complexity and inefficiency
that exists even though display advertising
may be the best way for those particular
advertisers to get their message out.

On the publisher side, this translates into 40

or 50% or north of that for publisher
inventory simply going unsold. The way I
think about it is if an airplane was taking off
every day with more than half of its seats
unfilled because it was simply too hard to
buy them – that’s sort of the way display advertising is today.

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Google thinks that system can get better. The way we approach many of our problems today is through technology
and this is how we hope to grow the [display advertising] pie for everyone.

So, there are three fundamental principles that we’ve tried to adhere to as we’ve been executing on our display
advertising roadmap…

The first is simplicity. First and foremost, we want to eliminate as much of that complexity and inefficiency that I just
described that exists and that’s what our DoubleClick platform has been focused on for 1000s of advertisers and
1,000s of publishers.

Of course, we don’t want to stop there. People spend money in display advertising to get results, after all. So we
want to drive up performance for our advertiser and agency clients as much as possible - whether they're brand
advertisers or direct response advertisers - and allow them to be able to measure it.

All the features and capabilities we’ve built on the Google Content Network and on YouTube – accessible to all of
our AdWords buyers over the course of the last several years – are really geared towards driving that performance
for them.

And then the third pillar, if you will, of our strategy, where the ad exchange fits squarely in, is to really open up the
ecosystem. In a nutshell, we want to democratize the world of display advertising and make it as accessible and as
open as possible to large and small publishers, large and small advertisers – just as search advertising is today
and that’s kind of our objective.

Having said that, what is interesting about the new DoubleClick Ad Exchange is that the participants are the large
publishers on one end, our advertising network partners on the other end, we’re bringing over all of our partners
from the existing exchange platform on to this new platform in addition to adding several more. For example, we
have the majority of the top 25 ad networks in the U.S. already signed up and ready to go even though we’re only
launching it formally [today]. In addition, the biggest element and key capability of this is the seemless integration
of AdSense on the publisher side and AdWords on the advertiser side. That means that the hundreds of thousands
of AdSense websites will now automatically be able to participate on this exchange platform and they’ll be able to
do it through the existing AdSense interface that they have. So they’ll get the benefit of the increased demand that
comes from all of those exchange buyers in addition to the AdWords buyers that are already competing for their
inventory.

Similarly, AdWords advertisers will be seamlessly integrated into this and be automatically eligible to not only buy
the AdSense inventory that they’re buying today, but also now all this premium ad exchange inventory that’s
coming online they’ll be able to buy, again, in a seamless fashion through the same AdWords interface that they
know and love and have the benefit of a much broader inventory pool to buy across.

Couple of other things.. In addition to this new pool of advertisers and publishers. [Regarding] the benefits of
dynamic allocation for publishers, so real-time allocation between directly sold and indirectly sold channels so that
the ad slot that is filled by the ad that will generate the most amount of revenue for that publisher and the ability to
have that decision be made in real-time on an impression by impression basis. If you can point an ad slot towards
the $10 CPM ad instead of the $5 CPM ad in real-time and you do that millions of times a day across lots and lots
of impressions, it adds up to real money for publishers.

Similarly one of the new capabilities is the real-time bidder on the advertiser side – it’s the way advertising
networks can leverage their data, optimization capabilities and ad serving technologies to bid in real-time based on
the information that is given to them in real-time right before that impression is delivered so that they can buy only
the sites, audiences and ad space that they’re looking for.

Some of the other new capabilities are enhanced controls for publishers and advertisers, easier reporting,
measureability and a new API by which ad networks can programmatically access the exchange. Last not by least,
something that is a significant component of this platform is in regards to one of the other areas of inefficiency in
display buying - the end of the campaign process: the billing and invoicing step. What we’re doing with this

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platform is to take care of that for all of our publisher and advertiser participants so that we can handle billing and
invoicing across multiple geographies, multiple currencies, etc. and really take care of the clearing on behalf of our
customers.

This is the general overview of not just the exchange, but perhaps more importantly, where it fits into our overall
display strategy and vision. And, as I said at the beginning, the real objective is to grow the advertising pie for
everyone."

Part II including a Q&A with Neil and Scott will be published Monday.

September 18, 2009 – 12:41 am

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AdExchanger.com Q&A With Google DoubleClick Ad
Exchange’s Mohan and Spencer
Email This Post

This is Part II of AdExchanger.com's discussion with Neal Mohan, Google's Vice President of Product
Management, and Scott Spencer, Group Product Manager, regarding the official launch of the new DoubleClick Ad
Exchange. Part I is here. (Today and tomorrow, we'll have reaction to the launch from across the industry.)

AdExchanger.com: What percentage of the inventory on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange is real-time

bidding-enabled? Is all of it ready to go and available to advertisers in a real-time bidding system?

Mohan: All of the inventory will be available for our ad networks to be able to access through the real-time bidder.

Spencer: Google is in a unique position because we can actually enable real-time bidding to many different buyers,
we have unique architecture and a footprint of
technology that allows us to let many buyers use this
simultaneously. Something that is fairly unique to
Google’s infrastructure.

Is there anybody that RTB is not enabled for on the

buy side?

Mohan: The participants on the buy side of the

exchange are these large ad networks as you know.
This tool has been designed for them. Our AdWords
advertisers, which represent hundreds of thousands of
AdWords advertisers that access that interface every
single day, would simply continue to participate in
AdWords and get the benefits of that new exchange
inventory just simply through the AdWords interface.

Can you give me the top line on how you feel you
differentiate in the exchange marketplace from other
exchanges such as Yahoo!'s Right Media or
Microsoft’s AdECN?

Mohan: I can’t really comment on what other players are

doing in the space. We’ve really been focused heads
down. We have a very large number of engineers
focused on this integration between DoubleClick and
Google, and that’s what we are trying to address here.

From our standpoint, we have tried to build this with as

much feedback and participation from our publisher and
advertiser partners as possible. The way we look at it is
we really want to create a means by which we can actually grow the overall display advertising pie. In addition to
making it easily available to our large DoubleClick publishers, our AdSense publishers, AdWords advertisers and
ad networks, we want to develop those capabilities that make it most effective for them such as the real-time
dynamic allocation on an impression by impression basis for publishers, the real-time bidding technology, the
payment and clearing capability which is a complicated part of the process, and creating as much rich controls for
publishers and advertisers such as - if I’m a publisher - which ad networks do I want to have participate and access

99
my inventory, which ones I don’t, for ad networks, things like frequency capping, etc. – all those controls you need
to make display advertising that much more effective.

Is a good fit for AdX 2.0 the big brand media site or the advertisers with the huge budgets? Who’s a good
fit? Can you discuss the attributes?

Mohan: The way I think about it is to put it in the form of an analogy. The ad exchange is like a stock exchange.
So, just like on a stock exchange, large institutional investors can participate directly – meaning large publishers,
newspapers, magazines, entertainment portals, etc. – people with premium inventory. Similarly ad networks that
are sophisticated in terms of their optimization and buying capabilities, those folks can participate directly as
institutional investors on the stock exchange. While, also on a stock exchange, individual investors participate
through things like brokerage houses which add another layer of value and so we see our AdSense and AdWords
publishers and advertisers, respectively, participating [on the exchange] through AdSense and AdWords. We think
the platform and the way that we’ve designed it is suitable for all of these constituents.

Let’s talk a little bit about fraud and spam. Google has worked hard on cleaning up click spam in AdSense.
But, now we move to the display ad exchange environment. Given that exchanges such as Right Media
Exchange have struggled with impression spam at times, what is Google planning to do about impression
spam?

Spencer: What we’re doing is taking the great controls that we’ve developed for the AdWords and AdSense
system for ad quality and inventory quality and we are extending those to operate on the ad exchange. And, then
we are enhancing those to incorporate checks and validation under the hood to work with the customers that we
have. I can’t talk about the details of them since we can’t disclose - to those who would try to thwart – what they
are, but we’re taking what we have and building it up.

Let's talk about cookies and cookie matching. On Right Media Exchange, RMX stores the advertisers ID in
their RMX cookie, but as I understand it AdX 2.0 offers a unique hashed user ID for each cookie that the
advertiser needs to store and track. Why did Google choose to go this route?

Spencer: We’re trying to be as sensitive as we can in terms of privacy. First of all, we prohibit buyers from using
any PII or sensitive categories when they’re buying on the exchange. The approach that we’ve taken is basically to
allow people to use their data, but we want to make sure there is no means for anything to happen with that.

Potentially, this (the DoubleClick Ad Exchange offering a unique, hashed user ID for each cookie that the
advertiser needs to store and track) is going to put more work on the advertiser's side and it’s going to
create some duplication [and inefficiencies] as they buy impressions across multiple, supply sources [if
they don't manage the mapping of their cookies properly].

Doesn't [Google's unique, hashed user ID] break the universal cookie model that helps create efficiencies
for advertisers and, ultimately, more frictionless advertising for the user which seems to speak to what
Google, at its core, is about?

Spencer: We haven’t received feedback that it’s a challenge. We’ve gotten feedback that it really enables buyers
and they’re comfortable with the protocols we have in place.

It seems to me there's an opportunity for a company to facilitate this matching and create the universal
cookie - helps all parties, ultimately, including the user. Would you agree that the universal cookie ideally
makes sense?

Spencer: We’re just trying to enable buyers to buy the way they would normally and enable them to use their own
services and their own systems. And, the protocol, the real-time bidder we’ve developed, we’ve gotten great
feedback. We’ve developed it in conjunction with our partners and they’re very happy with how way they’re able to
do it. It seems to be a big efficiency gain for them and so we’re very happy with the feedback and, frankly, the
usage we’re getting.

100
How does buying AdSense inventory on the exchange differ from buying it via AdWords? For example, is
there a way that I can use AdSense's contextual matching to help target my exchange-side buying?

Spencer: The experience for AdWords buyers buying is exactly the same as it is today. The real benefit for
AdWords buyers is they get access to more high quality inventory that we have available for the exchange. For
exchange[-side] buyers, they’re typically bringing there own targeting with them so they can leverage what they
have. We do provide high-level vertical targeting as one piece, but they have their own basic targeting. Any buying
that is done on AdSense [from the exchange-side and non-AdWords] is going to be certified, so we’re not
necessarily letting all the buyers come into AdSense inventory. They will be able to buy only if they’ve been
certified by the Google AdSense team.

What I’m getting at here is AdSense has contextual matching technology and I’m wondering if that is going
to be made available somehow through the exchange. Your point seems to be that you’re allowing
advertisers to bring the data to the exchange and that could be, for example, contextual technology. Yes?

Spencer: That technology, the ability to target through keyword targeting through AdWords, is an AdWords feature.
Other networks buying on the exchange have their own versions of things and can use their own targeting.

How critical is AdSense to the inventory supply on the exchange currently? Can you quantify it as a
percentage of overall inventory?

Spencer: We don’t know how the inventory size is going to shake out now. I think what’s exciting here is that we’re
doing the integration and enabling the AdSense inventory and AdSense buyers to come to the exchange. We don’t
really know that distribution will look like.

What restrictions, if any, do bidders have when buying AdSense placements through the new DoubleClick
Ad Exchange?

Spencer: Advertisers who come through AdWords are able to buy inventory on AdSense – obviously that’s what
AdWords typically buys on. And they also will now have an opportunity to buy on inventory that we get from the
exchange.

Ad networks coming on to the exchange must be certified in order to buy inventory from AdSense.

We’ve been very careful to give publishers lots of controls about how they manage their inventory. So, publishers
participating in the ad exchange have the ability to decide which ad networks can purchase their inventory. And so,
any given publisher can exclude any given buyer – and that’s up to them.

How does the revenue model work both on the publisher side and the advertiser side and, of course, what
Google takes?

Spencer: Yes, sure. The model is a rev share with the publishers, and the networks are bidding on the inventory
they want to buy. It’s a CPM-based auction so we don’t dictate any of the pricing.

In terms of Google’s transactional fee, is there a transactional fee for the advertiser? - I guess you’re
taking a percentage of what the publisher gets?

Spencer: It’s very simple. The only thing is a rev share with the publisher.

For ad networks, can they buy and sell? - or are they just demand-side on The DoubleClick Ad Exchange?

Spencer: Depends on the network. Some networks can be publishers who represent inventory and they can work
with the exchange as a seller. We allow them to rep inventory. What we don’t allow is chaining of inventory across
[the exchange].

101
What's your view on third-party aggregators like yield optimizers PubMatic, AdMeld and Rubicon Project?
Are they allowed to buy and/or sell?

Spencer: It’s not really designed for them. We’re working and focusing with our partners who are the large
publishers on the sell side and the ad networks on the buy side typically, and designing the system to integrate
well with their own ad servers. So, customers that are using DART for publishers get that benefit of dynamic
allocation which Neal and I mentioned earlier. And that’s really what we think makes this powerful for them – their
ability to check whether or not that if they’re about to sell something for $10 that there’s a buyer that’s willing to
spend $15 for it, that they’re able to capture that incremental yield.

Given a lack of sophistication around technology or resources for some advertisers, can they do
retargeting on the exchange without using RTB?

Spencer: It depends on the ad network. The system is designed for ad networks as buyers, not for direct
advertisers. Ad networks for varying sophistication will have different targeting – I can’t say really what targeting
any given network has - we’re just trying to enable the technology and targeting ability that they do have.

Talking about what data you can bring into the exchange as an ad network, can you bring in data from
providers on the exchange such as a BlueKai, Bizo or eXelate?

Spencer: We have prohibitions about buyers using PII or sensitive categories when they buy. Other than that, it’s
their targeting that they’re using and that they’ve got. The publishers have controls about what data can be
purchased from their inventory, so they can decide whether or not they’re going to enable remarketing or whatever
it is. But, really it’s up to the network to be bringing their own targeting.

What can Google or DoubleClick do about helping to provide advertisers cross-platform attribution for its
clients? For example, an advertiser will know if they will impact a conversion or end goal if they make a
buy on TV AND in online display advertising through the exchange. Is Google looking to solve this?

Mohan: That’s a great question. We don’t have anything to announce on that today. You can imagine that we
would love to deliver capabilities across channels, but we don’t have anything to talk about today in that regard.

Last question, the idea of a futures market or exchange. Can you see a futures exchange or reserved
exchange developing in the future?

Spencer: We don’t have anything to say in that area. Who knows what the future will bring. [But], we don’t have
anything we’re announcing on that.

Part I of our discussion with Neil Mohan and Scott Spencer is here which includes an overview from Neal Mohan
on the new features of the exchange.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 21, 2009 – 6:22 am

102
Inflection Point Media Seeing Shift Toward Targeted
Vertical Ad Network Model Says CEO Hulse
Chris Hulse is CEO of Inflection Point Media, a business-to-business ad network.

Any current trends that you can share in Inflection Point Media's B2B ad network business - strengths,
weaknesses? And, have publisher CPMs cratered like they
have in the B2C world?

Inflection Point Media's complete focus on the SMB market has

been our strength. In a recession, marketers are looking for
efficient ways to put the right message in front of the right prospect
at exactly the right time. That's what we do at IPM. We do this by
networking over 140, highly focused SMB sites and search
engines. We are able to identify key "inflection points" by the type
of keyword search or targeted browsing an SMB does on these
sites. By valuing the audience and monetizing it off site, we
generate incremental revenue for our publishers in a non-
cannibalizing way.

Publishers are struggling right now. Downward pressure on CPMs

in a recession is a fact of life, though the B2B vertical is a bit more
buoyant than the more general B2C world. Publishers that have
great content, provide real value to their users and have tight
control over their own inventory will always do best in down times.
We see that first hand with the publishers we work with. It's tough
out there and that's why we believe we launched our company at
exactly the right time.

For publishers, how do you increase their revenues without cannibalizing sales? Isn't channel conflict
inevitable?

IPM doesn't conflict with a publisher's existing sales force, reseller agreements or traditional ad network
relationships. At IPM, our promise to marketers is that we have high quality, scalable segments against fragmented
B2B audiences. Because we do not take any inventory on our publisher partner sites, our efforts never conflict with
their sales efforts.

We sell aggregated audience segments of shared intent derived from many SMB sites and search engines. We're
selling access to an intent driven audience, not a site. Publishers may not have enough critical impressions for that
site to sell against that particular activity. IPM can bundle that activity from multiple sites to create, highly focused,
sellable segments. We then retarget these segments across a completely separate network of sites. When the
SMB re-appears on one of these sites we serve a relevant ad based on what we know they're looking for. So we're
able create revenue where revenue wouldn't have existed under normal circumstances. We don't sell data or our
segments by specific site of origin.

What's your view on ad exchanges? Using any? If so, which ones work?

Every day, there is a new and better technology being developed to give greater transparency into how you can
purchase inventory on ad exchanges. Companies such as Xplus1, Invite Media, Google, Audience Science etc.
are developing breakthrough platforms giving more and more control to the marketer. Our goal is leverage one
interface that can access the top exchanges. Right now, through our partnerships, we are working with several ad
exchanges.

103
How will real-time bidding and demand-side optimization affect your business?

Real-time bidding and demand-side optimization will help performance by giving IPM more transparency, flexibility
and efficiencies when buying inventory to target ads.

How does Inflection Point Media address the purchase funnel for marketers?

Inflection Point Media identifies SMB decision makers at the point their intent is identified. We give the marketer
the ability to put their message in front of the right person at exactly the right time. In the B2B world, most
purchases are more considered than in the B2C world. The fact that an SMB user just searched for Payroll
Services, Web Hosting Services, Phone Services, etc. doesn't necessarily mean they're ready to buy right now.
They most likely just hit an inflection point in their business where they realize they now need a solution.

IPM delivers the marketers message to people who are "in-market". Our job is to get our marketers' messages in
front of these SMB buyers and influencers as they are considering a solution for their business. So the part of the
funnel we impact most is between "post intent" through purchase.

What are the challenges of running a B2B ad network versus a B2C ad network?
Our goal isn't to be the biggest audience network. This is not about sheer volume. We serve the SMB marketplace
exclusively. There is still a high percentage of B2B budget being allocated on B2C networks and we'd like to gain
share by creating a new solution, not just a new spin on and old one. We offer a solution that includes only quality
data from best-of-breed SMB publishers. Our growth may be more gradual than some other broader B2C offerings
but we are never willing to sacrifice quality for quantity.

Does licensing buying platforms make sense for ad networks? Or is it better to build in-house?
Building an in-house platform is an expensive and labor intensive proposition. The right platform will provide true
transparency into media buying on network and exchanges. That is where the rubber meets the road.

We continue to evaluate various solutions but certainly consider transparency and quality as crucial factors in that
decision. We are encouraged that through rapid advancement in this area, solutions we only dreamed of a year
ago are now available.

How do you see the ad network model evolving in the next five years?
We see a continued shift toward more targeted vertical ad networks. There is no one size fits all solution. Ad
networks are likely to build cross platform solutions utilizing other mediums - from online, to TV, to print to Mobile.
The networks that understand their audience's and that audience's specific needs best will win.

What strategies do you think agencies need to implement to be successful in the increasingly automated
world of media buying?
It may be an automated world, but you still need to know why something is good. With automation comes
efficiencies that will give the agency person the ability to do more with less. I've been working with agencies for 15
years. Whether in direct marketing, display advertising, or search, the best agencies seem to understand the value
of an impression or the value of an action. Typically, if you measure one data point, you're missing the bigger
picture. Our hope is that with automation comes insight into real metrics that matter.

Any issues with creative these days? Do you see clients taking advantage of the feedback it provides?
What recommendations would you make about creative?
When you consider how much time is spent on finding the right audience, it is interesting how often the creative
served to that audience is the same as that used in so many other, broader campaigns. Creative targeted to
specifically to in-market SMB users is always a welcome sight and almost always performs better. We would also
like to see advertisers adopt creative sequencing and more dynamically generated landing pages.

Follow Chris Hulse (@ChrisHulse) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 21, 2009 – 7:16 am

104
InterClick Pres Katz On Ad Networks, Exchanges and
Agencies
Michael Katz is President and Founder of InterClick.

AdExchanger.com: Is it more difficult being a public

company than private in the advertising industry?
Does this give an advantage to your competitors?

Good question, I get asked this a lot. There have been

many advantages and disadvantages to being public. I think being public has provided us with credibility among
advertisers and publishers. Relationships are still a key driver in this industry, being public has given us a sense of
credibility and in turn allowed us to build trust with our partners. In addition, being public has required us to focus
on continuous operational improvement. Sometimes you need to be backed into a corner to really excel and being
a public company has required us to be focused on revenue growth, margin improvement and operational
efficiency via better supply chain management. Obviously the capital markets could be a little better than they are
right now but that's not anything we can control so its not something we tend to worry too much about.

Can you give us a sense of revenue and product momentum for InterClick? Any observations on the
online ad industry you're seeing as a whole right now?

2008 was a tremendous year for interCLICK, we made great strides in terms of our building out our technology,
growing our salesforce around the country, and improving our operational performance. Revenue growth has been
directly correlated to providing consistent results for our largest advertisers via targeting and transparency. 2009
has been tremendous for us so far. Due to the economic downturn, advertisers are looking to maximize the value
of their ad budgets via more effective and more granular targeting. Our platform has proven to provide advertisers
with the ability to run highly effective and efficient campaigns at great scale.

InterClick has changed its focus from contextual targeting to behavioral targeting. Why?

"Behavioral targeting" is a bit of a catch all. We partner with 3rd party data providers to determine the most relevant
ad to show to the consumer. Some of our partners provide us with purchase intent data, others with demographic,
social data, or even contextual consumption data. The shift has been to allow for a more all encompassing
approach rather than focus on data mining.

Is online display advertising dying?

Ha. No, its evolving and those who aren't evolving are dying. Currently, with the economic downturn there is a
paradigm shift occurring at the advertiser level. Advertisers are no longer consuming media as a proxy to reach
consumers; they are buying very targeted audiences with a higher propensity to complete a desired action.
Whether that action is a purchase, a click, if its something that occurs high up in the funnel or at the bottom,
advertisers are looking to maximize their ROI at all costs. Companies like interCLICK and some of our competitors
who are able to meet clients' demands are thriving, while others are being left behind.

You suggested to AdExchanger.com that advertising players were jockeying for position. What do you
mean?

There are a lot of changes occurring right now in the industry. The big topic these days is disintermediation and at
what level it will occur. Will it be networks, agencies, both, neither? The end game is to provide the advertiser with
the most efficient and scalable solution. Historically, the ecosystem consisted of advertisers (agencies), networks,
and publishers. Guys like B3 and MediaMath are attempting to wedge themselves in between agencies and
networks, I have heard them referred to as "Meta networks". The "optimizer" guys like Pubmatic, Admeld, and
Rubicon have entrenched themselves between the networks and the publishers and will most likely begin to

105
directly compete with networks eventually. If they do, they aren't much different fundamentally then the "meta
networks." The ultimate question is how do you maximize advertiser value, there are a lot of different approaches
right now, which is what I mean when I say there is a lot of jockeying for position.

If you were running a multi-national media buying agency right now, what would you do to prepare for the
future?

Buy an ad network with a proprietary technology. Obviously.

How does InterClick ensure brand safety for advertisers? And for publishers?

interCLICK has always been focused on providing brand safety via our commitment to transparency for both the
advertiser and publisher. What separates interCLICK from other networks is our notion that transparency shouldn't
end when the campaign begins. Transparent reporting on the inventory and data levels provides advertisers with a
safe and trusted brand friendly environment. For publishers, we ensure brand safety by allowing them to see and
control which advertiser campaigns are running in the system and providing them with an interface in which they
can actively manage which creatives run and which don't with a click of a button. This helps to eliminate any sales
channel conflict as well as preserve user experience on their site.

How is InterClick using the ad exchange model today? And in the future?

interCLICK is not very active on the various ad exchanges at this time. This could change over time but we are
very much focused on providing scalable solutions via our own proprietary technology. We aren't one of those
networks that utilize a 3rd party ad server then wraps some front end UI around it and resells it as if it were our
own.

Do ad networks "cannibalize" publisher inventory and, consequently, revenue opportunity? How does
InterClick prevent cannibalization? Or does it?

Depends who you ask, right? Its obvious there is a lot of friction currently between ad networks and publishers, but
at the end of the day we need each other. However, I believe this issue simply an economics 101 lesson, supply
and demand. The value of inventory isn't created on a rate card, Value is a function of the price at the intersection
of Supply (traffic provided by the publisher) and Demand (the money being spent by the advertiser). If an
advertiser or set of advertisers can derive higher value based on their set of unique objectives from a publishers
inventory, they will pay more. If the traffic quality is poor relative to advertisers objectives, then price must be
lowered until equilibrium is met. I have no idea why most publishers cant understand this.

How do exchanges move from the current remnant ad inventory model to a remnant and premium future?
I think the shift will occur via increased transparency and control. Look at most of the ads that flow through the
exchanges and you will find that primarily they have been the CPA based lead gen offers. Because context is not a
primary concern when driving large quantities of leads, these types of advertisers have much looser restrictions on
where their ads run. These types of ads generally yield far lower eCPMs which in turn fails satisfy more premium
inventory pricing requirements. Premium advertisers have shied away from exchanges because of a lack of control
but as exchanges start to offer this level of transparency, rates should rise in the aggregate and there will be a shift
from "remnant" to "premium."

How do you see InterClick evolving in the next 18-24 months?

We have an aggressive product roadmap which should hopefully be completed in the relatively near future. This
will allow us to do some very interesting things that haven't been done yet in the industry. The most I can say is
just wait and see.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger.com) on Twitter.

April 21, 2009 – 7:58 am

106
InterCLICK Taps Markets For $12 Million; Pres Katz Says
Ad Network Model Is Validated
Email This Post

Fresh from its move to the NASDAQ, InterCLICK

announced that it has succesfully placed "2,875,000
shares of common stock to a select group of institutional
investors." Given the sale price of $4.50 share,
InterCLICK now has a cool $12 million in net proceeds to
play with. Acquisitions? More tech? Feet on the street?
We'll see. Read the release on Yahoo!.

AdExchanger.com caught up with InterCLICK president, Michael Katz...

AdExchanger.com: What does the investment mean for InterCLICK? And, can you characterize the
openness to investment in advertising technology companies these days by investors? Market improving?

MK: This is a significant development for us and hopefully continues to validate the network model amidst other
industry trends. Having access to significant capital (for the first time) will allow us to continue to deliver innovative
solutions on behalf of our clients.

Its tough to compare the openness to investment between us and private companies because they are two very
different types of investors but hopefully we are helping to validate the model for everyone.

AdExchanger.com: Looking back at the ad industry the past year, any surprising developments come to
mind?

MK: The most surprising development was the hype around RTB, still way too early.

By John Ebbert

December 16, 2009 – 4:10 pm

107
The Contextual and Semantic Targeting of LucidMedia with
Ken Barbieri
Email This Post

Ken Barbieri is Vice-President of Business Development at

LucidMedia Networks, Inc. and is responsible for developing
and growing strategic partnerships with online publishers,
advertising networks and advertising exchanges at
LucidMedia.

AdExchanger.com: How's business for LucidMedia? Any

momentum you can report?

KB: At LucidMedia we are having a record year for revenue

growth and client acquisition. And our momentum has been
increasing rapidly this quarter. Much of this is due to the launch of our Verified Inventory Platform (VIP) that
provides deep data insights to performance and brand safety online through our agency partners. Advertiser
response has been incredible especially after initial tests proved the returns are there. We also recently won an
OnMedia Technology Innovator award.

What trends are you seeing in online display advertising?

Trend #1 is performance. All the trends we are seeing are towards performance-based advertising and increasing
return to “do more with less”. Advertisers are looking for new ways to increase their return with a flat budget but all
the same growth pressure. They are turning more and more to direct response, CPC, and CPA solutions to move
the media risks as far away as possible and guarantee the backend performance. Apparently our fully transparent
platform with multiple optimization facets really resonates with clients in this tough new economy.

Trend #2 is exchanges. We are seeing a dramatic shift from networks to exchanges. The exchange model has
matured at the same time the network model has had its reputation tarnished. The real-time bidding and open,
transparent nature of the free market exchange model has finally distilled to the top as the solution of choice when
efficiency and return become as important as reach and scale.

Is it fair to say that LucidMedia is the contextual solution for Right Media Exchange?

Yes and no. Yes, we are a contextual engine on Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange but that is not our core business,
it’s just one of the many irons we have in the fire these days. And our work on RMX is a two way street. We
provide contextualization services to publishers and advertisers there but we can also purchase media there. We
have many of these types of media arrangements because it is how we provide the scale, efficiency and
performance that are so appealing to our advertisers. It took years to do but we are now able to pass those
benefits on to our advertisers and our agency partners. That is a key to the current rapid growth and momentum I
mentioned in the first question.

Any plans to work with Yahoo!'s APT Platform?

We are watching APT closely, as many are, because it holds a great deal of potential scale. Obviously we’d like to
continue our close and positive relationship with Yahoo and Right Media and integrate with APT when it is fully
operational.

108
Can you take us through the process of how LucidMedia's deal with Right Media works from a
technological perspective? For example, tell us how it all works for a single ad impression on a
publisher's site.

Right Media has established 63 standard categories that correspond to a 4 digit contextual flag. RMX publishers
have to deploy new ad tags and then advertisers can target their inventory more effectively. LucidMedia's ad tags
are distributed to RMX publishers instead of YieldManager tags. Then, during ad call, the LucidMedia tag analyzes
the context of the page in real-time to determine the most appropriate categories. We a YieldManager tag with
additional Query String Codes that represent the most appropriate Right Media Exchange categories. All
advertisers have to do is use Right Media’s Query String Targeting capability when they setup a campaign in
YieldManager and they can access the highly targeted contextual inventory right away. Your readers can go online
to find out more about it too.

Can Lucid Media's ClickSense technology contextualize social media other than, say, the "social media"
category?

Sure. Our technology does not care about self-declared categories. Rather we deal with exactly what the content is
about and categorize it accordingly. Our solution scrapes the page in real-time to determine precisely what each
inventory page is all about. What we find is that the majority of content is improperly categorized at a high level.
We find social media can be all over the map category-wise. Technology, Arts and Entertainment, Automotive,
Sports, Pets, Family and Parenting, Health, and so on. So we tag media at the page level for what it is about and
not what it is supposed to be about. And our performance proves out the approach. We’ve worked with advertisers
who have studied this and their findings are always the same: that context is a true predictor of intent.

How is the contextual engine for LucidMedia different than the competitors such as AdSense, Contextweb,
Kontera and others?

Although we all have a contextual solution in common, our focus is on providing a broad platform that
encompasses a range of advertiser and agency services beyond just running media. In fact, clients can actually
utilize our platform as a compliment to some of the other contextual providers. In terms of technology, our
approach is a bit different as well. At the core of our platform is a patented semantic solution that includes
advertising industry-focused taxonomies which let us target content at a very granular level.

In the future, can you see a network providing the essential services that an advertiser requires and,
thereby, disintermediating media agencies?

I think that is unlikely to happen. For example, our focus is on providing a media management platform to agencies
that allows them to outperform their competitors and pass on new levels of efficiency, transparency, and safety to
their advertising clients. So we are not trying to act like an agency, we’re trying to put tools in their hands that make
us a crucial part of the value chain. We feel our position between the agencies (and the advertisers) and the
networks (and publishers) is the best place to do business. This allows us to act as a media buying platform for the
exchanges—and even the other networks out there—and provide our data as the new currency of performance.
It’s a very exciting place to be right now!

How is LucidMedia ensuring brand safety? And, how does LucidMedia provide access to the Long Tail?

Brand safety is rising in importance these days. Our Verified Inventory Platform (VIP) leverages our deep
contextual technology to find the right content to meet the ever-tightening advertiser performance goals. But we
can also block content in the same way when they indicate something is inappropriate for their brand. Because we
evaluate the true meaning of each page for categorization, we get the by-product of knowing exactly what topics
are on each page. We have compiled an extensive list inappropriate topics that we call our Objectionable Content
Filters. With these filters enabled we can make sure that their brand won’t appear on pages about hate or
pornography or even things like natural disasters or war. And these are all customizable by the advertiser because
what is inappropriate to one may be desirable content to another.

109
As for accessing the Long Tail for our advertisers, we deployed the concept of Media Classes within our platform
to take advantage of the Long Tail. We not only categorize the page content accurately, we also categorize the
type of source it is found on like news sites, social networks, blogs, enthusiast forums, gaming sites, wikis and
webmail portals. We also categorize the sometimes undesirable media classes like peer-to-peer file sharing sites
so advertisers can not only target specific media classes, they can also filter against certain classes of media if
they want. This opens all kinds of doors for our advertisers.

In your opinion, what will be some of the key drivers which will allow ad exchanges to progress from a
remnant-only to a premium and remnant model?

The key drivers will be their openness, a clear value proposition to the publishers, and their ability to support real-
time bidding. The exchange platforms have to be easily extensible so everyone can play. And we’ll need the
publisher side optimizers to keep advancing as well. They play a key roll that the exchanges are not filling today
and they exert a great deal of pull on the publishers drawing them to the exchange model. I expect to see a lot of
interesting changes in the next few years and LucidMedia plans to be right in the middle of it all adding value to the
agencies and advertisers.

Follow LucidMedia @lucidmediaVIP and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger.com) on Twitter.

April 14, 2009 – 7:18 am

110
Netmining Brings Profiling Solutions Through Ad Network
Model Says GM Vegliante
Dean Vegliante is General Manager of Netmining, an online ad network and optimization company - and a division
of Innovation Interactive which also owns SearchIgnite and 360i.

AdExchanger.com: What problem is Netmining

solving for its clients?

Netmining helps marketers drive significantly more

revenue from their websites and online advertising.
That's the heart of what we do.

We also simplify the execution of online behavioral

solutions with our Smart Tag. One simple Netmining tag
in the footer of a marketer's page can be used to deploy
behavioral optimization across their website, email and
display campaigns. Any future changes can be
controlled by Netmining offsite, reducing the need for
marketers to get their IT and website folks involved.

Who is your target market? Please describe your

revenue model.

Netmining's customers include some of the world's

leading digital agencies, as well as direct marketers,
particularly in the automotive, retail, travel and B2B
markets. Right now we find ourselves best suited to
work with marketers who can tie us to a performance
metric where we are consistently the best performer for
customers like Red Roof Inn and Borders.

In terms of our pricing, we're in a fortunate position because the rich data we collect and use in our algorithm
provides us with the best performance in the space and thus allows us the flexibility to be open to different revenue
models – CPA, CPM, rev share. We flourish in all of these models and work with clients to determine the best
approach for them.

On your website, the LiveMarketer product is described as analyzing customers on a website in real-time
to deliver profiles - targeting profiles I believe. How critical is real-time conversion data - after the
purchase? Or is this more about top-of-funnel demand generation when creating the user profile?

LiveMarketer is a real-time visual representation of Netmining's proprietary audience profiling engine as it analyzes
the visitors on a marketer's site.

Real-time performance data is critical and a key reason that we're able to consistently drive more revenue per
impression than any other behavioral and remarketing providers. Because we track a large number of declared
and undeclared behaviors about site visitors in real-time, we're able to quickly take consumers in and out of
segments as their interests change. This inevitably leads to better performance because we're able to ensure that
ad delivery and marketing messages are relevant – served at the right time with the right message to get that
customer to convert.

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It's not about top or bottom of the funnel. We look at RFM (recency, frequency and the monetary value of the
products looked at) to identify consumers that have the highest propensity to convert and buy at the most
appropriate moment. Netmining figures out the optimal message and time to serve it to make that happen.

Plus, LiveMarketer is a really powerful visual tool. It gets a big ‘wow' factor in every meeting we have with
marketers and we have yet to find anyone who doesn't like watching the "bubbles." It's the Bloomberg Terminal for
CMOs.

Why is email marketing a natural extension of audience targeting and website optimization services for
Netmining?

Our audience profiling engine gathers data that gives companies the ability to customize the entire online
marketing lifecycle for a more seamless 1:1 dialogue with consumers. We help make the messaging more relevant
and timely. Email is a natural extension of that philosophy and a marketing vehicle that is very clearly driven by
performance, an area where Netmining excels. Our technology is also compatible with all major CRM systems,
further strengthening our services in this area.

First and foremost, do you consider Netmining a technology or a services company?

Brands and their agencies aren't looking for technologies or frankly even "services," they're looking for solutions
that help the brand drive more ROI from their online efforts. Netmining provides solutions that consistently increase
conversions and the revenue generated from display, email and a marketer's website.

What is the difference between a demand-side platform and an ad network in your estimation?

For ad networks, the relationships are one-to-one. We work directly with our clients, be they an agency or a brand.
For agencies with demand-side platforms, they are working with multiple ad network vendors to optimize the media
buying process on behalf of their clients.

A year from now, what are some of the milestones we will be looking back on for 2010 for Netmining?

2010 is going to be a banner year for targeting (pun totally intended). At Netmining, we have an aggressive product
pipeline focused on leveraging our existing audience profiling technology and targeting capabilities to scale our
reach while still retaining the high quality of our performance and results.

Follow Netmining (@netmining) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

December 20, 2009 – 6:02 pm

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OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan Says Exchange Showing
Traction; OpenX Market Doubles In 2 Months
Tim Cadogan is CEO of OpenX, an online advertising technology
company.

AdExchanger.com: When you say (MediaPost 6/29) OpenX Market

is more like a search marketplace whereas Right Media is more
like a financial market, what do you mean?

TC: Just to be clear, OpenX Market is an exchange for display

advertising. Specifically, the Market is an easy to use, structured
exchange in which publishers can maximize revenue for their ad space
by selling their ad inventory to a wide array of competing advertisers
and advertisers can access targeted, primary ad inventory across a
broad array of publishers. The reference to a search marketplace
comes from the fact that both sellers and buyers immediately
participate in the entire market in a simple, easy way, thereby reducing
friction. Buyers also benefit from a second-price auction like search.
This means that advertisers can bid their true value, but only pay $0.01
more than the next highest bidder. This compares to a model like Right
Media - which is more like a classic stock exchange – where
participants first need an “exchange seat”, then need to link to the
other players they want to trade with and is predominantly first-price, all
of which is more work and friction.

Is there an auction with OpenX Market or is it first-come, first-

serve where all the bidder needs to do is beat the publisher's floor
price?

Yes, there is an auction with OpenX Market. The auction model is

designed to both optimize revenue and eliminate economic risk for publishers. The basic mechanics are pretty
simple. When a publisher chooses to pass inventory into the Market, they set a floor price – this is usually the
maximum price they can generate themselves. OpenX then runs a real-time auction to see if it can generate a
higher-priced ad than the floor price set by the publisher. If the auction results in a higher-paying ad, the publisher
runs the ad from the Market and makes more money. Only then does OpenX Market then take a transaction fee
(15%) because it has created more economic value for the publisher. If the auction does not result in a higher-
priced ad, the publisher runs their original ad and OpenX takes no fee. Publishers are in complete control of both
what inventory they choose to put into OpenX Market and their floor price. The floor price is key to protecting
publishers against any economic risk because the publisher determines at what price the auction “starts” (the floor
price can also be thought of as a “reserve price”).

How would you characterize the competitive advantage of OpenX Market compared to other marketplaces
and exchanges?
Five key things: simplicity, segment focus, primary inventory, price and independence.

• Simplicity: With OpenX Market we make it very simple for sellers and buyers to participate. For example,
for sellers we feature 1-click integration into the Market from the OpenX Ad Server and for buyers the
second-price auction greatly simplifies bidding strategies.
• Focus: Unlike the other major exchanges, e.g. Right Media and DoubleClick, our focus is on the mid-
market and upper tail, a traditionally underserved group of publishers.
• Primary inventory: partly due to our focus on mid-market publishers, nearly all the inventory in OpenX
Market is “primary”. This means it comes directly from publishers rather than “secondary” inventory which

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 is passed-on by ad networks. We also believe that mid-market publishers often have very valuable
audiences, even if they are somewhat smaller individually. By creating a market to pool these valuable but
diffuse audiences – a process we call “de-fragmenting” - we are endeavoring to significantly increase
revenue for publishers by making it easier for buyers to reach them.
• Price: OpenX Market is free to use and OpenX only takes a transaction fee if we beat the publisher’s self-
established floor price.
• Independence: OpenX is the only major exchange operated by an independent player.

Can you discuss the adoption rate and scale of OpenX Market publishers? It's been in beta for a while,
correct?
It’s definitely still very early days, but we’re been really pleased with the rate at which publishers have begun to
participate in OpenX Market. In just a couple of months since the Market formally launched, it has already doubled
in size as measured by the number of impressions that run through the exchange on a monthly basis.

What’s also very exciting is the immense potential. Approximately 300 billion ad impressions flow through OpenX
ad serving products monthly, so the potential for growth is enormous. And that’s just for publishers who are already
in the OpenX ecosystem - OpenX Market is in no way limited just to publishers who use OpenX Ad Server (our ad
serving technology). Any publisher can participate in OpenX Market by the simple use of a third-party ad tag and
many already are today.

How can buyers (advertisers and ad networks) participate?

Buyers can participate either through our web-based interface – called Ad Console - or through our Ad Console
APIs. The Ad Console enables buyers to select their target audiences based on geo, page context, frequency,
various technical parameters (browser type, OS, etc.) and ad size. We also support re-targeting. We’ll be adding
more data dimensions (e.g. demo) over the next few weeks. In addition, we are piloting real-time bidding with a
major buy-side partner.

From where does the demand or advertiser side of OpenX Market come?
The demand side for OpenX Market comes from a combination of ad networks, agencies and direct advertisers.

What is the revenue model for OpenX with OpenX Market? Transactional, rev share?
The revenue model for OpenX Market is transactional and completely linked to increasing economic value for ad
inventory. When the OpenX Market’s auction process generates an ad that beats the floor price a publisher has set
(i.e. drives more revenue), then the Market takes a transaction fee (15%). That’s it. There are no other fees for
participating for sellers or buyers.

Do you have any plans for demand-side optimization and real-time bidding (RTB)? How far off?
Yes. In fact, we already have real-time bidding live with a major beta partner and are working on several more.

Generally speaking, when do you think publishers will be willing to start selling more premium in the
exchange?
Because publishers have complete control over their participation they can already place premium ad inventory
into the exchange. They simply protect the premium nature of this inventory by placing higher floor prices on this
inventory. For OpenX ad serving users, we make it extremely easy to flow any class of inventory
(contract/premium or remnant) into OpenX Market. We expect to see more premium inventory flowing into the
Market as we further build our scale and attract a deeper and broader set of ad buyers. Thinking more broadly, the
nice thing is that auctions have a well-documented history of maximizing value for high value items (think
Sotheby’s for fine art or Google for high value search terms) so we draw on a strong tradition of using open
auctions to maximize economic value. We think the next year or two is going to be very exciting.

Follow Tim Cadogan (@timcadogan), OpenX (@openx) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 1, 2009 – 7:29 am

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OpenX Update: On Microsoft

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Tim Cadogan, CEO of OpenX, spoke with AdExchanger.com about the OpenX/Microsoft deal announced last
week.

AdExchanger.com: How will revenue be driven to OpenX from

the deal announced today with Microsoft? Does OpenX get a
share of PubCenter revenue from OpenX pubs, for example?

TC: We're not breaking out financial specifics, but in general terms
OpenX expects to gain paying customer for our Enterprise ad
serving product which will obviously generate revenue for OpenX.

Will OpenX ad serving technology be used on MSN

properties? Curious about the large publishers mentioned as
an opportunity for OpenX in the release.

The partnership is focused on third-party publisher ad serving so

will not include MSN properties.

Considering OpenX open source roots, it is ironic that OpenX is making a deal with Microsoft - known in
the past for a walled-garden or proprietary strategy for software. What does this mean about the way both
companies are evolving today?

We have certainly found Microsoft very open to creative partnering opportunities. In their public statements they
have been clear they are increasingly approaching the space with an "ecosystem mindset" which means
sometimes working with third parties to solve customer needs. This partnership is obviously a great illustration of
that. I have a feeling Microsoft might start to cause people to reevaluate some of their assumptions about them.

From the OpenX side, openness has clearly been fundamental to our approach since our founding. When we
evaluated this partnership we thought, as we always do, about our core company goals. Those goals are very
clear; first, to make advertising technology ubiquitously available to help businesses grow online and second, to
help connect those businesses to revenue sources that help them make more money. We felt this partnership
really helps us make progress against those twin goals.

First, it will help us enable more online businesses to grow by exposing our advertising technology to more
potential customers via the referral arrangement with Microsoft. Second, the content ads component of the
partnership enables us to make another revenue option easily accessible to OpenX publishers while maintaining
comprehensive publisher choice and control. As such, the partnership made terrific sense for us and our publisher
community.

By John Ebbert
November 13, 2009 – 2:29 pm

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ShortTail Media Providing Good Ads, Rates, Clients for
Publishers Says Pres Jason Krebs

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Jason Krebs is President of ShortTail Media.

AdExchanger.com: What must ad networks do, if

anything, to make sure that publishers do not feel
like they're inventory is being cannibalized?

JK: The reality is they are being cannibalized by most networks. The networks make the publishers feel like they
are not being cannibalized by sending them nice checks every month.

How's business? Can you give us a sense of revenue momentum at ShortTail Media and where you're
seeing strengths and weaknesses?

Business is "okay." We're making progress but it's never as fast as you'd like it to be. Visibility is about 6 weeks
out. We're seeing strength in consumer products, food/beverage, entertainment and travel. We're very excited
about a new video ad platform we are launching this summer called the Digital 30. Stay tuned for more on that.

How does ShortTail differentiate itself from other ad networks?

We are actually partners with our publishers, not arbitragers. We do not buy media, but instead, we work with our
publishers to secure access to great placements and with our advertisers to provide broad reach and/or targeted
audiences in the clean, well-lit environment of the nation's top websites. Unlike other networks that promise you'll
get "sites like these," at ShortTail, advertisers receive complete transparency -- they only get the sites they
request. To our publishers, we deliver good ads, at good rates, from good clients who they wouldn't normally be
calling.

How does ShortTail Media ensure brand safety?

We only represent 50 or so professional media brands. They are all in the "clean, well-lit space."

In ShortTail's day-to-day operations, what trends are you seeing in the current online advertising
marketplace such as CPM direction, use of targeting technology, etc.?

The marketplace is stratifying in the high and low ends, with the former requiring customization and the latter being
largely click-performance driven. The targeting questions basically have not changed in the past 10 years. Of
course if I'm an advertiser with a very specific product, with a definitive, exclusive audience, then a fine target
makes sense. However if an advertiser has a new line of snacks, or a new flavored beverage, or a better detergent
to clean my laundry, we don't believe that level of targeting makes sense.

Can ad exchanges become a viable option for premium inventory? Under what circumstances would
ShortTail use an ad exchange?

No. None.

Will there be more or fewer ad networks in the future?

Fewer.

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How must ad agencies adjust as digital advertising evolves?

We don't think agencies should be so obsessed with marketing solely to pre-conceived groups for most products.
You still have to convince consumers that they need a product and then tell them how good the product is. Years
ago we were told in brilliant marketing that Volvo was the safest car on the road. Volvo would never have been a
success if they waited for people to type "safe car" into a search engine. I've got dozens more suggestions, how
much time do you have?

Do you feel the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) adequately represents the needs of ad networks?

I'm not sure they need to. What the IAB should do is to make sure that consumers understand that access to all of
the greatest news/information/entertainment in the world can be kept free of charge if they just take the time to look
at a few ads. I am confident on Randall's leadership to drive the industry forward. (I feel the same confidence about
Pam Horan of the OPA as well)

No pun intended, but does ShortTail consider the Long Tail a "scary" place to advertise?

Be afraid, be very afraid.

How do you see ShortTail Media growing in the next 12-24 months?

We'll be showing Fortune 500 advertisers that these beautifully designed websites, that ensure a safe environment
for their message, while being delivered to the most desirable of reader, are the perfect place for their video
commercials and their elegant banner creative. This is not your father's Internet.

Follow ShortTail Media @ShortTail and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

April 28, 2009 – 7:32 am

117
Tatto Media CEO Miao Says Ad Exchange Will Not Be
Needed Someday
Email This Post

Lin Miao is Chief Executive Officer of Tatto Media, an online advertising network.

AdExchanger.com: Tell us a little bit about Tatto Media. You position Tatto as an ad network, but during a
recent panel at the ad:tech Chicago conference, you sounded more like a DR agency to me. What's the
story?

LM: Tatto Media is the third largest global advertising network

(comScore, July 2009) and we are focused on performance
campaigns. We tailor to advertisers that are familiar with direct
response already and who are seeking a larger, more global
audience in addition to requiring next generation behavioral tools that
enables them to segment leads more accurately.

What momentum are you seeing on the client-side today?

We currently cater to more than 1,000 advertisers that fall specifically

in the following categories: Finance, Education, Entertainment and
Insurance. These clients are usually well-versed in direct response
and are constantly looking for more accuracy and quality in the
delivery of leads, larger scale and complete global presence.

Tatto Media was founded in 2005 and since then we believed that
behavioral targeting should exist as a support tool specifically for
direct response and not for brands. As more direct response
agencies and networks enter the space, it is imperative that large
advertising networks focus on technologies that can improve lead
quality. Behavioral targeting makes sense in assisting advertisers to reach a higher quality of an audience and thus
should increase conversions.

How is Tatto Media buying today from Publishers? Is it upfront, spot buying, etc.?

Tatto Media typically works with publishers on a revenue share.

Can you give us a sense of a typical campaign these days?

Tatto Media is a display advertising network. When looking at the overall network picture, there are very few
display advertising networks that focus strictly on direct response clients. This is typically because the creative
resources and customized tools required for lead generation is very different than the traditional CPM model.

A major difference in our self-serve display advertising platform is the fact that we focused much of the technology
on the ability for advertisers to customize their banners on a performance level. As long as the creative is designed
in flash, we can strip all elements of a creative such as color, wording, shades and elements and from there we
can tell you if, say, blue is converting better than red. The advertiser is then given the opportunity to allow the
system to change the creative automatically based on a proprietary algorithm. We understand that not all
advertisers have a large graphics team that can modify every single banner so we created a tool that minimizes
labor costs and increases the ease of getting a display campaign up and live.

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How does Tatto Media differentiate itself from other ad networks? Is it all about effective arbitrage and/or
is their proprietary technology involved?

Tatto Media strictly focuses on direct response clients. This enables us to be specialized in two specific areas:
targeting (behavioral) and creative design (self serve creative optimization). Because of our global scale, it forces
us to build sustainable technology that can automate much of this on a large scale. The sustainable technology
that replicates our success on billions of monthly impressions is what differentiates us from the rest of the industry.

How do you see the ad network model playing out in the future?

While there are some doubts on the ad network model, ad networks will continue to exist on a consolidated level.
For example, every network has its own strengths and weaknesses and there are various reasons why publishers
choose one over another. Some networks may be experts at monetizing Japan, for example. A publisher cannot
monetize every country effectively by themselves, nor do all have the resources to have a full blown sales team.
Publishers will need help in certain countries or certain types of inventories.

And the agency model - what are your thoughts?

I do believe that more and more of the traditional advertising networks and agencies will need to build a
performance/DR division as that is where much of the industry is moving toward even on a brand level.

Are ad exchanges good for ad networks? And, do you see impression-level, real-time bidding as a game-
changer?

There are a lot of inefficiencies in the online advertising model between publishers, networks and advertisers.
Ultimately, many publishers simply don't know better and make less than they should. When a publisher chooses a
network and runs a campaign, that campaign could be brokered 5-6 times, so naturally there exists 5-6 companies
in the middle all taking their cuts. The result of this is that the publisher only makes maybe 25 percent of what it
really should be making if it went directly to the advertisers. The trend between eliminating networks in the middle
and a direct publisher to advertiser relationship is more imminent than ever.

Ad exchanges exist simply because of all of these inefficiencies. Ad exchanges even add an extra level of
inefficiency into this mix. Once the inefficiencies get eliminated and the industry changes and improves, then the
need for ad exchanges no longer exists.

Does brand advertising work on the Web?

We don't work with brand campaigns, but I believe that brand campaigns need to evolve with more performance
metrics embedded.

Finally, what's the story with the spelling of "Tatto"? Inquiring minds want to know.

Tatto is Italian for "authentic". We chose the name because of how Tatto was started – with only $100 between
three college students. We find that to be quite a unique, and "authentic" start to a multi-million business.

Follow Tatto Media (@tattomedia) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

October 7, 2009 – 6:50 am

119
Platform Neutral TRAFFIQ Addressing Premium To Mid-
Tail Inventory For Havas Digital And Industry Says SVP
Portugal
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Scott Portugal is SVP, Global Business Development at

TRAFFIQ, an online advertising marketplace.

AdExchanger.com: Discuss the momentum for TRAFFIQ

in 2009. What's going on right now?

SP: What isn't going on! Obviously, the announcement

yesterday of our strategic partnership with Havas Digital is
big news. We're extraordinarily excited about the chance to
work with an agency of their caliber. It's also another
validation of our belief that the market and the industry are in
need of a company like TRAFFIQ now. Organizing the mid-
tail and premium display advertising space – and facilitating
transactions between those buyers & sellers - is something
that needs to be addressed, and it's telling of Havas' forward
thinking that they see an opportunity to have us help them
address this challenge.

The Long Tail has been adequately addressed by all the

names we know: Right Media, AdBrite, AdECN. Even
publishers own long tails have been addressed: AOL has
AdBidCentral in addition to Ad.com; Yahoo! has RightMedia;
MSNBC has their AdReady-enabled system. But for agencies
& advertisers trying to parse through 1000s of clean, well-lit sites ranging from premium category leaders to niche
enthusiast sites, very little has changed over time: it's still very siloed and inefficient.

Agencies and advertisers are all striving to become more effective in reaching audiences as they fragment, but
maintaining brand and price control is a challenge – one that we believe we're addressing through via an open and
transparent marketplace that operates very much like a traditional exchange. The commodities example – and for
the record, I am NOT intimating that ad inventory is in any way commoditized yet – actually works: an open market
of buyers and sellers moving different products (current and futures) where buyers can apply downward pricing
pressure and sellers can extract true market value of their goods.

The premium nature of our marketplace also aligns well with the ongoing push of smaller advertisers into display
inventory. Because you've got local and regional advertisers starting to push online display advertising in a big way
– clients who are comfortable with see their ad in the local paper, hear their ad on the local radio – they want that
safety in the digital space. Semi-blind agencies and exchanges offer efficiency and reach and scale against those
audiences but they inhibit brand and price control. By empowering these advertisers and their data with those
controls, they can safely move more and more budget into display media. It's a win-win.

Let's talk about TRAFFIQ, the company, and revenue momentum as well as affects of the economy.

Everybody has been affected by the economy and TRAFFIQ is no different. It's meant the acceleration of our
business hasn't happened to the degree that I think we expected prior to the recession really starting. However, the
upside is that were given a window in which the product itself – the marketplace and tools around it – matured
significantly. It's meant we were able to make sure TRAFFIQ was ready for prime time, and now that's playing out

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as we had anticipated: we're seeing significant month over month revenue growth as well as significant month over
month user growth on both the buy and sell side.

What do you mean by "user"? Who do you target as a prototypical TRAFFIQ customer?

Buyers and sellers of digital display media who care where their ad appears. Agencies, direct advertisers,
publishers as well as ad networks. Like anybody else, networks and exchanges have excess inventory and need
alternate business development paths to monetize that space.

One thing we don't have is a pure vertical focus. We have enough liquidity so that whether the agency is targeting
Travel, Auto, B2B, Moms, Sports Fans, etc., they can build their plan according to their own specs. TRAFFIQ
simply enables them to do that with greater efficiency, scale, and control.

Our sweet spot has been working with agencies that want to gain greater efficiency beyond the sites they always
buy on and at independent, local and regional agencies who are seeing local revenue flow online and need to
increase their buying power.

We're seeing a lot of independent agencies be able to use the web-based walk-up nature of TRAFFIQ and start to
grow their own businesses. With free ad serving, a deep set of analytics, consolidated billing and on-call support
staff, these shops can accelerate their own understanding of best practices in the display space. That drives more
revenue out to more publishers and networks, and again, everyone wins.

Let's go back in your past - to Tacoda. You read what Tim Armstrong said he wants: AOL should own
display. What are your thoughts?

It's the smart play. They have always had strong content: at one time that maintained 120 owned and operated
businesses. Putting an integrated display program in place around strong content is the killer for them. Taking the
disparate ad tools – such as Tacoda, Ad.com (and the Ad Learn, machine-learned optimization system) – they
should become an even stronger player.

The challenges of Platform-A is obviously similar to those that companies like Yahoo!, IAC, and other multi-site
media companies face: excess inventory, various targeting options and methodologies, publisher overlap, and
often times dozens of ad networks involved. Look at Yahoo!: they have their own ad space, O&O's, Blue Lithium,
Right Media, their newspaper consortium….lots of overlap, plenty of inventory. Baking that all together into a
cohesive and integrated inventory monetization system is a beast – but if anyone can figure out how to do it, it will
be Tim.

One advantage Tim has is what's left of the TACODA technology. Behavioral targeting has shown to be effective is
in the brand & branded response space: right user, right time, out of context, it resonates, they recognize it and it
creates positive brand awareness. What AOL can do is stagger their inventory utilizing the positive CPM's that BT
commands: start with premium ad partnerships, then step the subsequent ad calls down to behaviorally-targeted
campaigns. Ideally you deliver all you can against that user at quasi-premium CPM's, then below that slot in
Ad.com inventory maximizing the performance value of that user. It sounds like Yield Management 101, but pulling
it all together is going to be essential to realizing the best value per impression each session.

What is the new platform trend on the agency side about?

It's about control. Back in February, Rob Norman was quoted in the Wall Street Journal saying ad networks should
not have been allowed to exist. What he meant – and what he went on to explain – is that while agencies were so
"heads down" on serving their clients, they couldn't focus on targeting technologies. So in a world of oversupply,
the door opened for aggregators to start to pool together blocks of impressions. They then created slick, efficient
targeting mechanisms to take advantage of that pool of inventory and better extract the real market value of their
supply chains. Thus agencies & advertisers were left flying semi-blind in order to access the inventory they want
insight into.

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The agencies were smart enough to realize that, it's their data, their campaign budget, and that they need to reach
targeted audiences as efficiently as possible. So now the holding companies are fighting to regain that control over
price, brand, and most importantly their own data. It's why WPP changed their data ownership terms. It's why IPG
built Cadreon. It's why OMG is doing what they're doing and why Havas has Adnetik and Artemis etc. For these
shops it's about being able to maximize the value per ad call in real-time, pulling data from their own campaigns,
buying data out of BlueKai, eXelate, Brillig, Datran, etc. – and in turn helping publishers achieve maximum yield.

One challenge that the agency will face will be supply chain management. Ask anybody who has worked on the
publisher side of managing an ad network and they will tell you that there's a lot of staff there that is needed to
maintain relationships down to page load problems, "ad-tag-broke-my-page type stuff". Partners who can help
them in this space are well positioned for the long run.

How is TRAFFIQ going to fit in to the platform world?

We think we are the perfect partner to help these agencies both manage their supply chains AND drive the efficient
"deeper" buying that their clients want to see. Agencies and advertisers will always maintain strategic publisher
relationships, as there is real value in working closely with a publisher to develop integrated programs. The
performance component will be addressed via new agency delivery platforms. But it's everything in between that
TRAFFIQ can help with.

We've created a platform where agencies can go direct-to-publisher to maintain brand safety, but also use real-
time data and flexible optimization tools to re-allocate the buy to hit campaign KPI's.

We're not in a pure brand or performance world anymore. Advertisers can and SHOULD care about both brand
and performance metrics simultaneously. TRAFFIQ offers agencies a platform through which they can negotiate
direct-to-publisher and negotiate infinite numbers and permutations of media plans, execute through a single,
easy-to-use interface, and re-allocate and optimize with full transparency which is part of the other game. This
allows every buy to be brand safe AND optimized.

As audiences fragment, coalesce, and then fragment again, agencies and advertisers need a centralized location
to be able to find best-of-breed sites, evaluate targeting options, extract the best price on an order by order basis
(not ad call by ad call), and ultimately manage and execute against that without returning to the siloed process that
exists today. It's simply not scalable. Our system helps advertiser & agencies achieve that sorely needed scale.

How will TRAFFIQ participate in real-time, impression-level bidding?

I think it's a natural outgrowth of our current business. Like anybody else, we can't be all things to all people. We
started in an area of the market that we believe was underserved. From there, we are looking to expand in a
number of different directions.

Agencies and publishers are going to find the exchange that works best for them, and a continuous serving
environment is certainly on our roadmap for consideration. Over time, as TRAFFIQ develops secondary products,
one of those options might be a TRAFFIQ powered auction-based buying platform.

Let's talk about a shift in messaging for TRAFFIQ. In 2007, TRAFFIQ identified itself as an exchange.
Today, TRAFFIQ identifies itself as a marketplace. Why the change? Are you still an exchange?

We had been running a futures-based auction – a model that I don't think the industry was necessarily ready for.
Managing auctions against current and future blocks of inventory on a non-real-time basis requires a level of
liquidity that we may not have necessarily had, as well as publishers who needed to maintain a level of diligence in
terms of managing blocks of inventory that on a futures basis – which can be difficult.

What we saw was a need for a better combination of both automation and transparency, thus our switch in
messaging to what you see today – TRAFFIQ as an open and transparent marketplace.

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Isn't that an exchange, though?

Absolutely! The term exchange has been linked in our space to ad networks because their aggregators of
inventory and do sort-of real-time delivery. Like I mentioned before, we've built TRAFFIQ almost like a
commodities exchange where you've got actually buyers and sellers with market-makers in the middle helping
facilitate transactions. It's a return to what ad exchanges were originally developed to be.

Who are your competitors? Exchanges like DoubleClick AdX or buying platforms such as MediaMath and
Invite Media?

I'd consider the DoubleClick AdX as our closest relevant competitor.

How do you compete with them and differentiate with THAT company hanging around?

The independent nature of TRAFFIQ is obviously a huge value for both everybody in the market. We're platform
neutral. You don't have to be DFA/DFP/DFE-enabled: we are interoperable with all major serving platforms.
Additionally we have our own ad server and analytics package that are free as services to help utilize the
marketplace.

The free nature of our platform is also a critical differentiator: agencies and advertisers only pay for the media they
buy (we work on a revenue share with publishers). This revenue share is more favorable than what many third
parties offer, and because of the open model of our market, agencies, advertisers and publishers communicate
directly with each other.

But the biggest point of differentiation is most likely the quality of inventory available in TRAFFIQ. AdX may have
massive scale but it's against long tail inventory. Because TRAFFIQ is a biz dev tool for publishers, we see
publishers selling premium bocks of inventory, including high-engagement placements like video, interstitials,
roadblocks, sponsorships, etc..

Finally, remember that this is our only business – we don't have to worry about maintaining ancillary products and
platforms – it's just TRAFFIQ. This centralized focus means we can quickly iterate the platform and grow the
market without distraction. We put out new product releases monthly, not annually. It allows us to stay ahead of
agency & publisher demand and address marketplace needs as they arise.

How does TRAFFIQ grow in the future? Do you need more funding? Or do you just drive sales?

We launched the product as it exists today in January, so like any other maturing business, today it's all about
sales and marketing.

You have 500 directs, 400 agencies, 1700 publishers who work with TRAFFIQ. Among the publishers,
directs and agencies, which is the most difficult to grow and why?

Agencies, as they certainly have the least amount of bandwidth to evaluate new opportunities.

Utilizing TRAFFIQ means a new tool to plan, buy, execute & manage display media campaigns, and in the agency
world, anything new means a longer time for consideration. However, in the long run this consideration is beneficial
to us, as the conversation is no longer about media being a good fit for one client, but instead it's a healthy
conversation about how partnering with TRAFFIQ is it right for ALL clients and campaigns. Buying deeper with
greater control impacts every agency & advertiser, and we look forward to helping buyers achieve the efficiency
they want and the control they need.

You can follow TRAFFIQ (@TRAFFIQnews) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 23, 2009 – 9:02 am

123
CSO Schanzer of Undertone Networks Says Online Metrics
Today Don’t Support Long Term Needs Of A Brand
Email This Post

Alan Schanzer is Chief Strategy Officer, Undertone

Networks, an online advertising network.

AdExchanger.com: Of the four ad solutions you provide

according to your website (Display Ads, Synched Ads,
Undertone Video and Full Page Ads), which is the fastest
growing and why? Any surprises or trends that you've
seen in 2009?

AS: We are seeing growth in most of our higher impact units

including all forms of video, rich media and a new product
which allows a user to connect an ad or offer directly to a
mobile device, Web based calendar, Twitter stream or social
media environment. This growth is being driven by brand and
direct response marketers who seek both impact and
performance and are interested in experimenting online
beyond the basic banners with units that have TV
characteristics (site, sound, motion) but aren’t necessarily a
replication of TV creative.

In a recent Advertising Age article, it was noted that

Undertone will refund a campaign as much as $50,000 if
impression quality slips. How do you determine quality?
Please provide an example. Have you made any refunds
yet?

Undertone does not acquire inventory through an ad exchange or from other questionable sources. Each publisher
in our network must be professionally produced, provide a blend of the ad units we deliver, and offer above-the-
fold inventory. The publishers that meet that criteria are scored based on the quality of the layout and the content
to ensure a safe, well lit environment for brands that want performance without sacrificing quality and control.
Publishers that meet the Undertone Qualified Publishers (UQP) requirements are further analyzed based on their
ability to deliver brand or direct response objectives.

We issued the Undertone Quality Guarantee(SM) to help clients make sense of all the noise in the market. Too
many networks tout quality and appropriate placements yet few can deliver on that. The Guarantee was about
raising the ante and showing clients that accountability matters. What is most interesting is that since announcing
the Guarantee, not a single network has followed suit or offered anything of its kind.

Will real-time bidding (RTB) or demand-side optimization play a part in Undertone's strategy in the future?
It seems like a behavioral marketer's dream given the data intensive model.

We are currently investing in technology that will make the Undertone network seamless and easy to use for third
parties to "bolt" on and work with us. This will extend through demand and sell side systems. A real-time bidding
system is not in the plans as the nature of our inventory is not best utilized this way.

Trading platforms and systems such as Invite Media and Media Math are aggregating exchange and
publisher inventory and beginning to enable agencies and ad networks. How does Undertone meet this
challenge?

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Undertone has and is continuing to invest in inventory management and optimization systems that will compete
head on with trading platforms from a performance standpoint, however, we are not concerned with long tail or
remnant inventory. We are carving out a secondary media marketplace that is focused on quality and performance
and is best suited for brands that need a certain level of confidence and protection. Undertone will stay very
focused on this position, along with a suite of quality products to deliver our value to marketers and agencies.
Data, analytics and such play a critical role, but let’s not forget we are still in a service business where clients are
looking for more than just algorithms. We are focusing considerable effort on this.

How do you assure your publisher network that you are not cannibalizing their inventory?

Undertone is a strong proponent of publishers direct to agency sales channel. We do not provide transparent site
by site reporting and defend that position vigorously. As a result of a direct to publisher buying model, Undertone's
inventory and pricing is marketplace driven by supply and demand side economics for secondary inventory. With a
much smaller set of publishers, Undertone is able to establish specific rules of engagements with publishers that
may govern who and when our sales teams can target. Our goal is to provide incremental monetization to the
publishers’ direct efforts – never channel conflict.

One of the best things we can do for publishers is to help them drive additional revenue by leveraging their
strengths. Our new product called U360 will do that and we are excited about the response we have already seen
in the market.

What has been Undertone's experience with data exchanges? Do you use them? Do they provide ROI?

Undertone has successfully used data exchanges and is now expanding its partner list to include vertical data sets
where appropriate. Beyond providing positive ROI, well vetted exchanges provide access to clean opt-in data that
scales across segments and categories. We are releasing products that will increasingly leverage third party data
and help make access to data in large volume simple and effective for agencies and marketers.

In your opinion, why is it taking so long for brand awareness campaigns to come online?

It’s a big scary leap for brand marketers to move away from proven TV based models that go back 20, 30, even 50
years. The transition needs to be slow because the metrics today don't necessarily support the long term needs of
a brand, and traditional econometric models don’t do a good job of capturing and attributing online exposure to
sales and/or brand success.

The answer will come as research and metrics evolve. Not so much away from CPx but away from the very short
term view we have today that looks at success over weeks and perhaps months (if you are lucky) and move
toward measures that define the value of online communications to the long term growth and success of a brand.

Are your clients running display with their search campaigns? If so, have they seen any boost in overall
ROI?
Generally speaking, display advertising creates demand which provides lift to search efforts, certainly lift to the
number of searches conducted for a brand, keyword or phrase. We recognize the value of synchronizing efforts
between display and search to drive results but don't spend a lot of time thinking about it given the significant
impact other, typically offline channels, will have on these results.

Does search retargeting offer significant promise in increasing ROI and interest in the display market? Has
Undertone tried Yahoo's offering or will it?
Undertone offers search retargeting from a landing page which is one step further down the funnel toward sales or
desired actions. The ROI for these efforts is extremely positive. We have not tried Yahoo’s product.

Follow Undertone Networks (@UndertoneNet) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

125
Xtend Media CEO Orzel Says Ad Networks Will Need To
Rely On Media Buying Skills To Survive
Email This Post

Adi Orzel is CEO of Xtend Media, an online display

advertising network.

AdExchanger.com: How will ad networks need

to change to remain viable?

AO: I think that ad networks will need to rely much

more on media buying, rather than developing their
publisher networks, due to the fact that more and
more publisher relationships will move outside from
ad networks to exchanges and yield optimization
platforms. As a result of that change they will also
have a huge opportunity to put a bigger focus on
the advertiser’s needs when running a campaign,
rather than the inventory they own and need to sell.
I see ad networks being the dominant buying force
on exchanges and not the agencies. Agencies will
move slowly when it come to non-guaranteed
display inventory. I think it will be a challenge for
them to adjust to this opportunity. The ad networks
are there and ready to take it on with full force and
all of their campaigns, and I believe they will
continue to be a valuable player in the value chain
between the ad exchanges and the agency / final
advertiser.

Where does XTEND fit in the online advertising

ecosystem?

XTEND is a global performance display ad network.

We are part of an international performance
marketing group called Adsmarket. As such we
bring value to media companies and publishers by helping them monetize their international inventory even in the
most remote markets. On the other front we focus on direct response advertisers that look for a network with a
strong global marketing approach.

What’s your view on Demand side platforms?

I think DSPs are a must when it comes to working with the new ad exchanges. The real challenge relies in
connecting the bidding algorithms and decision making mechanism to the back end data of the advertiser. For DR
campaigns I think this is the most important challenge; you want to be able to bid effectively for what’s converting.
We are looking into working with DSPs to get quicker and more efficient access to the exchange platforms. I’m
intrigued to see how we can integrate our backend data into their bid logic. Other parts of the solutions such as API
integration with the exchanges are quite simple. I’m not running into developing under the same concept that we
don’t need to build our own ad server in order to be in the business. However, we are enhancing our data analysis
capabilities to build stronger campaign management logics.

What percentage of your business is brand, will you pursue it?

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I’d say about 20% of our business is brand. We don’t pursue it that much. We want to stay focused on our agenda
of performance advertising. We believe that many brands will develop their DR strategy from search into display in
the near future.

How do you solve creative optimization? Multi variate tools? In-house team?

We use extensive conversion data to optimize creative optimization and publisher performance for our clients. It’s
an ongoing process that never ends and relies heavily on the supply of new creative for the campaigns. We do
have an in-house creative team that works with our clients to generate new ads and concepts for our campaigns.

Discuss the inventory across quality, across exchanges, ad networks and direct publisher relationships.
How concerned are you about the placement from a quality perspective?

I think that inventory quality control is a burning subject in the industry right now and rightfully so. The problem
resides across publishers, ad networks and exchanges. Basically anyone who is working with UGC inventory is
exposed to the risk, because you can’t predict when someone will upload a bad photo or video file that your ad
might appear next to. There are also publishers who might register one legit site on a network and then use the ad
tag on 10 other sites that are not approved. The solutions we are looking at using or developing can help us assure
quality across our own inventory, but when it comes to media buying from other exchanges / networks / platforms,
you’re pretty much limited to what you can do and you have to rely on the other side.

Do you think Behavioral works? Contextual?

I see limited success with Behavioral targeting when it comes to conversions. I think most of the activity is still
Retargeting campaigns for brands that still measure it at a CTR level and not much beyond it. I think that the
potential there still needs to be proved from a DR perspective, because even if you get a 50% lift in performance,
the scale is limited. With Contextual, we are still at early stages when it comes to display advertising, we are
testing it in different cases, but again the scale of the opportunity is always a big trade-off when you narrow the
targeting down.

What trends are you seeing from clients? Goal types? Vertical strengths? Budgets?

I think that during the last 12 months I’ve seen most of our clients turning defensive. This means aiming at CPAs
rather than CPLs, and in general bringing the CPA targets down. These measures were taken due to fears that life
time values of clients will shrink due to the current financial recession. We’ve also seen that clients who were used
to consuming as much media as possible within their CPA targets moved to budgets in order to limit their risks.
This is especially true with advertisers who are based on subscription model and long term user transactions.

Are you thinking about RTB? Do you consider this an opportunity?

Yes, I do think it’s an opportunity for us. Although, we do not use a lot of external data for targeting yet, we will
need a way to hook our backend data analysis into the media exchanges bidding mechanism. This will have to be
through automated processes and RTB access is the way to do that.

Follow Adi Orzel (@adi_orzel) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

November 13, 2009 – 8:52 am

127
Yahoo! Right Media VP Taylor Looks At The Future Of
Exchanges And Media
Email This Post

Antony Taylor is VP of Display

Platforms at Yahoo!'s Right
Media Exchange.

AdExchanger.com: It feels
like it's very early in the
understanding of display ad
exchanges especially as it
relates to feedback from
attendees at recent
conferences.

AT: After a recent exchange

panel, an attendee said to me,
"None of it. I got none of it.
Why don't you guys just start
with how an exchange helps a
direct marketer?" Now, we're
doing this every day, but I still
thought the feedback was
good. We may think we're on
to the next big thing, but
there's so much education
that still needs to happen.

How is this education going

to happen around display
and exchanges?

When people think ad

exchange, they think biddable media, the auction, opportunities for advertisers to compete for audience. But [Right
Media] learned early on that the exchange was only going to grow if we made it relevant to the business problems
our customers were facing. For Publishers that meant an efficient inventory distribution platform and pricing and
yield management engine. For networks, that meant seamless access to supply and the tools to manage ROI
effectively at scale. For advertisers that meant solving for supply fragmentation in display, managing frequency of
user interactions and leveraging data across disparate supply sources and competing ad servers.

Would you say it's about performance display these days?

There is no question advertisers are looking for accountability in their media spend. I also think the industry is in its
next stage of evolution – the shift towards audience-based buying and selling. Advertisers today are pretty clear
that they want to find, target and buy audiences. And they want a platform that can provide them that. In some
cases they're saying, help us define the online audiences that make sense for our products. They acknowledge
that contextual or content-driven buys are just a proxy for finding effective audiences. They need to be able to
leverage their own data and insights.

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Getting legacy ad servers out of the way – manual arbitration and zero predictive optimization – no doubt paved
the way for performance advertising. But the bigger story here is the digital shift towards audience and our
industry's run at traditional advertising mediums.

Let's talk about the features of ad exchanges. Why do you think interoperability between ad exchanges is
important?

Well once you understand we are at another inflection point as an industry – one that is focused on helping
advertisers reach and buy audiences at scale – interoperability becomes an imperative. Advertisers need to be
able to interact with consumers at optimal frequencies across different supply sources.

Now some networks believe that they can actually service 100% of an advertiser's needs. "I'm Joe Network, I'm big
enough. Just give me all of your spend, and I'll find your audience." That's obviously nonsense, unless you own the
internet – especially when you consider consumer web experiences.

At the same time, ad exchanges had the vision of a single technology platform for the industry. While we made
incredible progress, advertiser needs are moving faster. So instead of battling over hosted supply solutions, we are
ensuring that we can plug-in to an auction environment and know that our advertisers are not disadvantaged in
auctions we don't host.

In this way, Right Media is now not only an operator of the largest ad exchange but also a platform for marketers.
We are partnering with large advertisers and agencies that need more efficient buying platforms. All of them
require access to supply that may not be hosted in Right Media Exchange and we are going to give it to them.

Do you think that DoubleClick will give them the same access to you?

It's a great question and you should pose it to them. From our perspective, we can't not be doing this for our
marketers.

Is that what Yahoo! 3PI is about?

Yes. We began exploring "Yahoo! 3PI" 2.5 years ago.

This isn't widely known. Is this a new branded term?

Yes, third-party integration. You either have a lot of demand and want to plug-in to supply marketplaces regardless
of platform or you have a lot of supply and want to ensure your marketers can leverage all of their insights and
capabilities to drive ROI.

But let's do some myth busting. It took 2.5 years to get to beta because there aren't a lot of companies that have
world-class ad decisioning capabilities that enable them to decision on a per impression basis. There are maybe 4
or 5 companies that can scale it enough to warrant their investing in real-time integrations. However, there are a lot
of advertisers with data who want to map their segments into Right Media. This is very powerful as it enables
audience-based buying at scale. But, it's different from the deep 3PI we talk about in real-time bidding.

Does Yahoo! offer real-time bidding (RTB) through Right Media currently?

Yes, we are beta-testing our first few partners. The challenge is scaling. It's not easy – we're really talking about
drinking from the fire hose.

What is the value of RTB through Right Media in your estimation?

For companies that can do it, we are ultimately trying to drive greater campaign effectiveness (reach and ROI)
which leads to greater yield for publishers.

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The other value proposition is that we have reduced technology friction that has constrained advertiser and
publisher performance.

Such as ad serving? How does that evolve?

When you talk about ad decisioning, prediction, unifying guaranteed and non-guaranteed marketplaces, the next
generation of ad serving innovations is extremely exciting. However, the basics of legacy ad serving systems have
become commodity. Period. They are important in as much as they can service the needs of advertisers and
publishers. The reality is those needs have evolved in sophistication and complexity. Legacy ad servers have not
innovated to meet those needs.

Imagine in the direct mail world if as a consumer you opened your mailbox and in it was ten of the same credit card
offers from the same company. Imagine the waste inherent in that kind of marketing execution – to say nothing of
the consumer experience and brand impact. This is the digital world marketers face today due to these legacy
systems.

RTB allows us to solve for this despite fragmentation. And it paves the way for the next wave of exciting
innovations in ad serving.

Let's talk about yield optimizers. What do you think of their services such as those of PubMatic, Rubicon
Project, AdMeld, YieldBuild and Yieldex?

Let me start by saying the Right Media product used to be described as an airplane cockpit of functionality –
enterprise level, some up-front investment, etc. The yield optimizers have attempted to dumb that down. And, I'm
obviously generalizing here…

Publishers say to us: I love getting one check at the end of the month, I love feeling that my networks have to
compete, more than anything I love the workflow tools that make life easier for my operations team: billing,
reconciliation, discrepancies. Yield Optimizers stepped in to address that narrow but important focus.
What I am less clear about is whether they're actually optimizing yield.

What do you mean by that?

Well, pricing time-based inventory isn't easy and it doesn't just emerge from a slick user interface. We all know that
frequency is a fundamental determinant of publisher yield. Managing to optimal yield across a yield curve requires
careful analysis, predictive algorithms, optimal marketplace design and a world-class salesforce or competing
salesforces. It also cannot be retroactive. You need to ensure you are serving impressions to the highest paying
advertiser based on time-of-day, frequency, recency, etc. The architecture of ad technology – whether exchanges,
yield optimizers or 1.0 ad servers – is critical to ensuring that is happening.

So, the positive is that "yield optimizers" took a lot of friction out of publisher workflow; the negative is that I am not
certain that the architecture of these systems actually enables true yield optimization. Some of these companies
are thinking about it the right way but some of them are not.

Have you solved the "airplane cockpit" perception regarding a high-level of complexity when integrating
and managing campaigns through Right Media?

It's bold to think that a single technology company can build the best UI, reporting interfaces, best data
management warehouses, best prediction for every customer segment. We are partnering with companies who we
think service customer segments that are not in our focus, helping them to design products that meet the needs of
their clients. We are also partnering with technology providers that we think can augment features and functions on
our platform. In that way we ensure our customers are getting the best-of-breed capabilities.

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At the same time, every partner is bringing more to the table today. Two years ago it was rare to have API
conversations in pre-sales. Today, everybody wants to see our APIs and build on top of them. That's cool because
we're totally evolving the way we think about product development. It's almost like a shared product roadmap with
our customers. Some of it we'll build, some they'll build.

Finally, for the segment of the market that is critical to us they require an enterprise level product. For them, the
cockpit mixed with our services is exactly right.

So, services – as in people – are critical to the success of your enterprise product?

Yes, it is for the market we want to win. As with any enterprise product, we have built a services layer to ensure
our clients are getting the most from the platform. We are then leveraging partners for segments of the market we
are not addressing. This allows us to apply the right focus to our target markets and also to ensure that the entire
market can benefit from the exchange through our partners. This is what it means to be an open ecosystem.

Let's pretend you work at an agency and you're a strong a proponent of demand-side platforms, but you're
surrounded by traditional minds, what is the principle argument you make to your executive layer about
why they need to get into a demand-side platform buying strategy?

The principal argument is margin. Digital agencies have razor-thin margins and a single media trading platform
offers them the efficiency to yield more margin on the buy-side.

The second argument is that advertisers need the efficiencies that supply consolidation, frequency management
and data provide. Only a platform can do that and agencies are well-positioned to be that provider, whether they
build or buy.

The argument against is straight-forward. Can the agency make the level of investment required? If they can, do
they have the right technology and services DNA to make it work? Finally, can they engineer the kind of change
management within the agency and on the client side to make this really effective?

So there are definitely challenges to making the shift. But for large agencies and even some of the smaller ones
the question is when not if.

What happens to ad networks down the road?

Everyone is surprised by the stat that in the last 3-4 years we've seen an expansion in the number of ad networks.
With exchanges, we removed the artificial barriers to entry of relationship and technology – we literally opened a
closed market. Who did we expect would enter the open market first? The companies who are most capable of
managing risk effectively! Now as agencies, advertisers and publishers evolve their own in-house capabilities,
there will be increased pressure on ad networks to prove their differentiated value. So we'll either see less of them
or margins will be squeezed. Or both.

I am not providing a timeline. This will ensure I am right eventually.

Are the search marketers the first step for improving liquidity with exchanges and demand-side platforms?

No. I think they're the last, in fact, which is surprising. They have all the right ingredients; actionable data and
insights from their search buying (and we now know how to leverage those into display), media buying and
optimization DNA, an understanding of managing ROI across marketplaces. But the focus on display has not been
there. Display is a very different animal in some respects.

No, the earliest adopters emerged from the Exchange 1.0 space. These companies quickly saw the marketers'
need. They said nobody is doing this for marketers, we might as well. And they've proven hugely successful at
making themselves a more meaningful part of the agency media plan. It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

131
Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 14, 2009 – 6:07 am

132
Yahoo! VP Bill Wise Discusses Future Demand-Side
Platform Plans For Right Media Exchange
Email This Post

Bill Wise is Yahoo! VP/GM, Ad Platforms. Wise answered a few questions that follow up on yesterday's
announcement regarding Right Media's new positioning.

AdExchanger.com: When will Right Media have DSP capabilities?

Right Media already has DSP capabilities by leveraging

exchange inventory and linking and numerous decisioning,
optimization, and analytics technology within the company,
and has further invested in servicing. We will continue to
invest in advancing these capabilities and growing our
services team as we scale. This will help head marketers, ad
agencies, and enabling leading DSP players, which we
believe is an important part of the ever-changing
marketplace.

Define what the features of a Yahoo! DSP will look like.

How is it different than what exists today, for example?

Capabilities of a DSP include dynamic decisioning, the ability

to build and optimize audiences, advanced analytics, real
time interoperability into supply marketplaces and a services
layer.

We've built out a professional services offering to support our

DSP layer. The core services include:

• Working with agencies to translate "the who," or agency target personas that capture the personality of the
users to reached into targetable audiences. For example, a media planner may explain the user of a
cosmetics brand to be a female from 18 - 54, who is a social leader that encourages who friends to try new
products and her motto is "there is no such thing as an ugly girl, only a lazy girl!." The services team has
the expertise to translate these offline personalities to actionable online triggers.
• As agencies continue to shift offline dollars online, we work closely with each brand to translate offline
success metrics to directional online success metrics. This may include a range of metrics from panels
such as Nielsen Neteffect, online surveys (such as Dyanmic Logic or Dimestore), coupons, email sign ups,
CTR, or reach.
• We work with the agency to deliver audience insights from online buys to better inform the "who" to use for
buying across all buys (offline and online)

There is a perception there is some low quality inventory on the Right Media Exchange today whether
through ad networks or direct-to-publisher relationships. Will you be discontinuing these relationships? If
so, when?

We are the largest and oldest ad exchange, with over 120,000 buyers and sellers trading 9 billion transactions
daily. We recognize that there is some undifferentiated supply in the mix. As part of this announcement, we have
segmented the market into priority customer segments and have a go-to-market which will focus on premium
partners. We believe as the leader in the exchange market, it is our responsibility to have a premium marketplace
on behalf of the end advertiser and end publisher to allow them to transact their business in a brand safe exchange
environment.

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November 17, 2009 – 6:36 am

Advertisers

From The Marketer: Mazda’s Collinson On Brand Dollars

Moving Online And Display Advertising

Email This Post

Mike Collinson is Director, Marketing & Product Strategy, Mazda Canada Inc.

When will brand marketer dollars finally shift online in a way that syncs with the overall time spent online
versus other mediums? - For example, when there are better
attribution models perhaps?

MC: This is a complex question, I'll try to be succinct. Budget

allocation by media is largely dependent upon brand strategy for
the coming year - is it a launch (or model change) year or a
sustaining strategy. We try to let the overall strategy set the brand
development objectives (upper or lower funnel) and then have the
strategy determine the best way to reach the target. For example,
2009 is a launch year for Mazda3 so the majority of the buy was
focused on the upper funnel, since we have 2 distinct targets to
reach with Mazda3 we utilized a broad media strategy (i.e. Cinema
to reach the younger target and TV for the older demo) along with
strong digital presence in both upper and lower funnel sites. Better
attribution models would help moving more budget to on-line, but
our target is very broad and our experience demonstrates we need
to utilize multiple media points to get the awareness levels we
need. Another layer to this discussion is the automotive purchase
cycle is very long, so we allocate a portion of the budget to reach
in market consumer, this is most effectively executed using SEM
and automotive portal sites.

Can you see brand marketers taking more of their media

buying and planning (digital-only or cross-channel) in-house
in the future? Why or why not?

Mazda Canada has no plans to bring media buying or planning in

house, we believe the media costs are lower when a large media
agency negotiates on our behalf. In addition Mazda Canada would
not be able to buy the necessary research to make good
decisions.

Do you think online display advertising is effective? Where are the holes - any improvements you'd like to
see?

We have had mixed results with display and I believe creative is critical. We've been most successful with
expandable ad units on upper funnel sites. We're still searching for the optimum formula for lower funnel sites. I'm
frustrated by sites that don't offer expandable or video capable banners, so this would be the largest improvement

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area. However, display is just one component within a broader strategy and effectiveness is dependent upon what
you want the units to do. To achieve creative effectiveness, engagement is key. Effective display happens when
more addressable messages are lined up with targeted media. Improving engagement levels is an ongoing
process of learning and tactical refinements, which digital media allows for unlike any other medium. We also strive
to move beyond just a CTR or CPC measure to ultimately a CPA (cost per acquisition) metric. At present we
measure effectiveness beyond CTR and CPC to determine quality of leads by looking at some of our key
conversion metrics.

Have any thoughts on agencies announcing demand side platform strategies such as Interpublic's
Cadreon or WPP's B3? How will these affect the advertiser in your opinion?

I'm not very familiar with demand side platforms, as you know they are not as popular in Canada as they are in the
US. I think at present the biggest benefit is in potential reduced costs, but for Canadian buying shops, reaching
critical mass is a big barrier. My comments from the previous question are appropriate here too, if the media site is
optimizing my ad to ensure click thru from qualified customers at competitive rates then I don't care who is selling
it, without losing site of driving the key engagement measures beyond CPC and CTR.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

November 12, 2009 – 7:04 am

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VP Federico Says Monster Looking To Leverage Display
Ad Exchanges In The Future
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John Federico is VP, Global Media and Marketing Alliances at Monster Worldwide, an online employment website.

AdExchanger.com: How important is online display advertising to your media buying strategy? Are there
any current challenges to display that keeps you from spending more?

Display is very important to us - especially for our b2b

advertising efforts due to the nature of our business and
the way customers interact with us. The challenge as
always on the b2b side is scale and the ability to get in
front of users at the right time and place with a highly
targeted message. We are constantly testing new
strategies and tactics to improve on the effectiveness of
our b2b marketing.

What do you do on the b2c side? Is online display

significant there as well?

Display is a key component of our consumer advertising

as well. We have had success supporting our NFL
partnership with flash, in banner video and rich media
display in driving entries for our Director of
Fandemonium promotion. We just launched season 2 on
October 1st and it concludes with the winner
announcement at the Super Bowl in February. The key
with display moving forward is to find ways to break
through the clutter without being overly intrusive. We're
testing a variety of sizes, placements and technologies in order to find the right combination.

As an advertiser, what trends are you seeing in the marketplace today?

We have surprisingly not seen a significant decrease in CPM's this year as one might expect. There has not been
a big upswing in CPA opportunites as was seen in the last downturn either, so publishers have clearly learned from
that experience and of course the industry has matured since then. We have seen increased flexibility in contract
terms, though. There are more integrated opportunities available as vendors are trying to maximize their assets
and stand out - and mobile apps as well as social media elements are becoming more and more a part of those
packages, which is good to see from an advertiser perspective as that is what consumers are engaging with.

And how about internally - any trends you've experienced, such as more requirements on accountability,
less budget, etc.?

We certainly have been impacted by the recession as you read daily in the headlines
about the employment challenges we're facing both domestically and internationally. Our marketing and media has
been shifting in a similar fashion to the marketplace - lower budgets, focusing spend on the most effective and
efficient channels at driving the business, which for us in media are SEM and digital display.

Does Monster use ad exchanges today? If not, why not?

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We have limited experience with ad exchanges to this point, although I can see that
changing as we go into 2010 with the help of our new media agency, OMD. I have nothing against ad exchanges
conceptually, and we have been discussing ways which we think we can leverage them for certain parts of our
business, we just haven't executed to any great degree, yet.

Can you envision a day when many of the buying services of a media agency are brought in-house to
Monster?

I can envision that very well as from 2004-2007 we did all online planning and buying in the US in house through a
team that I built! We still support some business lines through in house media buying. As far as the future goes, we
have no plans to bring planning and buying back in house for the careers business at this time.

Where do you net out in terms of buying audience versus placement/context? Is it all about addressable
media for you?

Due to the nature of our business, we have an extremely broad audience. Our approach is to manage a balanced
portfolio which allows us to both buy audience as well as go vertical and segment according to business priorities
and customer needs.

In general, how are agencies responding to the ongoing innovations in advertising? If you were running a
media agency right now, what sort of strategies would you consider to make sure you're around 5 or 10
years from now?

One of the main reasons we chose OMD as our new media AOR is based on their approach to innovation and
navigating the constantly evolving media landscape. The traditional big agency approach is outdated and if
agencies and media vendors don't evolve with consumer behavior they will be left behind. As media consumption
habits change and fragmentation grows, we need to take a much more holistic approach to how we reach and
engage with our audience. The media agency needs to be more of a marketing partner who lives and breathes in
these new mediums/technologies and understands how we can take advantage of these changes to help grow our
business.

How comfortable are you with your attribution models today? Do you measure cross-platform, for
example? Or, thinking just about your online campaigns, are view-throughs in display considered even
though the consumer may end up going through search, ultimately, to fulfill a conversion?

We are in the process of building our own custom attribution model as we do not think the last click model that is
still the dominant model today is the right one. We do measure cross-channel activity, and are looking at upgrading
our tool set to better track and understand the impact of our marketing across channels. We do look at view activity
and think there is value there, especially on the b2b side as our products are not impulse buys and typically include
an extended purchase decision making process. The key is understanding the entire conversion path and
weighting each action accordingly. I don't think there is a one-size fits all model - every business will have a
different way of evaluating attribution and the industry needs tools that allow for easy customization.

Follow Monster Worldwide (@monsterww) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

October 13, 2009 – 6:22 am

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Analysts

Yield Optimizers Poised To Migrate To Exchange Model

Says ThinkEquity’s Morrison and Coolbrith
Email This Post

Bill Morrison and Robert Coolbrith are equity analysts at ThinkEquity

Partners and recently authored a report entitled, "The Opportunity In Non-
Premium Display Advertising."

AdExchanger.com: Are data exchanges the key to unlocking value in

social media? Who's getting it right in the data exchange space?

BM and RB: We'll defer the second part of your question until a later date. As
investment research analysts, it's hard for us to identify "winners" without the
help of industry participants, who provide us with invaluable insight and
opinions. In our recent conversations with networks and exchanges, when we asked about the most important new
companies in the space, the data exchanges invariably came up. However, it still seems to be pretty early in the
development of the data exchange model, and we didn't sense any clear consensus from industry participants on
who is taking the lead.

While data exchanges are certainly "hot," it's an open question as to whether an auction-based marketplace is the
"right" paradigm for monetization of proprietary consumer insight. People have pointed out the similarities between
the data exchanges and the offline list marketing/direct mail model, and we think it's a fair comparison. In both
cases, the buyer pays up front for the data and then leverages the data to market to consumers on an individual
basis. But that's complicated in the online world by the matter of actually reaching the identified consumer, which
can be a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. An alternative approach might be to realize that the haystack is full
of needles, but of varying types. So, allow the inventory to dictate the targeting, not the other way around.

Regardless of how the mechanics play out, we think third-party data exchanges will be important for the
monetization of all display media, but will be particularly important in social media, where the inventory doesn't
typically contextualize well, the platforms are rich with demographic, behavioral, and social data, and current
monetization levels make targeting a real priority. One thing we're currently wondering about is which could be the
bigger opportunity for social media: the inventory (where value should be enhanced through the use of both first-
and third-party data) or the first-party data that can be directly monetized through data exchanges to enhance the
value of display inventory across the Web. The data exchanges, by providing a transparent pricing mechanism for
behavioral, demographic, and social data, should help answer that question.

How do you see large publishers evolving as media trading achieves scale?

The very largest publishers will be deeply involved in media trading, both as the sponsors of the key liquidity
platforms, and, in all likelihood, as traders in their own right. Regarding a broader set of "large publishers,"
including the leading vertical publishers, social networks and smaller portals, there are likely to be a lot of changes
in terms of how they manage O&O inventory. Direct sales organization will remain relevant for sponsorships and
custom integrations, but sales of banners, IMUs, etc. are likely to become more automated, data-driven and
audience-centric, whether that inventory is sold through forward/futures markets, co-selling arrangements with
partners, or non-premium spot markets. In terms of incremental reach extension, larger publishers will likely find
varying degrees of success via curatorial vertical network strategies and via data-driven media trading.

Could agencies disintermediate ad networks or visa versa?

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It seems that many traditional media agencies are deeply envious of the margin profiles of their ad network peers,
and are intent on putting the ad networks out of business as a matter of principle. Whether or not they'll succeed is
another matter entirely. Agency and network business models appear to be rapidly converging as the agencies
build out private networks and adopt media trading, and as the networks gradually abdicate their role in inventory
aggregation to the ad exchanges and yield optimization platforms. Agencies have the advantage of adjacency to
the client, the client's data, and the client's budget, but it remains to be seen if they can successfully adapt to a
technology-driven business model—although third parties like MediaMath and Invite Media should be helpful to
them in doing so. When it comes to media trading, leading technology-oriented ad networks have significant first-
mover advantage—they've been dynamically pricing and optimizing ad inventory for years within their own private
"markets". The ultimate winners and losers should be determined by who boasts the best performance on behalf of
clients, but there appear to be a number of complicating factors at work.

How do you define premium inventory?

We define premium in the way that Yahoo! and other large publishers traditionally have, as inventory sold with
specific guarantees as to placement, timeframe, volume, etc. It is unfortunately a confusing nomenclature, and
Yahoo! now makes use of alternate terminology such as "guaranteed" and "Class I". The distinction between
premium and non-premium can, however, be a bit fluid? Run-of-site behavioral targeting sold on the Wall Street
Journal, premium or non-premium? Probably premium. Run-of-site demographic targeting across Fox Interactive
Media properties? Probably non-premium. These fine distinctions are part of the reason we point to the emergence
of a "secondary premium" inventory category encompassing co-selling arrangements, inventory sold through
automated sales platforms and forward markets like Yahoo! APT, etc. In formulating our industry estimates,
however, our general rule of thumb is that directly-sold inventory counts as premium, inventory sold by third parties
as non-premium.

In your report, you suggest companies like Vizu will aid in providing analytics and support for brand
awareness campaigns and the long-rumored brand dollars. Do you think agency compensation structures
have kept media budgets tilted toward traditional media too? Hence, the slowness in moving branding
budgets online?

We're not sure that compensation plans vary all that significantly between online and offline media. However, there
is clearly a large opportunity cost for sales people when they focus on selling digital brand campaigns to their
clients. Executing an online media campaign is far more complex, time consuming, and expensive for brand
marketers and agencies than it is to execute a campaign in television, for instance. Publicis/Denuo recently
completed a study and found that the cost of executing online campaigns (excluding creative development)
represented approximately 15-20% of the media spend on average, compared to offline execution costs on the
order of 2-3% of media spend. That is an astounding cost differential, if you think about it, and one of the major
reasons that only 3-4% of brand dollars have migrated to the Internet to date (compared to ~15% for direct
response). There are a number of other "pain points" within the online advertising ecosystem that are slowing the
offline-to-online migration of brand dollars, including a lack of standards for comparing the efficacy of brand
campaigns across online and offline media, too many proprietary formats in emerging media categories like video,
sub-optimal inventory allocation decisions by publishers, inventory forecasting challenges that often lead to over or
under delivery of campaign goals, etc. The good news is there are lots of companies that are trying to create
solutions that alleviate these "pain points," and we remain optimistic that online will continue to take share from
offline brand budgets.

How will demand-side optimization affect pricing and performance of online media?

We view any limitation on buyers' performing their own allocation decisions (and iterative refinements) as an
economic externality in the online display ad market. While we don't think this argument has been generalized,
externalities in auction-based sales processes tend to impose a tax on the seller. An unfair auction process
provides bidders with an incentive to offer less than their best price. While we wouldn't qualify the display ad
market as "unfair," buyers have had very limited ability to perform real-time inventory allocation decisions prior to
the advent of now-emerging real-time-bidded ad exchanges. As transparency to buyers increases, prices in
general should increase. As the options available to media buyers in terms of inventory allocation increase (e.g.,
agencies may direct impressions to the client account of their choosing, or re-vend the inventory in a spot

139
advertising exchange), prices should increase. So, we view demand-side optimization as a significant catalyst for
both pricing and performance.

Your coverage of the yield optimization companies such as Rubicon Project, AdMeld, Pubmatic, YieldBuild
and Yieldex in your recent report was extensive. What initially drew you to the yield innovators? Are they
the new ad networks and/or exchanges of the future?

When we became aware of the yield optimization platforms in late 2007, we were initially skeptical. The Right
Media Exchange had already been acquired by Yahoo!, DoubleClick (and its advertising exchange) had already
been acquired by Google, and AdECN had already been acquired by Microsoft. Why would the world need yield
optimizers if it already had dynamically-bidded ad exchanges (on their way to real-time-bidded models)? The
dynamic default management approach typical of the yield optimizers should offer superior yield and efficiency
versus static default management by human ad operations personnel in most (but not all) cases, but seems
unlikely to outperform a liquid ad exchange.

The problem of yield optimization is not trivial, in as much as it involves dynamically allocating inventory to optimize
revenue derived from multiple buyers whose pricing varies over time and across variable inventory; complicating
matters is that this optimization process is performed utilizing retrospective pricing data. By comparison, in an ad
exchange, revenue for each individual advertising impression is maximized by an auction in which each bidder
offers their best price (assuming no marketplace externalities). We believe that ad exchanges represent the likely
endgame for non-premium display inventory aggregation over a several year time horizon; what we had not earlier
appreciated was that publishers required a near-term solution for yield management given ad exchange liquidity
constraints and marketplace inertia. Now that many of the yield optimization platforms have built substantive
publisher footprints, they appear poised to migrate toward the ad exchange model—real-time APIs for ad network
partners appear to be just the first step in that direction.

If you had to pick one company in your recent report that is under the radar but has an exciting
opportunity ahead, which one would it be and why?

It's not in our report, but we think AdExchanger.com is terrific and has a bright future ahead of it.

Good answer.

If you'd like a copy of Bill and Robert's report, "The Opportunity In Non-Premium Display Advertising," email Bill at:
- wmorrison at thinkequity dot com.

May 20, 2009 – 7:00 am

140
Buying Platforms

AdBuyer.com CEO Ogilvie Says Marketers Need Help In

Audience, Price, and Messaging
Email This Post

Tim Ogilvie is CEO of AdBuyer.com, an online media buying

platform.

AdExchanger.com: What is AdBuyer.com and how did it

begin?

TO: AdBuyer.com is a media buying and optimization platform

for auction-based media. We provide a full suite of tools to
help online marketers understand how their online advertising
is performing and what they can do to improve it. We’re
integrated with the major search engines and ad exchanges.

We started in 2007 by providing an automated platform for

SEM optimization. That includes centralized reporting, bid
management and keyword recommendations. We saw display
as the next big opportunity to deliver ROI, so we started
porting our search algorithms to display about 12 months ago.

Do you consider AdBuyer.com a services business or a

technology business?

We’re a technology business. We’re singularly focused on

building a platform that delivers the highest ROI for
advertisers.

We provide account management and support that helps

advertisers become self-sufficient when getting started, but that team is constantly challenged with identifying how
we build technology to make our platform easier to use and more automated.

How do you differentiate from other buying platforms and services such as those provided by MediaMath
and Invite Media?

1. We’re a holistic platform across both search and ad exchange buying. This allows for better attribution,
smarter media allocation decisions, and creates a data asset that we help marketers exploit.
2. We’re an automated platform, allowing us to service advertisers of all sizes. Like some of our competition,
we provide the power tools to help larger advertisers exploit the ad exchange opportunity. But we’re also
helping more typical search advertisers succeed: they can start with a credit card, customize pre-built
creative templates, and get access to the same high-end analytics that deliver significant improvements in
performance.

What is your revenue model?

We receive a percentage of the media spend.

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Why should marketers combine search & display campaigns into one platform?

There are three major benefits that marketers achieve:

1. Attribution: We help marketers get a clear view into which placements are driving results across both
search & display. This helps advertisers understand when a search conversion may have been helped by
a display impression, and vice-versa.
2. Improved ROI: As marketers increasingly think about their display and search spend as an investment, it
becomes important to optimize the overall portfolio. It’s crazy to lose money in search marketing if there’s a
highly profitable opportunity in display (or vice-versa), but we see this all the time because budgeting
decisions are being made in silos. We help marketers understand their overall marketing portfolio and
manage it profitably.
3. Data opportunities: Many of the advertisers we work with have very powerful “data assets” in their existing
search campaigns. This can be their own re-targeting data, information on what creative & landing pages
work with various customer segments, etc. We help them understand and unlock these opportunities
through the exchanges.

Who do you see as your key competitors?

On one hand, there are many competitors who provide similar services or substitutes across pieces of what we do,
including SEM firms, ad exchange optimization firms, and ad networks. On the other, I’m not aware of anyone else
who’s helping advertisers pull together search and ad exchange buying in a single platform.

Given the size of the opportunity, we expect others will enter the market. We’re always excited to put our
algorithms head-to-head against competitors and let the results speak for themselves.

Given your IAC experience, what are some of the key takeaways that you're bringing to AdBuyer.com?

I helped build two very large marketing platforms under the IAC umbrella. The first was for the IAC search toolbar
business, a large display buyer that predated the ad exchanges. I then helped build Pronto.com from nothing to
one of the largest comparison shopping engines in less than two years. Pronto is now among the top search
buyers.

My key takeaway from those experiences was to focus on actionable data. Successful online marketing is about
building lots of 5% and 10% improvements into a commanding lead. Most marketers that we talk to are drowning in
data, but can’t act on that data because they’re overwhelmed or the data lives in different silos. We’ve built a
platform that puts all the data in one place, makes it easy to identify improvement opportunities and just as easy to
act on them.

Will exchange traders be able to buy AND sell media with your trading software?

No. We’re focused exclusively on helping marketers take advantage of buying opportunities.

What exchanges and networks is AdBuyer.com hooked up to today? Will it make sense to buy inventory
direct from publishers and go around exchanges?

We’re currently integrated with Google, Yahoo & MSN in search, and Right Media, OpenX, APT from Yahoo!, and
AppNexus on the ad exchange side. Right Media is fully integrated into our platform, while the other partners are
largely reserved for larger spenders. We’ve built an open platform that takes in new inventory providers easily, so
we’ll add folks like DoubleClick and others in the near future as they ready their APIs.

We don’t try to circumvent the exchanges by going directly to publishers. We think exchanges play an important
role connecting buyers and sellers and that our buyers benefit from the auction-based pricing and centralized
liquidity.

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Do you think it's possible to optimize creative, behavioral/demo and contextual/semantic targeting data
simultaneously today? If not, how far are we from turning a dial to optimize interactive campaigns
broadly and effectively?

It’s definitely possible and our predictive models facilitate large chunks of this today. We’re beta-testing a product
we call Audience Finder that gives advertisers a single dial they can use to cut through the sea of targeting options
and zero in on their target audience through the exchanges. We assign an Audience Score to each impression and
allow our advertisers to buy only impressions that meet a minimum threshold. This allows marketers to get the
benefits of site, demographic, behavioral and contextual targeting and measure them through a single metric: the
advertiser’s goals. We can then help put the right price on that impression.

We’re not done. We think marketers need help in three areas: audience, price, and messaging. We’ve got great
solutions for audience and price, and will continue to enhance those based on client feedback. We also expect to
deliver significant improvements around creative optimization in late 2009.

If you were a publisher right now, how would you consider leveraging advances in ad technology?

There are currently too many sellers with too many impressions, which will continue to push down prices on
“standard” inventory and reduce the historical premium for reach. As a publisher, I would look to create scarcity to
differentiate my inventory.

Every publisher will have a slightly different strategy on how to create scarcity, but it can be through data, through
outstanding performance for advertisers, or a unified sales strategy. I think the ad exchanges offer great
opportunities to use and accumulate data that will pay dividends for smart publishers and command a long-lasting
premium.

How do you think the agency and ad network models will be playing out? Will one disintermediate the
other?

I expect the distinctions between agencies and ad networks will continue to blur, but I don’t know that I can pick
winners & losers. That said, I’m fairly confident there will be a major wave of consolidation as the winners and
losers start to emerge.

Follow AdBuyer.com (@adbuyer) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 30, 2009 – 6:15 am

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Adchemy CEO Nukala Says Marketers Need To De-Average
For Better Return On Ad Spend
Email This Post

Murthy Nukala is CEO of Adchemy, a demand-

side buying platform.

AdExchanger.com: What is "de-averaging" as

it relates to digital advertising and how does
Adchemy "de-average"? Would you say
"addressable media" is an equivalent?

MN: De-averaging summarizes a trend toward

increasing the relevance of digital advertising.
Today’s dominant online advertising model
primarily relies on a one-size-fits-all approach to
satisfy the need for scale. Consequently,
advertising designed for the “average” audience
member really is not that relevant to any particular
audience member. De-averaging means
recognizing that there are many small audience
segments that all require different marketing
experiences. We also call this "different marketing
paths for different people." It’s a move toward
greater relevance.

Adchemy technology gives marketers the

capability to address micro-segments fully,
improving relevance, conversion, and as a result,
ROAS. It automatically micro-segments audiences, values them appropriately, and delivers relevant and consistent
marketing to each—from banner and search ads and websites to merchandizing, pricing and promotions. As a
result, marketers can massively scale their digital marketing campaigns while maximizing relevance, engagement
and conversion.

“Addressable media” isn’t the same as de-averaging. Addressable media allows marketers to make more highly
targeted media buys. It’s a start, but it’s not sufficient. If marketers don’t show highly targeted ads and landing
pages to those targeted media buys, then there isn’t any better relevance.

Do you consider Adchemy a services or technology company?

Adchemy is a technology company with two businesses. The Adchemy Audience Management Platform is
software-as-a-service technology. Adchemy Actions leverages this technology and provides performance
marketing services.

What is Adchemy's target market, and how do you differentiate among the growing list of buying platform
competitors?

Adchemy’s target market includes the Fortune 1000, Internet 1000, and their agency partners.

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Adchemy is the only company to offer a suite of integrated solutions in both search and display, and address
functions across the entire marketing value chain—from media buy, to advertisement, to landing pages. We’re
relentlessly focused on the relevance of every advertising touchpoint with consumers in digital channels. Adchemy
has placed heavy emphasis on solving the “single view of your audience” problem as a software solution for
advertisers. This is similar to the “single view of your customer” problem Customer Relationship Management
solves. By solving the audience problem centrally, Adchemy enables highly efficient real-time bidding, conversion
through dynamic banner ads, attribution and workflow applications atop the core audience layer.

There’s another major difference. Our solutions are operational platforms that continually update every marketing
touchpoint in a marketer’s campaigns so that every consumer interaction with the advertiser is highly relevant—
and not just relevant, which is a huge win, but optimized as well, using patented machine-learning techniques. It
moves away from analytic solutions that merely present data back to the marketer with limited impact on any
actual advertising being delivered.

As affirmation of this strategy, Accenture recently entered into a global channel agreement with Adchemy, and took
a minority stake and seat on the company’s board.

What's your view on cross-channel attribution? Is Adchemy able to provide clients with cross-channel
attribution analytics? Just digital?

Cross-channel attribution must be addressed for advertisers to determine optimal online spend. Until now, online
advertising has seen a number of point solution providers solve individual steps/channels in the conversion
process. Adchemy’s Audience Management Platform enables marketers to comprehensively manage digital
marketing from end-to-end in both the paid search and display channels. So we are able to provide marketers with
a view into multi-session, cross-channel conversion paths.

What is your view on ad exchanges? Do you think the ad exchange model has fulfilled its promise for
online advertising?

We love ad exchanges; they represent a fundamental and necessary sea change in how digital media is bought
and sold. We have invested heavily in integrating with the major ad exchanges today and feel excited about the
level of activity in this space.

In fact, we believe all digital media should be sold through ad exchanges. We’re a far cry from that today, so, no,
the ad exchange model hasn’t fulfilled its promise for online advertising, but we think it’s just a matter of time.

Are you a behavioral targeting (BT) believer? Does it work?

BT can work great for marketers. To make it really successful, they need to pay the right price for the BT signal,
show the right ad experience, and send those targeted audiences to relevant landing pages. Basically, you need to
take a de-averaged approach when buying BT.

A hypothetical for you... If you ran a media buying agency today, which strategies would you put in place
today to affect a successful tomorrow?

I would get a seat on every major ad exchange, invest in software infrastructure to efficiently manage my ad buys,
and buy all types of inventory and behaviors.

I would pay a great deal of attention to employee skills and mix. Automation is accelerating, which means fewer
people doing mundane tasks in media buying and a greater percentage of time focusing on higher value-added
activities, such as strategic refinement of micro-segments to meet clients’ needs. I’d look to hire quantitative skill
sets to round out existing creative and relationship skill sets, but in a focused way as some quantitative roles are
being replaced by technology.

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Will real-time bidding (RTB) be a game changer? If so, any guess on a timetable?

RTB is a natural extension to the ad exchange model. We think it’s an important step for the industry, and
Adchemy welcomes it as a significant opportunity for full investment.

It took a few years for ad exchanges to really catch on, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes a couple of years
before we see a significant portion of the Web’s inventory on RTB. The speed at which RTB gains traction is going
to depend on data density—the depth, reach and variety of data available—in a privacy-sensitive manner. We
think doing this all in a privacy-sensitive manner is the only way any advertiser should move forward, and we have
some useful solutions to do that.

What will the consumer get out of all this innovation in advertising technology?

In the end, this technology delivers relevance, which is really a joint win for consumers and advertisers. The
consumer will get more relevant marketing experiences. Over a period of time, advertisers will get smarter about
targeting consumer segments with appropriate messages at the right time and—almost as importantly—not
showing certain segments inappropriate messages at the wrong time or in the wrong context.

You may have heard Rishad Tobaccowalla speak at AdTech in San Francisco this year. He commented that there
is nothing subtle or nuanced about online advertising—it’s in your face with big arrows flashing. The technology
investments we’re talking about are going to allow advertisers to be nuanced in their advertising. By being relevant
they’re going to achieve results, and there just won’t be the same need for some of the annoying advertising we
are faced with today. This should create a cleaner, more relevant online experience for consumers in the long run.

Follow Murthy Nukala (@mnukala) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

December 3, 2009 – 7:04 am

146
New CPM Advisors Display Advertising Buying System –
CPMatic – Is Now In Beta Says CEO Leathern
Email This Post

Rob Leathern is CEO of CPM Advisors.

AdExchanger.com: CPM Advisors... so I take it you

believe the CPM is not dead?

RL: CPM Advisors ("CPMa") typically works with

advertisers who are optimizing to a CPA or CPC metric,
but realize that they cannot get volume and scale unless
they can tap into CPM advertising options. We are
smart about how and where to find quality inventory at
fair, market-driven prices. Today, that is driven largely
(but not exclusively) by the exchanges and some of the
aggregators.... we want to automate the process and
systematize the knowledge. CPM Advisors - as a name
- seemed to capture that ethos fairly well, though we are
certainly not wed to the notion of CPMs in the long-run.

The current online advertising system does all come

back to a CPM and will for a while. A publisher or
network has to assess any CPA or CPC deal and
compare it to what they will realize on a CPM basis, and
CPM is thus the "base currency" for selling space
online. I do believe that the fractional-user-attention
"impression-based" CPM as we know it should have
been dead by now if true innovation had occurred in the
online ad market over the last 5 years, but it isn't gone
and won't be for quite a while: changing the way people
do business always takes time. Audience- or attention-based metrics are still a ways off.

How has your buying evolved in the last 12 months? What about the next 12?

As we've built out our software and systems, at the same time running billions of impressions and millions of
dollars of ad campaigns for clients, we have continued to become smarter and figure out more and more ways to
automate the different parts of the media buying and optimization process. For CPMa, it's an exercise in continual
learning and improvement as it should be.

We will continue to build on our early success. For the next 12 months, there should also be several new
exchanges that finally become commercially interesting. The more sources of good-quality inventory that become
available with API interfaces the better for everyone, not just us. Display advertising is fragmented and inefficient.
Since the learning curve to even the most basic display ad buying system is steep, via the economies that exist in
multi-system integration CPMa will grow further as a buying option for advertisers and agencies.

Are you using your own buying platform or using a third-party? Any observations regarding who will win
the "buying platform" race and why?

We have our own buying system, which is now in beta at http://www.cpmatic.com. CPMatic is a technology-based
ad buying service with an interface. I think that there are/will be companies with multi-exchange buying ad servers,

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for people who want to tweak dials and levers themselves, and this is a backend component of what we have as
part of our service. We provide a front-end that allows the user to set up their campaigns, upload creatives, get
reporting, retargeting or conversion tracking tags and so on - and that's helping solve a lot of the campaign
initiation inefficiency that exists today. Then of course, very important for us and the advertiser are the smart bits
on the back end: the technology to figure out where to set up ad campaigns and how, how to achieve consistency
across channels and optimizing frequency and spend across those channels.

Figuring out the differences between what can and can't be done in the various ad systems is not trivial, grabbing
reporting, making changes, tracking budgets, propagating creatives and knowing how and when to do it. It's a
difficult set of problems encompassing both integration and optimization. What I helped build at NexTag is quite
relevant to my view on things: in creating an adserving, media management, analytics and creative management
infrastructure, we were able to become a top 5 online advertiser by spend - automating as much of the display
media buying and optimization process as possible to a point where the company could have statisticians looking
at data to decide whether to run certain media buys. We got the optimization piece put together, but back then our
'integration' with third parties was mostly scraping reporting data from publisher adservers so we could track costs
accurately, and API opportunities for buying media in an automated way make the space much more exciting now
and allow a company like a CPMa to exist.

I'm not convinced it's a winner take all (or even most) market: the market is so big that there are going to be a
number of players who can cater to differing marketer and agency needs, and whose techniques work and have
application in different subject areas. I think the biggest race and one we all need to lend a hand in (and I applaud
adexchanger's part in this) is to educate our clients and potential clients about how the marketing world is moving
to a new kind of technology-driven accountability, and help move more dollars online.

Is there any value in placement anymore or is it all about finding the right audience?

There is absolutely value in the placement. Because placement is about more than a place on a page spatially, it's
often also predictive about what the user is doing at the time that space is occupied by an advertisement, and what
they're going to do next. Search in many ways is easier than display because there are fewer behavioral modalities
involved, and much less variation in how/where the placement shows up to the user - in consequence response is
easier to model and predict. So analyzing placement is hard but worthwhile, especially when you can combine it
with a notion of who the viewer is and his/her interests at the time. Advertisers and agencies need as their partners
the experts who can programmatically *apply* behavioral data from a variety of partners to a detailed knowledge of
placements and user modalities. I count CPM Advisors among a small group of providers who are doing that and
building the tools to do so.

What's your view on ad exchanges? Did your experience with Root Markets or Consorte Media help
inform your opinions and strategies regarding the exchange model?

I believe in making online media, in general, and display media, in particular, easier for advertisers to try, to target
and to buy in volume. Ad exchanges frequently fall prey to false comparisons with financial markets. A lot of it
centers around the false notion that impressions are commodities and can be "traded" interchangeably. It's just not
so (and definitely not true when it comes to leads either...). But take a look at two leading "exchanges" - Right
Media and Doubleclick AdX v.1.0 . The former is a venue where there are some buying exclusively, some selling
exclusively, and some entities that buy and sell from one another. It's a matchmaking service and an adserving
technology with a shared cookie space that I think has opened the eyes of a lot of people to the possibilities and
the perils of multi-party buying/selling, and as such must be judged a success, even if it appears it is not (in its
current form) going to be the definitive central place to buy or sell most media online. Doubleclick is more of a
venue for buyers to quickly buy across a larger number of (mostly) direct-publisher sellers, where Doubleclick
plays the middleman and absorbs payment risk, provides liquidity and anonymity in some cases.

There are many other parallels between the Root Markets experience and ad exchanges - and funnily I spoke with
some of the Right Media people on several occasions when I was at Root Markets. There are a lot of parallels
between what we were trying to do in the lead generation space (unsuccessfully) to what Right Media has both
succeeded and failed at in the broader online advertising market. We both wanted to create a marketplace for the

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actual buyers and sellers of leads to meet, and disintermediate some of the middlemen, but realized that to get
liquidity initially we would have to work with the aggregators (leads) or ad networks (display). In both cases there
weren't always incentives for the sellers with their captive salesforces to regard the exchange as anything more
than an outlet of last resort to sell their unsold inventory. I think Right Media may have had the same initial vision of
disintermediating some networks who don't add value (of course there are many that do add value).

Both RMX and Root made efforts to reach out to quality suppliers - we drove leads ourselves by buying media and
did deals with pubs like the New York Times; Right Media created their own ad network and also started
encouraging standalone advertisers, agencies and others to use their exchange, and some networks started using
it as their sole platform and source of supply.

And of course the same issues come up in these environments regarding quality (that pesky commodity point
again), transparency, channel conflict, and so on. But they can all be overcome with enough effort and investment.

How do you make the case for brand marketers to use ad exchanges? Or, do you?

There is a lot of value for brand marketers here, although being able to reliably predict volume is still a concern -
but this is improving all the time as well. You need to work with a specialist like CPM Advisors who knows where
the good quality and the bad quality publishers and networks are. The shared cookie spaces and increased data
available mean that things like cross-platform frequency management are possible, something novel that brands
should be thinking about as they strive for the right balance of reach and frequency within their target audience. At
any rate, I would make the case to pretty much all brand marketers not to try to do it themselves. And even for
most agencies representing brand marketers, it is still too hard to do efficiently themselves. Where financial
analogies make more sense - you wouldn't advise a retail investor to go to the NYSE to buy 100 shares of
Microsoft; brokerages and others have grown up in this market as on-ramps to help the end-user get buy they
need, whether that is an individual stock or a mutual fund - so firms like ours can help be the on-ramp for agencies
and advertisers to these new markets.

A recent CPM Advisors blog post said, "There is so much 'untargeted' display inventory out there, much of
it of dubious value, growing at a fast rate. The costs to trying out all this inventory, however, is going to be
very high for advertisers or ad networks looking to benchmark it." Will real-time bidding and the ability to
bid on single impressions mapped against advertiser data unlock display and overcome the "untargeted"
issue?

My point here was commenting on someone's idea that as inventory expands, the price goes down and
approaches zero which I don't think makes sense because impressions are not a commodity and are often of
unknown value (so inventory spots with known characteristics are more valuable). Real-time bidding is still a cool
idea whose specific implementation details and value is uncertain. It certainly doesn't make sense to bid on every
single impression given latency, overhead and cost, but for highly desirable users there needs to be some kind of
bidding/auction mechanism in place. In whatever way real-time bidding makes sense and can help advertisers, we
will be doing it. But it's not the panacea to make display magically work for everyone.

Do you feel you have effective attribution models that can leverage the scale of display to drive
conversions through search? What more can be done here?

CPMa's goal is to get every online marketer who is buying search to at least do some display advertising in the
form of retargeting. We've created a quick self-service way for them to do it with a credit card at http://cpmatic.com
that allows them to create their pixels, set up their campaign and everything without having to talk to a salesperson
or fax an IO - the ROI is fantastic as you know, but volume can be low so reducing overhead is key. Attribution is
an extremely complex issue, and it will remain contentious for some time to come. There is little doubt that display
and search work together to create value for marketers, sometimes leading to unfair lower ROI for display media at
the cost of search. But impression-based conversion is also fraught - witness past tactics by certain companies to
buy lots of untargeted super-cheap display units to get view-conversion credit for large-scale campaigns. Once you
add retargeting into the mix... it gets even more confusing since you could potentially have multiple display
partners claiming success, but the case for search + display retargeting is an easy one for us to make.

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How do you see the ad network model evolving?

One scenario is a bifurcation probably - a smaller number of very big, either technology-driven or sales-driven
networks... the smaller sales-driven ones falling away and then a large number of targeted, focused specialized
networks (either vertically or some other targeted orientation). Technology and lower serving costs means more
people can get into the ad network business. Whether they should, remains to be seen. In some ways, more
networks could mean more friction, but it could also mean more people able to service unique advertiser needs
and the agency and ad network models start to blur. There's some balance or equilibrium in there.

In your opinion, what do media agencies need to do to prepare for the increasingly automated media
buying environment?

Hire developers and math PhDs and invest in technology in addition to what they are doing now, or focus on their
relationships, the creative and the cross-media aspects of the puzzle and work with companies like ours who are
building the platforms and technology components. But I honestly don't think anyone has the answer yet as to how
to properly resource the online ad business yet and what business models are going to make sense long-term, so
we would like to talk to everyone from agencies, networks, data providers to publishers about how to create real
long-term value for advertisers. I'd rather talk about how we move many more dollars from less accountable media
to the more accountable media world we live in, than grabbing with others for the relatively small share that is
already here.

You can follow Rob Leathern (@robleathern), CPM Advisors (@cpmadvisors) and AdExchanger.com
(@adexchanger) on Twitter.

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DataXu Bringing Sophisticated Buying Strategies With
Real-Time Bidding Says CEO Baker
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Mike Baker is CEO of DataXu, a demand-side, media buying platform.

Tell us about your new agreement with Havas. What does this mean for DataXu? And, even advertising as
a whole?

We have enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with Havas. Their

marketplace insights have helped us apply our technology to
make the process of buying and optimizing online display
advertising more efficient. I think the relationship is also a sign
that ad agencies are starting to embrace leading technology to
"game change". As digital media consumption becomes
pervasive, media leaders are realizing that they need to actively
re-tool their assets and competencies to compete successfully.

How did DataXu begin?

DataXu was founded to commercialize a new data-driven decision

language created by several of my co-founders at MIT in support
of NASA Mars Mission Planning. The decision system
automatically designed 1162 viable Mars Missions by sorting
through billions of different combinations of vehicles, crew plans,
orbital trajectories, and technology choices. The DataXu team
transported from Mars to Madison Avenue after confirming that
the technology could solve a similar data-centric problem for
advertisers: making real-time decisions about ad placements
leveraging vast amounts of data.

What are some of the challenges you see in the advertising

space today that has created an opportunity for DataXu?

Display advertising online has yet to deliver on its promise. Even

while the industry grows, many advertisers aren’t really getting the
ROI they seek. Publishers are bemoaning low eCPMs and low
sell-through rates. Both sides are recognizing that the transaction costs in the buying and selling of media are
higher than they should be. Wasn’t it ThinkEquity that noted that as much as 28% of the spend on premium
advertising is pure transaction cost whereas it’s something like 2% for a mature medium like TV?

Bigger picture, agencies are striving to create greater value for their clients by more expertly gathering and
leveraging data to optimize ad spend. If they can create more value, then they will better attract and retain clients
and also build more profitable businesses.

So, what would you say is the top line for DataXu?

The top line is that the buyers of interactive advertising have really never had control over their data, algorithms,
ROI and yield. That’s because the ad inventory supply chain has been closed. But the opening of real time
bidding API’s creates new opportunities for them. DataXu’s objective is to provide the right technology platform for
the buyer to implement more sophisticated, automated strategies leveraging RTB. And this is good news for

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media companies and other sellers of ad spots: if we can empower buyers to obtain a better ROI and yield
management capability than is possible in other ad media, we’ll all enjoy a significant increase in spending on
display. There are a lot of brands that still don’t allocate much budget to online display.

Who do you consider being in your competitive set and how do you differentiate?

We’re focused exclusively on providing buy-side technology for real-time bidding, and we have yet to see direct
competitors. Many ad networks have somewhat limited tools for buyers so there is a little overlap with them, but
their focus is equally weighted on media sellers and creating a marketplace; so I believe they are good partners for
us. And while many marketing services firms focus exclusively on buyers’ needs, they tend to have more limited
technology capabilities, so there are partner opportunities there as well.

Let’s talk about how agencies can work with DataXu. How does it work?

Large agencies that are launching their own “media trading” operation can license our technology, which we host
as a service, and we will integrate it into their existing infrastructure as mutually agreed. This has the benefit of
leveraging existing system investments, which might include ad serving, analytics or data warehousing. Smaller
agencies, or players new to the exchange space, can purchase our technology as a turn-key service that includes
everything you need to execute out of the box. The benefit here is that you can get learning and experience with
exchanges and RTB, and if you think it’s strategic you can transition to a platform relationship.

How is this different from what Appnexus is doing – aren’t they built from the ground up with RTB
capabilities like DataXu?

We see Appnexus as an important inventory supply partner. (They’ve done a great job pioneering the technology
required to make an RTB marketplace work.) DataXu is a demand side platform designed to optimize for ad
buyers. So we connect our system to multiple marketplaces, including Google, Yahoo, Appnexus and others as
our buyers suggest or require.

So how where does DataXu get its data?

The data is not our data, but rather our customers’ data. And it comes principally from their past and ongoing ad
campaigns. But we also ingest multiple other types of data, including search, email and site data. This is why our
name is DataXu! Our core intellectual property and value add is the ability to make better targeting and valuation
decisions about the data – and to do that in real time.

How is DataXu’s decision technology different from an ad network’s?

What you usually see from companies such as ad networks is that the decisioning is not done in real-time, but
rather pre-cooked in a linear, batch-mode optimization. And, that’s a fine way to match ads, if you have a lot of
time, the decisions are simple, and the related data is not dynamic. What we’ve found is that Internet data is
increasingly dynamic, such that even something optimized six hours ago that’s loaded into production for ad
matching will serve out differently now from how you intended. One bucket will be empty and one will be
overflowing, because the page volume now compared to the past has a different composition, for example. And
the decision-making gets super complex in RTB because you need to accurately assign differential values to each
ad within 100 milliseconds!

What we’re talking about is the real-time web. The best way to understand DataXu is that we are for online
advertising what Twitter is for communications — we are both building systems for the real-time web and start from
the assumption that to keep up with the dynamism of the traffic requires a fundamentally different system.

In that DataXu is a data-intensive company, what’s your opinion - is there a shelf-life for data?

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Totally. I think best practices will emerge that have the industry retaining data for shorter and shorter periods of
time. It’s best practice from a consumer perspective, and also from a provider perspective, because the value of
the data declines over time and the grows as data accumulates.

In fact, in the early days of behavioral targeting, like when I was at Engage in 1999, the “going in” thought was that
we’d collect data for years and there’d be all these wonderful patterns with a giant data warehouse. Some brands
are eager to skip the hardware costs and rely on vendors who can efficiently “use and lose” the data to produce
good benefit at lower cost.

What’s DataXu’s target market right now?

We have two segments right now. One is large brands and their agencies. The other is a direct response
marketer who is interested in achieving the lowest cost per acquistion.

Is it expensive to work with you guys?

We’re currently not running anything below $50,000 as part of an upfront, initial commitment, and most of our initial
campaigns are larger.

Is there an opportunity for the Long Tail with real-time bidding?

Yes. Absolutely. The small marketers embraced search engine marketing because it was very cost efficient and
easy to buy on a performance basis. I think RTB will deliver very good efficiency but that it will take a little bit of
time to make it as easy to buy as search.

How does DataXu benefit publishers?

It benefits publishers in a couple of ways - and, it’s worth noting that my last job was running a premium publishing
network at Nokia. The biggest benefit to publishers is if we can get more brands spending on display. Some of the
largest eCommerce brands in the world essentially spend nothing on display today. Providing those brands with
an effective way to drive sales through display advertising is a multi-billion dollar opportunity. With that money in
the space, sell-through goes up, eCPMs go up for publishers, and I think we can all agree this is a good thing.

Also, publishers have realized that they need a waterfall sales strategy, where the direct salesforce is going to
attain the highest average eCPMs, but it’s the highest cost of goods sold. A network may be a secondary channel.
The question for the publisher will be where does real-time bidding fit in, where in the waterfall? The answer is that
real-time bidding can monetize unsold inventory without creating channel conflict and also do it with a very low
cost of selling.

If there’s one thing well-known about DataXu is all the MIT scientists that are involved. Does this mean that
you don’t need to know anything about media to provide a useful tool/system for the advertising industry?

Some of the biggest breakthroughs in industry and science are made by “outsiders.” DataXu has a team of
aerospace engineers with backgrounds in real-time control systems, and we are applying some of the techniques
learned from flying rockets—and course correcting them—so they’ll reach their intended targets [laughs], which is
not that dissimilar from helping an ad campaign meet its goals.

Discovering fresh and new ways of solving problems is a great way to innovate. Having said that, my background
is interactive advertising. Many members of the team here go back to Engage Technologies with me, where we
built the first profile serving technologies.

How do you address creative in your optimization process?

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In the DataXu system, we look at three data domains: context, consumer, creative. We’re looking at parameters
within each domain, such as for context for the site, the content of the page, the location on the page, time/day of
week. Consumer parameters would include where they came from in their web browsing, recent behavioral
interests and maybe search terms or other information that describes the consumer. And for creative we’re talking
about parameters such as each creative’s concept, media format and other design elements. So, we’re
incorporating and looking across all of these data dimensions to find combinations of data that are most successful
for driving actions on the web. So, fully integrating creative data is key to our optimization.

What are some of the key learnings that you’re bringing to DataXu from Engage, Enpocket and Nokia?

I've learned two really important things: first, to succeed commercially young companies need to be very focused
on providing a significant customer benefit; and second to succeed as investments that create value for
shareholders, they need to have a scalable technology that can support profitable growth and obviate the need for
armies of people manually supporting the business. It’s no secret that there are a lot of hamster wheels running in
the interactive advertising business. A core investment thesis of DataXu is that the most successful media buyers
of the future will need scalable, automated technology to transform their businesses.

How important is interoperability between exchanges to you?

Actually, a primary benefit of our system is providing interoperability among the exchanges. From a buyer’s
perspective, the question is how do I manage one budget, one set of campaign objectives, and one set of brand-
oriented profiles across multiple supply pools? We provide single source, integrated access to streamline
campaign management.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 17, 2009 – 7:30 am

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Invite Media’s Turner Discusses New Self-Service ‘Bid
Manager’ for Display
Email This Post

Nathaniel Turner is Co-Founder, President & COO of Invite

Media.

AdExchanger.com: What is Invite Media and how did it

begin?

NT: Invite has built what we call a "universal buying platform," Bid Manager. In one sentence, Bid Manager allows
an agency, ad network or media buyer to automatically buy and manage display media across multiple ad
exchanges through one interface. We've integrated with all the usual suspects, including Yahoo / Right Media,
Google / DoubleClick, and real-time ad exchanges such as AppNexus (and more coming). I can't get into a lot of
the secret sauce of what we do or how some of our customers use the platform, but we feel that Bid Manager is
really pushing the envelope with how display will be traded.

Invite got its start after one of my co-founders and I worked at VideoEgg for a summer, which gave us a crash-
course in digital advertising (albeit video in that circumstance). Long story short, like typical college students we
thought of an idea or two that wasn't protectable passed 6 months, and then constantly morphed the idea into what
it is today. Honestly though, we can't take much credit for the idea transformation, as we surrounded ourselves
with some tremendous investors and advisors who believed in us and gave us a ton of their time and feedback.
Without them we'd probably be pitching small local businesses on online video ads right now.

How is the beta progressing? Projected launch data? Any performance metrics you can share?

We are extremely happy with the progress of the beta. We have seen tremendous interest and traction for the
platform, and are up and running with well over a dozen clients (with many more in the queue). The pace at which
this industry moves is mind-boggling. To be honest, our biggest concern two years ago was how quickly the
market would evolve to adopt technologies like ours; now, I would say that is the least of our concerns, probably
thanks to the economy. In terms of performance metrics, we aren't disclosing any specific numbers, but I will say
that we are very satisfied with the progress thus far.

Do you consider Invite Media a services business or a technology business?

We are a technology business. We are not an ad network and we are not a services-only company. We are
building and providing a technology platform upon which agencies, ad networks and media buyers can build and
manage their business. We, of course, provide complimentary services to assist our clients, but that is only to
enable our technology. I think that is a key differentiator for Invite. We learned early on from our advisors that many
digital advertising companies bill themselves as tech companies in the beginning, and then 2 years later after
taking the "easy" money from advertisers and providing services, they realize "oh crap, we forgot to build tech."
You also can't just one day make the switch to be a tech company, as your company's DNA is decided pretty early
on. This has been a huge point for us, and we made the clear decision early on to stay the course as a tech
company. I think our clients respect that about us, as trust comes from knowing that our tech platform is 100%
transparent and open. We want to give them the keys to drive.

Will IM provide self-service and full-service offerings?

Our platform, Bid Manager, is entirely self-service. As I mentioned previously, we have assembled an internal
team, located at our new office in NYC (and often times out of our client's offices), that assists our clients in using

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our platform. We realize that the display industry has a long way to go in terms of maturity, and most of our clients
are still scaling up and learning the space, so we can't expect all of them to already have teams in place that are
ready to start buying and managing display campaigns internally.

You're like.. 23 (?).. what the hell do you know about media buying?

Ha! I hope a lot, but we're always learning. One thing I will say is that we've always said internally that age can be
an advantage if you use it correctly (all of the founders are either 22 or 23), and I think with media buying it's no
different. There's always a point where experience matters, but being able to approach a market with a fresh
perspective without bias or preconceived notions on how things work can be extremely valuable. I can't tell you
how many people I've run into (and continue to run into) who are resistant to change because they have "10+
years experience in media buying." In order to learn the fundamentals early on, we really just stumbled around and
did our homework for a couple of years while our parents were still paying our rent and food bills during college.
Having that luxury and very few life obstacles really freed us to learn the space. More specifically, we really just
threw ourselves into the fire and managed media plans for clients, which exposed us first-hand to the moving parts
of campaigns, how to make things work, what the metrics are, and my favorite, the absolutely mind-boggling
vocabulary of terminology you need to know.

Can the agency model survive given the rapid transformation toward digital media trading? What are key
steps in your mind that agencies must make to be successful in this new, trading environment?

This is a conversation I seem to now be having every day now, which means it's on a lot of people's minds. I think
that both agencies and ad networks are going to go through some major transformations in the next few years. I
personally see agencies having to adopt new technologies in order to build expertise and process around smart
media trading. They can't continue to outsource and give up that knowledge-building process to ad networks. I also
see ad networks losing the protectability of "owning" and managing a large scale publisher base, which in order to
survive will start building expertise around client service and catering to advertisers, as well as furthering campaign
performance. For the ad network, this also may mean a shift to being more transparent with the agency or
advertiser. And of course, both will start (or continue) to take advantage of user-level data, which may or not be
proprietary to the agency or ad network in some situations. In other words, I see the line that is currently separating
agencies and ad networks starting to blur.

Do I think that every agency and every ad network will die in the next two years if they don't evolve? No. I think
they're all in for change, but change isn't an overnight thing. However, before we know it, some ad networks will all
of a sudden start looking more and more like agencies, and vice versa. When that happens, agencies will find
themselves pitching an advertiser against some of the faster-evolving ad networks, and who do you think the
performance-minded advertiser is going to pick? My hunch will be the one that can deliver better results, which in a
measurable world will be the one with better understanding of media trading and use of technology, among other
things. That's a key point. Sure, agencies provide many services that go beyond media buying (which there will
always be a place for), the largest of which may in fact be "client services," but a handful of ad networks could be
successful at following. Even if advertisers still (and maybe always) look to certain agencies for creative work and
"brand story telling," agencies have to begin building expertise around smarter media buying now that the playing
field is becoming flatter. I've heard numerous conversations where either (a) a major agency has asserted that they
plan on spending zero money with ad networks in a few years, or (b) an ad network is scared that the value-add
they thought they had with agencies is being eroded, and that they need to evolve. We're talking billions of dollars
at stake here.

In terms of key steps, I think agencies need to start thinking "DEM" in addition to "SEM," which will entail applying
the same expertise and measurability they have with search to display. In my mind, this first involves finding the
right people to champion and lead the movement internally, which will probably be individuals who understand
performance and measurability (which can't be said about everyone at a traditional agency). Maybe that person
used to lead or work at an ad network or comes from a performance and measurability driven world, such as
search. Second, agencies have to think strongly about the technology they use and the data they have. They have
to grab the reins.

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Who do you see as your key competitors?

Honestly, we're still trying to figure that one out. There are a lot of people who share the vision and the story, but
very few that I know of that are taking our approach (and most importantly, have anything to show for it). There are
also plenty of companies who provide the "function" at a pure client-services level, and will most certainly move in
our direction in the future, but aren't offering the same thing in our client's eyes. All of these guys, however, are
really educating the industry and are getting things moving in the right direction. Instead of pointing out specific
competitors and where they stand in relation to us, I'll just list a few names that tend to come up in our
conversations: MediaMath, DataXu, Turn, and Collective Media.

Will exchange traders be able to buy AND sell media with your trading software?

Yes. Clients can choose to "re-sell" any single impression to other bidders who operate on either our system or
other third-party systems.

There is a lot of talk about better analytics and attribution capabilities for online advertising. Are you
satisfied with ROI metrics that you're tracking? What needs to be changed?

I think the industry has a long way to go in terms of ROI metrics. So many parts of display aren't measurable the
way advertisers and agencies would like them to be. Many traditional ad networks have been feasting on this lack
of measurability for years, and will probably continue to do so for years to come. The inefficiency in the market due
to this lack of complete knowledge is pretty astonishing. Attribution on things such as a post-view conversions,
impact of display campaigns beyond direct response, and the cross-pollination affects on other online efforts driven
by display are all parts of the industry that need maturity on how they're being tracked, measured, and attributed.

How does the online ad exchange model shift to a premium AND remnant inventory model from remnant-
only?

It's a good question. I think companies like AppNexus (with their AdNexus exchange) will really be at the forefront
of this model shift, and are making a ton of progress. New technologies like these will be required that successfully
"work" with existing publisher ad servers (ex. DFP) and get the publisher comfortable with having all of their
inventory (i.e., not just un-sold / remnant) available for auction. What this means is that the publisher needs to
believe that if someone is willing to pay more than one of their internal campaigns for a premium impression, that
it's worth it across the board. Not every premium publisher cares solely about that one dollar they get for 1,000
impressions like they do for unsold. They also care about things such as the signals they put out for the other
100mm impressions that they sell internally each month. Again, I believe that the reason we really haven't seen
this to date has been because the publishers just aren't comfortable. A unified platform has to support concepts
such as allowing the publisher to selectively approve or reject individual creative's and advertisers (i.e., competitive
exclusions), to allow their inventory to be visible as part of a broader "bucket" of inventory with a site list and not be
100% transparent on every impression, etc…

How will Invite Media evolve in the next 12-18 months?

Come back and ask me that in 12-18 months

Follow Nat Turner @natsturner, Invite Media @invitemedia and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger.com) on
Twitter.

April 20, 2009 – 7:51 am

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MediaMath Riding Wave of ROI Accountability Says CEO
Zawadzki
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Joe Zawadzki is CEO of MediaMath, a media trading solutions provider.

AdExchanger.com: When "last we left" MediaMath, the New York

Times had just featured you. What's been happening over the past 9
months? Any updates you can share about traction, product line,
etc.?

JZ: We've been fortunate to continue our two-year consistent growth

trajectory, despite the broader economic challenges in the market. In fact,
the greater focus on ROI accountability in today's market has actually accelerated the adoption of our platform (a
trend we didn't call when we started the company). As a profitable firm, we've been able to "lean in" to this
opportunity while others have pulled back, building out an already great team of smart, passionate, and nice folks
(a rare combination, imho!).

In Q1 of this year we released our SaaS media trading platform that allows our agency clients to opt for either the
turnkey results of our managed service offering, or a self-service and whitelabelled offering giving them the tools,
technology, and training to do media trading in-house, informed by the MediaMath lessons learned from the
monthly execution of millions of dollars in spend and billions of impressions bought.

It's been really fun, although it takes until Sunday morning for the kids to warm up to dad again.

Any insights you can share in online display advertising such as overall eCPMs, CTRs, category trends,
etc.?

We're excited to see more publishers embracing "biddable media" (we don't view the spot market as remnant!).
While the tier one / direct-sold market was booming, senior management at publishers were rather rationally
focusing on their "premium" sales efforts. Over the past couple of quarters we're seeing more and more high-
quality inventory coming onto exchanges, as publishers focus on making more from their unsold-in-the-futures-
market supply than they have been able to traditionally command.

We're focusing on making sure publishers don't regret it by bringing high-quality, Fortune 500 advertisers into the
spot market. A healthy spot market paying fair value on an eCPM basis for good audiences on good publishers,
benefits the entire ecosystem and encourages more supply and demand to enter the system.

Is Media Math a services business or a technology business?

Proudly both. This market is a ridiculously dynamic one: over a dozen exchange entities ranging in sophistication
from impression-level bidding to fairly manual UI processes, all focused on growing supply; third-party data
sources that are transforming media properties into information marketplaces and blurring the line between media
and audience; agencies, media companies, networks, publishers, and advertisers all trying to figure out their place
in this new ecosystem.

To innovate in this market requires having both the right tools and the expert practitioners that know how to design
and use them. To us that meant building a platform that could integrate with all exchanges, provide turnkey
campaign setup for our clients, deliver best-in-class optimization, and provide campaign reporting and insights. But
when we started two years ago, there were no practitioners around to use and refine that platform. So we did it

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ourselves. It's hard to imagine building a media trading platform without actually getting our hands dirty using all
the existing exchanges, ad serving technologies, and analytics platforms on behalf of real life client goals and
constraints.

For the past two years, our managed service team has been responsible for delivering results, over hundreds of
campaigns and tens of millions in media spend. That makes our solution "real world" and cuts through the vapour
out there. In parallel, our SaaS development team distills this learning into the shared technology that enables both
our internal traders and our agency clients to succeed.

It turns out the dual service-and-technology model fits well with the two types of agency needs we see. Some are
looking for us to solve this problem, now, i.e., generate immediate client returns, provide insights and visibility, and
work within my existing business model. Others are asking to "provide me a platform" that will allow me to build out
an internal media trading discipline they are looking for a technology solution. In many cases, we see agencies
starting out as the former and migrating to the latter.

You call yourselves 'digital trading experts'. Can you give us an example of what a typical MediaMath
engagement might be like?

Well, the definition of typical is changing. Twelve months ago, we were working "bottom up" focused on proving
the performance across brand and direct response with hard and soft objectives, insights, and power of
MediaMath's technology atop biddable display through a high profile advertiser or two within our agency's client
roster, and then scaling horizontally within the agency.

Of late, we've become more "top down" -- prospective agencies know we can produce results and the discussion is
more about "how do I structure this within the agency or holding company to roll-out aggressively across my
enterprise?"

Frankly, we've learned a lot from our agency partners as well! We've seen a tremendous amount of smart thinking
and entrepreneurialism from our clients, and the product set has grown to meet their evolving needs.

Can the agency model survive given the rapid transformation toward digital media trading? What are key
steps in your mind that agencies must make to be successful in this new, trading environment?

Absolutely and without question. Rumors of the agency demise have been greatly exaggerated: the agency model
is on the brink of resurgence.

Marketing is becoming more complicated, not less. Digital is becoming a bigger percentage of the total, not
smaller. Channels are integrating, not growing more siloed. The consumer is getting smarter, not dumber. Metrics
are getting deeper, not shallower.

Marketers can't quarterback a coherent program spanning all of this complexity on their own. An agency - the
transformed, modern agency, well-versed in technology and analytics - is needed to orchestrate this dynamic
landscape, pulling together the best tools and the best practices to achieve success for their clients, under
incentive models making them partners in that success.

As to how to succeed? Find a trusted partner to provide the technical and quantitative DNA, who understands and
believes in the agency model and can "get the flywheel spinning". It gets easier with some success. Perhaps
obviously, we think agencies are better served by working with a best-in-class and extensible solution instead of
trying to assemble a hodgepodge of tools and providers.

Will Media Math ever trade its own book?

I'm not totally sure what this means. We happily bear performance and payment risk for our partners, because
we're confident in what we do, as well as supporting those who prefer to handle both themselves. Our singular

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focus is delivering superior results for our agency clients, whether through our SaaS solution or our managed
service.

Does Media Math help facilitate the selling of display advertising media back to the exchange? Or is it just
facilitating media buying at this point?

We are buyers only. We think selling media creates a conflict of interest that would put us at odds with our clients.
The question of: should this impression get sold to our client at $1.00 CPM when it clearly performs for them, or
should we sell it to the exchange at $1.20 CPM so we can profit, creates divided loyalties. We don't want to deal
with that, and thus, we only buy. This said, more and higher quality demand in an auction model helps media
suppliers, so we view the relationship as "symbiotic". Analytics creates value the game is not zero sum.

Of the ad networks and exchanges out there today, who's getting it right?

That's a tricky question. Everyone seems to have standardized on the right vision at this point: real-time
impression-level bidding, prices driven by fair market supply & demand, easy access to third-party data sources,
open access to APIs and support for "bring-your-own-algorithm," preference to overlap versus underlap when
resolving sales conflict, integration of premium and remnant, guaranteed and spot. Where people are on that
roadmap, of course, varies. Some have chosen to emphasize certain parts of that vision over others, but most
agree on the horizon and acknowledge, and the need to get there sooner rather than later.

What's Mathtag.com?

It's our proprietary pixel-serving technology that allows us to normalize information across supply sources, append
third-party data, manage attribution and metrics, and build bid models based on our clients end-advertiser goals.
Agencies tend to have standardized on DART or Atlas, and we focus on streamlining their workflow, not disrupting
it.

Is there room for brand advertising with performance display advertising, or is PDA strictly about direct
response?

Definitely both. Exchanges are about providing sources of biddable media where prices are driven by supply and
demand, and where data, media, and audiences can be bought and sold programatically and algorithmically.
Whether the goal is brand impact, engagement, direct response, etc., doesn't matter -- all types of goals can be,
and are, supported. Considering exchanges "remnant" or "direct response" is hugely limiting.

Put another way, all marketing should be "performance based" just with a broad definition of the goals that include
brand (that traditionally are viewed as unmeasurable) and direct response metrics. Yes, even brand marketers
have goals, whether they be cost-per-audience member reached, brand awareness, net promoter score, or what
have you and the tools exist to measure these. Simply replace "CPA" with these goals, and the entire power of
this medium cost-efficiency, targeting & optimization, transparency, scalability, etc. are all brought to bear on
brand marketing. This really needs a whitepaper or a book to answer well. Short answer: yes.

There is a lot of talk about better analytics and attribution capabilities for online advertising. Are you
satisfied with ROI metrics that you're tracking? What needs to be changed?

MediaMath's systems support a whole range of upper funnel brand metrics and post-transaction "downstream"
metrics. Our technology lets us develop real-time bid models against billions of impressions per day against all of
these metrics today, while continuing to aggressively support more traditional online metrics like CPM-against-
target, CPC, CPA (thank you page).

As the company's name suggests, we're metrics pioneers but we look to avoid the proverbial arrows by tempering
zeal with an acknowledgement of market readiness for metrics broader than reach and deeper than CPA. Our goal

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is to make available the tools for agencies to help their clients clearly define, report on, and action against more
sophisticated measures of return, with systems built to handle them, without requiring the adoption of same.

How does the online ad exchange model shift to a premium AND remnant inventory model?

Power buyers - like a MediaMath - move upmarket to create a "premium spot" market with deep, quality supply
relationships, pricing above remnant, explicit avoidance of channel conflict, and quality advertisers.

The beauty of the free marketplace is that the cream rises to the top. We firmly believe that top publishers who
have distinctive content, valuable audiences, and aggressively innovate can garner higher prices for their inventory
in a premium spot market than the blended economics of direct sales.

How will Media Math evolve in the next 12-18 months?

Take advantage of our two-year lead in this market. Go from being a successful first-mover in media trading with a
stellar client roster to the industry standard solution for top-tier agencies. Despite the allure of profitability and a
track record of successful organic growth, we've elected to bring in a financial backer to provide the substantial
capital base and expertise to help us extend our lead rather than just maintain it.

We hope the adexchanger audience helps us succeed! We strongly believe that

a healthy ecosystem helps our partners on both the buy side and sell side win. We're very excited about being
participants in the new world that the adexchanger is chronicling and increasingly helping to define.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

April 27, 2009 – 8:06 am

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Permuto Bringing All-Inclusive Ad Platform Says CEO
Shamim
Email This Post

Shaukat Shamim is CEO & Co-Founder of Permuto.

AdExchanger.com: Where did the idea for Permuto come from? And how about the name - what's the
story there?

SS: We are a company comprised of online advertising junkies, all of the founders been involved in online
advertising from the formation days of Internet. We had our hands on building ad servers and other core
technologies that eventually became backends of Yahoo! and DoubleClick. Naturally, we looked at online display
advertising and we saw large inefficiencies.

Everyone knows that "search" has revolutionized online

advertising. When we dug into search, we made a surprising
discovery where a large majority of the top 100 advertisers of
search are ecommerce shopping, travel and auto retailers.
That was a light bulb moment. We decided to build a company
that will make display advertising "effective", as effective as
search, and to be very much focused on bringing search-style
economics in display advertising.

Permuto means "Total transformation" in Latin. During the

early days, as we were scrambling for a name with deep
correlation with our business, Navdeep Saini, our CTO,
pointed out the name, and lucky us, it was available.

What's your view on ad exchanges? And how will they

play a part of Permuto's plans?

We work with a number of ad exchanges, and we will continue

to do so. Ad Exchanges enable us to get access to a large
number of users quickly. Our plan is to continue to work with
ad exchanges and even expand that coverage.

Do you do a rev share with publishers? Any plans to buy

and/or resell user cookies from publishers?

We work with publishers on a variety of financial models – revenue share, media purchases, etc. Because we want
to make it as easy as possible for publishers to work with us, we have experimented with different compensation
structures.

No, we do not plan to sell any data that we collect to anyone else. Our purpose in collecting anonymous data is
solely to serve ads to shoppers. Period.

On the advertiser side for Permuto, how is data important for targeting? What data sets do you use?

Data is very important to us. The better the data about consumer shopping habits, the better our advertisements
can be and the more value we bring to consumers. We have found that the more granular and specific we can get

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about a user’s purchase intent, the better opportunity we have of featuring a relevant ad. We use a variety of data
sets, some from third parties, some from our own network and all collected in a privacy friendly way without any
Personally Identifiable Information (Non-PII).

What is ShopperConnect?

ShopperConnect is the name of our offering. It is an all-inclusive advertising platform and network that integrates
shopping data, dynamically-optimized creative, media buying, backend reporting and ROI calculation – all in one
solution.

We have three products lines:

• ShopperConnect Engage - a first-of-its-kind solution that helps merchants acquire and connect with new
customers that they have never seen. Participation is almost that of SEM, the platform lets retailers target
shoppers who are in market for shopping for particular product and then automatically generating
thousands of dynamic ad campaigns based on their product catalog and shoppers’ specific interest.
• ShopperConnect ReEngage - Serves personalized, product-level dynamic ads to customers who were
shopping on a merchant’s site, but left before the transaction was completed.
• ShopperConnect Reach - Delivers brand marketers a high-quality, brand-safe and carefully selected
network of themed shopping-oriented websites to reach ActiveShoppers. The network includes online
retailers, comparison-shopping engines, review sites, sale & bargain sites, and product-oriented blogs.

Beyond the tag line, how is Permuto "Reinventing Online Display Advertising" as you say on your
website?

As most of us know, the graphical advertising market hit a big bump in the road in 2008. From Q4 of 2007 to Q4 of
2008, the average price of remnant inventory for all sites declined from an eCPM of $0.50 to $0.26. That is a
decline of almost 50%! In one year! There are several factors for this decline – the recession, an increase in supply
of pages – but the essential reason is the same: display advertising does not work. That is, to say, it is not as
effective as, say, search in driving direct return on ad spend. We are looking to correct that.

To do this, we have created a system that does two things: (i) serves ads only to users who are interested in the
content of the ad and (ii) makes it easy for advertisers to buy. To accomplish the first, we identify users by their
purchase intent and serve an ad that matches that intent. To accomplish the second, we have a platform that:

1. Eliminates the need for a merchant to spend time and effort making ad creative;
2. Eliminates the risk to merchants that their ads will not provide new leads; and
3. Monitors performance of our ads to ensure that our network is delivering good quality leads to merchants.

Imagine the influx of thousands of new merchants into the advertising pool – paying for, and getting performance
from, display ads in the same way that they are paying for search. That is revolutionary!

Where's the sweet spot in terms of your target market?

Our target market is really any merchant selling product online. Because we are focused on the online shopping
space, we do not currently work in any other verticals (i.e., travel or real estate). As for the shopping space itself,
we welcome almost any merchant. While we would love to work with any product, we have found that there is a
minimum CPC below which we cannot make the payouts work for most publishers. As a result, we do not usually
feature the very low CPC products, like books. Otherwise, anyone selling products online is squarely within our
purview.

Where does optimization fit in with Permuto's products?

Optimization is core to what we do. In fact, without it, we will not survive. Because in our model we take on the risk
that the ads we feature will click and ultimately convert into sales, our ads must work. As a result, we are

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constantly optimizing the performance, based on a variety of factors: product, ad creative, publisher, comparison
product, size of brand, color, font – you name it.

Will real-time bidding (RTB) impact Permuto's display advertising product?

Yes. We believe that over time real-time bidding will eventually make our whole model even more efficient.

Will agency buying platforms provide an opportunity for to Permuto?

We certainly hope so. Anything that makes it easier for advertisers to purchase from us is certainly welcome by us.

How does your experience at Rhythm NewMedia, a firm that specializes in individually targeted mobile
ads, inform the development of Permuto?

At the time I founded Rhythm NewMedia, I was very intrigued by the lack of monetization and efficiencies in the
mobile industry. But we had to take on multiple tasks of educating the market, creating forward-looking services
and selling to brands only.

That experience played a big part in founding Permuto as we got an early conviction that an open performance-
based marketplace is the big opportunity to have.

Follow Shaukut Shamim @sshamim, Permuto (@permuto) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

October 14, 2009 – 6:06 am

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Triggit’s Self-Serve Technology Platform Leveraging RTB
Says CEO Coelius
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Zach Coelius is CEO of Triggit, an online advertising technology company.

AdExchanger.com: So what is Triggit - and where'd

the name come from? Are you a buying platform?
A media buying services company?

ZC: Triggit provides Real Time Bidding (RTB)

technology and services to innovative marketers and
their advertising agencies. Specifically, Triggit’s
technology individually prices and bids for billions of
impressions daily on the real time display exchanges.
Triggit’s media partners include such companies as
Google, OpenX, Admeld, Pubmatic, Adnexus and more.

At Triggit, marketers use our technologies to allocate

their media budgets on the real-time bidding enabled
media exchanges. In this process we provide our
clients a range of offerings to meet their needs. For
sophisticated agencies, ad networks and large ad
buyers, Triggit’s self-serve technology platform enables
them to leverage their own data, insights and media
buying expertise in the exchange buying process.
Others want a more hands off approach to their media
spend, and for those clients Triggit’s account managers
take complete ownership of the campaigns and provide
full media buying services as well as technology to
achieve unprecedented ROI.

As far as our name goes, Triggit is Scottish for "playful,"

and more importantly "URL" for not taken. We picked it a long time ago for a very different business model and
have never found a reason to change it. It also happens to be pretty memorable. We like it.

How do you differentiate from other buying platforms in the space?

Triggit has been building RTB technology since the space first went live with Adnexus and Pubmatic in December
of 2008. The technology stack required for individually pricing and bidding on billions of impressions a day is very
challenging and different then anything the ad industry has done before. RTB is all we do, and we have gotten
very good at it. For instance not only can we take any advertiser’s or third-party's cookie set and target against it
on Google and other exchanges, we can vary the price we pay for each matching placement according to its
expected value. We have found that the ability to value and bid on each impression individually, and to do a multi-
variate calculation on all the valid data points, results in a significantly more efficient and effective media pricing
process. At the end of the day, it is all about results and we stand behind our ability to deliver for any marketer.

Are you buying from Google's DoubleClick Ad Exchange? Any early results you can share?

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Yes. We have been live with RTB on the Google exchange since September. We were really lucky that the
technology we built for bidding on Adnexus and Pubmatic was architected in such a way that it was pretty easy for
us to integrate Google’s AdX. We are starting to see huge scale now, over 2 million bid requests per minute and
growing amazingly fast. Google has built an excellent system and deserves a lot of credit for validating RTB as the
standard for the next generation of media buying. We buy across the Google Content Network (GCN) as well as
the Ad Exchange and are excited about how quickly Google is exposing more and more GCN content.

Do you think impression-level real-time bidding is a proverbial game changer? Why?

We have seen results from hundreds of campaigns that show impression level bidding with good data behind it
results in an exponential increase in ROI. It is basically cherry picking the best impressions for our clients at a
huge scale. When we no longer have to buy a million, poorly-targeted impressions just hoping to reach a few of
the right users, we can be far more efficient with our client’s media dollars. Essentially, per impression bidding
enables us to de-average the price we pay for each ad and have that price more accurately reflect the expected
value. In an ecosystem where other bidders on the exchanges still use rules-based line items, with average
prices like you see on Right Media, we are able to buy good impressions at lower prices.

On Triggit.com it says that you offer "Fully Transparent Analytics" - what does that mean?

Because proper real-time bidding involves the passing of a transparent URL as well as a user ID, it allows us to
share with our clients full site information before and after a campaign. For instance, before a campaign begins we
provide our clients with a site list of all the domains we see across the exchanges. The client can then use that list
to target specific sites for their campaigns. This pre-campaign transparency allows the client to very carefully
manage the content adjacency of their advertisements and to ensure that they are not being run anywhere they
don’t like. Once the campaign is live we provide the client with a login that enables them to monitor where every
impression, click and conversion is recorded on a fully transparent site-level basis. This transparency is very
important for our clients and we feel it is one of the most important innovations that the real-time exchanges have
provided.

What are your future plans for Triggit? Perhaps you could start with telling us how many employees you
have today and your hiring plans? Will you need more funding to grow the way you want to?

Triggit currently has ten employees and is growing like crazy. We are having a lot of fun and are looking forward
to 2010, which we think will be a great year on the exchanges for DSPs.

How important is effective creative in your campaigns? How do you work with clients on creative?
Creative is tremendously important. We work closely with the clients to build libraries of creative that we can
optimize for the campaigns. One of the more interesting capabilities of real-time bidding is to use the data that we
have about the users and their intent to serve highly targeted creative. For instance, when a user completes a
search on a travel site for a flight to New York, we can immediately target the user with creative for New York
hotels, tourist attractions and maybe even a helicopter flight into Manhattan.

Is there going to be one winner in the buying platform race?

No. This is the sort of market where there will be a number of companies that develop robust DSP capabilities.
Because clients have very different needs there will be DSPs that emerge and develop different specialties for
different parts of the market.

How do agencies need adjust their model to keep up with innovation in the digital space in your opinion?
I don’t think there are many people who dispute the fact that media buying is going to become a highly automated
data and algorithm driven process going forward. In that sort of world agencies can make a choice. They can
either bite the bullet and learn how to build, manage and innovate with technology or they can become dependent
on vendors. If they want to retain the important role they play in the media buying process they will have to learn
how to start adding value on the technology side. If instead they want to remain focused on their current
competencies, they can give up their media buying arms and outsource that function to the next generation of
technology-driven companies.

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Follow Zach Coelius (@zcoelius), Triggit (@triggit) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

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Turn GM Philip Smolin Discusses Exchange Trading Desk
And Turn Network
Email This Post

Philip Smolin, General Manager, Platform Solutions at Turn discusses

yesterday's announcement regarding their new, white-label buying
platform solutions.

AdExchanger.com: How do you differentiate with other solutions in

the marketplace such as MediaMath and Invite Media?

PS: Turn is best-in-class for custom audience targeting, optimization and

analytics. A number of vendors are providing basic exchange
management solutions, and certainly Turn's platform provides all of the
core features you would expect: a unified dashboard for managing all ad
exchanges and yield managers, centralized retargeting and behavioral
buys, universal frequency caps, transparent reporting, etc. But where
Turn really excels is in the ability to help media buyers go beyond
traditional retargeting and behavioral targeting to actually discover and
convert entirely NEW audience segments they haven't previously
reached.

Some of the differentiated technologies driving Turn's platform include

real-time behavioral data assimilation and modeling; predictive bid
optimization that blends user, site and page context information; and
direct, real-time bidded (RTB) exchange integration. The end result is an
extremely powerful audience targeting and optimization platform that is
still surprisingly easy for the media buyer to use. The final component is
an advanced analytics system that goes beyond basic performance
reporting to include deep demographic and behavioral insights.

For media buyers who want to drive the system themselves, the platform is available on a self-service basis. For
others who want all the benefits of exchange management but without the overhead, Turn also provides a full
service solution. Our highly experienced professional services organization provides full lifecycle campaign
management and consulting, ensuring the agency a seamless and successful deployment.

Please discuss how you will manage the appearance of a conflict of interest between the ongoing
management of your own network while offering a white label version of your network's buying platform?

Actually, full transparency ensures there's no conflict of interest and in fact the two services are extremely
complementary. When an agency uses the Exchange Trading Desk, Turn Network is an optional ad inventory
source just like any other RTB-based inventory source. If the agency chooses to deploy the campaign to Turn
Network along with all of the other sources, the platform automatically optimizes budget allocation based on
performance. This means that if Turn Network is performing better on an eCPA basis, additional budget will be
allocated to it. But if Turn Network is performing worse, then budget will be taken away and re-allocated to the
better performing sources. Because performance data and budget optimization is fully transparent, the media
buyer can see and manage what is going on at all times.

What makes the Turn Network so complementary to the Exchange Trading Desk is the incremental reach it
provides. The simple fact is that not all publishers use exchanges, and many publishers place only a portion of
their inventory on exchanges. Frequently, Turn Network is able to provide access to inventory that would otherwise

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be unavailable via an exchange. The end result is access to increased reach and frequency, which ultimately can
have a huge impact on campaign success.

When will the Private Network and the Exchange Trading Desk model be available?

Both products have been in closed beta for some time with major agencies and are now available in market.

It would seem the Private Network option will appeal to agencies in that they'll want to source their own
inventory beyond Turn's options. Agree? Or do you think you have scalable audience available through
inventory that Turn can currently access?

The Exchange Trading Desk is designed to centralize and optimize buying across all auction-based inventory
sources. Turn Network is just one of the many optional RTB inventory sources the Trading Desk platform optimizes
across. Larger agencies with multiple advertisers and campaigns will absolutely continue to source their own
inventory, and they can use the Private Network to expand optimization beyond the exchanges to include their
direct publisher and ad network buys. It really is a great strategy, because the more campaigns the agency can
consolidate, the greater their buying power. This enables agencies to make bulk inventory purchases and have the
Private Network platform optimize the use of the impressions across all of the available campaigns. We've already
seen this model in use and its driving amazing performance results.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 24, 2009 – 6:17 am

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[x+1] CEO Nardone Says Predictive Algorithms More
Relevant Than Ever With Real-Time Bidding
Email This Post

John Nardone is CEO of [x+1], an online buying platform and data company.

AdExchanger.com: What trends is [x+1] seeing from its clients in 2009? Can you describe momentum for
[x+1] this year? Revenues, deal size, vertical strengths, product interests, etc.?

JN: [x+1] has been extremely fortunate in 2009 to see its client list, revenue
and average deal size all grow quarter on quarter from 2008. After the first
quarter, we announced 81% year over year growth. We’ll be in the same
ballpark for Q2.

Results have been based on the strong performance and critical insights
we’ve been able to deliver to clients. The insights pay major dividends in
terms of client retention and our ability to win additional share of budget. As
our clients respond to the global economic recession, we’re seeing them
move more money online and specifically into accountable, performance
based campaigns. This has been great for us and our outlook for the
remainder of 2009 looks very strong.

What third-party platform and data providers is [x+1] using today and
why? What is the ultimate goal as you aggregate partners?

Our core platform is entirely our own. We have our own optimization
engine…we don’t rely on yield manager. We have our own data centers and
distribution network…we don’t rely on AppNexus. We have our own decision
and ad server infrastructure. And we’ve built this platform to be open and
extensible. This allows us to work with any ad server on the market as well
as any of the myriad data providers in the industry.

The fact that our optimization engine (POE) can accept any kind of data is
particularly central to our strategy. It seems like there are new data providers
launching weekly and we’re committed to helping our agency and advertiser clients test and utilize these new data
sources. Importantly, we have no designs on being a data broker. We are simply enabling as many data providers
as we can on the platform so that our clients have choices for the data they can use.

To this end, We’ve also done a ton of work to ensure that we can leverage the data transfers and APIs that the
major ad servers have published. We’re aware that our clients have invested both time and money to integrate
these technologies into their process and workflow and feel that it is critical to be able to integrate with them as
seamlessly as possible.

How has [x+1] evolved in the past few years? And, how have shifts in the marketplace affected [x+1]
strategy?

Originally [x+1] (formerly Poindexter Systems) was focused on optimizing external media campaigns.
Unfortunately, in early 2000 the market wasn’t ready for our audience-centric optimization because media buyers
purchased content sites as a proxy for audience targeting and there was no mechanism to only purchase
impressions for individual audiences. In a sense, we couldn’t drive the improvements we knew were possible

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because context and audience could not easily be separated. We adapted our solution for website and landing
page optimization where targeting and optimizing message delivery to specific audiences could be shown to have
a huge impact on results.

In 2008 we returned to external media optimization in a major way, utilizing the infrastructure and decisioning
engine that we had built and perfected over the years. We started purchasing inventory through networks and
exchanges as a means of executing our predictive targeting. We are now expanding our media solution to tap into
other media channels and are preparing to offer it to agencies and advertisers as a self-service platform.

In a sense the recent changes in the media market have allowed us to really unlock the power of POETM, our
Predictive Optimization Engine. Not only has it always been the center of our company, it is also the only proven
engine in the marketplace.

Are you seeing more brand or DR marketers who are interested in your products? Where do you see this
going?

Direct response marketers have been our primary customers but we are absolutely committed to expanding our
products to support brand marketers. We recently launched a couple of new products aimed at the needs of brand
marketers: total campaign reach and frequency analysis and pre-campaign audience modeling, which are both
getting a lot of interest. The ability to do brand-based analysis in terms of reach and frequency and audience
profiling of both exchange and non-exchange buys is very appealing to brand marketers who are used to
managing delivery metrics. In addition, we are working on a portfolio management product so that brand marketers
like Kraft and P&G can buy online media “up front” and intelligently decision which brands within their portfolio’s
get the impressions that are best for each. We should have this live by the end of the year.

We are also seeing more dollars that are neither pure DR nor pure brand, but are hybrids. I think this is a reflection
of an overall trend for accountability. Even brand campaigns are using objective measures, and the most
enlightened clients are using multiple metrics as barometers of brand effectiveness. The car companies do this
extremely well.

What is your view on ad exchanges? Benefits? Any traps?

We believe that we’re in the infancy of something that is going to become very, very important to the media
ecosystem. The ad exchanges will become a platform that carries a significant portion of overall display spend.
That said, I don’t think direct publisher buys are in any danger of going away. Rather, smart planners will use
targeting tools and analytics to combine and optimize an overall plan of which exchanges are an important part.

The biggest trap that I’m warning clients about is solving for the problems of today instead of planning for and
solving the problems we’re going to see in the future. I use the Wayne Gretzky analogy with my clients all the time:
Stop trying to optimize to the state of business today. Watch where the puck is going and make sure you are
planning for where it is going to be a year or two from now. Our business is in a period of very rapid innovation.
The current state will be very short lived.

On a more tactical level, we’re seeing the usual traps associated with the exchanges, such as privacy,
inappropriate content and sales channel conflict that need to be addressed. That being said, we believe that
technology, smart policies and process improvements will ultimately address these shortcomings.

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Is there a perfect model for online attribution and can it be achieved?

No, there is no perfect model for online attribution. That being said, we work with a lot of direct marketers and in
many cases we get visibility on their display media, search and website sites and we know that the current,
prevailing last click / last impression attribution methodology needs to be improved ASAP.

We provide our clients with tools for understanding the interaction of online channels and are beginning to help
them figure out a more accurate attribution methodology. We do that for clients today because we have a very
strong competency in analytics overall, including regression and mix based analytics.

But there is no perfect answer. We believe there is likely to be a different model for every client we work with.

Is RTB (real-time bidding) and demand-side optimization an important development? How will [x+1]
respond to this new feature of the exchange model? In that it's based on a just-in-time/spot market, are
predictive algorithms relevant?

Yes, RTB is an extremely important development.

Predictive algorithms are more relevant than ever with real-time bidding and demand-side optimization. In fact it’s
the only way to go. If you don’t have a predictive algorithm in the new real-time bidding environment, how are you
going to do things like optimal bid pricing and delivery forecasting? You can’t have media buyers eyeballing this
kind analysis if you hope to drive the best results.

For us the term ‘predictive modeling’ is all about understanding whom is likely to convert. In the real-time bidding
environment you’re trying to answer the question ‘What impressions should I buy and how much should I be willing
to pay for them?’ and you can’t really answer these questions without predictive models.

If you were a publisher, how would you be preparing to take advantage of the increasingly data-driven
world of online media?

We believe that publishers need to embrace the fact that they are not only content creators but also data providers.
Publishers need to realize that they have a wealth of data inside their own house and they need to make sense of
that if they’re ever going to get the maximum value for their audience.

Representing the interests of the advertisers, I’d like to see publishers be more creative with the custom packages
that they make available to advertisers, both in terms of creative format as well as how they bundle audiences. For
example, Yahoo’s search retargeting product is very powerful and effective. An example of a custom media
package we’d like to see is session-based placement. A lot of premium publishers could totally change the game
for themselves by selling the first 3-5 pages of a consumer’s session, so there is an opportunity to tell story as the
user moves through content. We’re hearing from our clients that they would like access to these types of
programs.

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It would seem that predictive targeting would have some application to the publisher side - perhaps
predictive yield? Does [x+1] have any aspirations on the publisher side?

Great question. We get asked by publishers all the time to use our algorithms for yield optimization and the answer
we give is no. We are 100% focused on the buy side so we avoid any potential sell side conflict of interests and
our clients can have a greater degree of confidence that we’re going to get them the best results.

A general question for you: What will media buying agencies need to do to remain relevant in the future?

Media buying agencies need to realize that how they buy their target audience is changing. Media buyers need to
learn and adapt classic direct marketing competencies and integrate them into their view of what media buying
online is all about. That starts with buying audiences rather than buying placement. That also means that they
need to acquire a new technology platforms that allow them to manipulate and enable audience data in a way that
they never had to think about before. We’ve been speaking to a ton of media buying agencies and feel that they’re
really starting to get it and focusing on acquiring these new skills and technologies which is great.

Follow [x+1] (@xplusone) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 29, 2009 – 7:55 am

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X+1’s Korner On Emerging CPG Display Ad Channel
Email This Post

Toby Korner is VP, Account Management at [x+1], which released a new CPG-focused product today (Release
here. More here from AdWeek.)

AdExchanger.com: Why offer a CPG product? Curious your

thoughts on product development for this as I assume you see
identified CPG as low-hanging fruit for a reason - perhaps for
brand dollars?

TK: You could say low hanging fruit for brand dollars, but also to
allow the CPG players to have the same type of online presence as
Ecommerce and direct marketers have enjoyed for years, even in the
performance space. The ability to target based on actual purchase
behavior and online behavior across the entire Internet as well as
accurate measurement on the back end is a major gap that we are
filling in the industry.

Talk about the tracking of offline purchases in CPG Connect.

This would appear to be entirely dependent on what the client
can offer to you - ideally it should be in real-time for
optimization purposes, no? Is your product dependent on real-
time offline transaction feedback?

The media is tightly integrated with IRI's consumer panel data. We have anonymously matched our online data to
their panel and in-store purchases. We work closely with IRI to define the consumer segment that the CPG
advertiser wants to target, then integrate that with our own and 3rd party data to accurately and efficiently target
consumers that look like the target audience. Post campaign, we measure the in-store impact of the exposed
panelists vs. non-exposed panelists based on actual sales. In short, the client does not provide the sales impact,
we bring it to the client through our integration with the panel.

December 2, 2009 – 11:15 am

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Creative Providers and Optimization

ADISN Leveraging Data Across The Social Web To Target

Display Ad Placements Says CEO Moeck
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Andy Moeck is CEO of ADISN, a creative optimization technology firm.

http://www.adisn.comAdExchanger.com: Why did you start Adisn?

AM: We started ADISN because we were tired of seeing ads or having ads served to us with zero relevance to
what we were doing and interested in at that time. From that point, we saw a few BIG opportunities. (1) By
leveraging all of the great data that was being created across the Social and Conversational web and using that
data to infer display ad placement; why wouldn’t every brand want that?? (2) Online marketing will become a huge
player in overall marketing and messaging to the world; why not make sure the ads understand your needs by
basic behavior/pattern online within immediate sessions? We suspect
the online advertising world will grow immensely in a short amount of
time and will need ADISN’S innovative technology.

Could you give us a sense of momentum at Adisn? Any

strengths or weaknesses in the ad business in general that you
see these days?

ADISN is moving along quite nicely. We have been growing revenue

about 300% quarter to quarter – We don’t see much weakness but it
definitely takes a bit more time / work to close deals. What used to
take 30 days now takes 90 days but in general the budgets are still
there (even test budgets).

In order to explain ADISN in the past, you've used a diagram of a

human brain and its interests and inputs with the caption "Meet
Relationship Targeting." Bring it together for us. What do you
mean? And how do you differentiate from other social targeting
companies such as 33across and Media6degrees that are going after the "birds of a feather" audience?

The human diagram is an analogy for how we operate, fashioned in a visual example that conveys the human
touch and a level of personalization we can offer with our dynamic creative. As for the process, we begin by [EAR]
listening to users across the internet; through social media networks, blogs, and articles. We take this information
and [BRAIN] store it, forming relationships between words that are often associated with each other on the web by
hundreds of millions of people every day. When serving ads, [EYE] we see words that match ones we have stored
and look to the other words we have related to them in our system. Putting two and two together, we [MOUTH]
serve up a relevant ad that speaks to the user based on our relationship-targeting. Coupled with our dynamic
creative (ad layout personally customized, not template-based), it makes for an outcome which is incredibly
tailored and extremely relevant per user.

Who is your target client base and why? Also, please describe your revenue model.

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Individual advertisers as well as advertising agencies of all sizes. Agencies use us as they would an ad network
(to make their media buys) to make their media plans perform, however we also operate as the agency of record
for a number of clients.

Are their advantages to the ad exchange model that social media advertisers and publishers may be able
to leverage?

We are a big fan of the ad exchange model because it levels the playing field and ultimately allows the market to
decide what inventory is worth. We are big supporters of what Google is doing with their DoubleClick Advertising
Exchange in moving to a real time bidding model allowing us to maximize our technology without having to enter
into biz-dev contracts with thousands of publishers.

Are there unique inherent difficulties of attribution related to media buying on the social web?

Attribution is a bit of a sticky issue in general in the market right now. If a media buyer decides to use 5 networks
to run a campaign, the one with the most budget and highest reach is naturally going to be attributed with the 'last
impression' more often. The individual networks are competing with each other blindly to try and be the last one to
cookie the user. It encourages gaming, trying to tag the user with cheap media buys, manually overwrite other
networks' cookies, etc.

How do you see real-time bidding within the exchange model playing out?

Real-time bidding combined with the exchange model is going to have an enormous impact on the publisher world
in general. Initially the impact will be minor, but we see the exchanges integrating more and more data to be made
available to the real time bidders so they can make intelligent decisions. We feel like the trend will be to make
more and more data available to bidders, which will further distinguish what the 'real' price should be for that
inventory. Eventually this opens the door for publishers to put their premium inventory directly on the exchange to
cut down on their cost of sales. We see this dynamic lowering overall CPM rates on the web, but also lowering
costs for the publisher.

In general, how is the media buying agency model going to need to evolve? Will it need to be more
technically savvy, for example?

We feel like agencies that invest in technology will be able to provide a significant advantage to their advertisers
vs. those who are just doing traditional media buying.

Is this a good time to be an entrepreneur? Any advantage to being an entrepreneur in a struggling

economy?

This is an outstanding time to be in a company that knows how to streamline operations and move as quickly as
possible to profitability. It's not a good time for companies who spend like a drunken sailor on unnecessary
infrastructure or personnel. There are plenty of companies that will fail during this economy, and being one of the
ones that succeeds is a testament to the team we have put together and knowing what it takes to be profitable.

Follow ADISN (@adisn) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

October 27, 2009 – 6:03 am

176
Creative Agencies To Storm The Exchange: Rich Brings
Reporting On Brand-Focused Goals Says Burt Corp CEO
von Sydow

Email This Post

Gustav von Sydow is CEO and Founder of Burt, an advertising software company and makers of "Rich," a
campaign analytics tool focused on creative agencies.

AdExchanger.com: Burt recently presented "Rich" at DEMO '09. Why was it chosen to present? Can you
discuss the value proposition?

GvS: Right now, we think of Rich as an educational tool. The main idea is to provide an efficient feedback loop for
copywriters, art directors etc. so that they can learn from
their previous work.

Naturally, trial-and-error has been one of the main ideas

behind providing campaign metrics since like forever, but the
reports aren't really being used by the creative agencies on
a wide scale, as I'm sure you know. And if the people
actually making ads aren't using the metrics tools to get
feedback on their work, what difference can we expect the
reports to make?

The tech side of advertising usually attributes this to a

perceived technology aversion on behalf of creative
agencies, but that's simply not true. I love technology,
advertising and metrics (heck, I even started a company
around it) as much as the next guy but when I worked full
time at CP+B I still didn't use reporting tools to a very large
extent.

So at Burt we thought "what if we created a metrics tool tailored to the needs and workflow of the creative agency,
would that make them use it?". And it did. Big time.

We've run campaigns on Rich since may and are still providing access at an invite-only basis. We actually do get
paid (CPM for those of you keeping score) for campaigns that are running, but as most of you guys know
advertising platforms are sort of a working capital nightmare...

This has forced us to be a bit restrictive in how many campaigns we let on until "Rich for free" (a more lightweight
and low cost version) is ready for market, or until Burt gets a more solid capital base. Whichever comes first. But
we're in a good spot and things are happening on all fronts, so either way I think we'll be able to let a big chunk of
people on around the time I'm speaking at Eurobest in November.

What was the reaction? Any feedback you'd like to share?

We were a bit surprised of how extremely positive the reactions were, both from creatives and advertisers. At the
time of our first pilot test we were spending most of our resources to develop our other products, but those in the
Rich pilot literally forced us to shift focus to get that product ready for them to use for real. Turns out there really
was a huge unmet need to enable creative agencies to become more data driven.

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Who and what is Burt? (a bit of background on you, the team, touch on other products) And, what's the
mission of the company?

Burt makes software that taps into the knowledge of creative agencies, an underserved but extremely critical
audience in online advertising. Remember, the biggest effect multiplier in any campaign is the idea and execution
of the ad itself, something usually in the sole hands of creative agencies.

I used to work as a planner at Daddy, which then got acquired by CP+B (world's best ad agency according to
AdAge, AdWeek and Creativity) earlier this year to from the base for their European operations. Gustav Martner,
my co-founder at Burt, also co-founded Daddy and after he sold the agency to CP+B he still works full-time.

Burt basically builds products based on our hands-on-experience from Daddy and CP+B to address challenges
we've faced in our daily work. And by using that in-depth understanding of creative agencies to drive our decisions
I think that we're in a rare position to create tools that creative agencies will actually use.

A week ago I presented Rich at DEMO, but as a company, Burt has been in the works for about a year. Last
september we presented our first product, Copybox - "the Photoshop for copywriters" - at Techcrunch50, a
software that also landed us an award at this year's Cannes Lions, making us one of few companies to be
spotlighted on major venues for both technology and creative advertising.

Besides the odd appearance at award shows and conferences, we've been trying to keep a low profile to focus on
working with a some pretty great clients and build products to help them create more cleve, entertaining and
persuasive stuff... but after DEMO a lot of people started to take notice. I guess we can't hide forever

How do you balance working at Burt and your Crispin Porter Bogusky responsibilities? And, are you
getting enough sleep?

Haha, good question. I'm down to working part time for CP+B now, but Gustav Martner (co-founder of Burt) is still
working full time as the Executive Creative Director for CP+B Europe - he also has a wife and two kids. So
compared to him, I really shouldn't complain. Besides, Burt has got some super smart people on staff that makes
things a whole lot easier to manage for both of us.

Has your CPB experience influenced your product development at Burt? If so, how?

I'd say we're *very* influenced by the people and clients over at CP+B. And how could you not, with the track
record they have?

One of the most important insights they I have with me from CP+B is probably that most creative agencies (the
good ones, at least) love technology - and metrics for that matter - so long as it's packaged to fit in with how they
operate and their needs. But making this happen is *hard* and though I think that Burt is in a better position than
most to succeed in doing so, we still have a long way to go.

Do you consider Burt, and a product like Rich, more about services or technology? Is there a proprietary
angle to your decisioning process, for example?

Burt is a product company, the only "service" we aim to provide is "self-service" hahaha... seriously, I think there's
waaaay too much overlap between a lot of "technology" companies and the agencies as it is - especially in the rich
media and dynamic creative space.

Our goal is to make tools that leverage other more people intensive parts of the value chain.

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The simple use cases can be solved thru our apps, and the more sophisticated ideas is executed by accessing our
APIs. But creative agencies will have to manage it themselves - for instance, the tech staff at CP+B is extremely
competent so I can't see why we should overlap with them at all.

We'll focus on making our interfaces as simple and powerful as humanly possible, and educate agencies on how to
use them properly. I think this is one the things that Google really got right.

Do you see ad exchanges and demand-side buying platforms fitting into the goals of "Rich"?

I'd say that anything that makes it easier to buy and manage ad placements is a fantastic development for creative
agencies, since it will bring them closer to the media. And anything that's great for them is generally also good
news for us.

Short term I think that Rich will benefit from this development by providing advetisers and agencies better metrics
to audit purchases made thru ad exchanges than most other tools - enabling you to understand if an ad is in plain
view or if someone paid attention is naturally great for getting a leg up on the real value of an exposure.

Long term I think that ad exchanges will probably benefit our other products - Copybox and Meme Machine - more,
since they're more focused on leveraging RTB (or whatever you want to call it) and the separation of placement
and data.

However, we have no interest in competing in the data aggregation or the valutation and purchase space, but are
extremely interested in meeting companies that focus on these functions. We're confident that we can give them
with a hefty chunk of business they otherwise would have no chance of getting from creative agencies, that is if
they can perform either of these functions reasonably well.

A creative agency, landscape question for you. Do you see creative agencies adapting to the use of
technology today? Who's getting it, who isn't - and what are the factors involved?

Software time and advertising time are something completely different - ironically, most products in ad tech are
built based on a software view of the world. Square peg. Round hole.

In our experience getting creative agencies to use technology is not that hard if you manage to create something
that allows them to do better stuff, on time and within budget. It's really as simple as that.

Do you think the creative and media agency models merge at some point given the use of technology by
both?

It looks like the valuation and aggregated purchase of media will become increasingly simple over the coming two-
three years. If planning and management of ads can be integrated into creative process, I think we'll see quant
leaps in the quality of advertising ideas and their execution - which is really a bigger issue than quality of media
these days.

So yes, I think creative and media *have to* merge at some point, but it'll require a new set of tools - a toolbox we
aim Burt to become part of.

Is media creative in your opinion? Does it deserve an equivalent seat at the table, so to speak, with the
client even when discussing strategy and messaging?

Burt - like many ad tech companies I'm sure - is built around the idea that media and technology should be a part
of creative and strategy - and the other way around, of course. But I think that the problem is alot trickier than just
"giving media a seat at the table" and appointing a "creative technologist". Or creating "a new type of agency" for
that matter. Remixing the organization alone won't cut it.

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I think that your company's point-of-view on this issue can probably make or break you, regardless of size. I'd
actually go as far as saying that our idea on how to attack this is will be hard to replicate and right now part of our
"secret sauce"... but I don't feel ready to give away our entire hand at once

But I can say as much as that I think that the best advertising - TV, online, print, whatever - has always been great
at understanding the media and the audience's relationship to it. If media is just an afterthought - a dumb pipeline
for one-size-fits-all ideas - alot of potential is lost. And *that* we can't afford in online advertising, because the
consumer is in control and we need to deserve their attention. So now more than ever, advertising really have to
live up to it's full potential.

Are you seeing a market in brands/clients that are looking for better reporting on brand-focused goals?

Absolutely. Using Rich to provide more brand-focused metrics have shifted clients' opinions on what online
advertising can accomplish. Rich actually makes banners (somewhat) comparable to TV or print. Would be nice to
break out from the ol' direct response ball-in-chain once and for all, wouldn't it?

Follow Gustav von Sydow (@vonsydow), Burt (@BurtCorp) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 30, 2009 – 6:25 am

180
Burt CEO Von Sydow On Creative, Media, The Marketer –
And Its New Ad Software Play – Rich
Email This Post

Ad software company, Burt, recently announced a free version of Rich, Burt's new analytics tool for marketers and
creative agencies. AdExchanger.com spoke with advertising software company CEO Gustav Von Sydow
(AdExchanger.com Q&A) on current challenges for creatives in the space as well as his company's new product.

AdExchanger.com: How are creative agencies adapting to the use of technology in advertising in your
view?

The short answer is that in our experience, getting good agencies onboard with products that allows them to
deliver better work, in time and on budget is usually no problem whatsoever.

The longer answer is that advertising has always been about adapting to new technologies and formats. Some
agencies move a little bit faster than others, but eventually everyone will use whatever technologies and formats
that have proven to be effective and reliable.

Historically, creative agencies have steered clear of too much in-house production, but now we see how several of
the most creative agencies (defined as those winning the most awards) have quite a few talented tech people on
staff. This is very interesting shift that might suggest that agencies will embrace new technology faster moving
forward.

Obviously, at Burt we believe that there's a huge potential to match this shift with products that makes it even
easier for creative agencies to leverage digital technology and understand the media better.

What is the problem that creative agencies are having today that Rich solves?

We used to think that Rich was going to be all about providing better functionality - clever metrics, heat maps, APIs
etc. But based on user feedback, we've come to realize that an improved feature set isn't the most critical
dimension to build customer value. The way to improve - at least in the short term - is to provide better usability
and accessibility.

So the first problem we solve right now is that information isn't getting distributed to copywriters, art directors etc.
These are the people *making* the ads that are supposed to learn and improve, but since nothing reaches them,
nothing happens.

The second issue is that when someone actually get a report, they don't understand it. What does it all mean?
Which ads were shown? Reports don't tell a story, but they should. Rich is not quite there yet, but it's a big leap in
the right direction.

Do you think Media is starting to get "a bigger seat at the table" with the Brand Marketer? Is the Creative
losing ground?

Yes and no.

On one hand, ever increasing media fragmentization drives the need for media specialists... but on the other hand
biddable placements combined with 3rd party data might simplify media buying to the extent that media agencies
are disrupted. Of course this is only happening in search and display ads so far, but it's not far fetched that the
same model will be applied to other channels as well.

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Either way, Creative is more relevant than ever. If we are in fact being exposed to +3000 commercial messages
per day (who came up with that number btw?) the problem isn't reaching people, it's getting their attention and
making it stick. The difference between average and great ads can be as much as a 10x boost.

But doing great creative is not easy, and it doesn't help that the industry hasn't really harnessed the idea of
systematic continuous improvement. Hopefully Rich will help push things in the right direction by giving agencies
and advertisers access a simple tool that just works.

Follow Gustav von Sydow (@vonsydow), Burt (@BurtCorp) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

December 2, 2009 – 2:13 pm

182
CEO Trifon Says Eyeblaster Looks Forward To Bringing
Exchanges To Brand Marketers
Email This Post

Gal Trifon is CEO and Co-founder of Eyeblaster, a campaign management and advertising technology company.

AdExchanger.com: Can you see video ad inventory available through an ad exchange model someday
soon? What are the complexities?

GT: That's a tricky question -- the efficiencies of an exchange are relevant for videos, but there is still the brand vs.
direct-response divide. Brand media buying is still to a large extent relationship driven and will remain so for some
time. But, exchanges promise efficiencies that brand marketers - the typical video buyers - are interested in.
Initially, exchanges may be relevant for video placement on social sites. We'll then start seeing Exchanges on
media plans, as a complementary component at first. Our customers think players like Eyeblaster can play an
enabling role in expediting this transition.

What is your view on ad exchanges and demand-side buying

platforms such as those announced by the major agency holding
companies? Good for the marketplace and Eyeblaster?

GT: The opportunity for us is to help our clients optimize ROI when
bidding through exchanges by leveraging historical and current
performance and cost data. If ad exchanges can increase relevancy
and the overall consumer experience, that is good for all involved.
Exchanges were created to optimize inventory yield for publishers. The
opportunity is for demand-side players to finally get some economies of
scale and bring real value to their clients. Eyeblaster, as the
component in the center of the actual campaign, will be able to
leverage performance data, creative optimization to bring Exchanges to
the mainstream of brand advertisers. Exchanges are really not
designed with the campaign in mind. To a large extent, they're
designed to serve ad networks. We’ll be looking to bring Exchanges to
the mainstream of large scale campaigns. That is the role of solutions
like ours - to harmonize multiple channels and inventory sources. This
will allow clients to optimize ROI when bidding by leveraging the data
we aggregate on their performance and costs.

What momentum - and lack thereof - are you seeing in 2009 in the
marketplace and at Eyeblaster?

In 2009, we're certainly seeing continued investment in digital media, however with a greater focus on
accountability and ROI. Some agencies and advertisers have actually taken the recession as an opportunity to
streamline processes and leverage technology in new ways. At Eyeblaster we're encouraged to see year-on-year
growth both in terms of volume and in terms of advertisers served. We’re seeing increased attention to the
inefficiencies introduced by obsolete infrastructure tools. We’ve just unveiled MediaMind, the first buy-side ad
serving solution built from the ground up for today’s cross-channel campaigns. It is unique in combining actionable
analytics, streamlined ad serving and an open workflow approach.

How is Eyeblaster helping clients with cross-channel attribution?

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Cross channel attribution is one of the fastest growing capabilities among Eyeblaster customers. We call our
approach Channel Connect, which means we can analyze the channel even if you happen to be using someone
else's tool for it. Channel Connect for Search, for instance, analyzes Search & Display path to conversion, as well
as cross channel impact. But with any other tool, to achieve that you must adopt a specific proprietary SEM tool.
If you don’t happen to be using DART Search or the Atlas tool - tough luck. In reality, sometimes the search
budget is with another department or another agency. Channel Connect makes cross-channel attribution much
more realistic for advertisers to adopt, because it is SEM agnostic.

How do you see display advertising evolving in the future? Will it all be rich media - as in video?

In the future Display will become more data driven and effectively coupled with targeting capabilities. Additionally,
advertisers will be able to tailor 'story telling' media scenarios that use the optimal mix of standard and rich
impressions to individual users. You will be able to say - show this user a rich media experience, then two
reminders via standard banners, then another 3 rich media experiences. It’s not going to be about either/or - each
tools has its strengths – but it’s about what's the smartest way to deploy display advertising.

When will Eyeblaster take its learning to digital TV?

Our vision is to connect channels into a holistic campaign platform, and we continue to look closely at the digital
TV opportunity. Already last year we announced collaboration with NDS, a key player in the set-top space. We
certainly consider it strategically part of our target market.

What are your thoughts regarding engagement and the way in which the purchase funnel can be
addressed with display advertising?

In the past, marketers had two roadblocks in understanding the funnel - little transparency to the path-to-
conversion, and ineffective metrics for top-of-funnel. New technologies today address both of these points, and
marketers must keep in mind that there is not going to be a magic number for all brands and industries. However,
they can now very easily learn their own audience and optimize the balance of spend.

What are key points of differentiation between yourselves and rich media companies like Eyewonder and
Pointroll?

Unlike rich media niche players, we've enhanced a complete platform that includes standard display, search
integration, mobile and powerful analytics tools. On the other hand, unlike the legacy ad servers, we are
independent of sell-side priorities. Also, these platforms are over 15 years old and no longer reflect today's need.
They’re too hard to operate and leave agencies no time for strategic work.

Any plans to get into the creative optimization space that Tumri and Teracent have jumped into?

Creative optimization has a great impact on campaign performance as well as production costs. We recently
announced Smart Versioning (see case study here), a powerful tool for optimizing any aspect in the creative. As
Eyeblaster is already involved in the creative and tracking processes, an integrated optimization tool is the most
natural choice.

Any trends you're seeing on the client side in 2009? Are they concentrated in particular verticals, budgets
smaller but more numerous, ROI-focused, are they using data exchanges, etc.?

We are definitely noticing a stronger data and ROI orientation through every campaign. In certain verticals like
entertainment and CPG, it seems that migration to digital from traditional channels was accelerated in 2009. We
also see strong focus on operational efficiency and profitability amongst agencies, and a desire to maintain
innovation and creativity. We saw agencies demonstrate profitability by maintaining focus on hi-yield activities at
the account of operational overhead.

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If you were a big media publisher today, what steps would you be taking to ensure a profitable future?

GT: Smart publishers should go back to their core strengths: innovation, audience insights, and cross-inventory
integration. As an example, we worked earlier this year with MSN on servicing the Chanel 5 brand. It was great
to see MSN and Chanel use technology in a way that is so meaningful for consumers. The format was innovative -
homepage takeover with long video, all MSN properties around the world were engaged in an integrated campaign
that 'followed the sun' around the globe. These kinds of propositions really help differentiate and strengthen client
relationships. And technology is there to make it happen and help to ensure a profitable future.

Follow Eyeblaster (@eyeblaster) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

October 12, 2009 – 6:31 am

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EyeWonder CEO Vincent Says Standards Needed For
Video Ads Via Ad Exchange Platform
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John Vincent is CEO of EyeWonder, an online advertising technology company.

AdExchanger.com: How would you like to see standards evolve for in-stream video ad inventory? And in-
page video ad inventory?

JV: Standardization is still a work in progress for the in-stream industry, so at this point we'd really like to see more
of it in place. The IAB's Digital Video Committee has made a great start by releasing its Digital Video Ad Serving
Template (VAST) and Video Player-Ad Interface Definitions (VPAID)
guidelines. VAST standardizes communication protocol between
video players and ad servers while VPAID defines a method for
video ads to communicate with video players, enabling ad
compatibility across all VPAID-compliant players. Perhaps in the
future standards could address how to handle sequencing and
scheduling within players as well as develop standard video screen
sizes.

Can you see in-stream video ad inventory available through an

ad exchange model someday soon? What are the
complexities?

Yes, absolutely—and that's another reason we need to have

standards in place. Right now, serving any type of interactive ads
(in-stream or in-page) via an ad exchange platform is challenging
because the plan for the placement is different. We need to nail
down standardization as it relates to pixel dimensions and how ads
interact with content for it to be a viable option.

What is your view on ad exchanges and demand-side buying

platforms such as those announced by the major agency
holding companies? Good for the marketplace and
EyeWonder?

Anything that allows for the market to expand is good for the entire interactive digital advertising ecosystem—
advertisers, agencies and rich media providers alike. EyeWonder has relationships with many different players
within the industry, and we're always looking to develop partnerships that help drive growth in online advertising.

How do you see display advertising evolving in the future? Will it all be rich media—as in video?

According to numerous articles and studies, video advertising is most definitely growing. In a recent Dynamic Logic
MarketNorms study highlighted in their "Digital Advertising: Evolving from Display to Video" whitepaper, online
video is proven to have more impact than display advertising in improving brand metrics such as message
association and purchase intent. However, other forms of display advertising are still relevant. In the same study,
Dynamic Logic MarketNorms show rich media combined with video can be effective as well. So yes, we do believe
display will lean more and more toward rich media and video making up a much larger percentage.

What do you think agencies need to do to prepare for the increasingly automated world of online
advertising—let alone, digital, cross-channel advertising?

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Agencies need to partner with Service-Leveraging Technology Organizations (SLTOs) like EyeWonder to help
them get their messages across multiple channels. By partnering with rich media companies that offer not just
technology, but service, agencies can then deliver inventive advertising that delivers measurable results for clients.
What really sets SLTOs apart is their service and in-depth knowledge of how to optimize different technologies and
online ad products. Agencies benefit because they can concentrate on what they do best—being creative—and
therefore leave the technology and distribution to the experts.

What is PageMorph and why is it important for online advertisers and publishers? How is this good for the
user?

PageMorph™ is a homepage takeover ad format that gives advertisers maximum brand exposure on high-profile
publishing sites. With PageMorph™, an ad functions as a homepage takeover and appears to manipulate the
surrounding Web page by shrinking, stretching, crumpling or otherwise animating the actual site or a real-time
screenshot of the page.

Publishers gain premium selling space while also keeping ad clutter off their homepages as well as the ability to
provide engaging content for viewers, meaning every impression counts.

Advertisers reach a large number of viewers with flexible, customized solutions and built-in innovation. These
types of executions build buzz and create a big impact, making them great for product launches.

Most of these ad units are user-initiated, meaning viewers that want to immerse themselves in the ad experience
can do so, giving them a richer, deeper interaction with the brands they're interested in.

How does EyeWonder help its clients with attribution?

EyeWonder currently works with several ad servers with systems that track attribution for our clients. In addition,
we're working on developing our own system functionalities that we hope will address attribution among other
client requests in the near future.

Follow EyeWonder (@_EW) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 26, 2009 – 6:42 am

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Linkstorm Addressing All Stages Of Purchase Funnel
Simultaneously Says CEO Brandt
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Ari Brandt is CEO of Linkstorm, an online advertising

technology company.

AdExchanger.com: Why are brand marketers attracted to

Linkstorm's technology?

AB: Measurable performance. Brand marketers require greater

return from their campaigns and can't rely on "soft metrics" like
engagement and awareness anymore. In this economy, there's
too much pressure to demonstrate real ROI. What attracts
them to Linkstorm is the ability of our navigation menus to offer
a much richer set of marketing messages into what used to be
a limited, static "footprint" of a display ad - and to let customers
navigate deeply into their website with a single click, right to the
particular product information, marketing message, or even
conversion transaction that the customer wants.

Please discuss current momentum at Linkstorm. Also,

what trends are you seeing from your clients in 2009?

We've had a busy summer and our Q4 is looking really strong.

We now have 50+ campaigns under our belt which have
documented 2x-5x increases in click-through rate via strict A/B
comparisons between a Linkstorm-enabled ad and the same
ad without a Linkstorm menu overlay. As a results of those
tests, we're now seeing renewals and expansions from many of
those clients as well as rapid uptake from new customers who
are eager to see immediate results from their Q4 campaigns. The trend we're seeing is clients are demanding
accountability and flexibility, both of which are strong points for Linkstorm.

How is Linkstorm addressing the purchase funnel?

Linkstorm's strength is that it enables a single display ad to address multiple customers' needs across all stages of
the purchase funnel, from early-stage awareness and product consideration to late-stage, in-market intender
transactions. Further, even within each individual stage of the funnel, we can address the whole spectrum of
customer profiles and purchase motivations.

So in addition to applying multiple criteria to target an ad like a laser, with the hope you'll hit the exact customer
profile, purchase motivation, and stage of the funnel you're aiming for, we present all of these options in our
navigation menus and we let the customer self-select the path that they want. Even the best targeting mechanisms
in the world can only provide a certain level of accuracy, whereas if you let the customer choose, in effect the
customer crosses the last mile of targeting themselves.

What's your view on ad exchanges? Do they offer an opportunity to Linkstorm?

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Absolutely, and we have relationships with several of them. The migration to ad exchanges is another great
example of the pressure to achieve ROI, and with Linkstorm providing an ROI boost over and above what the ad
network is already providing, there's a natural complement. Many networks are hard-pressed to differentiate
themselves from others; offering Linkstorm as a premium enhancement gives them an extra edge by promising to
lift performance even higher.

What success metrics are important for clients to consider in a Linkstorm campaign? Considering its
interactivity, time spent might be considered important, for example? And how do these relate to insight
on the consumer?

Time spent browsing our menus is certainly important, because in effect this is almost equivalent to time spent on
the advertiser's site. For example a retailer's Linkstorm menu can pack a good portion of the retailer's catalog right
into the ad itself, or a car menu can present a significant amount of product consideration information and selling
points right in the ad, upfront.

Then in addition, seeing all those navigation choices drives a 2x-5x increase in CTR. Further still, these additional
clicks aren't just random/accidental clicks or resulting from some Rich Media animation or game - instead they're
qualified leads that go deep into the advertiser's website, right to the product, marketing info or transaction the
customer wants. So it's not just "more" clicks - it's also higher-value, more self-qualified clicks. That leads to higher
conversion and lower abandonment rates.

All of these metrics are like real-time research and we dynamically optimize messaging, product offers, etc to
adjust based on consumer interest and performance.

How do the recently-announced agency buying platforms impact Linkstorm strategy now or in the future?

We expect this to represent a faster route to higher volume. We already have strong agency relationships and
have engaged in discussions of highly favorable CPM rates in exchange for larger-volume commitments.

Trying to understand the competitive set here... Do you consider Linkstorm a creative optimization
company similar to Teracent and Tumri?

We're competitive with Tumri and Teracent in that we're typically competing for the same budget, yet we could
actually work together for an even better outcome for the client. For example their multi-variant optimization
"engines" could be used to optimize our Linkstorm menus in terms of messaging, graphics, menu choices, order of
links, etc. - and conversely, our own customer interaction data could feed their optimization engines, because our
data is far richer and more granular than they would normally deal with.

Also, we do compete in that one of Linkstorm's major value propositions is the ability to optimize based on our rich
customer data - and to do so in real-time, because any update to a Linkstorm menu is performed centrally, and the
new menu is instantly distributed to all the ads everywhere on the Internet. This is because our menu is actually a
separate unit from the underlying creative - and so it can be optimized all day long without have to touch the base
ad.

So ultimately, we represent a fundamentally different approach to the same goal - though one that can
complement, not necessarily just compete. And again, the most important difference is that while these other
vendors are trying to improve their targeting of customers or their optimization of message, we are all about letting
the customer choose. It's a big difference in philosophy.

What are some key takeaways you're bringing from Conde Nast to your role as CEO of Linkstorm?

My time at Conde Nast as well as at Yahoo provided me with a interesting publisher perspective on ad technology
and ad networks/exchanges. Publishers have lost "ownership" of their audience and in many respects their
content. As a result, publishers need to offer unique, custom tools to advertisers that can't be replicated and

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ultimately help sell product. At Linkstorm we have a similar goal, we help advertisers in three ways; first, enhancing
conversion, simply manifested as higher (multiples of) click-thru rates. Second, higher engagement, meaning the
ability of Linkstorm to deep link customers into specific parts of the sight vs. home page (lower abandonment rate).
Third, actual steering to sales or completing a transaction, like we can do with our partnership with Adgregate
alternative.

What data sets does Linkstorm use to effect targeting on behalf of its client?

Again Linkstorm's philosophy is to turn targeting around and instead let the customer choose. The best targeting in
the world can't get all the way into the customer's head, whereas the customer is already there.

But there are powerful ways that Linkstorm does reinforce or complement targeting. If a targeting mechanism is
already being used, Linkstorm can respond by providing a menu that is even more customized for that particular
target - e.g. a menu linking to stores within the geo-targeted area, or a menu tailored to particular profile of
customer or a particular stage of the purchase funnel. Then in the reverse direction, Linkstorm's highly granular
click-through data can feed a targeting engine by indicating that not only is the customer interested in a particular
item, but a specific feature. That knowledge could make the targeting and re-targeting far more precise.

How will impression-level, real-time bidding affect Linkstorm? Is this an important development?

Linkstorm is technology and media-agnostic - meaning we can deploy off anything and anywhere an ad is served.
Ultimately, every development that drives greater transparency, accountability and performance-based decision-
making is good for Linkstorm.

Follow Linkstorm (@Linkstorm) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 12, 2009 – 9:15 am

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PointRoll CEO Tafler Says Publishers Need To Adopt
Standards In Order For Video Ad Inventory To Reach
Exchanges

Email This Post

Jason Tafler is the CEO of PointRoll, a rich media advertising provider.

AdExchanger.com: How do you see online advertising evolving in the future? What role will rich media
play in driving innovation?

JT: A lot of it comes down to what users are doing online. If you
start with the user and see what they're doing, how they're
interacting, you can see where you need to go as an advertiser.
We’ve seen a lot of great innovation in our industry around
targeting and efficiency. A marketer can know everything about
a user, but if they don’t serve them the right creative, then all
the targeting intelligence is wasted and the advertising isn’t
effective. As online advertising evolves as an industry, we need
to make sure we don’t forget about the creative because that’s
what ultimately drives ad effectiveness.

We should always be creating emotional connections, building

brands and driving sales. PointRoll operates at the intersection
of creativity and targeting, ensuring that the most relevant,
interactive and engaging creative is dynamically presented to
each user at the right time. Rich media allows us to tap into
deeper levels of engagement, connecting with the user and
becoming part of their interactive experience. Ultimately, that's
how you create more effective ads.

What is AdControl and why is it important for online

advertisers?

AdControl is a dynamic ad creation platform that helps brands and their agencies easily produce, target and deliver
the most creative rich media campaign executions with customized creative elements. With AdControl, brands can
maximize the effectiveness of their ad spend by delivering highly compelling, interactive and relevant ad
experiences dynamically to create a custom user experience. With robust measurement tools, AdControl
minimizes waste, increases optimization effectiveness and provides deeper insight into what ads work best for
what users and where. We’ve been successfully deploying AdControl for close to a year for leading brands such as
Ford.

AdControl can also empower creative teams by eliminating time spent producing and updating hundreds or
thousands of ad versions, freeing up their hands and minds to develop new ad concepts and strategies. Using
these tools means everyone can focus on their core competencies and excel in their fields.

As the advertising space continues to change, how can rich media play an important role in the creative’s
toolbox?

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With the challenging economy, fewer resources and budget cuts, some brand marketers have sacrificed creativity
for what they feel is efficiency. They use basic Flash banners and animated GIF ads even though studies show
these methods aren't as effective in either driving brand or performance metrics. We believe this is a painful
regression back to the 1990’s and call upon the industry to get back to empowering creativity. Because these non-
rich ads don’t deliver brand messages effectively, marketers are actually decreasing the impact and ROI of their
online campaigns.

Many industry leaders now are rumbling about how creative is being ignored. We couldn’t agree more. Rich media
helps brands make the greatest impact, whether for branding or direct response. By leveraging new tools like
AdControl that make it easier to create and run rich media, brands can have creativity and efficiency with rich
media and dynamic, targeted ads. And they can do so with cost effectiveness, garnering a greater return on their
investment.

What is your view on ad exchanges and recent announcements by ad agencies to create demand-side
buying platforms? Will rich media and PointRoll play a part in the evolving ad exchange model?

I’ve spent time talking with many agencies about efficiency tools for the media buying and planning process. These
tools provide increased visibility and transparency while helping planners and marketers gather additional data.
They also provide more information for us to understand our audience and make informed targeting choices for
future campaigns and strategies. However, targeting and efficiency without the right creative is not going to
maximize ad effectiveness. Rich media needs to be a key layer on top of the ad exchange / buying platform
equation. With these platforms, the audience information gathered is useful and targeting is critical, but we’re going
for a high level of creativity, interaction and engagement. Anything that we can do to focus targeting is ideal, but it
doesn't help deliver the creative side of the message, which is a key element for any highly effective campaign. We
believe layering on rich media creative will play an important role in how these platforms are used to connect with
and impact target audiences, allowing agencies to gain much-needed efficiencies without sacrificing ad
effectiveness.

Can you see in-stream video ad inventory available through an ad exchange model someday soon? What
are the complexities?

I can see it occurring once enough publishers agree on incorporating their in-stream inventory into the exchanges.
That's only going to happen when brands and marketers put enough pressure on publishers to deliver a
standardized in-stream creative ad solution. That’s been one of the major obstacles to scaling in-stream
campaigns. This is where the importance of standards comes into play. Standards will help everyone easily use
and implement video ads, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel every time. I think agencies are looking for a
solution that will allow them to shift more of their spending to in-stream video. Incorporating exchanges into this will
hopefully push the process forward, but not unless the creative standards problem is solved at the same time.

In a competitive rich media landscape, how does PointRoll fit in and how do you differentiate?

For almost 10 years, PointRoll has led the rich media industry in solving our clients’ problems and enabling more
effective advertising through a combination of innovative technology and service quality. We offer four solid points
of differentiation in the market: creativity, innovation through our technology and products, a full-service approach,
and deep insight into performance with extensive data and analytics to drive the most effective rich media
campaigns. We’re focused less on what we are able to do and more on what marketers need — creativity, service,
relevant technology and insights. We also serve more rich media than anyone else, and have scaled our business
to serve over 85 billion rich media ads per year.

How is your target client evolving? What are they looking to PointRoll to provide? Do they need to be more
technically adept, less? More focused on the "big idea"?

Clients are becoming more adept at navigating digital and integrating it across their campaigns, because the digital
world is no longer a niche area. We're helping them navigate the ever-more complex digital media landscape. Of
course, clients are also becoming more knowledgeable as the line between digital and mainstream blurs. As their

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understanding increases, so too does the creativity of their ideas. With PointRoll, clients don't need to be rich
media or technology gurus. It’s our job to provide the expertise, technology solutions, support and rich media
creative application that helps bring their ideas to life and create engaging, high-impact campaigns. That’s our
company’s main strength, what we focus on, and what we share that with our clients daily.

How can PointRoll help the web publisher?

From working directly with thousands of publisher partners, we’ve recognized their ever-growing need for more
creative, high-impact ads and custom programs. PointRoll recently introduced new tools designed specifically to
help publishers differentiate their offerings and increase revenue opportunities. Our Channel Team, which is
dedicated to supporting publishers and developing new services for them, now offers PointRoll Dig@torials,
enhanced video and interactive offerings, viral and mobile solutions, and expanded dynamic messaging. These
products help publishers find new ways to leverage existing content, create highly relevant ads, and protect CPMs.
Ultimately, we’re developing ways for publishers to save time, reduce their costs, and open up existing and new
revenue channels.

If you were a CMO or an executive-level marketer at a Fortune 1000 company today, and given your
knowledge of how digital is evolving, what strategic steps would you take to prepare your company for a
more digital future?

First, I’d make sure that I had the right people and partners on board who truly understand the digital landscape.
Second, I’d gain a strong understanding of my customers’ actions online; how they communicate and engage
across the digital spectrum. It’s important to use this knowledge and meet consumers where they are online. Third,
I’d work to ensure my marketing strategy and messaging is integrated across all media channels. Finally, I’d set
clear performance goals and targets for my digital initiatives.

There’s so much data out there in the digital world, but if you don't have a clear definition of what you want to
accomplish, it's going to be hard to determine results.

It’s also important to determine how you’re going to leverage digital. What’s the right strategy for your company or
brand? Some marketers go for the latest digital trend or fad, which isn’t always the best fit to achieve the results
they want from their campaign. That’s where we like to be, finding the balance between technology, targeting and
creativity; between what’s new, what’s right, and most importantly, what works.

Follow PointRoll (@pointroll_twtr) AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

October 6, 2009 – 6:35 am

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Creative Optimization In Demand as Teracent Revenues
Double Each Quarter Says SVP Hall
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Chip Hall is SVP of Sales and Marketing at Teracent, an advertising

creative solutions provider.

AdExchanger.com: What trends have you seen at Teracent in

2009? Can you characterize trends in revenue momentum, deal
size, client verticals, consumer audience targets, etc.?

CH: Teracent has seen very positive growth and revenue in 2009 and so
far has been more than doubling revenue growth quarter over quarter.
The demand for optimized display advertising is immense as the market
has fully realized that only a data-driven, algorithmic approach will meet
the ROI goals necessary to make display “work.” Our growth is leading
us to prepare to announce that we have expanded our sales team in two
key markets – New York and Chicago – in response to growing demand
for Teracent’s intelligent display ad platform. We have also been
running campaigns in Europe since last year and see growing interest in
that market as well as Asia Pacific.

In 2009, we began an exclusive partnership with Yahoo to power their

“SmartAds” across mobile platforms (in addition to the Web ads we have
been powering for them for more than a year), opening up the intelligent
display marketplace to new players. This Yahoo! partnership makes
Teracent the ONLY media delivery platform that is able to optimize and
analyze media delivery to both Web and mobile campaigns from the
same set of audience.

In regards to new clients, we have experienced growth in the retail, automotive and travel verticals. Deal dynamics
see clients testing the platform first on a small portion of their available inventory and then scaling programs when
they see that Teracent exceeds their goals.

In terms of targeting, Teracent powered campaigns are guided by a concept called the Advertising Strategy which
acts as the “brains” of each campaign. The Ad Strategy is a mix of business rules (e.g. “this call to action goes to
this geography”) and learning (let the self-learning algo engine do the work!) that the advertiser/agency create in
order to gain the best results. We typically see people start with a bias to rules as they come into each campaign
with pre-conceived ideas of what targeting will work best. We find that this rules-based approach changes quickly
to more learning-based as our customers get more comfortable with a real-time approach to matching messaging
to audience targets. Teracent essentially does real-time focus group testing of customer segments and in the
process creates mini real-time BT segments; this is a new concept that requires customers to build trust in the
engine, which they do rather quickly.

How does Teracent differentiate from competitors like Tumri?

Teracent is one of the only companies in this space that has a self-learning optimization engine. Of the few
companies that do, including Tumri, Teracent differentiates itself by taking a very customer-centric approach by
giving our advertising partners more control over the front end creative and insight into the optimization process.
Unlike some of our other competitors, who take more of a “black box” approach, we believe that advertisers have

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a right to know exactly how their customers are responding to their ads and why something is or isn’t working at
any given time in the life of a campaign.

This flexible approach is seen in the creative process and the way we manage data. Teracent is the only player in
the dynamic ad optimization space with a development tool (Darwin) that allows advertisers/agencies the ability to
control their creative design from concept to testing. We will still “dynamicize” ads for our customers, but we know
they would rather ultimately do the work themselves, so we empower them to control their own workflow. Unlike
Tumri’s Adpod approach which forces clients to work with a pre-defined template framework, Teracent is agnostic
to any presentation layer constraints and can be designed using full Flash rich media or even HTML or Ajax if
required.

Teracent also has superior flexibility in terms of how it manages data. Teracent was the first company in its
category to offer dynamic re-targeting and helped several network partners develop and bring that product to
market through its unique and industry-leading SmartPixel technology. The Teracent SmartPixel is a universal
pixel that only requires one set of code to manage multiple pages and also employs conditional logic to help best
turn the data the SmartPixel tracks into the most relevant (e.g. the most valuable) advertising possible.

Teracent’s flexibility is probably best represented by our recent mobile launch. We ported our Intelligent Display
platform to Yahoo! mobile in about 10 working days. We were able to do this because our core engine is agnostic
to the presentation layer and the type of data it manages; instead our Intelligent Display platform is focused on
optimizing the most relevant message regardless of where that message is delivered. We are doing Web and
Mobile today and could easily go to TV if there was a good business case. The future of advertising will be digital
and will be viewed through LCD screens of all kinds, and Teracent has built an optimization and media delivery
engine to serve that future.

Any traction yet with Teracent's integration into Yahoo!'s SmartAds? Why is SmartAds a good fit for
Teracent?

Many of Teracent’s executives have come from former roles at Yahoo!, and in fact, were responsible for bringing
SmartAds to market during their tenure at Yahoo!. Also, as mentioned previously, Teracent is exclusively bringing
Yahoo! SmartAds to the mobile Web. In regard to specific examples of traction, in partnership with Yahoo!,
Teracent developed a Smart Ad online campaign on behalf of Travelocity, which led to a 79% decrease in cost per
transaction, a 230% increase in transaction volume, and a 651% increase in click-throughs compared to previous
campaigns.

SmartAds are a good fit for Teracent because Yahoo!’s core differentiation in the marketplace is its superior
audience insights. Those insights power Yahoo!’s audience-based sales approach, but can only be monetized
effectively if matched with very precise messaging. Teracent’s data-driven optimization approach is the best in the
business in terms of monetizing advertising variables like audience data.

Teracent is also a great fit for Yahoo! because Yahoo! has a strong vision of multi-screen digital advertising, and
Teracent is the only partner Yahoo! has who is capable of delivering that vision.

Given Yahoo!’s strong business as a content publisher and an ad exchange, Teracent also adds a tremendous
amount of value in terms of data management through its SmartPixel. Yahoo! is leveraging the Teracent
SmartPixel in many unique ways that is helping to further monetize Yahoo! inventory.

What is your revenue model? Do you charge per impression, per creative, etc.?

Teracent is flexible in its revenue model, but the most popular model in the market continues to be CPM pricing.
We also have relationships where we share revenue based on the total media spend, and we are open to CPA
pricing if the advertising model supports that approach.

Is placement important anymore? Or is it all about audience?

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Ultimately, advertising is most effective when it appears to the customer as a service rather than an ad. This
happens when you have the most relevant message at the right time in the right place. Teracent makes this bit of
alchemy work because we are able to take the relevant puzzle pieces of an ad (creative, audience insights,
product info, etc.) and optimize them using ALL existing parameters, like page context, and externalities, like time
of day. In this way, placement will continue to be very important, but not in a stand-alone fashion; placement
matters given the audience and also as a predictive bit of data insight, especially for top-of-the-funnel campaigns
where you don’t have much user intent. Teracent makes better use of placement than other existing media delivery
system because we actually merchandize ads in real-time using the contextual data of placement as an
optimization parameter.

How does Teracent offer the ability to optimize for audience?

Teracent offers the ability to manage the delivery of dynamic ads to audiences while managing relevant sequential
messages on an impression basis. This allows us to manage an advertiser’s customers as they move through the
sales funnel, from the research phase through consideration through actual purchase. With our self learning
engine and dynamic retargeting, we can identify what phase an individual customer happens to be in and deliver
the precise message that will encourage them to click through. Our approach to optimization essentially does
real-time focus group testing where the old weeks-to-months long process of design, build, traffic, analyze, and
tweaking ads now happens in milliseconds. We use rapid A/B testing and massive multivariate learning to make
every wave of impressions smarter than those that came before. By building the ads in real-time, our Intelligent
Display campaigns REACT to the needs of the audience rather try to merchandize a message based solely on
historical research.

How is Teracent helping to solve attribution for the advertisers?

Most agree that today’s attribution models are insufficient and disproportionately favor search over display. New
platforms like Teracent’s are in a position to evolve these models and present a more nuanced and complete view
of the events that lead up to a user action. The granularity of reporting provided by Teracent is certainly consistent
with this trend.

How do publishers benefit from optimized creative?

Publishers benefit by making better use of their site-side data to create more relevant ads and thus better monetize
their inventory. By using optimized creative they create more relevant ads with higher engagement and click-
through and thus create a virtuous cycle of performance where they generate even more audience insight data, so
their ads get better and better and they can increase the value of the inventory (or at least protect price erosion!).

Publishers can also use optimized creative for content units on their site and effectively ad serve merchandized
content for more relevant, compelling and engaging content on their sites.

Teracent’s Intelligent Display platform also creates a new dynamic in the market where publisher can offer “always
on” campaigns that are much more search-like in their campaign management as well as their performance. This
new model means that publishers don’t have to always be taking down campaigns and waiting for the new creative
for the next campaign to start; instead the ad tags are always running and the creative is swapped out on the
server-side so campaigns can run without disruption.

What is your view on ad exchanges?

The ad exchanges represent an important trend in display advertising by allowing ad impressions and targeting
data to become more liquid and setting the stage for a far more efficient market. There is still a lot of evolution yet
to take place that will make the exchanges better places for advertisers (versus arbitragers), but their role in the
ecosystem will only grow with time.

Will real-time bidding (RTB) and demand-side optimization be an important new feature of exchanges? Or
is it hype? Will Teracent be able to deliver through RTB auctions?

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Much of the aforementioned evolution will occur via entities that transact on the exchanges. RTB represents an
important change to the exchanges themselves that will give the most sophisticated buyers an advantage and
allow more complex user segmentation models to drive bid prices. Current bids are predefined and as result are
rarely taken to the level of granularity that is made possible via RTB exchanges. It will take a while for the majority
of impressions to be real-time biddable and even longer for the majority of buyers to leverage the capability, but
the trend is more than hype. RTB is very consistent with the Teracent approach because creative optimization
technology analyzes impression inputs (Behavioral, Contextual, Geo, etc) at the time of each impression,
effectively valuing that impression and making the creative decisions based on predicted performance.

AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 24, 2009 – 6:12 am

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Teracent’s Hall Discusses New Video Creative Optimization
Platform
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Chip Hall is SVP of Sales and Marketing at Teracent, an advertising

creative solutions provider.

AdExchanger.com: When will the video product be available to

customers and how will the revenue model work with video?

CH: The video product is live today and the business model is the same
as the rest of our platform (either CPM or a percentage of media spend
model). In fact, not only is the product live, but it's already seeing great
success.

It is being used very effectively by Match.com as a way to generate time

spent on their site. Match has seen a significant increase in their
conversion metric by using different combinations of dating pairs (M
seeking F, F seeking M, F seeking F, etc.) in videos and then optimizing
the use of the videos against various demographic and geographic
targets. Match started with a small set of videos and then gradually
increased the number of videos as they saw the optimization work and
realized the valuable data they were getting back in the process.

For the first time, Match was able to see how their videos were attaching
to their targeting segments and this learning is helping them develop
better video creative. So their use of video is not only providing great
lead generation performance lift, it is acting as a real-time focus group
and helping develop the next generation of marketing campaigns.

Can you describe a few of the key data points Teracent optimizes
in video and how they compare to Teracent's display media optimization data points?

With the Teracent intelligent display platform, anything that can be measured can be optimized and improved by
our predictive self-learning decision engine. This is true for video or non-video creative or data assets, but
obviously video offers a much richer engagement experience for the consumer. In terms of video, we offer a host
of very cool ways to leverage video as a source of data-driven ad optimization:

• Localization Overlays
• Graphical overlays
• Hot Spotting
• A La Carte
• Focus Groups

Read more at http://www.teracent.com/video.html.

Are you concentrating on optimizing a particular standard right now - such as pre-roll only? Given the
variety in video advertising standards these days, it would appear each campaign would need a certain
amount of customization, no?

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Right now we are focused on in-banner video optimization. We can certainly work with in-player video streaming,
but we need some basic industry standards before it makes sense for us to optimize against it as the
customization requirements player-by-player would create a ton of inefficiency for our business. Not only is there a
great deal of market demand against in-banner video, but it effectively leverages reels of existing creative assets.
By layering data-driven optimization against these assets, Teracent takes video from interesting sizzle, to a
measured and precise creative strategy for audience engagement and business feedback/analytics.

Follow AdExcchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 14, 2009 – 9:26 am

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CEO Calvin Lui Says Tumri Will Be Involved In RTB and
Demand-Side Optimization Ecosystem
Email This Post

Calvin Lui is CEO and President of Tumri, a creative

optimization technology company.

AdExchanger.com: What trends have you seen at Tumri in

2009? Can you characterize trends in revenue
momentum, deal size, client verticals, consumer audience
targets, etc.?

CL: Tumri has experienced tremendous growth and

momentum in the last 18 months. While we are a private
company and do not share specific revenue or performance
figures, I can share that we are growing at a rate in the triple-
digit percentages in just about any metric you can imagine:
revenues, impressions served, campaigns run, clients served,
etc. We have seen average deal size for us grow significantly
as our dynamic, intelligent ad serving solution has been
adopted in broader and deeper implementations amongst our
client base of advertisers in the retail, travel, consumer
electronics, packaged goods, financial services, telecom and
entertainment verticals.

We have also seen a much broader adoption of the Tumri

solution across much broader consumer advertising use
cases. Whereas many people initially used Tumri's AdPod for
merchandising and remarketing campaigns, we are now
seeing many advertisers leverage our dynamic platform for
broad awareness campaigns, advanced remarketing
executions (think extremely deep customer segmentations
based not just on site visit, but also behavior related to specific
category browse, purchase and non-purchase, recency,
frequency and basket size, and more), and
storyboarding/sequential messaging up and down the user
acquisition funnel. These advanced executions have yielded
amazing results. For instance, we have worked with HP for
about a year now, leveraging a wide variety of marketing
tactics with our AdPods. The results? Display campaigns with
Tumri have yielded ROIs on par with search marketing campaigns, and the HP-Tumri campaigns have reached
over 140 million US unique impressions. To do this effectively, our AdPods optimized over 20,000 unique creative
recipes to various audience and media segments. In essence, we have been able to deliver for HP what many
consider the Holy Grail of marketing: high performance ROI across broad audiences with the branding and visual
impact of graphical display.

How does Tumri differentiate from competitors like Teracent?

We respect our competitors tremendously. ChoiceStream, Dapper, SnapAds, Teracent and others have certainly
had their successes in various executions. This is great for the ecosystem and dynamic creative segment
overall. However, there is simply a dramatic difference in the scale, flexibility and execution capabilities that Tumri

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delivers across a wide range of use cases, volumes, campaign styles, and creative types. I read in an interview
with one of our competitors where they claimed that advertisers must use pre-defined creative templates when
working with Tumri. This is just blatantly false. While we offer templates to advertisers, probably 99% of our
executions involve customized templates to meet our clients' diverse needs. Our client list and volume delivered
speaks for itself. Our list of partners and clients range wide and deep, including such world class brands as Hewlett
Packard, Capital One, Allstate, Sears, Kmart, Lenovo, Travelocity, Dell, British Airways, InterContinental Hotels,
Harrah's Casinos, Intel, Marvel, Six Flags, and Samsung just to name a few.

In May, you said that HP's performance using Yahoo!/Tumri rivaled search. Can you provide data so that
we understand what you mean? What are the keys to running an effective campaign with Tumri?

Many people that release case studies share results about executions that cannot be replicated at large volumes
or replicated on a regular, consistent basis. We partnered with HP and Yahoo! to deliver campaigns over 10-12
months that consistently demonstrated remarkable results at large volume and scale. As Catherine Paschkewitz
from HP shared, the ROI from HP display campaigns with Tumri were equivalent to search. That is simply an
astounding statement. By working in tight partnership, HP and Tumri were able to generate extremely high ROIs
that were typically reserved for search and other highly targeted, lower funnel marketing tactics. But, we were able
to generate these results through the display marketing channel – a channel that has been cast aside and
forgotten in recent times. The beauty of the display channel is that display can:

1. deliver broad reach across a wide variety of audience segments, broadcasting your message beyond
those who are already looking for your products and services,
2. deliver visually impactful consumer experiences with rich messaging that search and text ads simply
cannot, and
3. build awareness and positive brand sentiment at the top of the funnel, thereby driving more site visits,
consumer search queries, brick-and-mortar store visits, and ultimately sales and customers.

For HP, our campaigns reached over 140 million US uniques with over 20,000 unique creative recipes that were
targeted and optimized to specific audience and media segments. This type of activity simply was not possible in a
pre-Tumri world. The advent of new technologies is a trademark of our space. The genesis of dynamic, intelligent
creative is the next revolution, the next leap frog execution in marketing.

What is your revenue model? Do you charge per impression, per creative, etc.?

Tumri is a technology platform, so we charge based upon usage. This typically manifests itself in a CPM rate, but
we have been very creative in pricing models to meet our various partner and client needs. We offer many services
as well, which are priced on an as needed basis.

Should the creative shop be worried? Will Tumri's technology put them out of business?

The creative shops of the world are our friends and partners. Tumri is a technology platform that provides a wide
array of tools, features, and reports for advanced marketers. Technology in and of itself cannot generate the type
of results that we have seen. Rather, technology must be used by experts with the experience and talent to create
what we call "the magic" to reach consumers. That magic is developing the right combination of an image, a
message, a line of copy, an animation, an offer – ultimately a complete experience that captures the attention and
imagination of consumers and causes activation and dialogue with your brand and product. Technology cannot do
this by itself. It is the amazing talent at agencies (both creative and media) and the brands' marketing teams that
create this magic. Tumri provides a platform with the right tools and insights to make this process easier, faster,
more efficient, and more impactful. The Tumri platform pushes technology and machines to do the massive
iterations and optimizations that humans simply cannot. To be successful in our ever evolving world, one cannot
live without the other. It is the ultimate marriage of art and science.

How does Tumri offer the ability to optimize for audience?

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Tumri's platform enables marketers to de-construct their ad experience into its core sub-components. Sub-
components of an experience can include any and all of the following: intro animation, background template, hero
image, headline, call-to-action button style, call-to-action text, promotion, featured product, price, attention
grabber. Our system seamlessly delivers the right combination of sub-components based upon a variety of inputs,
including consumer segment, media segment, website content, past performance, and more. In other words, our
system can intelligently understand "who" is looking at ad and "where" the ad is being viewed, then dynamically
generate the best ad experience (the "what") to that consumer at that particular time. The "who" can be influenced
by information from (a) media and data partners like Yahoo! (the world's largest consumer portal who has deep
knowledge and insights into who their use base is) and (b) advertisers themselves who have many customer
segments such as browsers, purchasers, abandoners, frequent purchases, etc. The "where" can be determined by
publishers and a targeting partner like Google, who provides Tumri contextual data about the content of the page
that an ad is served upon. The "what" is developed in partnership with the advertiser and its agencies. It is the
ultimate version of 1-to-1 marketing, but at massive scale of volume and micro-targeting.

How do users benefit from optimized creative?

Quite simply, consumers benefit by getting more relevant content. The ultimate advertising experience for
consumers is when they consider the ad to be content. Let's use an offline example. Subscribers to special interest
magazines such as Vogue or Golf Digest actually seek out the ads in the publication. The information provided in
the advertisements present the latest and greatest information about products and services in the market from the
experts in the field – in these examples, fashion and golf respectively. In much the same way, optimized and
targeted creative presents relevant information based upon interests, page context, past behavior, and group
performance and preference dynamics. Consumers are not annoyed by advertising; rather, they are annoyed by
irrelevant advertising that is imposed upon them. Think of your own behavior as a consumer. How many times
have said to your friend "did you see that E*Trade baby ad?" or "did you see the LeBron and Kobe puppet ad from
Nike?" How many times have you forwarded a link or discussed the Super Bowl ads? Those have positive
consumer impact because the ads themselves were considered content that was relevant and entertaining. Tumri
can help deliver that type of positive experience for consumers and advertisers.

What is your view on ad exchanges?

Ad exchanges provide a great vehicle for media buyers in this ecosystem. With the explosion of publishers,
impressions and fragmentation of audience, the exchange provides a much better mechanism to act quickly and
efficiently in an ever changing environment. And it's a positive impact on both publishers and advertisers, as it
provides visibility and liquidity to the media marketplace. However, I don't think exchanges will completely take
over the world. There is, and will be, a need for other mechanisms for advertisers and publishers to create
advanced experiences in partnership with each other. There is also the concept of futures market buying where
advertisers want to guarantee placement and not leave it to market dynamics. Online advertising exchanges are
often compared to financial market exchanges. And similar to financial markets, public exchanges are not the only
vehicle for buyers and sellers to interact – there are private equity sales, derivatives markets, direct corporate
partnerships, etc. that enable parties in the ecosystem to meet their needs, not simply one exchange.

Will real-time bidding (RTB) and demand-side optimization be an important new feature of exchanges? Or
is it hype? Will Tumri be able to deliver through RTB auctions?
I absolutely believe that RTB and demand-side optimization will be a key evolution of the exchange
marketplace. DoubleClick just announced this type of functionality will be coming to its exchange. Historically,
exchanges have been more focused on yield optimization for publisher inventory. Just like any marketplace, there
is a need for balance – meaning you will need to service the needs of both the buyer and seller for a truly liquid
exchange. RTB and advertiser-oriented optimization will be very important in introducing that balance so that
exchanges can take the next step. Tumri will absolutely be involved in this ecosystem. The fact is that the
ecosystem will be introducing (a) more data and audience/media segments to service advertiser needs, and (b)
more dynamic executions that are more real-time in nature. When these capabilities come into the marketplace,
the need for a platform like Tumri will be even more pronounced. Our dynamic ad platform helps advertisers carry
the execution through the last mile. The more micro-targeted and dynamic the ecosystem becomes, the more you
need to generate relevant messages and experiences on the fly. Otherwise, all the work and segmentation
becomes wasted. Imagine if you could find Sally the Soccer Mom in Indiana and Eddy the Surfer Dude in
California in real time, but showed them both the same generic message that is neither timely nor targeted. You
would have wasted a great opportunity to activate a customer and build positive brand health. It's exciting to think

202
of the powerful executions that will be available in the near future as the industry continues to evolve and innovate.
Tumri will be at the very center and forefront of this innovation.

Follow Tumri (@Tumri) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 25, 2009 – 6:20 am

203
Brand Advertisers Will Drive Efficiency With Rich Media To
The Exchange Says Unicast SVP Caleb Hill
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Caleb Hill is SVP of Product at Unicast.

AdExchanger.com: Given the competitive marketplace in rich

media ad serving, where do you see Unicast fitting and how do you
differentiate?

CH: Unicast is an established interactive advertising and marketing

technology company serving more than 120 top online publishers and
advertising agencies around the globe. We have more than 100
talented employees across our New York headquarters and offices in
Austin, Chicago, Hamburg, Los Angeles and London. We also have a
history of innovation having created the first Superstitial rich media ad
launched in 1999, the first interactive pre-roll ad in 2001 and the first
interactive 3D ad in 2004.

That being said, we feel that we've only scratched the surface with our
ability to compete in the rich media ad serving marketplace. We're
nimble, flexible and hungry. We look forward to expanding our focus
from leading in the publisher services space to gain market share and
grow with agencies and advertisers.

In addition to our technological focus, one of our biggest differentiators

is the level of service that we provide for our customers – our client service and support sets us apart from our
competition. At Unicast, the difference is personal. We offer 24/7 support and some of the fastest turnaround times
in the industry. We align with our client's workflows and offer direct phone, email and IM access to dedicated
campaign managers, creative producers, developers and support teams in locations all over the world.

Describe momentum for Unicast in 2009. Also, any insights you can provide regarding client tactics given
the economic climate?

2009 is shaping up to be a big year for Unicast, one focused on growth, evolution and investment – on a global
scale.

In a 2008 acquisition, Unicast became a proud member of the DG FastChannel family of companies. DG
FastChannel (NASDAQ: DGIT) has a workforce of more than 800 and a multichannel distribution network of
thousands of advertisers and media publishers worldwide. Within our new corporate structure, we've been
exposed to a new level of support, resources and desire for continued growth and expansion.

As with any acquisition, it took us a few months for us to adjust and optimize our staffing, our objectives and our
strategic goals. We recently launched the first phase of our new website (www.unicast.com), we're stepping up our
PR and communication efforts, we've hired new operations, sales and technology resources to help meet
aggressive global growth forecasts. Despite the economic climate, Unicast is poised for a breakthrough year in
2009 and beyond.

What is your view on ad exchanges? Do you see rich media and Unicast playing an important role in the
evolving ad exchange model? Why or why not?

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There is no doubt that ad exchanges can be efficient platforms for buying and selling online advertising inventory.
Media buyers have the ability to buy a target audience which can limit the amount of waste that they would see if
they bought based on reach and frequency and content alignment alone. Not only that, but they're able to adjust
their budget to allocate based on what makes sense for their ROI. As more brand advertisers look to lower their
CPMs and drive more efficiency by utilizing more performance based pricing, rich media will begin to be an integral
part of ad exchanges.

As within the general online ad industry, rich media will continue to grow and play an important part in growing the
ad exchange model, driving new standards for reporting and analytics that go beyond standard direct response.
Advertisers will require that brand awareness, and perception metrics in order to justify spends within the ad
exchanges.

We also see ad exchanges continuing to push companies to focus on the integration of search and display
advertising competencies. Advertisers want to be able to see the macro view of all of their online media spending
and the integration of these two platforms will allow them to see the direct effect that display advertising has on
search performance and vice versa.

As a leading service provider for online publishers, we suspect that the publisher market will have challenges
extracting the same value for their premium display and video inventory through exchanges as they do through
direct sales.

Post campaign, beyond CTR, time spent, etc., does Unicast provide clients insight about its viewing
audience?

As with any interactive business, Unicast focuses a lot of time and energy on providing analytics toolsets and
services to our customers. We follow the popular motto of having to measure it to be able to manage it – and we
work closely with our clients to provide them more insight into how their specific campaigns are performing against
business objectives.

Unicast has developed an intelligence product, called the User Engagement Index (UEI), which measures a user's
interaction with a rich media ad and provides a score made up of key engagement metrics. This Engagement
Index enables advertisers to truly measure and benchmark their advertising, which allows them to have a much
deeper understanding of where they need to improve their messaging and creative in order to drive a better ROI
for their marketing spend.

We're constantly looking for ways to provide more analytical value to our clients, and do so according to the needs
of their individual workflows. The available tracking within the ads that we serve is becoming more and more
advanced. The data that we're able to provide can be customized and wrapped up in an executive summary, or
given in an exportable format that can be easily managed by clients directly. We use our experience and expertise
to help assess the data and make recommendations and suggestions that are actionable.

Through product enhancements, partnerships and creation of new ad formats and features – reporting and
analytics is an area that will be receiving particular focus on in 2009 and beyond.

How would you like to see industry standards evolve for in-stream video ad inventory? And in-page video
ad inventory?

For in-stream video, standards must continue to focus on counting measurements and to ensure interoperability
between all of the different players in the ad and content delivery ecosystem - but never at the cost of
undifferentiated ad display. Not only do advertisers demand new ways to communicate to consumers, but
publishers also need the ability to stand out from a competitive playing field. The same can be said of in-page
video ad inventory - let the technologists, publishers, and advertisers drive innovation within a very open
framework that can be tracked and audited for compliance to regulations.

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What is your view on demand-side buying platforms such as those announced by the major agency
holding companies? Good for the marketplace and Unicast?

Marketers want transparency into where their ads display, and these platforms deliver it. Using the platforms to buy
and control premium inventory solves a core issue marketers have with networks and exchanges while
guaranteeing efficient pricing and access to desired audiences. We believe that indeed these new plays by the
agencies will be good for the industry as a whole as long as more money flows online as a result. Additionally,
buying a target audience vs. programming is very attractive to advertisers because it allows them to stretch their
media dollars further.

How do you see display advertising evolving in the future? Will it all be rich media - as in video?
Continued advances in technology, bandwidth and the proliferation of video content across the web and mobile
devices will cause increases in video based display advertising, especially HD. That doesn't meant that in 5 years
it will all be video or rich media, but the spendwill continue to shift in that direction.

At Unicast, we have what we feel is a unique perspective on the future of display advertising. As a member of the
DG FastChannel family of companies, we work in a world where our overarching business model is content
delivery. Broadcast, radio content, online, HD Video, mobile, digital signage… it's all made up of content that is
created, delivered, served, measured and optimized. As this content is increasingly shared across all vehicles and
mediums, we see marketers moving towards partners that can provide a unified platform to manage all of their
advertising in one place. With a wide breadth of content delivery services, we see Unicast and DG FastChannel
well-positioned to help evolve the way companies approach taking their campaigns to the masses, across
traditional and digital delivery platforms.

What do you think creative agencies need to do to prepare for the increasingly automated world of online
advertising?
Creative agencies need to demand better authoring and related workflow tools from technology providers. Close
collaboration between the agency and vendor can translate to efficient campaign executions without sacrificing
quality in creative design. The economic conditions and resulting reduction of staff levels in the agency world have
made efficiencies and scalability even more of a critical element in the creative workflow process.

Additionally, we're seeing more and more agencies look to partners who can bring them solutions to help manage
constraints that they are feeling from a headcount and operating expense perspective. In a marketplace that is as
competitive as ours is, Unicast has honed our creative and ad-operations processes to allow us to execute ad
production services very quickly and efficiently. We're now being asked more and more to extend our service
model and assume production relationships within creative agencies that find that it's more cost effective to partner
with us than it is to staff and execute creative production in-house. This model is especially relevant with traditional
agencies that don't have as much of a focus on the interactive space.

How does Unicast help its clients with attribution? Is an understanding of cross-channel initiatives
important to Unicast? Or is that a client issue?

With all of the reporting and analytics advancements made over the past decade, the models and reporting
systems have been based on last click activity, both across channels and within. The systems haven't been in
place to look beyond the last click, but even if they were – agencies, advertisers, publishers and ad-servers alike
were not fully prepared to handle the data and take action. These limitations are now fully exposed and attribution
has become a hot button item for everyone involved.

From the Unicast perspective, data is the key in attempting to solve for attribution. Our primary focus with clients is
to provide data that can assist with attribution within the rich media display channel itself; however we are also
starting to push forward with integration of data across channels. Not only does this include other digital channels,
but as we touched on earlier with our relationship with DG FastChannel, we are well-positioned to help evolve the
way companies attribute effectiveness of their campaigns across traditional channels as well. They way we see
this model extending, we see an opportunity to introduce measurement models that can attempt to assess true
attribution across all mediums within a campaign – across all traditional and digital delivery vehicles.

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Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 10, 2009 – 6:21 am

207
VideoEgg Focuses On Performance Pricing Model As Rich
Media Ad Network Revenues Double Says CEO Sanchez
Email This Post

Matt Sanchez is CEO of VideoEgg, a rich media

advertising network.

AdExchanger.com: Can you give us a sense of

current momentum at VideoEgg? Any effects
from the economy? Have clients changed their
buying strategies?

MS: We are delighted about the traction we are

getting. 2008 revenue was up 110%. This year we
are up more than a 100%. While we are seeing
softness in some sectors, advertisers are clearly
enthusiastic about Cost-Per-Engagement (CPE),
the performance pricing approach we pioneered,
and the richness of the advertising experiences
that VideoEgg offers. We’re also continuing to
enhance our targeting capabilities and this too, is
driving our business growth.

Are advertisers using social media profiles or

social graph effectively to target consumers
with ads on the web today? If not, how far
away are we?

At the most basic level, social media is providing

the industry with a source of demographic and
interest data that did not previously exist. This
data is being utilized widely by publishers and
networks. A number of companies are
experimenting with relationship data as a basis for
targeting, but it is too early to tell how this will
affect brand advertising. On the other hand, there are other companies using social data to customize the ad
experience. So far, though, this approach has received pretty negative reactions from consumers.

Social technologies like RSS, Twitter, Facebook Connect, Digg etc. are excellent tools to integrate into the ad
experience and drive “earned” media performance. We integrate all of these and more into our AdFrames rich
media technology.

Would you say VideoEgg is an ad network for rich media including video? How does VideoEgg
differentiate itself?

I would say we are a performance-driven audience network for brands. We utilize innovative rich media technology
to deliver interesting and functional ad experiences. Our network is constantly evolving. We are interested in any
digital environment, as long as we can cost effectively deliver the attention and audience that our advertisers
value.

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We differentiate ourselves on a couple of levels, but first and foremost, we are network- and approach-optimized
for attention, not clicks. We sell attention. The VideoEggNetwork is optimized to quality digital environments that
deliver attention. Attention is the basis of our Cost-Per-Engagement (CPE) pricing model, and extends through
AttentionRank, which is what we’ve coined as the way to optimize ad placements to maximize time spent with an
advertiser’s content. Our AdFrames rich media platform delivers the most engaging advertising experiences across
any digital platform.

We’re also poised to make several key announcements in the near future that will further exemplify why we’re so
different than other ad networks in the space right now. You’ll see new solutions focused on how we uniquely
leverage data as well as how we creatively capture and sustain user interest.

Additionally, we are committed to understanding the business impact of online advertising and are investing a
significant amount of energy and money in our research and data competencies to make this happen. Our ability to
demonstrate ad effectiveness through a variety of research services positions us as strategic partners with
agencies and clients.

Your new AttentionRank approach for advertising seems like a new CPA, if you will - "cost per attention." I
see you call it "cost per engagement" or CPE. What challenge are you trying to solve with AttentionRank?
AttentionRank is an optimization approach that we utilize to deliver impressions to sites and environments, or even
a particular place on a web page, where people are more likely to spend time with a message. CPE is our pricing
model. We charge advertisers only when a user engages with an ad. We never change for impressions.

What are the key drivers in getting brand marketers to step into online media?
Brand marketers need a scalable way to access audience. As importantly, they need to do it in a way that enables
them to tell stories and influence perceptions. TV was perfect for this: it was scalable, easy to buy and a very good
story telling medium. Plus, consumers knew what to expect with TV. While things have changed today, we are
making the internet work for brands by giving them a better way to inform and entertain across hundreds of sites
and millions of people. We will continue to find new ways to do this as the medium evolves.

What effect do you see the exchange model having on digital media buying?
For the foreseeable future, exchanges will be important for part of the marketplace where buyers and sellers can
abstract out much of the complexity. It will take several years before exchanges support the kind of rich
experiences we deliver.

How do you see agencies needing to evolve as technology continues to automate digital media buying?
Agencies need to continue to focus on solving marketing problems and helping brands create compelling content
platforms. Digital media is creating more complexity, not less, so brands will continue to look for partners to help
them manage the marketing challenge. We are living through an evolution in the agency landscape where service
offerings needs to change to meet the needs of digital. Agencies will develop competencies with data and
technology, reposition PR as part of the mix, learn to move faster and evolve compensations models. But the need
for agencies will not change.

How does VideoEgg ensure that it does not cannibalize publisher partner inventory?
We aggregate inventory across a lot of sites, overlay data and sell audience. We are transparent about our
network but do not sell specific sites. If a buyer wants to buy a specific site, we do not get in the way. Our new
VideoEgg ToGo solution allows buyers to take the VideoEgg ad experience to any site that’s a part of their larger
buy for free, eliminating incremental rich media costs. We also work hand-in-hand with advertisers to get the
creative up and running on other sites.

From your vantage point, any recommendations for online publishers who are steadily seeing CPMs
decrease?

We think performance creates value. Publishers that can deliver the right audience and get them to spend time
with a brand’s message will be able to manage CPMs. Finding innovative ways to blend ad messages and content
is paramount.

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Follow Videoegg (@videoegg) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

October 5, 2009 – 6:38 am

Data and Measurement

Aggregate Knowledge CEO Martino Announces New

Audience Discovery Platform
Email This Post

Paul Martino is CEO of Aggregate Knowledge, a buy-side optimization platform.

AdExchanger.com: What does the new Aggregate Knowledge (AK) Audience Discovery Platform do for
advertisers and agencies that they can't do today?

AK's Audience Discovery Platform delivers real-time, simultaneous

optimization of inventory, audience, and creative. Inventory is optimized
by determining which individual sites, ad networks, and exchange buys
perform best against campaign objectives. Audience is optimized by
determining key attributes of the best performing audiences (whether
demographic, psychographic, behavioral, etc) and only buying or
retaining impressions from those people. Finally, creative is optimized by
leveraging AK's personalization technology to customize the message to
each user. Prior to AK's Audience Discovery Platform, awkwardly fitting
point technologies were available that could only optimize within their own
silos. Our unified approach leads to significantly better results and deeper
insights.

AK makes it easy for our customers to get started using our Audience
Discovery Platform. Today, we are announced three Audience Discovery
Platform products:

• AK Audience Insights™ reveals off-target impressions from each

inventory provider.
• AK Audience Validation™ eliminates waste by rejecting off-target
impressions in real time.
• AK Audience Optimization™ delivers real-time campaign
optimization via attitudinal, click, or conversion metrics derived
from a deep understanding of the best performing impressions.

Are Aggregate Knowledge products full-service or self-service? What's the revenue model?

AK's products are all available on a full-service basis. We take a hands-on approach to managing each of our
customer's success. AK gets paid based on the delivery of significant cost savings to our customers. The model
can be either a percent of media spend or CPM based.

Does Aggregate Knowledge work with or compete with buying platforms such as Invite Media and
MediaMath?

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There are certainly some overlaps with companies in the broad category of 'trading desk' software. These
companies would make ideal partners for AK in that they provide a key infrastructure for bidding and buying across
the major ad exchanges. AK's core competency is around unified optimization, not on trading desk software.
Therefore, don't be surprised to see AK partner with companies of this kind in the future.

Why are agencies announcing buying platform strategies? How does this mesh, potentially, with AK's
product line?

It makes a tremendous amount of sense for the agencies to be developing buying platforms. The question comes
down to: 'will this be done cost effectively by licensing a platform from AK or building the buying platform in-
house?' The kind of optimization delivered by AK is really tough stuff. Literally, years of high-performance super
computing has gone into the development of this unified optimization infrastructure. This is not easily replicated by
agencies that have traditionally not done technology efforts in-house. That's one of the reasons why AK is
announcing this product offering now. Agencies are in the midst of making these decisions, and we have a great
offering to meet many of their needs.

Do you consider yourselves a technology company or services company?

We are a technology company that must deliver a compelling service. The display advertising business is service-
driven and AK has built up excellent expertise in the customer management area over the past years to service
this need. Under the hood, we are a technology company, but our customers are not buying technology. They are
buying a service.

Quoting figures from a recent AK release, how do you boost reach up to 80% - isn't this a question of
buying more media? Second, in addition to managing data to find the right user at the right time, etc., what
other factors are in play to boost performance up to 60 percent?

AK works in two ways with its customers depending on their needs. In the first way, AK is responsible for sourcing
media, and in the second way, AK is optimizing media that is already purchased. In the case study discussed in
the press release, AK worked with its customer in the first way. As a result, a good portion of the boosted reach
was achieved via smart media buying.

Achieving the overall 60% performance win was achieved via a combination of media and audience optimization.
In this case, we used two of the three core AK technology components. In future campaigns with this customer, we
will also deliver the third kind of optimization: creative optimization via our personalization platform.

AK appears to be demand-side focused. How about bringing your optimization capabilities to the supply
side? Thoughts?

AK began its life on the supply side. Our first offerings in the recommendations space were certainly for the sell
side. We continue to provide these services to major retailers and media sites. By delivering high-quality
recommendations, customers buy more and stay on publishers' sites longer. This creates more ad inventory on
which to optimize ad delivery. This deep understanding of the user, what he or she likes and dislikes, and the
underlying discovery of hidden performance attributions are what are at the heart of our buy side offering.

Does data have a shelf life? Some agencies seem to think they will be able to leverage the piles of
customer data they have. But, is it possible given changes in consumer habits and tastes?

Most data has a shelf life. News browsing behavior has a different shelf life than product purchase information. On
the other hand, demographic data has a significantly longer shelf life as people stay in the same income or
geographic brackets for some time and rarely change their gender! One of the core competencies of AK is its
ability to ingest, normalize, and activate huge volumes of data. That competency requires an understanding of not
just which sets are most predictive, but when and for how long those data sets achieve the customers' unique
optimization goals.

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How important is real-time, impression-level bidding? Holy Grail or hype?

Right now real-time is certainly more hype than holy grail. We believe that this will change markedly over the next
year. As the next versions of the major exchanges offer real-time impression level bidding, the game is going to
become dramatically different. In our estimation, the announcements of such exchanges will catch up to the reality
of live service late this year and early next year.

When it happens, AK will be a true leader of impression level bidding. Our system was built for this use case, and
we can't wait until exchanges are ready for us.

How does Aggregate Knowledge work with creative - in that creative is a key lever in the success of any
campaign?

Our Personalized Creative product has been available to the market for almost one year now. It is fully integrated
to our Audience Discovery Platform as one of the three types of optimization available (creative). It's also available
as a stand-alone product when customers require creative optimization only.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 29, 2009 – 5:46 am

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BlueKai Data Exchange Buyers Doubling Every Quarter
Says CEO Tawakol
Omar Tawakol is CEO of BlueKai, an online advertising data exchange.

AdExchanger.com: Can you provide insight on recent momentum

at BlueKai? Any observations due to the recent economic slump?

OT: We are seeing some very positive growth trends at BlueKai. The
numbers of data buyers and the average spend per buyer in the
system is doubling every quarter. In a tightening economy the most
important target audience for a marketer is in-market shoppers. We
have the largest pool of true intenders across retail, auto, and travel
and because of this we have seen marketers shift their spend towards
BlueKai data.

Generally speaking, who are your clients - such as any particular

vertical silos? Any ad networks or mostly agencies? And, from a
prospecting point-of-view, where do you see the opportunity?

BlueKai Data Exchange buyers currently include agencies, ad

networks, portals as well as publishers. Anyone who can benefit from
data-powered targeting or segment creation can become a buyer in the exchange. BlueKai focuses on delivering
intent data in 3 major verticals (auto, travel and retail). We also partner with industry data leaders to provide social
graph, geo, purchase propensity and interest data categories via the BlueKai Data Exchange.

From a prospecting point of view, having the ability to identify someone who is in-market to buy is KEY to efficient
media buying and targeting. BlueKai gives our data buyers access to the largest database of commercial intent
data (i.e. someone searching for Hawaii travel for two on June 15), which is crucial to identifying audiences who
are about to buy and provides data points for more targeted messages.

Are you seeing brand awareness marketers buying from BlueKai's data exchange whether directly or
through agencies? How could BlueKai be of value to brands?

Many brands are buying BlueKai data through their agencies. BlueKai data is very valuable to brands, because
even brand awareness marketers are looking for targeted advertising and ways to find people who show signs of
heading down a specific purchase funnel. We’ve sold data to many auto manufacturers, and top retail and travel
brands.

From a very tactical perspective, is it difficult to implement data exchange "data" in a display campaign?
What complexities are involved?

Running campaigns using exchange data is easy. It is tactically set up just like a re-targeting campaign except the
data source is coming from the exchange and not the advertiser site.

What's your view on display ad exchanges? -A benefit to the advertiser and publisher?

Display ad exchanges bring important efficiencies into the marketplace. In particular they provide the following:

• Highest price paid per impression across multiple ad networks

• Eliminates daisy chaining of networks

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 • Provides publishers with a single point of managing dozens of relationships and technical integrations
• Instant scale for participants who have data but need impressions

What benefits will real-time bidding (RTB) on ad exchanges bring to data exchanges? Will BlueKai
exchange data "play" in this RTB space?

Today, BlueKai does offer real-time bidding to its data buyers. We believe this allows the buyers of the data to set
the price for the goods (pay more for data that delivers results), while compensating data providers fairly when
their data delivers performance to advertisers. We also integrate our data into the various real time ad exchanges.
This means that a marketer or ad network can buy BlueKai data and then connect that data to impressions across
the various ad exchanges. By doing this, a marketer can standardize their audience definition once - yet, still have
access to the ad inventory across the various exchanges.

Curious about attribution metrics and how clients connect the dots to BlueKai data and data exchanges.
Any feedback on how clients manage attribution with your exchange's product? Can BlueKai assist with
measurement?

One of the values of separating data from media is that finally, marketers can buy one set of data and apply it
across different media outlets. This will enable them to achieve apples-to-apples measurement for their campaigns
and adjust media buying over time. For example, if you buy different behavioral segments across 5 different ad
networks you won’t know if your performance across those networks was caused by good inventory or good data.
By standardizing the data asset across those 5 networks you can now do an apples to apples comparison on
which network is providing the better ad product.

Given the tumult caused by recent changes in GroupM's Ts and Cs, CRO Mark Zagorski commented on
your recent ClickZ article saying that "the data 'ownership' issue really comes down to a 'fairness'
discussion." Can you expand on what he meant?

We have transformed the issue of data ownership into a market issue (rather than a legal debate). Instead of
having publishers fight advertisers over having the right to pixel a creative – we have given publishers a tool that
turns the discussion into a more fruitful discussion. Now a publisher of data can tell a marketer, you can have
access to my audience data as long as you pay me a fair price. BlueKai, unlike other data companies, determines
that fair price through an auction where the data is paid for independent of the media. This pure auction approach
has allowed the marketplace to determine what a fair price is. Once the data is paid for, the advertiser is free to
port that audience to any media source they want.

Follow BlueKai (@BlueKai) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

May 14, 2009 – 11:18 am

214
BlueKai Data CEO Tawakol On New Certification Program
Email This Post

Omar Tawakol is CEO of BlueKai, an online data exchange.

AdExchanger.com: Regarding your new BlueKai Certification

Program, ad networks and buying platforms must be excited -
you're performing lead gen for them, are you not? What is BlueKai
getting?

OT: Yes, the new program is definitely designed to drive agency leads
directly to our partners. It's a win-win situation because not only are we
making it easier for agencies to adopt, we are also minimizing channel
conflict and driving data-ready leads directly to our partners. BlueKai
still gets paid for the data transaction - with the new process, agencies
streamline their media and data buying through the media partners,
who in turn, pays us for the data portion of the campaign.

What challenge were marketers running up against that prompted

the program?

When we launched the BlueKai Exchange, we saw immediate excitement from the agency community on the need
to define quality "data" to power their online campaigns. However, buying data separate of the media appealed to
the early adopter agencies. For the rest of the agencies, the extra legal steps and separate insertion orders
created work many of them would prefer to avoid. This prompted the creation of the Certification program with the
goal of helping agencies get from "interest" to "running BlueKai-powered campaigns" in the most streamlined way
possible. We've received very positive feedback from the agency community and we feel the program is successful
in addressing some of the adoption barriers.

How is the BlueKai data set differentiating itself today?

BlueKai's differentiation remains the same. We are the only online data exchange who focuses on bringing intent
data at scale to impact more effective online targeting. We only work with top tier commerce, travel and auto
comparison sites to aggregate the most valuable in-market retail, travel and auto data into the BlueKai Exchange.
With over 120 unique shoppers across these verticals, we're providing unparalleled access to low-funnel, ready-to-
buy audiences. While our unique focus is intent data, we also partner with data providers to bring top-funnel data
into the exchange for marketers interested in branding and awareness efforts.

Follow BlueKai (@BlueKai) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 6, 2009 – 11:01 am

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BlueKai Releases Latest Pulse Index; CEO Tawakol
Discusses Intent Capture and Its Time Value
Yesterday, BlueKai announced the second edition of its
BlueKai Pulse which looks at intent data across its data
exchange through the end of November. The report offers
insights on consumer buying trends much like the company's
new analytics tool, BlueKai In-Market Reports, which includes
access to a a panel of 160 million unique users across online
retail and comparison shopping sites according to the
company.

Here are example results provided by BlueKai for video game

equipment that you might expect during the run-up to the Holidays - and people want a Wii!...

Get the latest BlueKai Pulse here.

So what is intent? According to the release: "Shopping intent is defined as search and shopping related activities
by consumers on retail and price comparison sites."

AdExchanger.com asked BlueKai CEO Omar Tawakol for more insights on the insights...

AdExchanger.com: Can you get in the weeds a bit and explain the technology side of how BlueKai
generates "Pulse" observations?

OT: BlueKai captures commercial intent through pixels that are integrated into the largest commerce sites on the
web. For example, when an anonymous consumer shops for a Sony Bravia flat panel tv, BlueKai, tags that
consumer as in-market for a Bravia flat panel tv. That tag is captured in the consumer's browser cookie, but it is
also logged as an event on our back end. This shopping event is then captured and aggregated with billions of
shopping interactions every month. This allows BlueKai to mine for patterns that provide insights into how

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consumer's behaviors are changing. The BlueKai Pulse report is our way of sharing those high-level insights with
the industry.

AdExchanger.com: Do you have any sense of the shelf life (time value) of intent data?

OT: Intent behaviors are most valuable when they are first created. Over time, a consumer will buy the item they
are shopping for - so intent behavior is best served fresh before a competitor accesses that behavior and converts
that customer into a buyer. You can visualize this with a conversion decay curve by graphing conversions against
time. This curve will show the highest number of buy conversions very early and fewer conversions a month later.
Given this dynamic, each vertical has a different decay curve. For example, the conversion curve for in-market
auto decays much slower than the conversion curve for a smaller ticket purchase like an iPod. One of the
advantages of an auction system like BlueKai's is that buyers can set their own price depending on the granularity
and freshness of the data.

By John Ebbert

December 17, 2009 – 12:44 pm

217
Brilig Resembles Advertising Data Version of Bloomberg
Terminal Says CEO Cimino
Paul Cimino is CEO of Brilig, a data optimization platform.

AdExchanger.com: What is Brilig? Do you consider it a

technology or services company? Gotta ask - what does the
name mean?

PC: Brilig is a technology company with a patent pending process

for data integration that provides advertising data and analysis
capabilities to online publishers, marketers and targeters. Our
platform enables marketers and targeters (be they contextual,
behavioral, retargeters) to assess response rates of past
campaigns using segmentation data provided by web publishers.
For instance a travel ad directed not only to someone who has a
browsing interest in travel, but who has some confirming travel
propensity, might get a much higher response. So the behavioral
targeters would purchases this travel measure, updating its own
records with the individual travel propensity field. It now has a
better segment. When we have enough data we will be able to
assess what works for an audience, or an audience member.
prospectively. This is where the term TruePropensity(sm) comes
from.

When you get down it we resemble an advertising data version of Bloomberg. As characteristic of many innovative
companies, our business represents a new way of thinking about the industry more than any breakthrough
technological achievements.

The name Brilig comes from the Lewis Carroll poem, Jabberwocky. It represents the idea that every word has
meaning and value when placed in the proper context. We realize the brillig from the poem has 2 L's but that URL
was taken so we dropped one L's for expediency sake.

On your website, you say that Brilig's TruePropensity is "a next generation online advertising optimization
solution." So are you a buying platform like a Media Math or Invite Media? Or a data optimizer like
Aggregate Knowledge?

We are different from (ad space) buying platforms like either Media Math or Invite Media. We don't buy or arbitrage
ad space, we provide a data exchange and analytical platform for the buy and sell side of advertising to enable
them to assess why ad buys were successful or not. In that regard we could be considered second cousins of
Aggregate Knowledge but have significant differences. I take my hat off to companies like AK who cover so much
ground; ad personalization, creative optimization, content personalization etc. Although we could someday reach
this breadth of services, we have chosen to focus on being the best at integrating advertising and consumer
databases and providing analytics and data services around that core skill. Therefore, like AK we provide
retrospective insights into why ads performed or not. Unlike AK we provide data that is not native to the ad
campaign, as well as the ability to gain insights from that data. Another difference is our ability to provide
prospective insights on what an individual consumer or audience population is likely to do. Lastly, and most
importantly, the biggest difference between Brilig and these other companies is the fact that our platform is open
and transparent. Most current approaches seem to be proprietary, black-box and closed in nature. Our belief is
that we can be successful providing a mechanism that give everyone access to all necessary market data.

What are the "non-targetable segments" that Brilig can now target? What's the key? If it's related to data -
where do you get your data?

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Our data comes from website publishers, etailers, social networks on the sell-side, and ad performance data from
targeters and marketers on the buy-side. A view of this non-PII information resides in what we call the "Brilig
Dictionary", the central piece of our platform. Consumers will have the capability to view their "page" in the
dictionary and correct it.

It is our belief is that the likelihood someone will click on an ad is inversely proportional to the size of the audience.
And because click-rates are well below 1%, we feel that the devil (for marketers) is truly in the details; meaning the
heuristics of the people that did (or did not) click is very important information. This is what we mean by "previously
non-targetable segments".

What is it you love about the start-up environment?

We love the intellectual challenge of creating something new, innovative, useful and valuable. Having worked in
every work environment from startups to large companies I can say that each stage of a company has its
rewarding aspects as well as its touch aspects. I guess it might be a little like parenting, you've always loved your
kids from day one and as time goes on that love becomes more profound, but there is nothing like a brand new
baby. I mean startup.

Please name two or three key learnings that you bring from previous startups such as Marketing
Technology Solutions, CAC Media or (even way back) Snickelways Interactive to Brilig?

1. Focus, focus and focus some more. Too many great concepts die on the vine because they are over ambitious
in their market approach or because the company allows itself to be distracted by short term, non-strategic gains,
such as a custom job for an important client. Saying "we can't do that right now" is a tough sentence to utter, but is
the sign of a mature team.

2. Hire the right people. So many cycles and so much valuable capital is wasted on trying to make people fit and/or
giving people time to "find their way". Startups simply don't have the time, money or mental energy to waste on
people who are better than average and hopefully superstars.

3. Find the right financial partners. Financial partners have to mix well with the founder-culture and understand that
startups are like families. They need to understand how to cultivate young companies, outside of cash flow and
balance sheets. It is sometimes difficult force what may be perceived as austere rules or changes in. I have had
both good and bad experiences with venture capitalists. Beyond the cultural aspect, you need to constantly make
sure that your goals are aligned. Solidarity among key stakeholders is paramount.

4. Finding the right initial customers. Startups need to make absolutely sure that the initial role out of a product or
service line is successful. To accomplish this the company needs to find very friendly initial clients that are a good
fit. This means that Sony might be too big as an Alpha client / partner and make overwhelm your little startup.
Conversely, your initial clients cannot be insignificant players whose endorsement will be meaningless.

What's your view on ad exchanges? Are they key to Brilig's success?

Certainly. Ad exchanges represent the greatest innovators in the field, and we can offer them a white labeled
targeting solution.

I think ad exchanges, especially the big 4, are a vital part of the digital marketing supply chain. F500 CMOs
currently are faced with extreme fragmentation in the Internet Ad realm. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of
ways to get their message out. Within CPM, CPC, CPA/L and CPX there are approaches and technologies. The
big exchanges represent market attention consolidation that is natural in any hot, quickly evolving marketplace.

Brilig's mission is to serve as a data and analytics partner to whoever needs us. Initially we are launching a trial run
of our platform which will involve several dozen publishers, contributing sell side data and 3 or so behavioral
targeters who will be contributing buy side data. Both sides will analyze where the lift is coming from and when lift

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is found, the buyer can buy data from the seller. Therefore ad exchanges will be important to us because they are
important to targeters in general.

How does your platform address the creative "wild card," if you will? After all, if an ad unit doesn't have
the right messaging, it doesn't matter what segment is targeted.

We are a data company. If there is data about which creative performs better than we will enable our clients to
analyze it. We leave the actual creative optimization to the experts like Eyeblaster, who have already turned this
into an art form.

What's Brilig's target market?

Ad exchanges and ad networks.

On the sell-side we cater to web publishers, social networks and e-tailers and on the buy side we cater to targeters
(behavioral, contextual, retargeters) as well as ad buying platforms and exchanges.

What should we expect at launch from Brilig? Has a launch date been set?

Our data study / trial will run from October 2009 till March 2010 at which point we will begin charging a license fee
for the analytics platform privileges and will charge a flat fee for (sell==>buy) data transfer. We have a road map of
other features that goes out to 2012.

Do agency buying platforms represent a threat or opportunity to a company like Brilig?

This is an opportunity for Brilig. We can provide them a white-labeled targeting solution.

Buying platforms represent an opportunity simply because they need mounds of data and analyses in order
succeed. We hope to be a major supplier.

Follow Paul Cimino (@paulcimino) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 10, 2009 – 7:25 am

220
Comscore’s Josh Chasin Says Panel Important For
Accurate Measurement and Overcoming Cookie Deletion
Josh Chasin is Chief Research Officer of Comscore, a marketing
research company.

AdExchanger.com: Of the three silos of metrics - audience

measurement, campaign analysis tools and web analytics - in
your opinion, which one is the toughest to grasp for the end
client?

JC: One the one hand, I think the most vexing thing for the client is
that the three don't match. In network TV, for example, all metric
streams come from the Nielsen ratings-- there is no analog to web
analytic data (maybe Set Top Box data will get there) and ad
campaign data is run off the ratings data. So the advertiser raised on
TV is flustered by the fact of multiple metric streams.

On the other hand, there continues to be an issue with both ad server

and web analytic data, in that they talk about "Unique Visitors," but
unlike audience measurement they base these measures on cookies.
At this point, we all know empirically that cookies are not unique at
all, and they can dramatically overstate and thus misrepresent reach.
And this isn't just coming from the audience measurement side of the
divide anymore; web analytics guru Eric Peterson summarized the
issue nicely right here.

I would refer all prospective Internet advertisers interested in parsing the definitional differences and limitations of
the different ways to calculate Unique Visitors to the IAB Audience Reach Definition Guidelines.

How is Comscore quantifying the Long Tail?

We're all trained to think that the play online is in "the long tail"—Amazon’s business model is brilliant because they
have every book ever printed for sale. With respect to advertising, though, I’m not sure the long tail is where the
action is.

How long is the long tail? 50,000 sites? 100,000? A million? Well, at comScore, for the US in May 2009, we show
a total of 504 billion Page Views (across all sites, long tail included). Almost half (48%) were on the top-100
properties. 59% were on the top-thousand properties. I don’t have adspend data in front of me, but I’m certain the
advertising revenues are even more highly concentrated in the head than the Page Views.

That said, we’re able to go about 35,000 sites deep in the US right now, and we’ll thoroughly quantify the Long Tail
through Media Metrix 360, which involves hybrid measurement combining our 2 million person panel with site-
centric server data; the server data provides robustness when you get far enough down the tail that the panel
sample sizes become an issue. But right now, for buyers and sellers of online advertising, let’s not kid ourselves—
the money is disproportionately in the head and torso, not the tail.

As part of its new Comscore 360 offering, the new Comscore beacon combines with the huge 2 million
member Comscore panel to provide a supposedly better estimate on audience. Why is this better?

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For a good 12-15 years, the dialogue in online metrics was about site-centric versus panel-centric data. Each is
good at different things. Naturally the way the mind works, people began thinking, "What if we could combine the
best of both worlds?" (A friend calls this "you got chocolate in my peanut butter.")

Panels are great for measuring people; site-centric data are great for measuring machines, especially when those
machines are servers. Internet measurement is essentially about measuring the way people use machines.

Panel data are good at providing true unduplicated reach; shared traffic across entities (do my visitors also visit my
competitors?); demographic composition; and duration. Site-centric data provides a census of all server activity,
which, when properly filtered (eliminating out-of-country traffic, non-human traffic, ineligible events such as
redirects) provides an empirical count of the user-initiated activity occurring on the website. The integration of the
two essentially results in the allocation of the person data—in all its richness—across the census count of activity.

It is important to note that not everything that generates a server call or "Page View" in site-centric data
corresponds to an eligible Page View in audience measurement; the latter is by definition exclusive, because
advertisers want a rigorous accounting of the actual pages that users in the target actually were exposed to. So
hybrid and internal data won’t necessarily match. But they ought to move in concert together, and publishers,
advertisers and agencies will end up with a keen understanding of what drives the differences. Hybrid
measurement will remove a good bit of the uncertainty from online metrics, and that will prove to be good business
for everybody.

How do you differentiate Comscore 360 with a company like Quantcast that has had an installable
"beacon," if you will, for several years?

In all honesty, I don’t tend to see Quantcast in our competitive set. Their business model is entirely different from
ours, and is far more similar to those employed by ad exchange companies such as Platform A, Specific Media,
Blue Kai, or eXelate.

Saying that there is too much data seems like a cop out. Do you agree?

Well, I’d probably say that a complaint of too much data is really a plea for more insight.

Data is ubiquitous. But knowledge is elusive. It is important for those of us in the metrics space to remember that
ultimately we are trying to inform better business decisions. It isn’t how much data you have; it is how you facilitate
the deployment of that data in the service of those practical applications.

So I guess I’m saying I agree.

Are reach numbers becoming irrelevant in Comscore's monthly numbers related to ad networks? With
clever frequency capping, it's possible that Comscore reach numbers can appear more impressive than
they really are from a frequency perspective.

Well, one thing I’ve thought about is something that one might call "effective reach"—what is the ad network’s
reach among persons exposed, say, 3 times? (based on the old saw that effective reach is between 3 and 10
exposures.) That would go directly to the heart of the issue in question. Otherwise, though, it is a certitude of the
math of advertising that reach times frequency equals gross impressions, so it’s difficult to get around the fact that
lots of impressions with low frequencies will yield very high reaches.

What is important for advertisers to note, though, is that the reach of an ad network in total is a different thing from
the reach of a campaign delivered by that network. That’s why we also do campaign-specific post-buy analysis
work for many advertisers and agencies.

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I would also point out that frequency capping is plagued with cookie deletion problems. The capping is per cookie,
not per person. That’s another reason we see the importance of panels in being able to provide an accurate
measure of a campaign's actual reach and frequency.

Do ad exchanges present special challenges in data analysis?

Yes, naturally. Fortunately, there are solutions as well. Some ad exchanges are extremely proactive about
combining the ad platform with a data platform, and in building analytics around both.

At comScore, as we migrate to Media Metrix 360, we are incorporating not just beaconing, but also a tagging
protocol. This allows us to track delivery across websites by campaign, and to report on any aggregation of
inventory in the fashion in which it is sold. We do a lot of work with ad exchanges and ad networks, and some of
them are real power users of our offerings.

Are you seeing any good solutions for media buyers interested in better attribution models for their online
buys?

The industry is learning that it is important not to attribute the last exposure with full credit for the action (click,
conversion etc.) I think Atlas has done some nice work in this arena, as has comScore and others.

At comScore we've seen that, for example, the majority of the value of search is latent -occurring either in a
subsequent user session or offline entirely. We’ve measured that 16% of the lift in sales from search may be
observed within-session; another 21% occurs in a subsequent online session (making attribution tricky), and fully
63% occurs offline (trickier still .) We've used all sorts of tools to get at the true impact and effectiveness of
advertising, including tracking eCommerce, integrating our data with third party sales data, and doing ad
effectiveness research for times when the goal of the campaign is branding-oriented.

Indeed we have observed, and I personally continue to believe, that a significant portion of the value of online
advertising exists in branding, and wholly beyond the click. This suggests, I think, continued creativity around new
branding and advertising formats and platforms. But it also means that attribution modeling is more complex,
because different impressions and campaigns have different objectives and should be evaluated accordingly. If I
click on an ad for BMW, for example, how important is it that I’ve been exposed to brand building advertising for
BMW, across media, my entire life? Literally thousands of touch points might have been involved in bringing me to
that click.

What will real-time bidding's (RTB) and demand-side optimization's affect be on the analytics business?

I fear that the effect will be, good for analytics, bad for branding.

Broadly speaking, what are the measurement challenges that agencies are facing? How does this compare
with publishers?

We’re hearing a couple of things from agencies. One, of course, is about quantifying the impact of advertising—
effectiveness, results, ROI, branding versus direct response. There are so many new platforms for advertising—
mobile, social networking, place-based video—and each is fighting for a piece of an increasingly fragmented ad
dollar. So agencies need to be able to justify to the client the value of every dollar spent.

The second thing we're hearing is about cross-media; how does advertising work synergistically across platforms?
This is an area in which we’ll likely be doing a lot of work over the next several years. Clients are asking, for
example, how does the Internet fit in with my TV buy? How should I deploy online video? How do search and
display advertising work together?

While some traditional media are experiencing precipitous declines—notably newspaper and radio—the news of
TV's death has been greatly exaggerated. Many large agencies still spend—and make—the majority of their

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money in TV. So for publishers looking to break into new and under-developed categories, probably better to sell
digital as enhancing a TV campaign than replacing it.

Follow Josh Chasin (@jchasin), Comscore (@comscore) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 25, 2009 – 5:56 am

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DataLogix Positioning For Data-Rich, Cross-Channel
Future In Advertising Says Pres Roza
Eric Roza is President of DataLogix, an advertising data and technology company.

AdExchnanger.com: Can you discuss trends

you're seeing in the data marketplace?

ER: There's no question that data is hot all of a

sudden. But, candidly, the use of data to drive
online advertising effectiveness is still in its
infancy. To give you perspective - the entire
Behavioral Targeting market is barely more than
$1B in 2009. By contrast, there are a dozen
advertisers that EACH spend more than $1B on
traditional media in any given year. Online
media companies have begun to realize that to
tap into the big traditional media budgets, they
need to find the right audience, and there is no
better way to do this than through proven data
sources with which advertisers are comfortable.
The agencies get this, big time. Digital
advertising, whether it be search, email or
display, is still dominated by "bottom-of-funnel"
advertising and clickstream works well for this,
but it's not where the big dollars are. The kind of
data we are bringing in will enable advertisers to
move up funnel and use the web effectively for
branding, as they do today w/ traditional media.

Why is your recent announcement with

Nielsen's PRIZM segments important? Could this be another step toward brand ad dollars migrating
online?

You are right on - this is all about brand dollars, and moving online advertising up the funnel. The largest CPG
companies and publishers use PRIZM to drive billions of dollars in segmentation decisions, and have never before
been able to use this data online at the household level.

Can you give us a bit of an update on the recent past for DataLogix(tm)? You've undergone a re-branding
recently, for example.

NextAction(tm) recently brought in a new majority investor, General Catalyst (who back Kayak, BigFishGames and
JumpTap, among many others). As part of the investment, we rebranded the company to reflect a growth from our
roots in direct response to a broader focus on being the best company at bridging offline data into the online world.

DataLogix announced a significant funding in October. What will the new funds be used for?

We'll accelerate investing in the data, technology and analytics that help drive cross-channel marketing solutions.

Discuss how marketers merge online and offline data today. Are you hearing that it's difficult? What's
needed here, if anything?

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Most marketers remain silo'd to a greater or lesser extent - meaning that the sharing of information across online
and offline channels is sub-optimal at best and non-existent at worst. Our mission in life is to de-silo marketing.
Like any other multi-faceted problem, the solution is quite complex. Issues from organizational realignment through
technology, partnerships, and analytics need to be addressed. DataLogix is uniquely positioned to lead the charge
in what we call "De-Siloing", and ensure that marketers are thinking not just "multi-channel" (which implies different
channels acting autonomously and in ignorance to one another) but "cross-channel" (which implies that strategies
in each channel are pursued in complementary fashion). As an example we recently pioneered the "Cross-Channel
Campaign(tm)" which allows marketers to flight online display ads to the recipients of a direct mail campaign. We
went to market about a month ago, and it has been the most successful launch in our history.

Have you seen more traction with conversion sensitive buys or brand buyers who are looking to reach a
particular audience?

Interestingly, we've had considerable success with both. We have shown very significant lift in response for
hardcore performance networks like Turn, and by the same token have been able to help the great brand networks
like AudienceScience and Collective Media deliver really well-defined audiences and thus command higher CPMs.

What improvements can be made around using data in advertising, let alone online advertising?

Bringing Real-World(tm) data online to expand and improve online targeting. It has been eye-opening to see how
the silos manifest in different ecosystem participants, whether it be clients, agencies, or big data companies. When
we started working on this problem of bringing what we call "real-world data" to bear online, we would find that a
large CPG company's digital team didn't even know that their brand managers used PRIZM to drive segmentation,
they were so used to operating in a vacuum with a tiny % of the ad buy. De-Siloing has really become our mantra
around here.

How do you overcome PII concerns?

Deliver value to consumers, respect their right to opt out, and safeguard data like crazy. If there is a fair exchange
(information sharing in return for, say, free content and services, targeted discounts, etc) and I can choose not to
participate, why would I have a problem with you showing me ads that are more relevant to me? Most importantly,
our roots in offline give us a healthy respect for precedent. Direct Response Marketing is what has allowed the
post office to offer daily mail service at reasonable prices for so many
years. And there are clear rules around data usage, etc. In the same way, online targeting will allow all kinds of
advertising-based business models to flourish, permitting the free delivery of content and services to consumers.
We have retained the best counsel in the industry to help architect our solution, but beyond this, I use a simple rule
of thumb - if I can say "it's just like Direct Mail", then I know it will pass muster for marketers, agencies and
consumers, because this model has been around since Sears and Roebuck was the only game in town....

Other than the new Nielsen segments, where do your offline datasets primarily come from? Catalog
businesses, for example?
In addition to Nielsen, we currently offer Affiniti Demographics which are double-verified - this is actual data, not
inferred, across almost every US adult and household. We also offer Affiniti Frequent Buyer segments based on 8
billion retail transactions at the SKU-level. And we will soon announce very significant partnerships in and around
automotive data, grocery data, and panel-based segmentation. The Affiniti Data Platform(tm) makes all of this
feasible. One of the platform's most interesting features is what we call the "OnRamp", which lets marketers target
their own customer file online - until now, they couldn't even reach their own customers unless they had recently
visited their website. So the OnRamp allows a marketer to leverage their own offline data online, which is a really
big deal.

How does the DataLogix pricing model work?

We generally receive a percentage of media spend, with guaranteed minimums.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

November 16, 2009 – 6:45 am

226
Demdex CEO Nicolau Says Ad, Data Exchanges, And Data
Management Solution As Key To Mining Data
Randy Nicolau is CEO of Demdex, a behavioral data management company.

AdExchanger.com: What challenge is Demdex looking to solve in behavioral advertising data?

RN: Demdex gives its clients the speed and flexibility to understand and adapt to that rapidly changing "audience
data" marketplace. We help our clients better understand the value of the behavioral and demographic data that is
either purchased from third-parties or harvested directly from their website(s). We maximize the value of that data
by making it easy to understand and available for use in all their
online efforts rather than being tied to a specific platform or
technology. To achieve this we provide our clients with a variety of
tools and technologies that facilitate the efficient collection,
organization, segmentation, and analysis of their behavioral data.
Additionally, we integrate this data with all the platforms used by
our clients (like ad servers and buying platforms) so their
technology teams don’t have to deal with this, all the while
enforcing the rights of the data owners and the consumer.

What is a "behavioral bank" and "TraitWeight"? Can you

share some of the technologies tracked traits?

"Behavioral Bank" is the metaphor we use to describe a client’s

exclusive data repository. Each of our client’s data is safely stored
in their own data "vault" and each data point is wrapped in a "rights
management" solution that allows Demdex to enforce the rights of
the data owner when data is being moved to third party systems
like demand platforms and ad servers.

TraitWeight™ is our proprietary data scoring methodology that

determines the confidence (or significance) of each behavioral and
demographic signal we receive about a user. It is a statistical
methodology for removing all the "noise" and culling to the surface
the meaningful, reliable data because, let’s face it, everyone is
drowning in data and most can’t make heads or tails of it. We track
and score over 50 standard traits like gender, income, and "in-market" activity. Additionally, we create and score
the "custom" traits that are unique to each of our client’s business.

How are considerations for creative (banners) addressed with the data bank?

Demdex is NOT an ad server nor an optimization engine. We create the "fuel" (i.e. the marketing data) and we
make it available to our clients’ ad servers, optimization partners, demand platforms, etc.

How easy is the set-up? Is it a question of adding tags in campaign clickthrough URLs in the ad server?
How far does the integration go?

The Demdex solution is "iPod Simple" to set-up and use. We have developed all of the "apps" our clients need to
collect data from third-parties, harvest data from their own websites, organize their data, create custom segments,
and analyze the data they buy from third-parties. In terms of empowering our clients to use their data in third-party
systems, we currently integrate into all major ad serving technologies (e.g. Google’s Dart, AOL’s AdTech, OpenX,

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etc.), all the major demand platforms (e.g. Media Math, Invite Media, and Turn), and we are adding new
integrations weekly.

Regarding the Demdex business model, how much does the service cost?

We have two simple pricing options. The first is a per-user fee based on the number of records we manage (we
call this a "Monthly Active User" or MAU). This pricing model scales nicely for our clients since our costs are not
directly tied to the number of times the data is accessed. We see our publisher and ad network clients choosing
this option most frequently. The second pricing option is a CPM based upon ad deliveries. This pricing model is
fixed to the number of data-targeted impressions served by our clients. We see our ad agency clients more
commonly selecting this option as it is easier for them to pass the costs on to their advertisers.

How do (and will) ad exchanges impact your business?

Ad exchanges continue to have an incredibly positive impact on our business as do data exchanges like Blue Kai.
Advertisers and agencies are in the preliminary stages of learning how to "mine data" like we see in the offline
world. To do this efficiently, you need ad exchanges, data exchanges, and a data management solution. Demdex
is the data management solution that makes the entire equation operate most efficiently.

What do you think of social targeting? Does the "birds of a feather" mantra ring true with you - where
social "friends" tend to be like-minded consumers who exhibit the same buying habits?

When I look at my online social circle I see that we don’t use the same mobile phones. We don’t drive the same
cars, have the same credit scores, buy the same electronics, or even like the same sports teams. Now I realize this
is only a single data point and you can’t draw a trend from just one data point, so I’d have to say the jury is still out
on social targeting. I have no doubt there is "some" value to unlock, and if there is, Demdex is in the position to
help its clients do so.

Who do you see as key competitors to Demdex? And your target market?

For companies stuck in "Behavioral Data 1.0" there are solutions like Dart Boomerang and Audience Science that
offer some version of behavioral data management. However, for companies looking to capitalize on "Behavioral
Data 2.0" in which data is unlocked and can be ported to multiple platforms and destinations, Demdex has the
clear head start on all competitors. We think it’s only a matter of 3-6 months before this space begins to flood with
lookalike companies trying to reinvent themselves. By then, Demdex will have at least a two-year jump and will
have established itself as "the Akamai of behavioral data management" – i.e. the gold standard.

Does Demdex store campaign data such as attribution metrics and specific conversions, too? Or is it just
behavioral data?

Demdex only stores data as requested by our clients. We have the capabilities to store and score all data that can
be used for commercial purposes which includes campaign and conversion info, cart abandons, etc.

How has your experience at Azoogle prepared you for Demdex?

It was really more than the Azoogle experience that gave me this perspective on the behavioral data landscape.
First it was the 10+ years I spent as an offline data miner learning how to decipher the good, meaningful data from
the bad. Next, it was running a large online media company where I developed the understanding of publisher-
specific needs for accessing this valuable data. And finally Azoogle, which is an ad network that sits between
publishers and advertisers, gave me the perspective on the value of making data available in multiple channels
and across multiple platforms.

How are you addressing PII concerns? What are your views on how the industry should address privacy
concerns?

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From "day one" consumer privacy has been in the forefront of our thinking and product development. At the time
we launched the beta with our first client we also launched DoNotTarget.com. DoNotTarget is our consumer
privacy management platform. It is an easy to remember destination, like "Do Not Call" for telemarketing and "Do
Not Mail" for direct marketing. Any of our clients that wish to give their users the ability to opt-out of receiving
behaviorally targeted ads or content can direct users to this website (usually through a link in their privacy policy)
where users can easily opt-out. Since all the data that is collected and actioned by our clients flows through
Demdex we are in the position to enforce the privacy policies of our clients and the preferences of their users.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger.com) on Twitter.

December 1, 2009 – 6:21 am

229
Digital Element Finding Demand For Granular IP Targeting
Says Co-Founder Friedman
Email This Post

Rob Friedman is Co-founder and EVP of Digital Element.

AdExchanger.com: Can you layout the basic ways

your clients are using Digital Element's IP detection
services?

RF: Digital Element's customers use our IP Intelligence

solutions in a variety of ways such as improving response
and click-through rates through more accurate ad
geotargeting; reducing advertiser variance issues by using
an industry-standard technology; creating more impactful
interactions with site visitors through content localization;
creating communities—both online and off—by connecting
visitors with similar interests in similar geographic regions;
improving online marketing through audience geo-
segmentation; offering geo-based content distribution with
geographic rights management; and more.

In the online advertising space, the largest ad networks,

servers, exchanges, and portals such as DoubleClick,
ValueClick, The Rubicon Project, Microsoft Advertising,
Facebook, Yahoo, Blue Kai, AOL and many others use our
technology to deliver real-time, highly targeted and
optimized ad messaging. Armed with Digital Element's
industry-standard technology, ads can be geotargeted
down to a zip code or town level based solely on a visitor's
IP address. Furthermore, companies can target based on
other IP Intelligence data factors including company name, domain, connection type, home or business user, and
more. In a nutshell, Digital Element's IP intelligence targeting data allows for increased ad relevance, which
improves ROI and delivers more revenue for our ad customers.

What trends has Digital Element seen in 2009? Any areas of momentum for the business that you can
share?

The biggest trend we're seeing right now is the demand for more granular IP targeting data. When we first
introduced IP Intelligence to the advertising and marketing community in 1999, clients rarely requested anything
more than country-level targeting. As the years have gone by, advertisers and marketers have demanded
increasingly deeper targeting capabilities. Now, quite possibly due to the recent success of mobile targeting using
GPS and the rising sophistication of advertisers, our ad network customers are looking to target customers down
to the town or zip code level with the highest degree of accuracy in order to present a more hyperlocal and relevant
user experience.

To meet these client requests, we leveraged our 10 years of experience in IP targeting and developed NetAcuity
Edge™, our newest solution which greatly increases the granularity and precision of targeting based on a user's IP
address. By leveraging opt-in participants from our customer and partner base, we are able to deliver zip code-
level targeting data that is highly accurate to four or five digits— bypassing the traditional limitations associated
with targeting based on IP addresses.

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Another trend we have seen is the request for richer demographic data that will allow marketers and advertisers to
target based on an individual's propensity to buy. In a partnership with Equifax, Digital Element is leveraging its
NetAcuity Edge data along with Equifax's demographic data to link offline behavioral data with online data at a zip
level. The solution, called the Consumer Insight Engine, allows marketers to deliver highly targeted and more
personalized messages and offerings while maintaining user privacy.

What's your view on ad exchanges? How does Digital Element work with exchanges?

Ad exchanges are all about removing inefficiencies, and Digital Element's NetAcuity IP Intelligence data plays a
key role by delivering real-time information so that users can be presented with the most relevant information and
messaging. By improving message reach and relevance, users are more likely to engage with online content,
which leads to better monetization of site traffic. Also, IP Intelligence data allows ad exchanges to analyze online
audiences and impressions in real time, ensuring that each impression is efficiently targeted.

Could you clarify your corporate structure and discuss its synergies?

Digital Element is a business unit of Digital Envoy, part of the Landmark Interactive division of Landmark Media
Enterprises. Founded in 1999, Digital Envoy invented and introduced geotargeting to the market as a way to better
target online users while at the same time respecting user privacy. In 2005, Digital Envoy created two new
business units, Digital Element and Digital Resolve, to address the various needs of different market segments.
Digital Element is focused on Digital Envoy's legacy business of providing IP Intelligence data as a tool to increase
the reach and relevance of online content. Digital Resolve was created to supply online authentication solutions
built on Digital Envoy's IP Intelligence data, thus allowing companies to protect online users from fraud.

In 2007, Landmark purchased Digital Envoy and has been very supportive of the company's continued innovation.
This acquisition has given Digital Envoy and its operating units access to almost unlimited resources, allowing
each unit to focus on creating new value for clients. For Digital Element, this has allowed us to answer our clients'
demands for deeper data reach and granularity with the introduction of our new NetAcuity Edge technology.
Furthermore, being part of the Landmark family has helped us to uncover many data synergies through its
ownership of several media and emerging technology companies and allowed us to supercharge our business
development, sales and marketing efforts.

How is Digital Element's IP services important for social media targeting?

The key to unlocking the value of social media is to understand each member of the online community and to
deliver content and ads that resonant with them. By providing social networks with a means to target advertising
with precision, we aid in the overall monetization of this medium. Using Digital Element's IP technology, social
media companies can effectively deliver highly targeted ads and content without leveraging a user's personal
information. Because social networks can deliver highly concentrated audiences, the ability to provide potential
advertisers with precision targeting of users gives them the ability to increase revenue and offer more sophisticated
services to their members.

How does Digital Element make creative more effective?

One-size-fits-all creative is a thing of the past as users simply ignore advertising that is irrelevant to them as an
individual. Digital Element's technology is a key tool in allowing creative to be customized and delivered to specific
audiences. By incorporating more relevant creative, ads will deliver better performance and ROI. For example, if
you're in Atlanta, why would you want to see a deal on tickets to a Dallas Cowboys game at the Cowboys Stadium
in Arlington, Texas—even if they happen to be your favorite team? Now, if the offer was for a Cowboy's game
against the Falcons in Atlanta, you might actually click.

Any early results you can share regarding your partnership with Tumri?

Digital Element's IP Intelligence has been incorporated into Tumri's dynamic ad construction and optimization
capabilities to enable advertisers to deliver highly targeted display ads to online consumers. Through its proprietary

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technology platform, Tumri provides integrated brand and performance marketing tools that marry advanced
targeting capabilities with a dynamic, interactive presentation layer. This unique approach allows Tumri's
customers to seamlessly adjust marketing messages to consumers based on the behavioral, contextual and
location information gained through Tumri's ad delivery platform. For example, ads can automatically be deployed
with different headlines, products, pricing, images, etc., depending on who is viewing the ad online.

Tumri has found that, on average, the targeted ads served on the Tumri platform have performed 100 percent to
400 percent better than standard ads. Additionally, Tumri has created significant efficiencies for advertisers
because targeted variations of ads are generated dynamically versus each variation being created separately.

Who's your target client? Please describe your revenue model.

Truthfully, any company that is interested in improving how it targets online users is on our radar. This ranges from
mainstream and vertical ad networks and servers, publishers, social and behavioral networks to search engines,
online video advertisers, and emerging technology companies.

We pride ourselves in working with customers of all sizes, from small start-ups to the largest networks and portals
online. Our fees scale with the size of our customer deployments, based on overall site or network traffic as well as
the data elements that our customers license. Typically, our customers pay a flat, recurring monthly fee, with a
one-year commitment that is based on those factors.

From where do you pull your data sets?

All of our data is developed via our patented and proprietary methods. Our traditional NetAcuity data is derived
from our "spidering" technology that develops a rich map of Internet connectivity, determining where routers and
end-user equipment are located and distilling that down to a workable database for our customers. As there are
billions of active IP addresses on the Internet and new IP addresses are allocated, de-allocated and re-allocated
constantly, we stay on top of these changes 24x7 so that we can ensure our customers have the most accurate
and reliable data available. The expertise that we've gathered through our 10+ years of Internet analysis is
unsurpassed and allows us to provide our customers with the best data possible. Our data has been independently
verified to be more than 99.99 percent accurate at a country level and 95 percent accurate at a city level
worldwide.

Our NetAcuity Edge data takes our granularity one step further. It allows us to marry our infrastructure-based
targeting, which works from the "inside out," with user generated, "outside-in" targeting, supplied by our growing
Edge partner network. This enables Digital Element to augment its industry-leading IP Intelligence data with the
most granular IP targeting data on the market.

How can publishers benefit from Digital Element's services?

Publishers benefit from our services in a number of ways such as delivering highly targeted and relevant content to
users in real time, without requiring user interaction. Also, in a push to build brand recognition and loyalty, many
publishers are using our technology to connect users with similar interests and within close geographic proximity to
create online, local communities. By serving content that is relevant to users where they live, they feel a deeper
connection and loyalty to a publisher, resulting in increased frequency on a site and more opportunities for
recurring revenue generation.

Also of note, many publishers are realizing the value of their audiences and are bringing ad serving in house, thus
allowing them to monetize their own audiences without relying on third-party ad servers.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 20, 2009 – 10:07 am

232
Rev Share And Rental Pricing Models Bring Accountability
to eXelate Data Exchange Says CEO Zohar
Email This Post

Meir Zohar is CEO of data exchange, eXelate.

Ad Exchanger.com: Can you provide insight on recent momentum at

eXelate? Any observations due to the recent economic slump?

MZ: We're experiencing strong growth on both sides of the eXelate

Targeting eXchange – buyers (ad networks and agencies) and sellers
(publishers) of data. Since we're in a burgeoning segment of the market and
in the middle of a "hockey stick" growth trajectory, we're not as affected by
the economy as the bigger and more established players. Furthermore, we
provide exclusive ROI builders for both the ad networks and publishers who
participate in our Targeting eXchange, therefore, the down economy
actually provides more reasons to work with eXelate.

Generally speaking, who are your clients - such as any particular vertical silos? Any ad networks or
mostly agencies? And, where do you see the growth opportunities?

On the "buy side", we work with anyone looking to leverage audience data to increase advertising value. Ad
networks, agencies, ad optimization platforms – all of them are customers, including over 40 top ad networks. On
the "sell side" we empower leading publishers who deliver targeting data on nearly 120 million unique users in
vertical segments including Auto, Travel, Finance, Shopping and Demographics.

We see growth across the board – each side of the eXchange feeds the other. As publishers look for new ways to
build a business around their audience data, that feeds the demand and provides more opportunities for our buying
clients to enhance their campaign targeting.

Are you seeing brand awareness marketers buying from eXelate's data exchange whether directly or
through agencies? How could eXelate be of value to brands?

Yes, we're beginning to see more activity as a result of the buzz surrounding eXelate in 2009. Our value
proposition to brands is very straight forward - utilizing personally unidentifiable data to better target a brand's
prospective users in the most efficient and cost-effective manner in order to maximize ROI.

As the largest data exchange, we can offer an unmatched variety of data including demographic, user interest and
purchase intent across a range of vertical segments – 19 in all. This means that brands can virtually "create their
own targeting segment", based on multiple types of data – not just one indicator. This targeting capability better
matches the way that brand marketers target their campaigns – based on numerous variables that best identify an
audience.

How does eXelate differentiate itself with other data exchanges?

What differentiates eXelate's Targeting eXchange is the volume, diversity and quality of data, that we provide
buyers, and the control that we give publishers in delivering this data "to market" In terms of volume, with 120
million uniques, eXelate is the largest data exchange. Regarding diversity, eXelate offers a range of demographic
and interest-based segments, including Auto, Travel, Finance, Shopping, Business, Fashion and a broad range of
demographic segments. Through testing and validation by our Optimization Lab, and through our rigorous

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methodology, we're able to ensure the quality of our data.
For publishers, we provide a unique set of tools that allow them to not be just a blind "data donor" but an active
participant in our data marketplace. We give publishers the ability to manage, monitor and monetize their audience
data – basically to build a real data business. No one else is really looking out for the needs of the publishers like
eXelate is.

Can you provide examples of exactly what kinds of behavioral (or other) data are coming through the
eXelate exchange today?

We are capturing billions of deep granular data points – what we call qualified targeting events – on multiple
activity levels. We analyze the targeting events in our data lab and roll them into specific Targeting Segments
based on three high level categorizations. These categorizations include Demographic data derived from user site
registration information on top social nets (NOT inferred information), consumer Interest data gathered from
specific site activity on relevant vertical sites (such as parenting and auto enthusiast sites), and deep purchase
Intent data culled from relevant commerce activity on top transactional sites. We further segment and sub-segment
this data into relevant buckets that in many cases drill down to the product and keyword level.

What's your view on display ad exchanges? -A benefit to the advertiser and publisher?

I'm a big believer in display advertising exchanges because I'm a big believer in the power of display advertising
and in making the model as efficient as possible. The display ad market has received a bad rap for too long based
on performance comparisons vs. search that aren't relevant. How much branding can a text link do?

Under my leadership, my previous company, Oridian, was actually the first big ad network to bet on this model, as
we were the first major ad network that joined Right Media's exchange. And eXelate is actually the only data
exchange that is fully integrated with the Right Media system.

So media exchanges are in our DNA – we believe that they level the playing field for pubs and buyers, drive
greater advertising efficiency and provide an excellent venue for the integration of performance enhancing data.

What benefits will real-time bidding (RTB) on ad exchanges bring to data exchanges? Will eXelate data
"play" in this RTB space?

As in any other exchange, RTB is the right business model to bring maximum benefit to buyers and sellers on a
data exchange as well. eXelate already offers basic bidding on our eXchange, and as the data market matures
and becomes ready for RTB, we'll launch that processes to meet the market needs. In the meantime we feel that it
is important to provide data sellers as much transparency and control over the sale of their audience data as
possible. That is why we have tools like our eXchange management system – teXi for Publishers, which gives
publishers more control over pricing and revenue generation from their audience data.

Regarding clients connecting the dots to eXelate data and data exchanges, any feedback on how clients
manage attribution with your exchange's product? Can eXelate assist with measurement?

When it comes to behavioral data, the core value proposition is all about reaching a target audience at a more
efficient rate or optimizing campaign performance to drive ROI. Based on both our pricing model and our campaign
optimization tools we can make sure that a data buyer can directly attribute performance to our data and calculate
ROI.

On the pricing side, we have a two models – a revenue share model, in which we only get paid when our data is
used (and subsequently only get continually used if there is success) and a per pixel "rental model" which allows
buyers to maximize the potential leverage that the data can bring. Both are easily accountable on a per campaign
level and stress data value as part of the campaign performance.

Additionally we also offer a Campaign Insight program that can cost effectively empower buyers to test broad
segments of eXelate data, directly track its performance and incur minimal overhead. Basically if a targeting

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segment works they can see it in the Insight report and determine the amount of budget they want to commit. It is a
virtually risk free way of leveraging BT.

Any plans to expand to the auction of offline data in addition to online? Will data exchanges get "there"
someday?

Since offline data requires using PII, I don't see us moving into that direction before there is clear legal guidance
regarding acceptable use (if any) of PII. That said, there is so much more work to be done with online data that I
don't feel the desire to expand to offline data.

Where does the name "eXelate" come from?

Like many company names it is a hybrid of several words that denote our corporate drive to generate success for
our clients and ourselves. In this case, a combination of the terms "excel" and "escalate" -- with a capital "X" to
show that we really mean it (and to drive copywriters crazy!).

Follow eXelate (@eXelate) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

May 28, 2009 – 7:20 am

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Netezza GM Terrell Says Ad Exchange Model Is
Transformative Across Entire Industry
Email This Post

Brad Terrell is VP and General Manager of Digital Media at Netezza,

a data warehouse and analytic appliances company.

AdExchanger.com: What trends is Netezza seeing from its

digital media clients in 2009? Can you describe momentum for
Netezza this year? Revenues, deal size, vertical strengths,
product interests, etc.?

We see consumer attention continuing to fragment across new digital

channels – not just computers, but also devices like IPTV’s, smart
phones, and gaming platforms. These emerging digital channels are
creating an explosion of data and a need for analysis of that data –
both so that advertisers can measure the ROI on their advertising
campaign investments, and also because analysis of this data
enables direct response and predictive analysis techniques that
dramatically increase targeting precision, and therefore campaign lift
and ROI.

Netezza’s digital media clients are increasingly leveraging terabyte-

scale data analysis to create competitive advantage. And our clients
are focused on a broad variety of different problem domains: ad
targeting, content targeting, yield optimization, click fraud analysis,
website optimization, attribution analysis, search engine marketing,
and more. The unifying theme across all of these problem domains
is that the big data challenges that seemed nearly impossible to
solve just a few years ago are now easily within reach because of the
fundamental technology breakthrough that Netezza has introduced.

Netezza produced revenue of $45.4 million last quarter, which represents a 15% increase over the same period
last year. Our digital media customers include many of the most compelling brands in the world. Netezza is
publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, so additional information regarding our financial performance is
readily available online.

What type of ad targeting are you offering display advertisers? And how does ad targeting work with
Netezza: do you have a platform that accesses other exchange and networks?

Netezza powers sophisticated ad targeting systems for many of the world’s largest display advertisers. These
systems offer every type of targeting capability imaginable, but behavioral targeting is particularly popular with our
customers – both because Netezza makes analyzing the vast quantities of data involved so much simpler, and
also because Netezza’s performance enables near-real-time analysis of that data, which is critically important to
increasing targeting precision. But to be clear, Netezza’s offering is a data warehouse appliance. We’ve taken the
concept of a relational database and instantiated in hardware – taking what historically has been 3 independent
technology silos – database technology, server technology, and storage technology – and re-integrating them,
which opened up opportunities to innovate across that entire technology stack and deliver an incredibly compelling
value proposition – over 100 times the performance of a traditional data warehouse, at a fraction of the cost, with
unmatched simplicity of deployment and operation. Netezza provides a simple and high-performance solution for

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terabyte-scale data analysis that ultimately enables advertisers, agencies, and publishers to better deliver the right
message to the right person at the right time.

How does Netezza tackle attribution? Do you offer attribution across a range of your online, ad targeting
products (email, search, display, direct mail) simultaneously?

We recently published a case study (download here) on how one of our customers, GroupM’s Media Innovation
Group (which was formerly part of 24/7 Real Media) powers their attribution analysis solution with Netezza. In that
example, as in all the others, Netezza’s unique value proposition involves making it simple to analyze terabytes of
impression-level and user-level data with exceptionally high performance and low cost – regardless of the
attribution methodologies our customers implement.

With your yield optimization capabilities, how do you differentiate with companies like AdMeld, Rubicon
Project, Yieldex and PubMatic?

These types of firms provide services that help publishers maximize the value they get from selling their non-
premium inventory through ad networks. Netezza’s data warehouse appliance is a technology product that is the
foundation of a best-of-breed yield optimization solution – large publishers implement their own yield optimization
algorithms on top of the Netezza platform to maximize their revenue per ad (eCPM).

One of the "challenges" marketers identify is being overloaded with data and the consequent difficulty
related to decisioning. How does Netezza bring the data together for clients? And for what types of
clients are Netezza's services best-suited?

Unlike alternative approaches to terabyte-scale data analysis, Netezza does not assume that all relevant questions
can be fully anticipated for every given marketer. Instead of requiring a pre-calculated set of static reports or
analytics, Netezza’s performance enables marketers to ask any question of the data at the speed of thought. This
enables marketers to interactively explore the data in ways that ultimately lead to the insights that produce optimal
decisions. And importantly, Netezza’s performance in analyzing terabyte-scale data sets eliminates the need to
sample or aggregate the data (techniques often required by legacy approaches to terabyte-scale data analysis, but
which severely limit the flexibility and depth of insight available to marketers asking questions of the data).
Netezza’s open interfaces make it simple to bring together data from disparate data silos including Atlas, DART,
Omniture, CRM systems, and more.

Netezza’s data warehouse appliance is well-suited for any company that requires terabyte-scale data analysis. Ad
networks use Netezza systems for the data analysis involved in ad targeting, ad inventory forecasting and sales
analysis, ad attribution analysis, click fraud analysis, and more. Agencies leverage Netezza systems for audience
measurement and segmentation, multi-channel campaign analysis, direct response marketing campaigns, and
more. Publishers use Netezza systems for website optimization, content targeting, ad targeting, yield optimization,
search engine marketing, and more.

What is your view on ad exchanges? It would seem Netezza's could be positioned to create an exchange
given it's specialization with business critical assets?

Ad exchanges promise to correct fundamental inefficiencies in the ad network market, and I expect their influence
on the industry to increase over time. The ad exchange model transforms the industry’s competitive frontier –
moving it away from one in which reach and inventory quality are sufficient to create a competitive advantage, and
toward one in which a competitive advantage is created through terabyte-scale data analysis. That obviously plays
to Netezza’s strengths – you might think of us as an “arms dealer” to the ad exchanges.

Is RTB (real-time bidding) and demand-side optimization an important development? How will Netezza
respond to RTB in that its digital media tools revolve around ad targeting?

RTB is certainly an important development – it is part of an inevitable evolution in an industry that is placing
increased emphasis on leveraging technology to exploit market inefficiencies. I’m seeing a steady stream of

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innovations across the market that create value in no small part by reducing data latency, and RTB is a great
example of this. Netezza’s high-performance data analysis platform enables optimal real-time bidding decisions.
And while the types of analysis involved in RTB scenarios will vary across the participants on any given exchange,
ad targeting analysis is particularly relevant because the most targeted ad placement opportunities will typically
command the highest bids, and Netezza’s performance increases targeting precision.

Could Netezza get in the data exchange or data sales business? In other words, you have the capability to
store data - why not sell it? What models look attractive from your perspective?

Netezza will continue to focus on providing the media industry with the simplest and highest-performing approach
to terabyte-scale data analysis – at the lowest cost available. Our customers often derive competitive advantage
from the data that they control – Netezza will continue to focus on enabling those customers to maximize the value
of their data through the high-performance analysis we make possible.

I think the ad exchange model is a particularly compelling nexus of innovation for the industry – that is one of the
reasons I’m a fan of your content.

Follow Brad Terrell (@bradterrell), Netezza (@Netezza) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 7, 2009 – 6:58 am

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Quantcast CEO Feldman Says Advertisers Need To Use
Their Own Data In Order To Define Target Audiences

Email This Post

Konrad Feldman is CEO of Quantcast, an online advertising

solutions company.

AdExchanger.com: Overall, what industry-wide trends are

you seeing across your product lines in 2009?

KF: From our vantage point we are seeing tremendous energy by

brand advertisers and their publishing partners to unlock the value
of real-time audiences. At the end of the day, brand marketers
want to reach their customers and prospects at scale – with limited
waste. If publishers can deliver against that objective, they can
drive their own revenue yield, and expand their advertising base.
It's potentially a win-win for the marketplace, but it requires some
fundamental shifts in how we operate.

Digital media distribution creates opportunities and challenges:

consumption is increasingly fragmented and impression delivery is
allocated dynamically, but there is no market-wide solution to
deliver advertising against audiences in real time. The result has
been a brand-based online ad model grounded in total impression
– not audience – delivery. It's hard to know what actual audience
is bought/delivered when the yardstick for evaluation (historical
property-based audiences) is completely disconnected from the
delivery model (real-time impressions). Just because you "buy" a million impressions on a site with a historically
high male skew doesn't mean the impressions you have delivered in real-time are actually the men.

We're excited by the rate of adoption of the products we've launched in 2009. Quantcast Marketer helps agencies
and advertisers understand the distinctive characteristics of their best audiences and Quantcast Media Program
allows buyers and sellers to execute addressable media buys using these audience definitions as a consistent
yardstick for impression selection and delivery. These products just launched in Q2 and we're already seeing
significant active participation from leading players on both the buy and sell side of our industry.

In AdAge you said that your new Media Program "allows marketers to define their customers ... rather than
a media entity making that package or translation for them." I believe you're referring to behavioral ad
networks and publishers here. Can you elaborate on what is getting lost in the translation and how
Quantcast improves it?

Great question. There's actually a lot getting "lost in translation".

Think about it this way – to a certain extent, media planning, buying, and delivery has been like a game of
"telephone". Because the process is disconnected, there is significant degradation of value from start to finish.
Quantcast connects the process, and maintains as much value as possible for buyer and seller.

Marketers, for decades, have had large volumes of both proprietary and syndicated intelligence about their
consumers – sales, customer touch point, loyalty program data, etc. In a digital world that data set increases,
through customer interactions with advertising, paid search links and brand web site activity. Both offline and

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online, marketers and their agencies use this information to build deep insights and segmentation models about
their desired target audiences. But ultimately, when placing advertising, they've had to evaluate and buy media
based on generalized audience attributes – because that's the marketplace currency. Sure, there have been ways
to target based on behavior, or action - think coupons you receive in the supermarket checkout line based on
something you just purchased, or delivering an incentive based banner ad to someone who abandoned an online
shopping cart. Those are tactical solutions. From a strategic perspective – driving scale, and more importantly new
prospects – brand advertisers have used broad content or demographic descriptors like age and gender to
evaluate and buy audiences.

Online, the problem is more complex. While there are a host of offerings that enable more specific targeting
(millions of niche sites, BT as you suggest, or registration-based targeting) the problem becomes one of both
segment relevancy to the advertiser, and of consistency. What do we mean by segment relevancy? Well, there are
a vast number of segments brand advertisers might be interested in at any one time (driven by whatever marketing
objective is in play, for example share/shift goals drive a different targeting strategy than driving usage/frequency
by loyal customers). But it's not practical for the sell side to create and manage a vast number of audience
segments. So the marketplace has created – in a fairly ad hoc way – a variety of ways to target, none of which
deliver the exact needs of an advertiser at a particular time. From a consistency perspective – when you have
thousands of ad sellers each delivering mutually exclusive targeting offerings from a potpourri of arbitrary, content
genre definitions, self-reported demographic information and third party licensed data, you lose apples-to-apples
comparability from one seller to another. Who knows if Site A's "automotive" segment is of equal quality and
precision to Site B's, or whether Site C's auto racing content delivers the same type of enthusiasts as Site D's?
Even more importantly, the buyer is left to translate this hodgepodge of audiences back into a form that can be
compared against the desired audience segment they have spent so much time and money developing.

Our belief is that the model needs to be flipped. Advertisers need to be able to use their own data to build
customized audience definitions representing who they want to reach, and that "consumer profile" needs to be
actionable across the web at scale. This approach, solves two critical challenges that brand advertisers continue to
confront as they attempt to shift more of their dollars to digital media: 1) it allows marketer-driven consumer
segments to be uniquely defined, and 2) it allows them to be activated at scale, consistently.

What's your view on ad exchanges?

Ad exchanges create value by generating additional liquidity for display advertising inventory and reducing the
transaction costs associated with buying and selling this inventory. Ad exchanges also bring technical optimization
capabilities to market participants who previously were unable to access them in-house.

At Quantcast, we see ad exchanges as an important opportunity for Quantcast-enabled marketers to connect with
their custom audience segments. By allowing marketers to build actionable audience segments and then leverage
those audience segments across the ad exchanges, Quantcast brings consistency and accountability to media
buying and liberates advertisers from outdated, index-based, site-centric buying mechanisms.

It would appear that the opportunity to buy "lookalike" consumers - those being consumers that
successfully fulfilled a specific advertiser action - will drive huge interest. But how does it work? For
example, as target consumers are effectively identified by Quantcast on the exchange, the buyer will be
able to purchase impressions only for that type of look-alike consumer. How am I doing? Does the IO go
through you, the exchange?

Let's take a step back. First and foremost, a "lookalike" audience is not simply a group of people that have
successfully completed an advertiser action. The premise of our lookalike model is that insights from small (or
large) groups of people who take action through marketer-controlled content allows that advertiser to build an
aggregate understanding of their target audience, so they can extend reach against a broader, relevant audience.
For years, marketers have been able to "retarget" groups of people who take an action on their site – say the
20,000 people who download a coupon. This simply builds frequency against an already engaged group. What
they haven't been able to do is leverage the aggregate attributes – both what those people are, and are not – to
find much larger groups of similar people across the web.

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You mentioned the "exchanges" in your question, in terms of how lookalike models are activated across the web.
It's important to note that exchanges are only one of many inventory sources advertisers can leverage to deliver
Quantcast-enabled audience segments. Our service is built to accommodate whatever inventory sourcing model
an advertiser and/or publisher chooses to deploy. The opportunity for advertisers is not to simply source inventory
from exchanges, but rather to leverage a lookalike audience across the web. Any publisher, network, or exchange
that is participating in our service will be able to deliver an advertiser's lookalike audience.

In terms of how the process works – it's quite simple. A marketer "tags" their brand site/content (particular events,
product info, even ad campaigns and search activity). They use the insights from one, or any combination of these
events, to power the "lookalike" model, and an aggregate audience profile is developed. Quantcast then scores the
Web – we help the advertiser understand how many people with a similar set of attributes exist, and the volume of
their composition on particular sites. We then enable publishers to sell groups of impressions that have high
conformance to the lookalike profile to the advertiser. The advertiser can purchase their audience directly from
Quantcast, or they can choose to work directly with publishers if they have existing relationships. Ultimately, we will
work with ad buyers and sellers however they want – our goal is to provide solutions.

Will Quantcast Media Program be integrated into all the exchanges and when? Is this a time-consuming
process? Assume you are mapping Quantcast cookies to the exchange's cookies here. Given your scale,
this could be a huge task.

Quantcast's scale is actually a benefit in enabling our customers to act on their audience segments. Because of
our broad distribution we can offer a myriad of options for a marketer to gain access to their lookalike audience.
Quantcast-enabled marketers can leverage their custom audience segments across the ad exchanges today;
Quantcast works with RightMedia, the Google Exchange and ContextWeb. As the exchanges and our entire
ecosystem evolve, Quantcast will continue to create integration points for the marketplace with the goal of
increasing liquidity for Quantcast Marketers and Publishers.

A basic behavioral/demo question for you: In that user data is anonymized, how does Quantcast, or any
behavioral firm for that matter, truly know that a user is a woman, for example?

The answer to the question is that no targeting solution "knows for sure" that a specific person has a particular
attribute. Our approach is based not on targeting individuals, but rather, helping ad sellers and buyers transact
groups of people that have above average propensity to align to a certain set of characteristics. There will always
be some people in that group – for a whole host of reasons – who don't conform perfectly to the target, or at all.
Our goal is to minimize waste as much as possible and enable delivery of enriched audiences that perform for our
clients

The reason we're confident about our approach is because our programs have very broad participation. Over 10
million web destinations participate in our program, and collectively those organizations engage every US Internet
user many hundreds of times each month. This provides the visibility necessary to construct accurate fine-grained
models of virtually any audience.

If you were running a digital media buying agency, what changes or strategies would you put in place to
prepare for the future?

The first thing we should recognize is that future of most media is digital – the lessons we learn online today, will
apply to television tomorrow. Agencies, both digital and parent, must transition to a future built on insights,
attribution and performance. I don't mean performance in terms of just clicks, but rather true performance for the
marketer, whatever their goals might be. There is a vast amount of data that is now accessible by agencies – but
to make it valuable it must be made easy to use, and actionable.

Digital agency execs understand this – and many are focused on retooling their organizations with robust data
analytics and modeling capabilities.

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I wouldn't suppose for a moment that I'd be any good at running a digital buying agency, but I do think I'd focus my
organization on leveraging technology holistically to support the transactional elements of my business and focus
on doing what agencies do best – developing ways to differentiate their offering through unique application of data
and insights and creative solutions for my clients.

How will real-time bidding (RTB) and demand-side optimization affect Quantcast?

Real-time bidding will offer Quantcast's clients new opportunities to apply insights and select the right impressions
in real-time for their campaign.

In AdAge it was noted that Quantcast isn't ubiquitous. On the other hand, you say in your marketing
literature that you cover all 220 million U.S. uniques. Where's the drop-off? Perhaps the point is that you're
not seeing what users are doing all the time, so it's hard for you to create a complete
behavioral/demographic profile?

We don't see all users all the time, but through our publisher and marketer partners we are able to interpret the
media consumption of virtually all US Internet users when they interact with their content. We analyze a very broad
range of activity – over 6 billion consumption events every day – and this comprehensive anonymous view of
Internet media consumption enables us to model the web with a scale and precision that has never been achieved
before.

In terms of being ubiquitous, it's less than three years since we launched and we think we're on the right track.
Already more than half of the top online media companies (as ranked by ad revenue) have joined our service, and
the adoption rate among top marketers in the three months since Quantcast Marketer launched has been
phenomenal. So long as we continue to focus on delivering value to our customers we're confident that over time
the vast majority of ad-supported sites and networks will participate in our program.

Where does placement fit in your strategy? It seems like it's all about audience. Is it?

Our strategy is to provide the marketplace with a set of services that enable ad sellers and buyers to define and
control how they transact. While sponsorship and property-based ad models will continue to be highly effective for
many advertisers and publishers we believe these have to be complemented by addressable audience models that
allow marketers to define the types of consumers they want to reach, and deliver them at scale across the web. In
fact, we expect to see placement and audience value coexist as driving forces in the media buying and delivery
process, often used together (i.e., a marketer just wants to deliver men, in top tier professional sports content).

In its most basic form, placement has been the proxy the advertising industry has used to deliver audiences since
its birth. An advertiser bought a TV commercial in a particular show or page in a specific magazine, because its
audience tended to have a certain set of characteristics. There is waste in property-based models – not everyone
consuming a particular media property shares the same attributes. Even though sports content tends to attract
men at a higher than average rate than women, there are still women consuming sports content. Ultimately, what
an advertiser wants is the ability to minimize waste – and deliver the highest possible concentration of the
audience they care about. In the analog world, the reason advertisers buy properties and placements is because
it's their only choice - media is delivered on a one to many basis. That changes in a digital world, where every
media consumption event is served in real-time.

Follow Quantcast (@quantcast) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 28, 2009 – 6:50 am

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TARGUSinfo Sees Momentum In Creating Online Audience
Segments With Offline Data Says McLenaghan
Email This Post

Paul McLenaghan is VP of Interactive Markets for

TARGUSinfo.

AdExchanger.com: What insights can you provide on

current momentum at TARGUSinfo as it relates to your
online services?

PM: We are seeing a great deal of momentum around our

AdAdvisor solution, which we launched out of private beta in
February. AdAdvisor is a unique online targeting and
optimization platform that leverages our vast repositories of
verified offline data on every US household to build predictive
audience groups and demographics segments and bring
them to the online advertising industry in a privacy-friendly
way.

In our sixteen years in business we have demonstrated again

and again that rich, deep data is the lifeblood of successful
marketing and advertising businesses. So we are not
surprised that interest in AdAdvisor is coming from all facets
of the online advertising industry: agencies, ad networks and
exchanges, publishers, media buying platforms, data
exchanges, etc.

How does TARGUSinfo differentiate from the many other

data providers available in the digital marketing space?

AdAdvisor is a new predictive-targeting solution that stands apart from other data providers by leveraging the
industry’s largest repository of verified offline lifestyle and demographic information.

Our team of analytics experts has more than 25 years of experience in the offline direct marketing world. They
have architected a segmentation methodology to build predictive audience groups and demographic segments
which have wide-ranging application for our clients and partners both online and offline. The predictive nature of
our audience groups and demographics segments enables advertisers to quickly and easily find those anonymous
individuals that fit their target audience.

Unlike online behavioral targeting firms who see a limited number of data points for a given user and place them
into a very specific and time-sensitive in-market category, AdAdvisor understands that individuals have a large
number of interests at any given time.

We leverage millions of data points per segment, coming to us from hundreds of data partners, to build highly
predictive propensities across thousands of product, service, lifestyle and interest categories.

In other words, whenever one of our partners sees a user that we have placed into an anonymous audience group,
they have a very robust profile of what that person’s likely responsiveness is to advertising across a nearly limitless
array of categories.

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Lastly, we do not have to rely on inferred demographics derived from aggregate site profiles to describe an
audience. All of our data is verified because it is repeatedly cross-referenced within our repositories. This gives
our clients and partners much more confidence in the accuracy of our demographics data, because it enables
them to be far more accurate in their targeting, reporting or backend analytics.

Are ad exchanges important to TARGUSinfo's business model?

Exchanges are very important, not just to the AdAdvisor business model but to the entire online advertising
ecosystem. They provide publishers a simple way to maximize revenue on their inventory. Ad exchanges also
enable advertisers a way to get more reach than ever without having to negotiate multiple I/Os.

What is exciting for TARGUSinfo is layering in AdAdvisor as a targeting parameter on top of the exchange
inventory. This gives agencies and advertisers the ability to serve ads to their target audience, using our audience
groups and segments, no matter where they are on the Internet. They no longer have to worry about looking for
the best places to “find” their target audience or buy based on publisher site profiles or advertising network
“channels.” Instead, they can use our data to define the target audience for a campaign and input their parameters
into their bid profile, so that the exchange will serve their ad to their audience wherever it sees those users.

How do you overcome PII concerns in digital media?

We take privacy very seriously at TARGUSinfo. When we designed AdAdvisor, we incorporated guidance from
industry policy and legal experts to ensure that our practices not only met current privacy standards, but exceeded
them.

AdAdvisor is not a behavioral targeting solution. We do not track users or collect any click-stream data to build
audience groups or profiles. Our cookies contain anonymous non-PII which our partners and clients use to
improve their own targeting and optimization performance. Moreover, even though we do neither serve ads nor
track users, we provide users with an opt-out of the AdAdvisor service.

How can publishers benefit from TARGUSinfo products?

Publishers can benefit in a number of ways. First, we can give publishers a more accurate view into their audience
and thus a greater ability to “slice and dice” their audience to attract more advertisers.

In addition, for publishers who want to create more customized experiences for their visitors and increase the
effectiveness of the inventory that they have sold directly, we can provide them with greater insights into the
propensities and interests of each visitor, based on the segment or audience group they fall into.

When prospecting, where is the sweet spot for TARGUSinfo's online marketing customers?

Data is key to being successful in any marketing or advertising efforts. Ad networks are great clients for us
because we can help them put their best foot forward when responding to RFPs from their advertisers. Instead of
having to rely on inferred data and aggregate site profiles to determine if and how they can deliver the advertiser’s
network, they can with great confidence and accuracy ensure that the campaign is delivered to the right types of
people.

Agencies and advertisers are also very strong partners and clients for us. Agencies love being able to have us
define who their target audience is, and use those definitions to conduct a unified and consistent media buy across
multiple channels – publishers, networks, and exchanges.

Instead of putting out RFPs that say “we are targeting 40-somethings who like to travel internationally”, they can
simply say “show my ads to this set of AdAdvisor audience groups”. Since the networks already have licensed our
data, they and the agencies are now all speaking the same language.

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How does the TARGUSinfo pricing model work? And, how do you respond to concerns that data services
often cost more to deploy than the lift that they provide?

Unlike other information services companies who have offline businesses that focus on large database/batch files,
TARGUSinfo has always focused on the single transaction, delivered in real-time. We typically build all of our
solutions with a query-response revenue model built in, to take advantage of our real-time data delivery
capabilities.

I agree that some data services are difficult and costly to deploy. You see this primarily in traditional offline data
companies who do not really have the capability to deliver data in real-time, and do so at a large scale.

Since TARGUSinfo has always been in the business of delivering data in real-time, with query counts that measure
in the billions, deployment of our data solutions is actually quite easy.

As far as lift goes, we have been providing data to improve marketing, customer acquisition and customer retention
both online and offline for sixteen years. Our reputation as a company with a commitment to delivering the highest
quality data is well deserved and I believe our base of almost 1000 clients is a testament to that.

What are the factors involved that will finally bring brand awareness dollars and begin to match the time
spent by the consumer on the web?

As an industry, we are seeing a fundamental shift towards data and audience.

Agencies and advertisers, in conjunction with data providers and technology providers, have a greater ability than
ever before to feel confident their ads are reaching the right people.

Rather than blindly buying media and hoping for the best, agencies and advertisers can now buy “audiences,” and
more to the point, they can buy their desired audience. That is what will bring the brand advertisers online,
because until now there has not been a truly efficient way to measure brand advertising effectiveness and if a
branded campaign did actually reach the desired audience and make an impact.

Follow Paul McLenaghan (@PaulMcLenaghan), TARGUSinfo (@TARGUSinfo) and AdExchanger.com

(@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 9, 2009 – 7:25 am

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Vizu Focused On Brand Lift Instead Of CTR For Ad
Campaigns Says CEO Beltramo
Email This Post

Dan Beltramo is CEO of Vizu, an online advertising effectiveness research company.

http://www.vizu.comHow did Vizu begin? And where did

the name come from?

Vizu began with the vision that market research could be made
more widely available and useful by using the internet to make it
much faster, easier, and less expensive to conduct. While
pursuing that broader vision, we encountered numerous online
publishers who were having difficulty selling brand advertising on
their sites.

Given my background in CPG marketing, it became clear to me

that one of the primary reasons brand advertisers were not
advertising online in volumes commensurate with online media
consumption is that there was not a reliable, relevant everyday
measurement system in place for brand advertisers. Given the
dire need expressed by online publishers and the corroborating
feedback that we received from media buying agencies and
brand advertisers who were equally frustrated by the tyranny of
the click-through-rate, we chose to focus exclusively on delivering
a reliable online brand advertising metrics system based on
measuring the brand lift associated with ad campaigns instead of
the CTRs.

The name Vizu was a riff on the word visibility which is what we
provide to brand marketers and their partners.

What is the sweet spot for Vizu in terms of client type? Is it difficult selling to traditional brands due to an
unfamiliarity or lack of comfort with online marketing tactics?

Our "sweet spot" includes any company that is trying to maximize the value they derive from online brand
advertising. For Publishers and Ad Networks, we help them grow sales - by incorporating brand lift feedback into
their offering, they are able to close more deals, bigger deals, higher quality deals, and even break into entirely
new ad categories. For agencies and brands, we help them measure and improve the effectiveness of their online
advertising by analyzing the performance of their campaigns across their entire buy, maximizing their return on
investment.

With regards to the discomfort traditional brands feel with online brand advertising, a lot of that comes from the
lack of a meaningful metric to measure the effectiveness of their spend. Brand managers, agencies, and
publishers know click-through-rates are meaningless measures of brand campaigns, and if they're measured
against such are likely to be seen as failing. By providing an alternative to the click through rate - measuring brand
lift - we actually relieve a lot of this discomfort for them. Sometimes they even thank us for talking their language.

When will the much discussed brand awareness dollars finally come online?

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Brand ad dollars will come online when brand marketers are comfortable that 1) the audience they are trying to
reach (or at least a material portion of such) is online, 2) the online medium is an effective means of influencing
that audience, and 3) they have an effective, relevant means of tracking return on investment against this medium,
just like they do in other mediums such as TV, radio, and print.

The first issue is resolving itself, and that shift is only accelerating. Vizu is addressing the second and third issues.
When all three of these dynamics are in line, you will see dollars being allocated across mediums based on
performance, not along lines such as "traditional" vs "new" media.

Do you ever work with creative agencies in helping them fine tune their creative? Or are your clients just in
media? It would seem that the brand data might be very valuable to the creative team.

We are increasingly working with creative agencies. One of the key aspects of our solution is allowing our clients to
dissect the overall brand lift metric, analyzing the extent to which particular sites, frequency of exposure, creative,
and message contributed to or detracted from the overall result. The feedback on creative and message
performance is extremely valuable to the creative team. It allows them to shift impressions from low-performing to
high performing creative and/or messages during the campaign, using the real time data that is available in our
solution, and therefore optimizing the end result. In some cases, it even enables them to make a data based
decision to produce more creative that conveys a particular message

I am particularly excited by the fact that we are starting to see creative agencies use our real time, in market data
capabilities to influence offline creative development. Pretty soon online advertising is going to be the dog not the
tail.

Can you discuss how the Ad Catalyst system allows clients to close larger advertiser deals?

There are a lot of ways Ad Catalyst helps online publishers close larger deals. Offering brand lift measurement as
a value-add to a media buy to optimize campaign results and therefore prove our customer's site is an effective
medium for a particular advertiser to reach and influence their target audience is very common. Leading online
properties also make brand lift measurement a standard part of their product offering in order to position their
whole company as a committed brand building organization as opposed to just another source of cheap inventory.
Perhaps the most important aspect, though, is somewhat more subtle - Ad Catalyst allows our customers to take a
consultative approach with their prospects, positioning themselves as trusted advisors and partners willing to work
with their customer to maximize the return on their buy.

Our digital media agency partners, on the other hand, will often use Vizu's Ad Catalyst data to credibly suggest
different media mix allocation for their clients often leading to bigger digital media spending.

What is your view on ad exchanges? Any impact on Vizu's business?

Ad exchanges are good for Vizu's brand ad metrics business in two ways. First, they put more pressure on
premium publishers to justify the value of their inventory and special programs. Secondly, brand campaigns run on
ad exchanges require a relevant metrics system just like any other campaign - perhaps even to a greater degree
because of concerns about inventory quality.

Are clients ready to move beyond clicks? Still seems like a client addiction from here.

Our clients, in selecting to work with us, have demonstrated they understand that click-through is not a relevant
metric for online brand advertising. In our experience, most brand managers, agencies, and publishers we speak
with realize this also - they just haven't had an alternative in the past. Vizu is providing that alternative and,
consequently, adoption is escalating rapidly.

Can you discuss other trends you're seeing from your clients today?

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A lot of clients are interested in experimenting with social media and the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of social
media is a very hot topic at the moment. In providing a means to measure that, we're increasing the comfort
advertisers have in engaging with the medium. Some of the most interesting work we have done is in the social
media realm, such as measuring the branding effectiveness of virtual goods, branded games on Facebook, and
even time based exposure on a social media oriented network.

Another blockbuster trend is the interest in online video advertising. For brand advertisers, it is a relatively small
leap from TV to online video ads. Consequently, we are seeing a lot of interest in our in-player measurement
technology.

How does your revenue model work? Based on campaign budgets, per seat, another?

We charge on a per campaign basis. When Publishers first begin working with us, they will often by a package of 6
or 12 campaigns, as this makes it much easier to effectively build case studies and truly integrate our offering into
their general sales process. Given the nature of the agency model, when they begin working with us, they often
purchase on a per campaign basis, as their media budget is allocated in that manner. In either case, as our
customers work with us over time and become more comfortable with the value they can derive from our solution,
they shift more toward subscription-like models, which lets them more deeply integrate our offering into their own.

In your estimation, what improvements can be made around using data in online advertising?

Brands and their agencies are drowning in data - they don't have time to slice and dice reports and spreadsheets
full of ancillary information that dances around their primary objective - determining whether or not they have
achieved an appropriate return on investment for their advertising spend. What they really need is answers,
bubbled up via metrics that can be used to take actions that produce measurable top-line or bottom line results.
And that is what Vizu is providing.

Additionally, with respect to brand advertising, the online media industry needs to stop lazily reporting CTR's as a
measure. Doing so is intellectually dishonest. On a related note, the digital media community needs to stop
creating new measures of convenience that are confusing and hard to understand. Instead it needs to start
speaking in terms, such as brand lift, which are familiar to advertisers. For their part, online brand advertisers
should stop accepting CTRs as a relevant form of data or stop working with those entities that refuse to up their
game beyond CTRs.

Another key to success is consistency of measurement. With consistency of measurement come norms, best
practices, and even enhanced intuition. Too often advertisers blow their annual insights budget on one big study
that produces a complicated report so far after the fact that people lose their sense of context and interest.

Follow Vizu (@vizu) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

November 30, 2009 – 6:24 am

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Digital TV, Video and Radio

blip.tv Co-Founder Kaplan Says Web Video Offering

Opportunity To Brand And Direct Response Marketers
Email This Post

Dina Kaplan is co-founder of blip.tv, an online video broadcasting company.

AdExchanger.com: What does the future of online video content look like in your estimation?

I think we'll see a proliferation of three types of content online. First, we'll continue to have network shows
available on the Web and also original Web
content produced by the networks. I'd put that in
the "professional content" category that sits at the
top of the content pyramid.

Second, we'll have far more original Web shows

of increasing quality and covering an ever-
expanding diversity of topics. This goes in the
middle of the content pyramid and is the content
blip.tv hosts and distributes, so this is the market
we focus on.

Third, you have friends and family videos and

one-off viral videos that you'd typically watch on
YouTube. This content sits at the bottom of the
pyramid but may be seen by millions of people if it's particularly funny or interesting.

I think we’ll see an increasing blurring of lines between "professional" content and independent Web shows,
especially as more talent from traditional media dabbles with Web originals. Eventually I could see us each having
something like a content toolbar, and during the day we'd feed different types of content into it - some Web shows,
some network programs and some videos from friends and family. We would then have the ability to send that
content to a TV screen at home, to a computer or to a mobile device. So you’ll be choosing what you watch, when
you watch it, and exactly how you will consume that media.

Do aggregators pose a threat or an opportunity to content creators?

Aggregators are a great opportunity for content creators. A traffic hose, of course, is important to someone looking
to build a brand and an audience. You can market the heck out of your show and the show's destination site and
gain a lot of success that way. But you will be at a huge advantage if your show is also on the home page of MSN
or another portal that natural drives large amounts of traffic.

I also think there will be a variety of successful loose aggregators of content on the Web. The Huffington Post is a
good example of that. It has a looser relationship with its bloggers than the New York Times has with its writers,
but the HuffPo is extremely valuable to its writers in that it's a great tool for marketing the content and building an
audience for it. Blip.tv can be seen as an aggregator in that context, too. We don't own the content on our site, but

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we have a relationship with our content creators, and they can use us to distribute, market and help to monetize
content, too.

Given fragmentation of the online audience, it would appear that blip.tv is trying to leverage and aggregate
the Long Tail of original video content. Fair characterization?

Blip.tv wants to host the best shows of the Web, and many of them fit your Long Tail characterization. We have a
show called Beet.TV that covers the business of Web video and would only be interesting, I suspect, to people
who work in that industry. We have a show called Old Jews Telling Jokes that is, well, pretty much that. But we
also have shows about Pilates and fashion and sports that would be more of what we would consider “torso”
content, if you want to extend a somewhat unfortunate metaphor. And we have shows from Michael Eisner’s
Tornante studio in L.A. that have mass appeal. So there’s something for everyone, including straight news
programs and scripted sit-coms and dramas that would appeal to vast swaths of the public.

How does Blip.tv monetize its video content today?

We have, broadly speaking, two buckets of content: shows we sell directly, and shows we use networks to
monetize. In both cases we do a 50/50 revenue share with the show creator. Our content and sales teams
determine whether we sell a show directly or not, and they review each show once it reaches a certain size. We
organize shows based on the age appropriateness of the content using the TV ratings system (i.e. TV-Y, TV-G,
TV-MA), the quality of the show (we assign a number between 1 and 4) and the content itself (i.e. "How To",
"Comedy"). We use advertising networks to monetize shows that aren't appropriate for major brands.

When we work with marketers we generally start by trying to understand their target audience and campaign
goals. For example, an advertiser may want to reach female viewers who are interested in golf and convince them
to buy a new pair of shoes. We'll create a "pyramid" of content that reaches the target audience. At the top of the
pyramid you'll find shows that seem almost like they're custom made for the campaign (even though they usually
are not).

I can give you a real world example: Puma had a new women's golf shoe. We put a show called "Golf Girl TV" at
the top of the pyramid. We did brand integration into the show so the host actually wore the shoes and did an
episode about how to move your feet when taking a swing, and then we ran media across a wider array of shows
that were lower on the pyramid. This technique allows the advertiser to make crucial emotional connections and
execute an efficient media plan with reach and scale against the target.

Many advertisers don't have such a specific target audience. In those cases we can sell a collection of shows that
reach the target audience at very high comps, perhaps 75% or even 85%. Still other advertisers may just want to
run media across our entire network to reach as many people as possible. We price campaigns based on a
number of criteria, including the creative used (which ranges from host reads and integration to simple pre-roll or
post-roll), timing and how targeted the campaign is.

We have a significant advantage in that the shows on blip.tv are themselves targeted at very specific audiences.
This allows us to create collections of shows that are much more efficient from a marketing perspective than a
show that's designed to maximize the potential audience and revenue of one hour of prime time television. We
then close the loop by relentlessly focusing on optimization and campaign ROI during the advertiser’s flight. We
can execute mid-campaign tweaks (changing the order certain ads and/or videos are served, ramping up on well
performing creative units, or diving deeper with a specific segment of the target that is delivering increased ROI to
ensure our partners maximize their dollars.

And how will Blip.tv monetize in the future - what if a "hit" show were to develop such as, let's say, "The
Susan Boyle Variety Show"? Syndication, for example?

The Susan Boyle Variety Show – I love it! We should bring in iTunes/Apple to sponsor that. Our monetization
strategy scales in a very nice way. If we have a mass show, you can still run media on it, and benefit from the

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additional views, or you can do brand integration into the show, such as having Susan hold a Dr. Pepper
throughout the show (although we may want to be more subtle than that).

The beautiful thing about what we’re doing is that we’re not forcing brands to bet on hits. We have shows on
blip.tv that have been with us for years, and we’re happy to guarantee traffic for existing shows and can send over
graphs detailing a show’s viewership trend month by month – or, if the advertiser wants, minute by minute.

Also, we benefit from having engaged audiences. Unlike network shows that could be playing back to back while
you’re washing dishes or reading the paper, people watching blip.tv shows have clearly chosen to watch these
specific shows. They’ve clicked on the episode and made a clear, active decision to watch the show at that time.

In terms of licensing content, or selling the foreign rights to a show, that’s something we may look at doing in the
future but aren’t doing right now.

Are you aiming Blip.tv toward a convergent future with traditional television?

We believe that very soon most people in the United States will be able to watch Web shows on their televisions
just like they watch "television" shows. This is a big priority for us. We're planting a stake in the ground. We've
started by making blip.tv shows available on Sony Bravia televisions, TiVo, Verizon FiOS Video On Demand,
Apple TV, Boxee and a number of smaller cable operators around the country. We'll be launching on Roku this
fall.

The living room is a battleground for everyone from Sony to Apple to Microsoft to Comcast. We don't want to pick
sides, and we wouldn't know who to pick even if we wanted to. Our strategy is to work with everyone. And the end
game is probably going to be somewhat complicated: some people will use their cable boxes to watch Web shows,
some people will use Rokus, some people will use their Internet-connected TVs and others will use their XBOX.
We want blip.tv shows to be available on all of these platforms. You should be able to seamlessly flip between
Lost and Anyone But Me with your remote control.

Do you think brand advertisers are more willing to advertise in web video content as opposed to text
content in that it is has an intuitive link to TV and traditional media?

The Web has been seen as good for direct response advertising for a very long time. Television and print have
traditionally been seen as superior from a branding standpoint. We believe that Web video offers the best of both
worlds. It's inherently measurable because it's digital and it's as emotionally powerful, and can even be more
powerful, than television and print advertising.

The challenge is that Web video is still new. Agencies have long-established budgets for print and television
(although, admittedly, these are shrinking), for search and for Web display ads. Many agencies and brands still
don't have dedicated online video budgets. This is changing, and big brands, including the CPG companies, the
auto companies and some communications companies, are leading the way.

The reality is that nothing can beat the emotional impact of a video advertisement, whether it's on television or on
the Internet. Web video also offers a clear benefit over television -- it's interactive. On the Web you can click on a
product in a commercial and buy it instantly. On the Web you can watch an auto ad and be customizing your new
Ford Mustang with a single click. Pick the trim! Be connected to a dealer! That's powerful stuff.

How important is analytics and understanding a site or video's audience to video advertisers? Or is it
more important to do a brand match with content which presumably their audience follows?

Analytics and audience data are crucial. But so is environment. Audience data is improving dramatically, thanks
to some significant moves from companies like Quantcast and ComScore. Meanwhile, shows themselves give us
important clues about their audiences' demographic and psychographic composition. It's pretty clear the show
Momversation appeals primarily to moms, while DadLabs appeals primarily to dads.

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We believe that demographic matches are incredibly important. No one's going to argue with that. But we also
believe that environment and context is crucially important. A mom is going to be more receptive to an ad for
diapers while watching Momversation than while watching House. It's the mode they're in. The extremely targeted
nature of our shows allows us to put together packages that combine the right demographics, psychographics and
context for advertisers.

The analytics we can provide in Web video are also pretty exceptional. We have a partnership with TubeMogul
that allows us to show advertisers the audience's attention on literally a second-by-second basis. With Golf Girl
TV, for example, we were able to show Puma that viewers rewound over and over again to see exactly how to
position their feet while they took a swing. They saw the Puma shoes every time. We're also able to offer CTR (a
metric which is great for many campaigns, but not always applicable to branding campaigns) and brand lift data to
our advertisers. We can ask viewers literally any question and get statistically valid results back. These metrics,
together, are infinitely superior to the one sledgehammer that TV offers: the GRP.

Are you satisfied with analytics available for video advertisers? What improvements can be made?

There have been huge improvements on the metrics side of Web video, and we’re thrilled about all of the metrics
companies like TubeMogul can offer, such as the engagement graphs for individual videos. We can also track
what days of the week a show spikes, what hours of the day, and all sorts of additional granular information that’s
valuable to us, to advertisers and to show creators who are thinking about when is best to release new episodes.

We also run brand lift surveys with many of our ad campaign, so we can measure things like brand recall, brand lift
and purchase intent. Dimestore Media, Vizu, Insight Express and Dynamic Logic all have products you can use to
run these surveys for Web video campaigns.

I think we’ll see further improvements on the demographics side so we can learn more about the audiences of Web
shows, and then we’ll have an even bigger advantage, in terms of metrics, over television.

The one area where we still need improvement is in audience and viewership measurement standards, particularly
in syndicated environments. ComScore and Quantcast are both making strides, but more work is needed. There
is no clear definition of what a "video view" is, and there's not yet a clear leader in syndicated audience and view
measurement. This can make it tough for advertisers to compare different potential partners on an apples-to-
apples basis. Some sites, for example, count advertising impressions as "views" -- often doubling the perceived
volume of videos they’re serving up. We don't do that, but we also don't want to be penalized in the market for
doing what we see as the right thing.

What under-the-radar video advertising method(s), technology or companies impress you, if any?

FreeWheel is amazing. We just integrated them on blip.tv so they can traffic ads on blip.tv content wherever that
content is watched, including on a show’s destination site and on YouTube as well. Having companies like that
which can operate cross-platform is fantastic. It helps us achieve our goal of letting shows reach their total
potential audience by syndicating them, and the ads running on the content, across the Web and to the TV set.

TubeMogul is doing a great job on the stats and analytics side.

In terms of advertising creative, we're finding right now that five to ten second pre-rolls that say, "This episode is
brought to you by Geritol," followed by an overlay that offers basic brand or product benefits and giving the viewer
an opportunity to engage further are extremely successful. MTV did some research on this recently that backed up
the data we’re seeing on our network. Over the next few years I think we'll see some really creative ad units
emerge that drive actual purchases, at scale, by facilitating purchasing directly from the ad. Side by side with that
trend is that I believe in the next 5-10 years many more people will buy many more products online, so facilitating
those transactions can be very powerful. Why talk about purchase intent when you can drive actual purchasing?

Follow blip.tv (@bliptv) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

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September 2, 2009 – 7:42 am

253
Addressable Media Only Just Beginning Says FreeWheel
Co-CEO Knopper
Email This Post

Doug Knopper is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of FreeWheel, an

online video advertising technology company.

AdExchanger.com: What are some of the key learnings that

you're bringing forward from your experience as
DoubleClick's GM?

DK: There are two key parallels that come through. One is the
critical importance of building a strong team, which has been one
of our key areas of focus. A second one is the parallel to the
market cycle of 2001. Back then, the growth rate of the online
display advertising market was early and uncertain, similar in
many ways to the online video advertising market of today.
Inevitably, the market comes back and we need to be ready for
that. This is the time to innovate.

In your opinion, where does addressable media today

compare to its potential?

It's clearly the top of the first inning for addressable media. When
you stop to consider that the bulk of display ads are still being
served by legacy ad management software and systems that
were initially installed years ago, or that semantic or story-based
targeting is just getting under way online for text, you begin to
realize just how little innovation there has been in the past
decade.

How does Freewheel differentiate from other video ad

inventory management platforms?

FreeWheel's key differentiators have less to do with any implied competition and more to do with solving problems
that nobody has ever even tried to address before, like managing sales rights, forecasting video inventory, make
non-binary ad-call decisions, and being able to allocate revenue shares in a distributed world. No other ad
management system that we're aware of is capable of doing any of these, let alone all of these, in a distributed,
syndicated ecosystem.

Regarding your recently announced deal with Google/YouTube, why is Freewheel a good fit for YouTube?

The benefits to FreeWheel's and YouTube's customers are clear and many. Content owners want to be able to
better manage their content on YouTube, and YouTube wants to attract more content owners, and both want to
make more money. From our vantage point, the YouTube deal is the poster child for how the entire digital video
ecosystem will work, and who will drive it - the owners of the premium content that deserves the widest audience.

Do you make a distinction in Freewheel's services between online video (such as streaming that we might
see on any of the major news sites) and digital TV? Do you serve both, in other words?

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I think that the chief difference between the two idioms in your question have no reflection on FreeWheel's
business or technology, but that they reflect an entire different set of rules. FreeWheel technology can manage
both of these environments for the content owners, and adapt to any business terms, or rights ownership matters
that are conveyed.

What's your view on ad exchanges - are video ads going to be a good fit for this model someday?

Premium video content will probably never be sold on an exchange. Think of the Super Bowl or other premium
programming. It always sells out, and demand generally exceeds supply. That is where brand advertising resides.
FreeWheel's focus is on the premium video market, and we don't see much role for exchanges in that market any
time soon. Of course, as you work your way down through torso content and through the long tail, where there is
more performance advertising and less brand advertising, then exchanges very well could play a role.

Please provide a hypothetical on how Freewheel.tv's technology works. And then, where does Freewheel
make money?

When a viewer watches a video at a distributor's site, FreeWheel technology makes a series of real-time and
interdependent decisions based on the rules and restrictions entered into our system. First: Who has the right to
sell ads in this content? Second: What are the optimal ads to show in this content, taking into account all available
ad opportunities and formats? And third: What is the revenue share and accounting for the ads that were shown?
The combination of these decisions, and the associated activity around inventory forecasting and management,
largely comprise the FreeWheel technology. We generate revenue on a revenue share based on CPM.

Can advertisers bring their own data to target? What targeting do you offer the advertiser?

We offer some of the most sophisticated targeting in the business. But, our technology is very flexible, so
advertisers can utilize their own data

What's your view on standardization efforts such as those led by "The Pool" and the IAB?

It is clear that we're at an early stage in the industry and we support efforts toward standardization. Randall
Rothenberg seems determined to make the IAB a more activist organization, and if you understand the crucial role
that FreeWheel technology plays in the digital video ecosystem, you begin to understand how what we do
promotes these standards and best practices.

If you were running a large media property today with a significant video library and/or online video
programming strategy, how would you be preparing for the future?

I would do all I could to enable broader distribution and the widest possible syndication of my content possible
while controlling the monetization rights to that content, predicting inventory yield and optimizing that yield in a
distributed ecosystem. In other words, I would work with FreeWheel.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 12, 2009 – 8:28 am

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Simulmedia Bringing Online’s Technology-Driven
Optimization To Television Says CEO Dave Morgan
Email This Post

Dave Morgan is CEO of Simulmedia, a television marketing company that optimizes the effectiveness of “on-air”
program promotion.

AdExchanger.com: Have you tired

of the online ad business, where
you've already had success
(Tacoda, Real Media)? Confess -
don't you miss banner ads? What
prompted you to start Simulmedia?

DM: I am not tired of the online

business, but I believe that there is a
much greater market opportunity today
in applying technology within the
television industry. Today, television
advertising is a $70 billion market
annually in the US and television
subscriptions represent another $130
billion per year, and neither side of that
business has seen any significant
technology-driven optimization for
many years. Contrast that to the online
world, where US ad spend represents
$30 billion per year and, outside of
search, it's already optimized at a 70-
80% level.

What learnings from your experience in the online ad business are relevant to TV tune-in optimization?

A lot of online experiences relate very well to the television business. First, the discovery problem in television -
where it is virtually impossible to know everything that is on TV that you might enjoy - is very much like the
problems that web surfers have finding content that they want. Second, television viewers prefer more relevant on-
air promotions, and respond much better to them when they are relevant, just as web surfers do with more relevant
ads. Finally, success in integrating technology into the television eco-system means finding a balance between art
and science, just as it did in bringing better technology to web media.

For targeting purposes, has context become less important? Is it all about audience these days from the
advertiser perspective? What's the Simulmedia view?

No. Context is always critically important. However, viewers are different and they respond differently to different
messages. Our view is that the company that finds the best balance between the "program" and the "person" in
delivering relevant messages will create the best viewing experience and will be the most successful.

How does Simulmedia gather its audience data? Is it panel-based? Through the set-top box?

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We license anonymous set-top box data from television system operators. We don't know anything about the
viewers except the zip codes where the boxes are located, but the set-top boxes record what shows are watched
and when they are watched.

Wouldn't the same targeting, multi-variate testing and analytics be useful for digital TV ads? Is this the
next step for Simulmedia?

I do think that the same or similar approaches will be used for all digital TV ads over time. However, at this point,
"tune-in" is a plenty big category for us. It is unique, since driving viewership is critical for the TV companies to
support all of their programming and all of their advertising. Plus, our success can be directly measured, which is
critical in this early stage of market development.

Assuming Simulmedia's product offerings play out successfully, what does the TV viewer get?

The TV viewer will get better media choices. They will be more informed of programming that they might enjoy and
they will receive fewer interruptive ads for shows that they are not likely to enjoy.

Who do you consider in your competitive set? With your indexing statistics (shown in a recent Simulmedia
blog post about the Jay Leno show), it would seem that Comscore and Nielsen might have something to
worry about, no?

We are not focused on any particular potential competitors. We are not in the measurement business, nor are we
in the insights business. We deliver incremental viewership on a cost-per-viewer basis. No one else does that
today.

How will the revenue model work for Simulmedia? When do you expect to start generating revenue?

We are paid to deliver incremental viewers to shows and networks and will generate revenue this calendar year.
From that revenue, we pay our partners that provide us with inventory to air optimized promo spots and data to
build our optimization models.

You've been fairly strident in your view that the interactive ad industry needs to take charge of its future
when it comes to regulation and privacy protection for the consumer. How is the online ad industry doing?
What improvements would you like to see in terms of self-regulation?

I am very hopeful about the work that the IAB, AAAA, ANA, DMA and others have done in developing self-
regulatory guidelines. Now it is a question of implementation. I believe that legislators and regulators are going to
give the industry one last chance to do this right.

New York City versus Silicon Valley (or east coast versus west?) - who's got "game" when it comes to the
online ad tech business?

Both the "Valley" and the "Alley" are doing great things in the online ad tech business, however, I believe that the
Alley has gotten much better over the past 10-15 years when it comes to providing a home for tech companies
relative to the rest of the country. We aren't nearly as big as the Valley, but we're getting better every day.

What's your view on the recent launch of the Google DoubleClick Ad Exchange, and the increased focus
on demand-side buying platforms - particularly for agencies? Is it time to say there's a paradigm shift
occurring?

To me, the announcement was a non-issue, since it has been operating for the better part of the past two years.
As to exchanges generally, I believe that they are becoming significant factors in the marketplace and are certainly
putting more and more pressure on both agencies and "tweener"-sized publishers, who lack massive scale and
automated fulfillment of their own.

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Follow Dave Morgan (@davemorgannyc) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 29, 2009 – 6:59 am

258
TargetSpot Bringing Deeper Audience Targeting To
Internet Radio Advertising Says CEO Goldwerger
Email This Post

Eyal Goldwerger, CEO of TargetSpot, an Internet radio advertising network.

AdExchanger.com: What momentum has TargetSpot seen in 2009 for itself as well as its clients?

2009 is going to be a year of accelerating growth at TargetSpot, driven by rising advertiser demand. This is a result
of both an increase in our advertisers' budgets, as well as a much wider mix in our advertiser base. Our customers
now include a more complete spectrum, from the very largest national brands running national network campaigns,
to national spot campaigns, and through to the small, locally-focused advertisers. Our customers are also using
our network in an equally diverse manner: a recent outreach campaign enabled us to double the number of "self
service" advertiser sign ups, which complements the growth in our large advertiser and agency-driven business
that is predominantly "full-service" based.

Do you consider TargetSpot a technology or a services

company?

TargetSpot is a service company which is enabled by great

technology. As an advertising network, we enable the
advertiser to tap into an immense amount of consolidated
inventory and efficiently place ads across the network based
on accurate targeting criteria. They benefit from scale,
diversity, targeting, and automation. And we provide our
integrated distribution partners access to advertiser demand
that is consolidated and aggregate through our network. Ads
are automatically placed within their streams, with similar
benefits from their end.

This is achieved by our sophisticated technology which

provides the backbone for our advertising network. We rely
on our unique technology to place the right advertising in the
right streams, optimally managing inventory capacity and
advertiser demand to maximize placement and campaign
efficiency across a wide network of interconnected market
participants. Technological innovation is core to our success.

What special opportunities or "challenges" does internet

radio offer the marketer? What's missing that still needs
to be developed for internet radio advertising?

The key challenge the marketer faces today is in understanding the new advertising possibilities internet radio
offers. Radio advertisers, for example, were accustomed to geographically targeting users using radio station "call
letters" as a proxy. Further, they have been constricted to placing ads at radio stations located in physical
broadcast proximity to their target audience. However, the location of online radio content providers is a virtual
one. Any "station" may reach any user anywhere in the country, or in any country. Similarly, users' locations can be
determined much more accurate. In fact, TargetSpot can target users at the zip code level.

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Internet radio presents many new opportunities, including the ability to accurately and automatically target the right
users across a wide array of stations within a single campaign, the ability to monitor actual advertising delivery
(impressions served), or the ability to complement the advertiser's audio ads with display and video, to name a
few. Complete and direct access to consumers and advertising inventory, and centralized trafficking and
measurement of campaign placement and performance, are some of the further advantages of an online radio
advertising network. Technology enables continued innovation free of physical constraints and driven by continued
investments in growing this market opportunity to which TargetSpot is deeply committed.

With internet radio advertising, can you target audiences besides just using content as a proxy? If so,
how? Any behavioral options?

Internet radio advertising audience targeting is much deeper than terrestrial radio and very granular. For example,
an ad can be delivered through a radio station made for a specific person. Alternately, targeting by format profiling
is very accurate and can reach a well-defined demographic audience.

Behavioral targeting is not yet fully developed since it requires continuous tracking of user responses per specific
ads, which is harder to track in audio. However, we expect innovation in measurement to continue improving in this
rapidly-developing online advertising market.

How do you see the media agency model evolving? With your product line it would seem that marketers
could potentially go direct, no?

The model is evolving, but that evolution has more to do with performance and accountability than where the
dollars come from. Whether an agency or direct client, the campaign must be targeted to the right geographic
location, the most relevant user, and with the right mix. TargetSpot is well-positioned to ensure that marketing
dollars are being spent efficiently and to the right audience. We do this for both agencies and direct advertisers,
who we work with is the decision of the customer.

What is your view on the ad exchange model where buyers and sellers of media use transparency and
control to eliminate waste and improve ROI/yield? Is it a good fit for addressable radio?

Anything that increases transparency and provides more value to the customer is always desirable. Until now,
audio advertising has been accepted as a passive medium, making response difficult to measure. This is one of
the areas in which we've been innovating - creating a framework in which advertisers benefit from better
accountability of their marketing dollars.

What is the revenue model for TargetSpot?

TargetSpot is an advertising network. We sell to advertisers (both direct and to agencies) who buy audio
advertising, as well as campaign-related video and display, and we share our revenue with our distribution
partners, who are the publishers of online streaming audio.

Is cross-channel attribution (tv, online, radio, etc.) achievable? What is TargetSpot doing about
attribution?

TargetSpot allows the advertiser to aggregate digital assets across multiple formats - audio, video and display - to
provide a more complete marketing mix. We do believe that over time the ability to better integrate marketing
across different media is important, not just for budgeting purposes but also to more effectively engage the
consumer at different occasions. Online radio is becoming a critical medium in this mix.

What insights are you providing advertisers?

Marketers are increasingly focused on accountability. We address this need wherever possible. For example, we
are careful to sell on actually delivered impressions (rather than based on estimates). And we let advertisers

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measure performance by making it possible for advertisers to know where their ads are running, what the click
through is, and track the ongoing impact, such as direct visits to their site, hours and days after the ad is played.

What key learnings from your experience in online marketing are helping you today?

My previous roles have made me sensitive to the marketer's perspective. Any portion of their spend needs to fit
into the total mix of the campaign in a way that makes sense from brand management or performance
perspectives. Advertisers look very closely at their budget and want assurance that the right message reaches the
right audience.

Follow TargetSpot (@targetspot) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 27, 2009 – 7:29 am

261
Tremor Media Balancing Targeting Needs With Scale Says
CEO Glickman
Email This Post

Jason Glickman is CEO of Tremor Media, an online video advertising network.

http://www.tremormedia.com/Adexchanger.com: On your website, you identify your #1 ranking in

premium video views according to Comscore. What do you mean by "premium"? And, is there such a
thing as non-premium video ad inventory? If so, does Tremor Media fill non-premium inventory and is it a
significant part of the business?

JG: Our network is comprised of 100% premium content which we define as professionally produced, non-UGC,
above-the fold placements with brand safety guaranteed. We view all user-generated content as non-premium
video ad inventory and we do not serve ads against this content. All of our publisher partner sites are carefully
vetted and are required to meet our quality standards before we agree to include them in our network and serve
ads against their content. As an additional quality control mechanism,
we have partnered with ContentWatch to ensure that these standards
are continually met.

Do you think digital media - and video, in particular - needs to

embrace reach, frequency and GRPs in order to receive a larger
slice of the overall media pie? What strategies is Tremor Media
putting in place to get more "pie"?

Yes, we believe that developing common metrics, common

denominators, and a common language will be an important driver of
the shift in media dollars from TV to online video. But advertisers also
need to understand the unique differences and benefits of online video
and its role in the media mix. For example, online video is the only
place to reach certain segments with video, as TV is being tuned out
by portions of many advertisers’ target audiences. Advertisers can
gain greater efficiency for their investments, as they can obtain more
GRPs at the same investment level by including online video in the
mix. In addition, online video offers interactivity and brand
engagement.

In order to make the shift from TV to online, brand advertisers want quality video content online and the kind of
scale they’re used to getting in broadcast. We deliver on both counts better than anyone in the market as reported
by 3rd party measurement firms like comScore . Our ability to aggregate and target audiences in premium ‘well-lit’
environments is changing advertisers’ perceptions that scale in online video can only found in user-generated
content. As our comScore numbers illustrate, scalable, professionally-produced content in online video is now
possible. Not only are we able to deliver as efficiently as TV, but our flexibility in pricing models including
engagement and performance based pricing makes us an attractive alternative to advertisers.

To obtain a larger portion of this pie, Tremor Media began offering comprehensive reporting of campaign impact
and effectiveness metrics from comScore in February and was the first video advertising network to offer GRP
reporting. Agencies with brand advertising clients that have been reluctant to dip their toes into digital video
because of the fragmented reporting online now have one less barrier to overcome

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But beyond delivering TV-like quality, scale, efficiency, and audience measurement, more and more, advertisers
are going to expect proven measures of impact and effectiveness from their video media buys. That is why we are
focusing on creating highly customized technology driven business solutions that deliver accountable brand
impact. Furthermore, through the Tremor Media Insight Lab, we’ve developed a robust set of research tools and
initiatives that will provide advertisers with deeper measures and insights around brand impact. In addition to
research focused on branding and online behavior metrics, we are investing in large scales studies focused on
media synergy and ROI so that advertisers can understand how online video and TV can be compared and
combined, not just in terms reach and delivery, but also in terms of results and cost per impact.

How close are we to accurate cross-channel attribution? How does Tremor Media help with attribution?

To better address this industry need, Tremor Media has created the Tremor Media Insight Lab. The Insight Lab is
focused on a number of research initiatives and technological innovations. We are currently making investments in
and identifying advertisers for large scale research initiatives focused on measuring ROI for online video, and
media synergies between TV and online video.

What's your position on standardization in the video advertising industry such as standards that VivaKi,
the IAB and others are trying to build or create?

Tremor Media is in full support of efforts to develop standards in the video advertising industry. We are fully
compliant with current IAB standards, and we are actively participating in those efforts. As a board member with
the IAB, Tremor Media is involved in the discussions around standards including VPAID, VAST, and online video
measurement and reporting. In addition, Tremor Media is participant in VivaKi’s Pool initiative focused on
identifying the optimal online video ad formats. We believe it’s critical to collaborate and support these industry-led
initiatives, but we also continue to push our own technology and capabilities to deliver a range of unique and
compelling ad formats for our publishers, advertisers and their consumers. In addition, we are partnering with blue
chip advertisers to build customized ad solutions that address their company’s specific business needs. Our
Acudeo technology allows us to deliver these proprietary and custom formats and solutions at scale, because we
have taken the time to fully integrate the technology across 1,000 plus sites in our network. .

Non-premium display advertising is beginning to find value within the ad exchange model and through
demand-side buying platforms. When will video ad inventory begin leveraging similar models? What's
your view on exchanges?

There may be a place for a video ad exchange at some point in the future. However, in order for a video ad
exchange to be relevant there needs to be a large number of participants and a set of widely adopted standard
formats and methodologies, We are not there yet.. The exchange model for display advertising thrives on the
commoditized and often blind banner inventory, which can be appropriate for direct response campaigns. Video is
branding focused and currently requires a high touch, often customizable sales approach.

How does ACUDEO, your video ad publishing platform, differentiate itself from other opportunities in the
marketplace?

The Acudeo video ad monetization platform serves as the backbone of our in-stream ad network giving us a true
footprint based on a deep integration with our publisher partners. Acudeo allows publishers to utilize existing ad
serving systems to dynamically deliver and schedule the most advanced in-stream video ad formats from multiple
sources to maximize their revenue potential. Publishers can seamlessly control their entire video ad inventory with
full flexibility utilizing Acudeo, and it provides a unified view to track, manage and optimize all direct and 3rd party
video campaigns. In addition, Acudeo allows publishers to manage content to ad ratios to achieve optimal balance
between maximum revenue and user experience, and all video ad delivery policies can be controlled through the
publisher’s existing ad management system. Acudeo is fully compliant with IAB standards. It has been pre-
integrated with most major player platforms and all major 3rd party ad servers, and there’s no serving or licensing
fees with participation in Tremor Media in-stream ad network.

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In developing the Acudeo platform, Tremor Media sought to build a true in-stream network by fully integrating the
Acudeo component into the player within each site. The benefit of our Acudeo integrations for advertisers goes
well beyond the aggregated scale that we deliver such as the advanced proprietary ad formats that Acudeo
powers, robust targeting and reporting, and new features that are currently in development for Q4 and 2010.

How is your partnership with BlueKai performing? Have you had much traction? Is targeting difficult with
video ads?

We believe that targeting is very important to the future of online video advertising. The main challenge is
balancing an advertiser’s need to narrowly segment audiences while still achieving scale. As the largest premium
video ad network, we are uniquely qualified to deliver on both, and we are working with the leading companies in
the space, including BlueKai to provide robust and scalable targeting solutions to our advertisers.

What are the biggest challenges for a video ad network today?

A few of the biggest challenges are: pricing pressure, user-level targeting at scale, the potential for legislative
impact on BT, and the need for continued investment in technology to keep up with the pace of innovation in digital
media.

What is the current state of the online video publisher in 2009? Can you provide a general of sense of
who's making it - and not - and why?

The majority of online video publishers are thriving as CPMs for video ads are the highest of any online format.
More and more content is being added to publishers’ sites and they are promoting their video assets both internally
and externally. One area that seems to be having a difficult time with monetization is the User Generated Content
space. Blue chip advertisers prefer professional content and have largely stayed away from UGC sites due to fears
that the content could be harmful to their brand.

Do commercials made for TV work as online video advertisements?

Yes, commercials made for TV can work for online video advertisements. However, Tremor Media believes that we
can unlock even more value from online video with creative executions that take advantage of the unique aspects
of the medium to deliver greater engagement and impact. To this end, we are developing the most innovative ad
formats in the industry such as our recent launch of vChoice, a family of ad units to change the linear TV model for
video ads that’s been in place for the last 50 years. vChoice is a suite of new interactive in-stream ad formats that
enable non-linear and multi-video viewing experiences inside the video player within pre-roll inventory. vChoice
allows for unlimited creative options for advertisers, a better experience for viewers, and it’s enabling us to build
customized solutions to address our advertisers specific business needs. Since launching vChoice in June, we
have been actively engaging with creative agencies to build awareness for the creative potential of interactive in-
stream advertising which we are enabling through vChoice and delivering at scale across our network.

How do you ensure brand safety and appropriate brand management for your advertisers? And, for your
publishers?

Each of the sites in our network is monitored before it is accepted into our network. After acceptance, we continue
to monitor sites to ensure the safety of our network for our advertiser clients. Through our partnership with
ContentWatch, the brand safety of our network is third party verified.

Also, each of our publishers may limit the advertisers that we run on their sites for either brand reasons or to avoid
channel conflict. Our publishers are actively in control of the content that we serve to their sites.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 16, 2009 – 7:50 am

264
Exchanges Will Play Role In Addressable TV Says Visible
World President Tara Walpert Levy
Email This Post

Tara Walpert Levy is President of Visible World, a provider of

targeted television solutions.

AdExchanger.com: What momentum has Visible World

seen in 2009 for itself as well as its clients?

TWL: Visible World’s business is up substantially in 2009,

despite the tough economic environment. While many
advertisers are cutting back on TV advertising, they are also
looking for new ways to make each dollar more effective.
We are pleased that our solutions are able to help
advertisers improve their marketing results during this critical
time. We typically see client campaign performance improve
by more than 30% from running targeted, relevant
campaigns.

Is big media and Madison Avenue ready for addressable

TV media? When will the scale in addressable TV
arrive?

Addressable TV exists at some scale today. Our zone-based

addressability platform will cover 80% of cable homes by
year-end, and our household addressability deployments will
be in the millions of households by early next year. Madison
Avenue adoption is growing rapidly as well – we ran 5,000
different spots just last week, and annual campaigns are
nearly doubling year on year as more performance results
are shared. The combination of message and media
optimization is proving particularly powerful, and the number
of targeted spots per campaign is also growing rapidly.
Current campaigns average 18 spots per campaign although
advertisers range from only two spots into the hundreds at
any one time.

How do you see the media agency model evolving? With your product line it would seem that marketers
can potentially go direct, no?

Our product line actually has the potential to make the agency more important than ever. Agencies are already
beginning to work more closely to develop a holistic view of the target consumer and an ongoing strategy of how to
best reach that consumer across all mediums – digital, television, print, and direct – at any given moment.
Addressability represents a huge opportunity for media agencies to share in the value created by deeper strategic
execution and the ability to provide new, innovative services to their advertisers. As for the core business, Visible
World does not buy or sell media. We provide services that enhance the work that the media agency does today
and that increases the value of every dollar spent. This should make agencies more important, not less.

What is your view on the ad exchange model (where buyers and sellers of media get transparency and
control to eliminate waste and improve ROI/yield)? Is the exchange a good fit for addressable TV?

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That topic could be a whole interview in itself! Many of the goals behind an ad exchange are similar to those of
addressable TV – more automation, better ROI. However, significant complexity exists in TV – from both buy-side
and sell-side – that makes rollout of an ad exchange particularly challenging, as evidenced by the many historical
efforts in the past. Exchanges will almost certainly play some role in the future of addressable TV, but our crystal
ball hasn’t said when or how.

Do real-time (RTB) and impression level bidding features of online exchanges ever become an important
part of the addressable TV media model you're enabling?

Performance optimization is an important aspect of addressable television. The first step is to be able to enable
targeted campaigns that have been proven to drive significant campaign results within the traditional television
model. How, when, or for which inventory types that will extend into impression-level buying and selling is unclear.

What is the revenue model for Visible World?

Similar to a Doubleclick, or a Pointroll, we provide, for a fee, media solutions for media companies and marketing
solutions for advertisers and agencies.

Is cross-channel attribution (tv, online, radio, etc.) achievable? What is Visible World doing about
attribution?

What is most important is that multiple mediums simultaneously deliver a consistent and holistic brand message,
and that the combination creates incremental value for the advertiser. Only then can marketers leverage the data
from the different mediums to cross pollinate ideas, iterate, and optimize.

Does online/digital need GRPs to get a bigger slice of the media pie?

Online/digital and television serve very different and complementary purposes. Not everything that works in TV will
work for online and vice versa. While GRPs might attract some portion of buyers who are used to working that
way, competing to be more like traditional media is unlikely to generate the kind of premium CPM and explosive
growth the online world is seeking.

Where does context and placement fit with addressable media? Is it all about audience?

Great question! The first instinct many marketers have is to use addressable capabilities to target audiences.
However, data suggests that message context is just as important. This isn’t to say that it’s not all about the
audience; it is to say that it’s not only about the audience characteristics but also about their frame of mind. What
an audience will find relevant and when has been shown to be heavily dependent on context. This is why our
solution is set up to be able to target messages based on any data-driven condition, including context,
programming, time of day, weather, etc.

To date, Visible World has taken $73 million in funding according to a recent AdAge article. The AdAge
writer, Warren Lee, suggested that "Raising too much money too early and before hitting key milestones
(e.g. getting paying customers, showing attractive margins) can be [a problem]." How do you respond?

We agree with Warren. Fortunately we do not fall into the category of companies he is describing. We have
consistently been hitting key milestones since our conception nine years ago, which is how we raised money to
fund further expansion over time. We are very grateful to the hundreds of advertisers and media companies who
use our solutions and have helped drive our growth.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 5, 2009 – 9:05 am

266
Search Engine Marketing

The SEM Arrives: Efficient Frontier CEO Karnstedt

Discusses His Company’s Move To Display
Email This Post

David Karnstedt is President and CEO of Efficient

Frontier, a performance marketing company.

AdExchanger.com: What are some of the key

drivers for Efficient Frontier recently announcing
expansion of its product line into display
advertising?

Our goal is to unify optimization across both search

and display. There were several developments that led
us to launch our display product to our current client
base. First, the growth of ad exchanges and our
ability to access quality inventory with auction-based
pricing at massive scale. Recent enhancements by
the exchanges also have allowed us to integrate
display management into our core platform, which was
critical factor.

Secondly, we have the ability to purchase and

optimize targeting data that is unbundled from media
and isolates specific audiences relevant to our client's
products and services. Lastly, our clients have
reached out to us proactively asking us to provide
insights and optimization across both search and
display.

In general, do you think we are at or near a tipping

point where search engine marketing
encompasses display advertising? Why or why
not?

I believe performance marketers care most about results. If marketers could be channel agnostic and invest only
where the returns are most favorable in a truly dynamic fashion, they would. Across many of our clients in search,
day-to-day budgets are limited only by an ability to hit return on investment targets. By the nature of negotiated
CPMs and static placements, display could not be managed in the same way. Additionally, ceding optimization
control to publishers or ad networks with open-ended insertion orders is not something most marketers trust to be
in their best interest. Ad exchanges provide access to inventory, bidding control, and visibility into performance in
a similar fashion to search. They trust that their technology and agency partners will manage optimization on their
behalf and with their best interest in mind.

Platforms like Efficient Frontier's have been managing hundreds of millions of dollars in search spend and
optimization while at the same time delivering strong performance at massive scale. While display introduces new

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variables, our clients trust that our algorithm and engineering teams are well positioned to address the challenge of
biddable display optimization.

We do believe that we’re at the tipping point where search marketing encompasses non-premium, biddable
display. To be clear, Efficient Frontier is focused on managing auction-based display. We are not set-up to
manage traditional media buying. Search marketing, both technology and people, will quickly take a primary
position in non-premium display optimization.

What are some of the challenges you see in transitioning your clients to the new opportunities that display
affords? And, how will EF meet these challenges?

One of the challenges we see is that some of the big advertisers that we work with still look at search and display
in silos. With Efficient Frontier’s cross channel platform, we intend to bridge that gap by not just providing insights
across search and display but also optimize across channels.

Another challenge is educating clients on the new opportunities in display and its potential for strong return on ad
spend at significant scale. Some clients have still lingering doubts about display that we need to overcome
through education.

Site retargeting is typically an easy entry-point for clients and often produces strong ROI but is limited in scale
potential. Leveraging a combination of unique targeting data with algorithmic inventory optimization to add scale
while maintaining ROI is a challenge that we are meeting for our clients. Additionally, transparency in success
attribution and the resulting loop back to optimization is critical for our clients to understand that the next dollar they
spend is in the most impactful source.

A final challenge is that historically identifying latent dimensions of user intent and subsequent creation of
consumer segments, along with the revenue imputation, fell to the advertiser. With our display offering, Efficient
Frontier leverages our modeling expertise to solve customer segmentation problems for the advertiser on a huge
number of latent intent dimensions, spanning both search and display.

Where will the brand marketer fit in with Efficient Frontier's move to display?

We are a performance marketing company. Our optimization operates on data. I believe brand marketers are just
as data hungry as direct marketers. The key for us is to partner with our clients in developing the right metrics for
success. These metrics can be more brand oriented using metrics such as engagement or purely transactional.
At the end of the day, both brand marketers and direct marketers want to pay the right price for their target
audiences and inventory that deliver results. And both brand marketers and direct marketers trust Efficient Frontier
to optimize across search and display for maximum return on investment and scale.

Follow Efficient Frontier (@efrontier) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

December 3, 2009 – 1:03 pm

268
Digital Out-Of-Home

Argo Digital Solutions CEO Kates Says Digital Out-Of-

Home Reaching Segmented Audiences For Advertisers
Today
Jason Kates is Founder and CEO of Argo Digital Solutions, Inc. and rVue.com, a digital out-of-home advertising
exchange.

AdExchanger.com: Can you give quantify the Digital

Out-Of-Home (DOOH) reach for Argo's rVue
Exchange? Do you think of reach in terms of
networks or stores or consumers who are estimated
to see particular digital media in a given day?

The rVue search engine quantifies its reach in a number

of ways based on the needs of the individual agencies
and networks we work with. Currently, rVue has
amassed over 100,000 screens and nearly 2,000,000
daily impressions concentrated within the top DMAs
throughout the country.

Why call rVue an exchange and not a meta network?

How does it offer transparency and control to
advertisers and signage owners?

That is a great question. It is first important to note is that

a driving force behind the creation of rVue was to aid an
industry we strongly believe in. Digital Out of Home
(DOOH) has faced challenges in the past which included
industry fragmentation, difficulty efficiently delivering high
quality content as well as exposure and connection to
advertisers and agencies wanting to place media. rVue
was developed by our highly experienced, tech savvy
engineers partnered with our advertising and marketing
team. They bring a powerful combination of engineers
with in-depth experience managing complex DOOH
networks and marketers with agency and media
experience. The result is rVue - designed to ease the
process of buying and managing DOOH.

Like meta-networks, rVue has enrolled an ever-

increasing number of individual out of home networks
from all types of locations - arenas, doctor's offices,
pharmacies, malls, college campuses, grocery stores
and more. It optimizes efficiency and effectiveness for
both DOOH networks and advertisers looking to reach their target audience out of home. -rVue helps them
connect with each other and generate revenue, and although rVue may share some characteristics of a meta
network and advertising exchange it also has its differences. rVue is a web-based DOOH search engine that
allows advertisers and agencies to search the DOOH networks within the system, develop and place a campaign,

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make the media buy, upload content, distribute the content to desirable venues and review the results, all from one
place.

There are a number of ways in which advertisers and DOOH venues are given control within rVue. For example,
advertisers are exposed to the growing directory of quality networks - many of which they were unaware of before.
Now, they can set their budget, select their geo-targets and demographics, upload their content and virtually create
a DOOH media campaign in a fraction of the time it had taken them in the past. As for the networks, they receive
incredible exposure to advertisers and are presented with advertising opportunities that might not have otherwise
been available with no risk and no cost.

"Addressable media" and targeting audience have been key phrase for 2009. Have you seen momentum in
your addressable media offering this year? Have large media agencies caught on?

Addressable advertising has caught the attention of some of the most recognizable brands in the world...brands
that are designing campaigns based on identified zip codes, specific demographics, etc., to more effectively target
an area or profile. Agencies not only understand addressability, but they are investing in early trials. rVue's
searchable directory, offering a multi-faceted database of geographics and demographics, integrated with venue
types, content formats, etc., has been key in attractiing media planners and ad agency groups who are looking to
get the most "impressionable" bang for their buck.

What's happening with creative in DOOH campaigns? Do traditional TV campaigns translate better than
online campaigns, for example?

With DOOH, we are reaching an audience that is targeted beyond their geography to now potentially include
interests, shopping habits and traffic or lifestyle patterns. Our experience has led us to develop a philosophy about
content presented in DOOH which is more like content for the internet rather than traditional broadcast. At its
simplest, it comes down to "still images for a moving audience and moving images for a still audience." Content
should be built to be highly engaging and provide the audience with a clear message without audio as it isn't
always available or effective in out of home environments.

When not used strictly for branding purposes, DOOH campaigns can be designed to be more interactive than
traditional TV and offer direct response vehicles to get the most out of the media experience and collect valuable
feedback from the responses.

Regarding reporting, is a dashboard approach possible for viewing results across rVue?

The rVue advertising application provides a full accountability package wherein campaign owners can download
affadavits, pay only for actual airings and leverage prior campaign histories in building new campaigns.

What does BroadSign Open do for Argo, rVue and cross channel campaign strategies?

Through an API, software providers like BroadSign and others, can connect their networks into the rVue engine,
making themselves available to advertisers. Today, rVue consists of a true cross-section of networks utilizing a
variety of software, and all are available to advertisers to facilitate the creation of campaigns.

What overall recommendations would you make to agencies as they step into addressable media via
DOOH?

Clearly, agencies are moving away from traditional advertising and looking for effective digital solutions. DOOH is
one of today's fastest growing medias despite economic conditions that are pulling budgets from more traditional
medias. When asked by agencies for recommendations, I tell them to invest in their campaign with bandwidth in
mind - from both a time and reach perspective. I want them to think beyond running the same :30s or :60s
commercials they're running on TV. They need to look closely at creative and target their audience more
succinctly, not only based on who the audience is, but where they are and what compels them. When appropriate,

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agencies should include an interactive component to their campaign to further engage their audience. And lastly,
but most importantly, they should analyze the effectiveness of their campaign in helping them define and refine the
next one.

Is it more about brand awareness right now or direct response campaigns with digital signage? Where do
you see this evolving?

Both approaches are critical parts of digital out of home and are somewhat dependent on where the content is
running and the mission of the brand. Certain venues lend themselves better to branding opportunities, while
others help drive sales and provide ideal direct response environments. There will always be a place for branding
in DOOH, but as video to mobile becomes more and more accessible, the ability to interact with target audiences,
via an opt-in approach, will become incredibly attractive and is where I believe we are headed.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 19, 2009 – 6:29 am

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Lead Generation

Reply.com CEO Zamani Says Now Is The Time To Invest In

Local Advertising
Payam Zamani is CEO of Reply.com, a lead generation marketplace.

AdExchanger.com: Reply.com started in lead

generation. Why did you transition the
business into an exchange and marketplace?

PZ: Until the summer of 2006, Reply.com was

focused on lead generation for the real estate and
automotive markets. During that quarter, many of
our largest real estate buyers informed us they
were going to stop buying leads due to the
slowdown in the market. We started discussing
the tremendous innovation in paid search and
display / traffic exchanges. However, lead
generation had been around for over ten years
and hadn't evolved. The writing was on the wall:
Lead Generation 1.0 was going to die and Lead
Gen 2.0 would replace it. We had to rethink and
revise our business model.

To give you some context, in a Lead Gen 1.0

model, a car dealer negotiates with a 3rd party
lead provider for a fixed fee, price-per-lead,
locked contract with no insight into lead quality.
At the end of the month, some sources have a
$300 cost of sale and some a $1,000, but lead
quality at the time of purchase was unknown. If
that dealership has too many cars on the lot, or is running a weekend special, there isn't a way to segment and do
more of what works and stop spending where it isn't working. So more often than not, the dealership gets
frustrated and quits the program.

We decided to protect our revenue base, but stopped growing it. Instead of continuing on an inefficient path, we
went dark for 18 months. During that time, our engineering team built a lead exchange and marketplace. We
formally launched in April of 2008; it has grown tremendously since.

In our marketplace, that same dealership in the Lead Gen 1.0 example now has access to Lead Gen 2.0 controls.
We provide tight controls over price, quality, volume, radius, model, and auction-bidding. The dealership is now in
control. As a result, we have found that our buyers are shifting offline dollars online because they can measure
their return on investment, segment what works, and buy more of what is profitable.

Tell us a little about Enhanced Clicks™. What problem is Reply.com solving with this product?

After we launched the Lead Marketplace, we offered real estate buyers Lead Gen 2.0 controls. We heard that they
weren't buying leads, but they would consider buying clicks. Keep in mind, a click or lead customer is the same to
Reply.com. One is just earlier in the conversion funnel.

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One of our core competencies in online marketing is paid search. We immediately went back to our offices to
discuss how to sell clicks. We researched the patent space and came up with the concept for Enhanced Clicks™.

An Enhanced Click™ (patent-pending) represents a consumer with intent to buy a product or service in a specific
geography. Think of it as a "soft lead."

We thought this was a revolutionary idea. Now the buyer doesn't have to learn how to build a landing page with
high quality score, become an expert in SEM, learn bid management, write text ads, decide keywords, or deliver
banners. All they have to do is select a category, sub-category, define a location, and set a CPC. Then they will
acquire ready-to-purchase consumers with perfect geo-targeting.

From our perspective, there are several problems with today's paid search and display marketing solutions. They
are not designed for locally-targeted advertising, and are too complicated, imprecise, and expensive.

By too complicated we mean that, to be effective with paid search or display, an advertiser needs a team of
experts and a significant infrastructure investment. They need people on their team focused on creative
optimization, bid management, keyword expansion, and landing page optimization.

By too imprecise, we mean that it is difficult to generate locally-targeted traffic in significant numbers. Most
solutions today filter based on IP addresses. This solution results in significant waste, as IP addresses are right
only about half the time.

By too expensive, we mean that existing platforms make local marketing almost cost-prohibitive because imprecise
traffic drives up costs. Poorly-targeted local advertising offers no way to recover an investment.

Our solution is Reply.com's Marketplace. It provides easy access to category-specific and locally-targeted Internet
traffic. In five minutes, an advertiser can sign up, create a campaign for buying leads or Enhanced Clicks™, and
start receiving traffic. Reply.com's platform is designed to make gaining access to the local online consumer
efficient and profitable.

Who are Reply.com's customers, and what are your core categories?

Sample customers using our marketplace are: Hearst Newspapers, Ford, RealEstate.com, GM,
ServiceMagic.com, Market Leader, Kia, QualitySmith, Quinstreet, Cars.com, Vertrue, Audi, and ZipRealty.
Our core categories are:

• Autos: New, Used, Special Finance

• Real Estate: Buy a Home, Sell a Home, Foreclosure, Mortgage
• Home Improvement: all major trades (Additions, Remodels, Painting, Cabinets, Roofing, Siding, Flooring,
Windows, etc)
• Insurance: Auto, Home, Health, Life

We are launching new categories quarterly.

Looking at your clients, what trends do you see today with respect to verticals, metrics, and conversion
goals?

We are transacting more than 300,000 leads per month and more than 500,000 Enhanced Clicks™. We have
more than 3 million leads and 8.5 million Enhanced Clicks™ available monthly. Buyers of our Enhanced Click™
report that our conversion rate is 50%-100% better than search or display. We attribute that success to inserting a
second step in the consumer's experience where they are asked to confirm intent and location. This allows the
advertiser to dynamically generate a landing page more unique to the consumer's interest. Not only do we
significantly reduce abandonment, but we also eliminate issues with geo-targeting.

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Autos have been growing rapidly and the "Cash For Clunkers" program is helping create demand.

In Real Estate, foreclosures are still hot and growing. As the market starts to recover, we are well positioned to
help advertisers and sellers take advantage of the efficiencies offered in an exchange.

We see the biggest growth in Home Improvement. The industry is highly fragmented, and the geo-restrictions are
very high. We have signed up with most major buyers, and sells are quickly building liquidity.

How are lead exchanges playing out in your company's strategy? Where do the publisher and advertiser
have complete transparency into the transaction?

We have several thoughts on exchanges and how we define and participate in the exchange model. First, in most
lead generation businesses, buyers establish a fixed radius around their business and try to only purchase leads
closest to their business, as they feel they are the most serviceable and monetized. There are hundreds of
thousands of quality leads that are unsold because there hasn't been an exchange model. Furthermore, there are
an equal number of undersold leads. Leads that can be sold three or more times are often sold only once.

The net result of this inefficiency is that lead sellers do not earn a premium for quality leads, have a limited
incentive to improve quality, and have no reliable way to align lead generation efforts with lead demand. To the
consumer, that means a high percentage of results to be contacted go unfulfilled.

Second, one of our core innovations is an exchange that delivers "margins for the advertiser," not "yield for
publishers." The basic point is that search and display online marketing are not built for companies targeting local
consumers. So we created an advertiser-side exchange where ad dollars can be recovered by selling poorly
targeted, local advertising through the Reply! click exchange. In fact, Peter Burris, a Principal Analyst and
Research Director at Forrester Research interviewed customers and called Reply!'s inventions "just plain smart."

Lastly, transparency is overrated. To us, what matters is acquiring consumers who have intent to purchase in
locations where you can service them and offering an opportunity to segment and bid based on propensity to
convert.

As an example, we feel Google is one of the most opaque companies in online marketing. Ask anyone who invests
in Google Paid Search these three questions, and see if you get consistent answers:

• What is keyword quality score and how do you improve it to lower your CPC's?
• If you geo-target, how many clicks fall outside the requested geography?
• How much does cost increase and volume drop when you geo-target?
• How important is display advertising to lead gen and Reply.com specifically?

Display is a critical part of our acquisition portfolio. In fact, we have recently launched an ad network
where publishers can run HTML widgets to directly generate Enhanced Clicks™. The feedback from publishers
has been great. They tell us we offer a superior monetization platform and a smarter way to maximize eCPM's for
remnant inventory.

What's your view on display ad exchanges? Are they useful?

If you are a publisher, they offer a reliable way to increase eCPM's. If you are an advertiser, it depends on your
acquisition process. Banners, PPC, and email all have problems with accurate geo-targeting that our platform
helps to resolve.

We find it interesting that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are not focused on the $100 billion+ spent by local
advertisers. That's the market we are after. Our platform acts as a catalyst in bringing these dollars online. Our
platform makes these advertisers online marketing-ready.

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Is automation helping creative in your business? Or are the best landing pages still built by people?

We automate as much as possible. We have direct API access in and out of search engines. We use Marin
Software for PPC bid management, DART for display management, and Google Website Optimizer for A/B and
multivariate testing. We never stop testing and improving our conversion funnels.

If you ran an offline company that targets local advertisers, what steps would you take to prepare for a digital
future?

Never let a good crisis go to waste. The shaken credit markets have created an uncertain future for local
advertising and a massive opportunity for advertisers. Many newspapers are near bankruptcy, CPC's and CPM's
have dropped, and the Googles and Craigslists of the world are poised to paralyze today's incumbent local media
channels.

Now is the time to invest and take control of locally-targeted advertising. Here are some important questions:

• Does branding matter or is profitable acquisition more important?

• While you may monetize banners and paid links, do you have a process to monetize leads?
• Running paid search is difficult and requires investments in personnel and technology. Do you have a self-
service, easy-to-use platform to get local advertisers engaged in buying online clicks?
• Can you offer your advertisers a way to liquidate their poorly-targeted local advertising?

Reply.com offers the following solutions to help:

• A comprehensive, white-label cost-per-lead platform that can power a self-service solution across multiple
vertical businesses
• An Enhanced Click™ self-service platform to bring more locally-targeted ad dollars online faster
• An advertiser-side exchange where ad dollars can be recovered by exchanging poorly-targeted, local
advertising, which can encourage further investment in your other advertising platforms
• Syndication of Reply! widgets to maximize yield for remnant traffic

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 21, 2009 – 7:23 am

275
Mobile

Mobclix Bringing Ad Networks And Developers Together

Through Ad Exchange Says Co-Founder Subramanian
Krishna Subramanian is Co-Founder of mobile ad exchange, Mobclix.

AdExchanger.com: Why create a mobile ad exchange?

What problem are you looking to solve?

KS: Mobclix allows ad networks to reach targeted ad

inventory across mobile applications. Mobclix solves a real
problem mobile developers have: managing their mobile
application ad inventory. One ad network alone does not
have a 100 percent fill rate - low fill rates result in a loss of
revenue for developers. Mobclix optimizes ad impressions
on a real time basis across over 20 ad networks and 20
different optimization variables. For the first time, traditional
online Web ad networks have the ability to extend their Web
networks to mobile

Who's your target market in terms of advertisers and

publishers?

In terms of advertisers, our target market is the ad networks

themselves who then deal with advertisers. We work with
the ad networks from start to finish to provide them with the
support, education and access they need to close deals.
Our publishers are mobile app developers. We currently
work mainly with iPhone apps, but are in private beta for
Android, Blackberry and Mobile Web. Right now, we
represent 90 percent of the top 100 app developers on the
Apple App Store.

What transparency do you offer advertisers? How much information can they see about their placements?

Advertisers can choose how to target their ads: behavioral, contextual, geographical and demographic targeting.
Advertisers can cherry pick the users that will be most effective for their brand, driving higher conversions.

Can advertisers bring their own data and targeting to Mobclix inventory as they do in using demand-side
platforms for PC-based display ads?

Yes. Advertisers have the opportunity to leverage not only their own parameters/information and data but to use
our APIs and in-depth analytics platform to make better targeting decisions. We have the ability to pass data back
and forth with the network increasing conversions, driving up ROI for advertisers and commanding higher payouts
for our developers.

Do publishers or app developers push back on pain points like channel conflict by selling through an
exchange like Mobclix?

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Many of our developers have shared with us that they find the ad exchange model much easier for them than
dealing with ad networks individually. Mobclix enables developers to activate ad networks on the fly without
pushing out additional updates. Additionally, ad networks have the ability to bid on targeted inventory that
developers would otherwise not have access to.

How does the Mobclix revenue model work on both the publisher and advertiser sides?

We give 100 percent of the revenues to publishers, so there is no charge to use the analytics or advertising
platform. Ad network partners, however, pay a fee to participate on the exchange.

In your mind, what key hurdles have NOT been overcome yet in mobile display advertising?

Cached ads are still not perfected. There are various problems that need to be solved in terms of accountability
and also the advertising action (e.g., you can't click through to a Web site if you're offline). As an industry, mobile
display advertising has ways to go before it reaches the targeting potential mobile has to offer. Simply think of all
the possibilities with location based advertising alone -- advertisers could target consumers when they are near
their stores or near a competitor.

What's your view on the recent acquisition of AdMob by Google? Does it affect your competitive
landscape?

AdMob's acquisition has generated lots of buzz and validated the mobile industry as an effective and growing
marketing channel. It has increased our partners' efforts towards mobile, creating a great opportunity for all of our
publishers.

Is there such a thing as brand awareness, mobile display advertising campaigns that are sold through
Mobclix today?

Absolutely, our premium campaigns are often CPM-based to increase brand awareness for advertisers.
Advertisers are willing to pay to get the right eyeballs and the small size of the screen means that brands will be
more top of mind for the end user. At the end of the day, clicks are not the best indicator for success for any
advertising campaign.

Follow Mobclix (@Mobclix) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

December 18, 2009 – 5:34 am

277
Performance Marketing

Dotomi Riding Personalized Media Beyond Behavioral

Targeting Says CEO Giuliani
John Giuliani is Chairman and CEO of Dotomi, an online marketing agency.

AdExchanger.com: What's been happening at Dotomi in 2009? Any trends you can share on the client-
side?

Dotomi is very fortunate to be experiencing double digit growth in 2009 despite macro economic trends and a
general decrease in overall advertising revenue. Marketers are looking for advertising that works and they’re
shifting their budgets to those tactics that can demonstrate a real return. For our clients, that’s a shift toward
display advertising that’s more personalized and relevant for
the consumer. Advertising that caters to the individual and
what’s meaningful in their personal sale’s consideration. That
also includes a bigger interest in understanding how
advanced analytics plays a crucial role in creating that
relevancy for the consumer. We feel we’re a great partner for
media companies because our sophisticated approach draws
in clients that otherwise would not consider running display
advertising.

Advanced campaign testing is growing in importance for

Dotomi clients. We invest a lot of our time and money in very
sophisticated testing and analysis. We are constantly
improving client campaign performance. Our multivariate
testing platform allows us to run a myriad of campaign
elements simultaneously so we can more quickly determine
the best drivers to increase conversion. It’s a great value
driver in the platform that we bring to the online media
market.

Is ad network arbitrage on the way out? Will agencies

start arb-ing through their demand-side platforms?

There’s always going to be roles for agencies, publishers,

networks and service providers in the online advertising
ecosystem. We all need each other to keep the system
balanced. Ad networks create arbitrage value through aggregation and convenience. Agencies may be able to
arbitrage for certain buys, but for the broadest reach and coverage, marketers are going to continue to turn to the
networks because there are just limits to what the agencies can do.

Dotomi is not an ad network. We do buy media from networks, but we drive value by making each message more
relevant to the consumer and that creates an entirely different dynamic. Everyone has their role.

What's your view on ad exchanges? Does Dotomi use them? Which one is best and for what reason(s)?

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We think ad exchanges are an important and growing part of the ecosystem mentioned above. They help
efficiently move inventory – particularly lower valued inventory. They also serve to “sharpen” the focus of others
(such as Dotomi) to continually drive incremental value out of every impression.

We work with several exchanges and each of them serves us well and they work differently for each of our
customers.

Read any good books lately that have affected your business thinking?

I’ve recently read Presidential Courage by Michael Beschloss. It documents the difficult decisions that our US
Presidents’ have made over the course of the last 230 years. These decisions were all made against the grain of
what was then popular or conventional. But these leaders had the foresight and courage to make the right decision
– the decisions that over the long haul were proven to be the best decisions and in no small way saved our
country. Washington’s backing of the Jay Treaty and Reagan’s approach to the Soviet Union are nice bookends to
our history. They are inspiring stories that influence me to stick with the principles that we know drive the greatest
value for our customers and the industry – even when they aren’t always in vogue. We’ve fought the good fight
over issues such as encouraging consumer control over privacy, attribution and analytics, extending the time
aperture to analyze results, and driving towards the reality of true one to one personalized media.

How is personalized media different than behavioral media? How are you differentiating yourselves in the
marketplace?

Behavioral targeting is a stepping stone to personalized media but doesn’t take into account the ability to get very
granular and personalize every aspect of the campaign for an individual like personalized media does. BT is
focused on selecting an audience based on mathematical models that determine who is appropriate for a given ad
based on what other consumers sharing similar characteristics have done in the past. On the other hand,
personalized media uses known information about a consumer to customize the ad itself, as well as where and
how often the ad is presented, to make it more meaningful for that individual. Overall, it’s the difference between
delivering a static ad to a segment of many verses a dynamic and intelligent message dialog delivered to a
segment of one. Because of our client mix, Dotomi can help media partners take advantage of this approach and
create real value for them.

Do you buy on a CPM basis still? How do you see pricing strategies evolving in online advertising?

We are a little amused at the debate over CPM vs. CPA. Dotomi is agnostic. We buy primarily on CPM, and many
times we buy at a premium. But in our view CPM and CPA are essentially billing mechanisms. We encourage
marketers to separate performance analysis from the method of billing. A big portion of the debate comes down to
risk and trust. If you work with trusting partners than the perceived risk of certain pricing models diminishes and the
advantages of those models can be assessed against the goals of the each partner in the relationship.

Are cross-channel advertising strategies impacting campaigns at Dotomi? Does attribution become a
challenge when, for example, radio drives online to (ultimately) drive in-store sales?

We embrace and encourage it. Our analytics allow us to isolate the effects individually and show clients the impact
on both their online and offline campaigns. If we can help clients understand specific cross-channel improvements,
then together we can make the best campaign decisions. So if clients work in a trusting relationship with shared
analytics, then pricing can be divorced from the analytics to create the right win-win for everyone. The payment
method is simply a negotiation at that point.

How does Dotomi convince brand awareness marketers to work with you? Or, is it all direct response?

Brand advertising, like all advertising, ultimately has to be accountable and lead to increased sales. Dotomi has the
analytics to demonstrate the brand effect and create a lot of transparency for our clients. That’s why we’re able to
bring some big brand dollars – that haven’t otherwise been able to make display advertising work – to our media
partners.

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What is your view on real-time and impression level bidding - game changer? If so, how will Dotomi take
advantage?

We're currently involved in some tests. It’s hard to know the game-changing elements right now and who will
benefit and under what circumstances. But it’s a great idea on paper and we're anxious to understand how it will
specifically be executed and evolve. If it meets its promise, we think it has potential to clear more inventory and
create more pricing transparency. Since we buy media differently – we’re not really in the business of clearing
inventory – it’s uncertain the effect it will have on us. There’s still a lot to discover.

In the meantime, Dotomi continues to work with our media partners by bringing great brands to the display space.
We’ve put together some custom and innovative solutions that create win-win programs and we will continue to do
so with willing partners.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 15, 2009 – 6:40 am

280
Advertisers Taking A More Audience-centric Approach
Says Epic Advertising CEO Mathis
Email This Post

Don Mathis is CEO of Epic Advertising, an online performance marketing

company

AdExchanger.com: How has Epic Advertising fared during the

economic downturn? Please share any strengths or weaknesses
you're seeing. What types of client campaigns are thriving - or not?
How is creative evolving?

DM: Epic Advertising has fared well due to our fundamental performance-
based economic model, which centers specifically on CPA, or "cost per
action". Our clients only pay us when a desired action, such as a sale or a
subscription, takes place. This is clearly a more desirable way for
advertisers to market their products and services during a downturn, as
they avoid upfront costs. Specifically, Epic is seeing strength in our Health
& Beauty, Casual Gaming and Entertainment categories at present. The
Entertainment category, for instance, is up 20% year over year, and
Casual Gaming and Health & Beauty are up astronomically. Over the last
12 months, our creative team has expanded their scope with multivariate
testing, new advertising formats, and new custom applications. The
landscape is more dynamic, and is continuing to grow in this direction.

With performance marketing as its focus, does this hurt the ability of
Epic to expand into the brand awareness budgets? How can brand
awareness marketers use Epic today? Any real world examples?

Epic Advertising doesn't believe there has to be a split between performance-based and brand-based marketing
online. Brand-based advertisers are beginning to understand that having more data at their fingertips and a better
ability to target their audience actually helps drive brand awareness better and more effectively, while realizing
stronger ROI. We work with many more traditional "brand" marketers now than we did a year ago. In this scenario,
Epic is delivering branding through our massive reach and network of 40,000 publishers, in addition to ROI due to
our performance model.

Given all the talk of current and future regulation, is the lead generation business dead? Valueclick
recently reported a decline in its lead generation business and an uptick in display in Q1 2009. Does this
mean there is opportunity ahead for display?

There definitely are opportunities for display now and into the foreseeable future, with the key drivers being better
technology, targeting and data. Lead generation is a lot more strategic than it used to be and is still a very effective
practice for many advertisers and networks. Thankfully, Lead generation is no longer synonymous with the "win a
free iPod" days, and a properly-executed campaign can still be very effective.

Will real-time bidding (RTB) offer strong improvements in ROI or is it all hype in your estimation? Will
Epic build RTB capabilities or work with partners?

Epic is familiar with RTB and some of the companies who have made strategic decisions to invest in it. We don't
believe it's all hype, and in fact the byproducts of these enhanced capabilities are a faster and more efficient

281
marketplace for online media buyers. This is positive for the entire online advertising ecosystem. Epic is currently
evaluating the "build" or "partner" question.

Azoogle is your well-known affiliate business. Are ad exchanges "good" for the affiliate business? Why?
Any challenges?

We don't view ad exchanges as competitive to our efforts or inhibiting us relative to our publishers. It is another tool
for affiliates and networks to use in order to obtain inventory. The volume of networks and exchanges speaks to
the tremendous amount of web inventory and the potential to tap into the inventory in a wide variety of ways and
techniques. We're somewhat agnostic in terms of how we get inventory for our advertising clients and exchanges
are certainly one aspect. There are many industry related challenges. There is confusion among advertisers and
agencies trying to decipher differences between networks and exchanges. There needs to be a great deal more
education.

Do you think ad networks and online marketing companies such as Epic have the potential to
disintermediate media agencies? Is Epic working with direct advertisers today? If so, which ones?
We don't believe companies like ours will replace or sidestep media agencies. At Epic, we in fact work
collaboratively with agencies as well as directly with advertisers. Clearly, there are a lot of advertisers who are
clients of major agencies, and are expanding further in the online medium. We want to be there to help agencies
handle those requests from their clients. For advertisers not represented yet, yes, we work quite effectively with
them too. A few of our clients we work direct with include Netflix, IAC, Real, and Match.com just to name a few of
the hundreds.

Are view-through conversions applicable in Epic's business? Or is the last click still the only click that
matters? How is Epic solving attribution for its clients?
Epic has invested quite a bit in this area. Late last year, we announced our own patent-pending solution called
pCPM, which means performance CPM. Our competitors call this "view-through" or "engagement mapping". We're
focusing on this because attribution for advertisers is increasingly complicated yet important. What we aim to do
with pCPM is to score any and all factors surrounding an online ad campaign beyond impressions, clicks or
actions. Epic will continue to hone these technologies on behalf of our clients as the demand for clearer attribution
increases.

Many publishers feel ad networks and exchanges create channel conflict and diminish the value of their
inventory. In your estimation, beyond hiring a yield optimizer, what can publishers do today to improve
their yield - i.e. revenue potential?
It has been documented that a handful of publishers feel this way,and feel that networks and exchanges are the
cause of the diminishing value of their inventory. The right way to look at it, though, is if a publisher has excess
inventory or inventory that simply can't be sold, which today is largely the case. In this scenario, they probably had
1) an inflated view of the value of their inventory to begin with or 2) improper means or resources to sell it. Simple
supply and demand economics is starting to bring inventory values into line. Networks and exchanges fill a
necessary, and growing, void in the marketplace. At Epic, we feel it would be wise for publishers to work closely
with networks to improve ROI, as networks have more advanced optimization technology and a wider array of
advertisers and advertisements for publishers to choose from. Overall, networks can often offer etter and faster
analysis and measurement.

Is placement and context still important? Or is it all about audience in online media buying and selling?
This is the crux of what differentiates online marketing from other traditional ad platforms. Epic is beginning to see
an online shift, with advertisers now taking a more audience-centric approach versus a site-or ad placement-
approach. We firmly firmly believe in the importance of reaching the right audience for advertisers first and
foremost -- in the most efficient and economical way, supporting advertisers' sales and branding goals.

Follow Azoogle (@azadsinfo) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 1, 2009 – 7:47 am

282
CPL Advertising Invading Brand Advertising Says Pontiflex
CEO Lasker
Zephrin Lasker is CEO and Co-founder of Pontiflex, a performance marketing agency.

AdExchanger.com: Has performance

marketing started to reach the brand
marketer?

ZL: Definitely. When we started Pontiflex

two years ago, we anticipated that most of
our growth would come from direct
response marketers. But surprisingly we
have seen a very rapid adoption of Cost-
per-Lead advertising by brand marketers
who are looking for cost-efficient and
scalable ways to connect with new
consumers.

We’re seeing major brands like HUGGIES,

Dell, Blackberry and others look to CPL
advertising as a way to acquire marketing
leads. I want to be clear here. When I say
marketing leads, I mean the contact
information of people who raise their hands
to hear more from a specific brand – the
kind of information you would collect off a
landing page in a display or search
campaign.

Our advertisers pay for these marketing leads on a performance, or Cost-per-Lead basis and then engage them in
a variety of ways. As many as 51% of advertisers used community sites and social networking groups to engage
consumers. This was closely followed by e-newsletter programs with special deals and offers.

So yes, as brand marketers begin to think about branding not as broadcasting, but as engagement, we will see
more brand marketers use performance marketing to accomplish their objectives.

Please discuss the momentum for Pontiflex in the past year. What are the strengths? (verticals, pricing)
Any weaknesses?

We’ve had a tremendous year. We’ve tripled our client base and seen over 300% YOY growth in a tough economic
climate. Most of this growth has been driven by the massive adoption of CPL advertising by Fortune 500
companies and national non-profits.

Based on the feedback we’ve gotten, businesses love the simplicity of the Pontiflex AdLeads technology. We
started off as a technology company – and at every step we have tried to make CPL advertising as simple and
intuitive as search advertising.

We also made big bets on openness and transparency – and both have paid off. In terms of openness, advertisers
can use Pontiflex for no charge to do a variety of things – manage a non-Pontiflex CPL campaign or hook Pontiflex
up with their ESP, something that allows them to acquire leads and follow up with them in real-time easily. In terms

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of transparency, our advertisers can make an informed decision about where to run their campaigns and optimize
campaigns by lead source.

In terms of weaknesses, I would say that we could have done more to educate the market about Cost-per-Lead
advertising and how it fits into the overall advertising picture – particularly the worlds of email and social marketing.
We have to continue telling the stories of how some of the world’s largest advertisers are using CPL to grow their
email lists and build responsive social communities. That’s something we’ll continue to do in 2010.

How important are exchanges and buying across multiple supply sources (a la a demand-side platform) to
Pontiflex buying strategies?

Buying across multiple supply sources is important. Consumers spend time across multiple media – all at once,
and advertisers should be able to run campaigns while keeping with the new ways of media consumption.

There was a Nielsen study recently that said people spend something like 68 hours a week online. Look around
you; people have their heads buried in their smart phone, which is not really a surprise with 91% mobile
penetration. One of the more interesting points I’ve come across lately is that people spend three times more time
on Facebook than on Google.

Given these dynamics, in order to connect with consumers, it’s imperative that marketers be present across
channels. So of course, our technology team has worked hard on giving marketers the ability to run CPL
campaigns across online, mobile and social networks from one point of connection. For example, Blockbuster ran
a campaign across online and mobile sites with just one insertion order.

Advertisers are dealing with an incredibly fragmented market now with so many vendors and technologies. We are
focused on helping advertisers consolidate and keep it simple.

What do you think of the demand-side platform buzz? Is it hype?

There’s so much change going on in the online advertising world. These are still early days for many kinds of
products and offerings, and it will be interesting to see what remains standing once the dust settles down.
Specifically, for the demand side platforms, we have been approached by some players to integrate our proven
CPL technology with their offering and in the spirit of openness and collaboration, that’s something we will work
on.

Are you thinking about real-time bidding as an important feature of your company's offering?

Real-time is no doubt important, and as liquidity expands and the market grows we will accommodate an
appropriate model. The difference for us is that because marketing leads are unique to an advertiser’s offer, they
aren’t a fungible commodity. This is important because it protects the advertiser’s brand and the consumer’s
privacy.

When buying, how much do you care about transparency on an impression or bucket of impressions?

Transparency is an absolute must for us, and it’s a key driver of our success. We’re a transparent CPL
marketplace, which means that advertisers can track marketing leads to the publisher source and optimize
performance accordingly. If one particular site isn’t producing the right leads, dial it down or turn it off. If a particular
site is performing really well, the advertiser can crank it up. This gives marketers control over not just how well their
campaigns perform, but control over where their ads will appear. Having transparency also helps protect brand
integrity which is very important for all of our clients such as Disney, Blockbuster, UNICEF and Dell.

Any predictions for 2010 - perhaps something not everyone is thinking about - but will?

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I think that what we’ll continue to see in 2010 is a more symbiotic relationship between email and social marketing.
There’s been a fair bit of debate about whether email becomes less relevant now that social networking is so
dominant. I strongly believe that email will become an even more important tool in 2010.

A recent Harris Interactive study showed that 96% of online adults are willing to share email addresses with brands
while only 12% are willing to share social networking information, such as Facebook username or Twitter handle.
These statistics prove that marketers first need to build trust with consumers via email before engaging them on
social networks.

Performance advertising will continue to grow in 2010 – and this growth will be driven not just by direct response
marketers, but by brand marketers. Brand marketers will turn to performance advertising not only for the cost-
efficiencies, but also because performance advertising by its very nature delivers a consumer who is searching for
a product or signing up for an offer – a more engaged consumer. These are the kinds of consumers they want on
their Facebook and Twitter groups.

Follow Pontiflex (@pontiflex) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

December 13, 2009 – 4:14 pm

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Publisher

Associated Content Is A Content Platform – And Not Just

For News Says Patrick Keane CEO
Email This Post

Patrick Keane is CEO of Associated Content, an online publishing platform.

AdExchanger.com: Given AOL's recent positioning in

the content creation space, where does Associated
Content fit? And, is it odd having Tim Armstrong as an
advisor and competitor?

PK: Tim remains an investor and friend of the company. I

cannot comment about Tim or AOL's strategy but he has
made a number of very public statements about the
increasing importance of scalable and cost efficient content
models. In my opinion we at Associated Content have the
largest and most open content platform on the web. The
web content ecosystem is large and diverse and will
support multiple companies.

There has been a lot of talk about pay walls as a savior

for newspapers and other online publications. Will
Associated Content use a pay wall? Why not? And
when do pay walls make sense?

First and foremost we are not a news site. We are an open

content platform and news happens to be a genre that
some portion of contributors choose to write. It is our
feeling that 'open' is the model that wins on the Internet.
Associated Content will continue to be an open, advertising
supported content destination for the foreseeable future.
Looking at my own personal patterns of interest and
content consumption I can say there will likely continue to
be a model for subscription supported content in finance,
sports and very proprietary data driven verticals.

Can Associated Content replace newspapers? How might the two models work together?

It is not our mission to replace anyone. Our goal is publish the most useful content on the web. We, like
newspapers, have a model for producing quality hyper local content, but our cost structure and content
development ecosystem is very different. We are a great potential and existing partner to many news organizations
and hope to continue to partner with these companies in the future.

Do you use ad networks? When do they make sense for the publisher? Are you ever concerned about
channel conflict?

We do use ad networks and we are a large Google AdSense partner. We use networks in certain challenging
areas of monetization like news and a few others. Networks can be helpful instantaneous revenue partners but as

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a former Googler and one who worked on AdSense, it has been interesting to sit on the other side of the table. We
want to make certain we maintain ownership and control of our premium inventory maintain the appropriate
controls to avoid channel conflicts. I want to ensure our premium inventory is sold by our sales organization.

In that 90% of your traffic comes from search, are you ever concerned about having a single point of
failure, say, if Google turned off the traffic?

For content and commerce companies Google is the oxygen of the internet. We like others are very mindful of
never doing anything to subvert the Google algorithm. We take a very user centric approach to everything we do at
Associated Content and we make sure to follow all Google index guidelines.

How do you see yield optimization companies evolving on behalf of the

publisher?

The feedback we consistently receive from our advertising partners is that advertising on Associated Content
yields superior results. And to date, we have not seen appropriate value being placed against that superior
performance opportunity by either ad networks or the various network optimization platforms. Also, from a strategic
perspective I do not see yield optimization companies optimally serving publishers until publishers are willing to
share their click data, RPM's, traffic sources, etc.

How do you manage "quality" in your content?

We have a multi step process incorporating human and algorithmic means to define content value and quality. We
have an editorial staff that manually reviews content. We conduct a machine driven plagiarism check. And before
we conduct these tests we do our best to make certain content is unique and useful. Quality is a subjective term
and means different things to different people. Does quality equal only content created by Columbia trained
journalists? We think quality can be defined by many parameters including writing expertise and well crafted linear
narratives. But I can also say, I often times would rather read the authentic expertise of a mom who has unique
first hand expertise on potty training toddlers versus a similar opinion from a scholarly professionally trained
psychologist from Yale.

Follow Associated Content (@acnews) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

December 16, 2009 – 3:33 pm

287
Vertical Ad Networks Are Different Side of Same Rusty
Coin Says CEO Koretz of BlueTie and Adventive
David Koretz is CEO of BlueTie, Inc., an email and collaboration
services provider and Adventive, Inc., an online ad solutions
company.

What media-related trends have you observed in 2009 at

BlueTie and at Adventive? Vertical strengths/weaknesses,
pricing pressure, etc.?

At Adventive we are seeing large publishers put an increased

emphasis on creating unique products for their advertisers that
differentiate them from both the ad networks and the other large
publishers. Not everyone is going to survive this economic
downturn, and as the recession lingers on, publishers are starting to
take the gloves off.

Following up on your theme from "Eight Things I Hate About

You" in MediaPost in March, what would you advise publishers
to do this year - paraphrasing your words - to innovate their
product and help advertisers measure success? Is Adventive a
step in this direction?

Publishers need to move beyond the banner ad. They need to think
of themselves as having two distinct products: one for readers, and
the other for advertisers. Publishers would be well served to spend
their energy building unique products like site take-overs,
sponsorships, and ROI-driven ads that help align them with the
goals of their advertisers. Adventive is hyper-focused on innovating
both the ad units and the optimization of ads to deliver ROI to
advertisers. We hope to be a part of every premium publisher's
arsenal.

In your opinion, does the ad exchange model and automated media trading hold promise for publishers?

Any time you have another entity with a different set of goals competing against the publishers own sales force,
you are in a race to the bottom. I do not believe the current tension between ad networks and publishers is
sustainable.

Advertisers appear to be moving toward targeting audience and addressable media rather than concerns
about placement. Agree? How does Adventive assist advertisers looking to target audience?

I think advertisers are looking for customers, not audience. Audience is not a solution, but rather a means to an
end. Adventive uses many forms of targeting including demographic, audience-based, behavioral, and some
proprietary forms to optimize the advertising campaign to maximize ROI.

Can brand awareness marketers use Adventive effectively or is it more DR-focused?

No advertiser is only a brand advertiser. Every marketer is ultimately going to be measured on their ability to move
the business forward. A lot of people refer to brand advertising when they really mean influence advertising.
Products with long sales cycles, or products where you need to change consumer behavior like CPG need

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influence advertising. They need to move the prospect closer to becoming a customer. Adventive helps both
influence and DR-focused advertisers to be more influential and move the ball forward.

What do you think of vertical ad networks? Given the decline in standard display CPMs, is building out this
model worth it for publishers?

Vertical ad networks are just a different side of the same rusty coin. Any time a publisher makes a conscientious
decision to pool their advertising, they are making the implicit statement that they do not value their own product as
being unique. That is a very dangerous road.

Any thoughts on impression-level, real-time bidding (RTB)? Could RTB help publishers realize better
CPMs for its standard IAB display if there is adequate liquidity?

RTB has no chance of real traction so long as the supply greatly outstrips demand. Publishers would be better
served by focusing on differentiating their offering.

For large media publishers, is the Long Tail an opportunity or threat? If it's an opportunity, how should big
media leverage the Long Tail?

The long tail is very long, but very insignificant if you look at the numbers. The top 100 publishers capture 91% of
every online ad dollar, and the top 3,000 publishers represent 80% of the spend. I would recommend that large
publishers do not waste their time fighting over scraps.

Do you see a threat to the agency model from the ad networks? What would you be doing to bulletproof
your future if you were an agency?

I think the agency model will always have its place. As long as there are marketers competing for attention, there
needs to be great agencies that help their clients stand out from the noise. The future of online advertising seems
to be shifting increasingly toward a DR-centric view, but that does not make agencies any less relevant. Publishers
will realize that they will earn more if they view DR as an opportunity and take control of the optimization of the
ads. This shift is only going to further put pressure on agencies to deliver ads that perform.

What do you think will be the key issues that industry organizations such as the OPA, MPA and IAB will
need to drive on in the future on behalf of publishers?

I have yet to see an industry association drive an industry forward; companies competing for real dollars do that.
The IAB and OPA have their place, but publishers themselves and their partner ecosystem will lead the next wave
of innovation.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 15, 2009 – 7:58 am

289
Forbes.com CEO Spanfeller Says CPMs Under Pressure
Due to Move Towards DR Metrics – Not Oversupply
Email This Post

AdExchanger.com: How important is the display segment to

Forbes? Can you share recent momentum in online display ad
revenue at Forbes? Any verticals showing particular strength or
weakness given the economic slump?

JS: Display is very important to our business model. Of late the

recession has taken a toll and we are not seeing the same type of
growth that we have enjoyed in the past. My guess is that the year
will come in fairly flat.

How does Forbes.com try to improve display CPMs (great

sellers, vertical selling, targeted content creation, technology,
etc.)? Are ad networks and exchanges a part of the strategy?
Why or why not?

All of the above…plus we always strive to test any and all new ideas.
Historically we have been awarded some of the highest CPMs on the
web. There is good reason for this. We reach a very hard to find but
yet very desirable audience in a very efficient manner. Of late, CPMs
around the web have come under pressure. I feel this is more a
result of the move towards DR metrics driven in large part by the
horizontal ad networks then it is a factor of over supply of ad
impressions. Clearly there is a discrepancy (and in fact a growing
discrepancy) between consumer behavior and advertising spend and
this has added huge numbers of unsold impressions. But this
inventory can be controlled if the will is there. Offline there has been unlimited inventory in print and other media
for years and it has not affected CPMs. The big issue here is that the horizontal ad networks are pushing models
that are all about clicks in one form or another. And as such this has pushed a vast amount of advertising to chase
the 20% of web visitors that create 80% of the clicks. It is almost certain that these strategies will dissipate over
time as advertisers become more experienced online and as new metrics are developed and tracked. In the
meantime though we all face pricing pressures and these pressures will continue for at least a few more quarters.

Are yield optimizers such as PubMatic, Rubicon Project, AdMeld, Yieldex and others offering a viable
option for publishers? How does Forbes.com manage yield?

Perhaps, but the fundamental issue is that ad networks monetize (due to their model) at such low CPMs that even
with great performance from the optimizers the results are not meaningful. This is the core reason why we do NOT
use any outside horizontal ad networks. They simply do not generate enough revenue to play even a small part in
our revenue picture. Our yield management is relatively easy because all of our impressions carry high value. In
other words we do not have vast buckets of differentiated inventory in email or social media. We clearly have very
differentiated opportunities around types of content but throughout those offerings the quality of the audience and
the engagement from that audience remain at very high levels.

Is the ad exchange model good for publishers? In your opinion, what needs to happen to encourage
Forbes.com, or any larger publisher, to place its premium inventory on the exchange?

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Maybe…but not right now. The exchange model could be a good one in the future if enough controls were placed
on the types of inventory and the quality of "seat" owners. Right now the vast majority of exchanges are simply
trading posts for the ad networks.

Do you see real-time bidding (RTB) and demand side optimization as an opportunity for publishers? It
would seem to follow that if advertisers can map data to individual impressions in a liquid marketplace and
in real-time that CPMs could rise for publishers. Agree?

A lot will depend on what the government does in the privacy space. The vast amount of data being collected
across sites by third parties is scary. Very little is known about these practices. As these behaviors become more
transparent I can see a future where the governors on data usage (either industry- or government-imposed)
become a factor in this space.

How has Forbes.com financial vertical ad network strategy progressed? Are vertical ad networks a viable
strategy for large publishers? Any challenges?

Yes indeed it has. There are clear opportunities here for well branded sellers. Our issues have been around the
understanding, or lack thereof, of the nature and type of blogs that we are representing.

Other than a vertical ad network, how can large publishers leverage the Long Tail? Is sharing content in
hopes of extending reach an option?

Maybe…although I would start with sharing links and not full content. That said both strategies could have real
legs in the future.

Jim, here's a scenario for you... Humor me.

Let's say the controls are in place on the exchange to the degree that Forbes.com requires for yield and
brand management. And under this scenario, Forbes.com has in-house, digital media traders who sell
and manage at least part of Forbes' online display ad inventory via the exchange model. This creates an
in-house expertise in trading and a new revenue stream as Forbes.com traders not only sell, but buy
on behalf of direct Forbes.com clients, or buy and sell to benefit from the arbitrage and leverage Forbes'
trading expertise.

Have I been sipping too much ad exchange Kool-Aid or can you see this potentially coming true?
Sure but right now given all the issues around privacy that I alluded to above the second half of your scenario will
be tough. Also the ad agencies would want a say in all this…that said though at the end of the day it is the clients
who actually pay the bills.

In terms of industry organizations, where does Forbes.com look for support: the IAB, OPA, another? What more
would you like to see from industry orgs on behalf of large publishers?

We are very active in both the IAB and the OPA. We also look towards the MPA, the ABM, the ANA, and the 4As.
I think in general there needs to be more focus on moving the online advertising discussion towards demand
creation in addition to demand fulfillment. In doing so, new metrics will need to be identified, ratified and
standardized. Clearly the trade organizations listed above can play a very key role in all this.

Where does Forbes.com stand on ownership of data? Do media buying agencies and their clients own all
the data associated with their campaigns on large publisher sites, or does the large publisher own some or
all of it, too?
Our thought is that at the end of the day the end user is really the owner of the data. That said we do collect data
to help make the user experience on our sites better. I would think that the advertiser would also have some rights
in this space. I am left wondering though how third party ad networks or buying groups can lay claim to this data
unless it is with the express consent of the advertiser and will be used on their behalf alone. The idea that third

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parties will use data created by one client to help another perhaps competitive client seems foreign to me although
I know that this is the standard procedure that is now happening online.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 3, 2009 – 7:59 am

292
Pandora CRO Trimble Waiting For Brand Advertisers To
Start Using Ad Exchanges Before Jumping In
Email This Post

John Trimble is CRO of Pandora, an internet radio service.

AdExchanger.com: How important is display advertising to Pandora's overall revenue model?

JT: We are genuinely in a unique position in the marketplace based on our

ability to bring brands a digital multi-platform adverting solution with
display, mobile and audio. The success of our display has been the core
of our revenue, but the growth as a market leader on the mobile app front
has created accelerated and valuable scale and engagement to leverage
the mobile and radio advertising offerings. We are well positioned to work
with brand marketers to develop these multi-platform solutions that take
advantage of Pandora's ubiquitous experience.

Does yield optimization technology provide an important option for

you as a publisher?

Absolutely. Not only does AdMeld help us generate the highest yields from
our discretionary ad inventory by optimizing multiple networks, they allows
us to focus on developing and nurturing direct client relationships and new
sources of revenue.

What do you look for in a yield optimization company? Is it just about

driving revenues?

Revenue is always important, but it's definitely not the only thing we look
for. Reliability is a major factor. Another important aspect of managing
discretionary inventory is quality control. The last aspect we consider is
making sure we work with outside companies that dedicate resources on their side to help us achieve our goals.

What's your view on ad exchanges and buying platforms?

I like the idea of exchanges and buying platforms from an efficiency standpoint. Instead of haggling over whether
our non-guaranteed inventory should get sold for $3.45 or $3.50, an automated system can help make those
decisions so it works for the publisher and the buyer. However, we're cautious to jump in head first because we
want brand advertisers to know the benefits of Pandora outside of just pure efficiency. Brand advertisers have the
opportunity to integrate with our service with custom radio stations, skins, and audio ads, in addition to standard
IAB units. We want those advertisers to be aware of those opportunities in addition to our efficiency vehicles.
These opportunities need to be communicated by a direct sales team, and cannot be accomplished through a
buying platform.

When you look at your inventory? Do you see it as direct/premium and remnant? Or is there a secondary
channel between direct/premium and remnant?

There has always been a big gap between direct/premium and remnant. Over time, every publisher should work to
close that gap by working with the right advertisers, indirect channels, or platforms. Our premium sales force works
with major agencies and large national brands. We'd like to see the gap between premium and remnant (which we

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refer to as discretionary) get filled with local and smaller endemic advertisers. Although a band may only be able to
spend $1K per month to promote their new album, with the right targeting, they can afford to pay a "secondary
premium" rate and still make it work for their model. The key here is automation, which brings us back to ad
exchanges, buying platforms, and self-service models.

How will your new deal with Katz work with your inventory? Will they be selling audio ads only or will they
be allowed to sell display too? If so, do you allocate everything to Katz and then send whatever isn't sold
to other monetization sources?

Katz is essentially an extension of our radio sales team with a focus on radio advertisers in our uncovered
territories (mostly the Midwest and Southeast). Katz will be selling our standard radio product, which is an in-
stream audio commercial with a synched banner ad.

What has been the biggest challenge for you as CRO in this recent, difficult economic environment?

You are correct, it is very challenging out there, the usual patterns and pace of the advertising market has a very
different flow. That said, we have been very fortunate to continue to grow our partner base and actually do very
well. We have benefited from our teams focused efforts of delivering unique and effective value for advertisers to
tap into their core consumers. In this type of market, advertisers become extremely selective with who they are
partnering with and the ability to deliver an engaged audience in multiple platforms has positioned us well.

Do you think agency buying platforms are a net positive for web media companies? Or are they
cannibalizing your direct sales by buying the same audience cheaper through networks and exchanges for
example?

As I mentioned earlier, we become challenged in this type of marketplace to deliver against multiple key metrics for
our partners. We are big believers that a key value proposition for brands starts with the engagement of Pandora's
targeted and passionate audience. We view ad buying platforms as a strategic piece of the overall media mix and
while reach is a key component of any plan, the ability to create value through deep contextually relevant
campaigns is always core to achieving brand objectives.

Follow Pandora (@Pandora_radio) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 11, 2009 – 7:03 am

294
Exchanges, Networks and Optimizers Providing Revenue
Streams At Sporting News Says Exec Strauss
Email This Post

Gary Strauss is National Digital Sales Manager of Sporting

News.

Is it frustrating having a great brand, but needing to

compete against much larger sites such as ESPN and CBS Sportsline? What does Sporting News do to
entice advertisers who can get much better scale elsewhere?

GS: No I would not categorize it as frustrating. Challenging, yes, but we really do not see espn.com as a direct
competitor. Both CBS and ESPN have strengths as do we. Our strengths are audience engagement and great
content specifically about six main sports –baseball, football and basketball (college and pro), hockey, golf and
Nascar. We can and indeed do complement the vey large sports sites. Often we stand out on our own due to a
great composition story and the ability to integrate, customize and make a creative statement for a client; all at a
reasonable cost investment. We are not a reach vehicle but there are marketers out there who do not necessarily
want only reach, rather they also want people’s attention. That is a real viable asset for Sporting News.

Do you think using yield management platforms such as AdMeld, Rubicon Project, AdMeld, PubMatic and
others offer a viable option for publishers? How does SportingNews.com manage yield?

Ad Meld helps us monetize some aspects of our inventory more effectively. Like many companies we are "lean
and mean," so AdMeld gives us another revenue stream for inventory.

How has your revenue model evolved at Sporting News online? What are the key drivers of this evolution?

Our digital revenue model is similar to other properties. First provide unique online editorial content and unique
applications (for us fantasy games and editorial) and educate and offer clients unique opportunities to tie into this.
We also look at our digital properties as a different extension to our traditional magazine product-vastly different
content and audience.

What is your view on the advertising exchange model? Ready to put your premium inventory in the
exchange? If not, what needs to happen first?

No - in regards to the premium question. It is there to augment our existing revenue but reaching out to marketers
that we have not worked with. For us the ad exchange model is more effective for us and somewhat like a network
model in that it helps us monetize some of our inventory.

If you were looking to use an ad network, how would you ensure that an ad network partner does not
conflict with your direct sales channel?

It is all about communication. There are many advertisers who earmark most of their $$ to networks and we want
to obtain some of that, but overall, ad networks help digital properties with primarily DR advertisers along with
those that our direct staff either has not targeted or developed a relationship with.

Can magazines survive without a potent online strategy?

I imagine they may be able to but why would they want to. Magazines are not going away-rather, they like the
newspapers business will have to adjust and change their business model and product offering(s). Content that is

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unique and valuable to consumers will always have a place regardless of vehicle and as we know via media
consumption, the acceptance and use of digital is ubiquitous. So, established magazine brands should embrace
this challenge. Decade old established brands especially must adjust to changing media consumption habits and
build their brands online, with in my opinion with a focus on quality, unique content.

Does SportingNews.com try to extend its reach through online media buying? If so, what are some of the
tactics that are working (or not)?

Not at this time. We have an incredibly active and engaged user participatory audience. Even in an era of
economic uncertainty we have invested in product –redesign of magazine and a major new daily sports digital
property entitled "SportingNews Today." I imagine the tactics we would use is improved SEO methodologies.

Since you work at Sporting News, I'm thinking you can help me with this question from a Chicago Bears
fan... Is Jay Cutler for real or a bust?

Cutler is the real deal –about 9 months ago John Elway one of our frequent NFL contributors was raving about
Cutler in fact even stating that Cutler at his current stage of his career is even more advanced and accomplished
than Elway was at a similar stage. Cutler was on the Broncos at the time, we will see if John’s opinion changes as
he moves the Bears forward.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 31, 2009 – 7:56 am

296
Targeting Technology

NetSeer On Concept-Based Advertising

John Mracek is CEO of advertising technology company, NetSeer. NetSeer announced a new offering today called
"concept-based" advertising. Read the release (PDF).

Concept-based advertising sounds a lot like semantic or contextual. Is the

"secret sauce" the real-time identification of concept categories like
"Italian food" or "headphones"?

The secret sauce is the ability to algorithmically, and therefore scalably discern
concepts on a page as well as determining related concepts "off page."
Categorization is just a crude approximation of what NetSeer’s technology does.
Unlike first generation contextual, which is largely keyword-driven based on the
page being analyzed, or semantic which tries to leverage Natural Language
Processing (NLP), NetSeer’s concept-based approach takes a top down
approach to analyzing concepts in the context of how they are used in the entire
web. One of the issues with keyword-based classification approaches is that
they require meticulous updating and management of keywords and how they
map to various categories. Semantic also involves a lot of hand-holding that limits its scale. In fact, some semantic
providers boast about the dozens of linguists they use to build out their semantic dictionaries. In addition to making
it costly to support, the knowledge about the page is limited to purely what is on the page. NetSeer's approach is
almost purely machine based and therefore scalable and always up to date. Concept-based advertising goes
beyond both first-generation contextual and semantic by unambiguously determining the most relevant concepts
on the page as well as related concepts that the user is likely to be interested in.

The release discusses improved CTR, but in display view-throughs are an important metric. Where does
NetSeer's technology fit?

View throughs are a very important metric when evaluating online advertising campaigns. However, our model to
date has focused on sending consumers to search ads and tracking both click-throughs and traffic quality as
measured by Yahoo, our search partner.

Generally speaking, why is "real-time" important these days for web advertisers and publishers?

We think "real-time" is especially important in an advertising context. The more you know about the user and their
context at the time of impression, the more relevant the advertising can be. For instance, one of our health sites
deals with information and treatment about cancer. If someone comes to that site with a cookie that says that they
searched for "Jumbo Mortgage" two days ago, a typical retargeting system will put a mortgage advertisement in
front of them because they score high on the Behavioral scale for in market for a mortgage. However, if that
person is on that site investigating different approaches to cancer therapy for a relative, it doesn’t matter how much
they want a jumbo mortgage, they are not going to completely break context and click away from their investigation
at hand. The signal you get from real-time contextual analysis is always critical for achieving high relevance.

December 10, 2009 – 7:22 pm

297
OpenAmplify To Provide Categorization, Targeting and
Segmentation For Ad Exchanges Says CEO Redgrave

Email This Post

Mark Redgrave is Founder & CEO of OpenAmplify, an

online advertising technology company.

AdExchanger.com: How did your experience at an

agency (HHCL Group in London) prepare you for
running OpenAmplify?

MR: I was lucky to work under some really brilliant client

services and creative teams on some of the world's
most important brands. I learned to listen. I learned how
to think strategically and tactically. I learned how to
engage with people and how to focus on the end-game.
All very useful skills when you are running your own
business.

Who is OpenAmplify's target market? And, please

describe your revenue model? Any plans for a white
label version?

OpenAmplify packages $15M of patented Natural

Language Processing technology into one beautifully
simple API. We deliberately created OpenAmplify as an
open web platform as its potential applications are huge
and we wanted to make our technology accessible,
efficient and usable. Today, many of our customers,
partners and users are in the digital media space. We
have publishers, ad networks, agencies and brands all
using OpenAmplify to better understand content that's
being created on the web. In the near future, we will no
doubt see OpenAmplify used in the search, CRM,
homeland security and mobile markets, to name just a
few. In all instances, the basic revenue model is the
same: we charge per transaction and the cost of those
transactions depends on the required speed and depth
of the analysis you require.

It would appear that your semantic technology does not use cookies. True? Given many of the
complexities around privacy these days, does OpenAmplify provide publishers and advertisers a pseudo-
behavioral solution without the cookie?

True. OpenAmplify does not use cookies in any way. We don't need to. OpenAmplify's function and role is simple:
you pass us a piece of text content, and we'll tell you what it means, returning the analysis as a rich XML
document. We don't keep, nor do we record data, which clears our process past any privacy red flags. We are not
able to carry any unique identifiers through the analysis. We treat each analysis as a blind transaction. It's
therefore left 100% up to our customers to decide how they wish to assign, track and use the data.

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What is your view on ad exchanges? How will they affect OpenAmplify?

Ad exchanges will become a fundamentally important part of the digital media landscape. The concept of an open
and transparent trading platform connecting advertiser and publisher is both wonderfully simple and utterly
compelling. The exchange wave is coming. And when it does, we believe there is a huge role for OpenAmplify to
play in 1) the advanced categorization of content, and 2) the targeting and segmentation of users and content in
the exchange. We anticipate OpenAmplify being made available as a value-add to both publishers and advertisers
in these emerging ecosystems.

After viewing your demo on YouTube, the video is persuasive regarding its semantic understanding of a
block of text around SUVs, for example. Does this take into account "birds of a feather"? In other words,
friends of friends who want an SUV? Will it someday?

OpenAmplify in itself has a very focused mission: to understand the meaning of text content. We intend to be the
best company in the world at doing that. Social graph methodologies and technologies are therefore off-mission for
us, but we are very much looking forward to adding value in partnership with the various companies in the space
like Media6 who are leading the charge in these areas.

What are some of the key differences between semantic and contextual advertising?

To many users like you and me who have experience of current technologies in the market, the two terms can be
considered one and the same. But at OpenAmplify we do make an important distinction: Semantic targeting
involves 'rolling up' concepts and topics into higher level of semantically similar groups and categories. This
categorization is where so-called disambiguation occurs i.e. the ability to tell Sprint the phone company from sprint
a fast run. Contextual targeting, however, is all about understanding what's actually going on in the text. What is
the meaning of the text? What are the topics, actions and emotions being conveyed... and how are the different
aspects of meaning inter-related? This capability enables precise targeting. In this construct, several companies
could claim to offer Semantic targeting. But Only OpenAmplify offers Semantic targeting AND meaning-based
Contextual targeting.

Just trying to understand the corporate structure with this question - is Hapax the holding company and
OpenAmplify, a portfolio company? How does Hapax compliment OpenAmplify?

Hapax is the holding company that has developed the core technology and owns the intellectual property.
OpenAmplify is a service built on Hapax's technology core.

It appears you've moved from Amplify - to OpenAmplify. Any reason?

We wanted our name to reflect our open platform approach. We owned the OpenAmplify URL. This was one of the
easier decisions to make!

Any plans for allowing advertisers to overlay their own data, such as intent data, with your semantic
indicators?

OpenAmplify can deliver data points about content that are totally unique. Topics. Sentiment. Intent. Emotion. We
are currently engaging with advertisers and agencies who themselves have access to some very powerful data. It's
early days, but we firmly believe that the combination of these data sets will enable logic that will give significant lift
in advertising performance.

How do you see the ad agency model playing out in the next 2-3 years? If you were running an agency,
anything you'd be doing today to prepare for tomorrow?

As the whole ad ecosystem becomes more and more transparent, Agencies are going to find it increasingly hard to
justify fees. Pure creative agencies will stand and fall on their brilliance, but many media companies, SEO

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agencies, etc., who are earning fat fees for doing very little are going to get found out. They are going to need to
raise their game significantly. And the way to do that is to invest and innovate. Add the fact that social media is
changing everything and you have your answer: if I ran an agency, I'd be looking at technology innovation across
the board, but with a special interest in social media.

Follow OpenAmplify (@openamplify) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 31, 2009 – 7:23 am

300
Peer39 Leveraging Semantics to Help Publishers and Ad
Platforms Capitalize on Display Ad Inventory Says CEO
Solomon
Email This Post

Amiad Solomon is CEO of Peer39, an online semantic advertising technology company.

AdExchanger.com: Please describe momentum in 2009 for Peer39.

AS: This has been a breakout year for us as we have been recognized as the leading innovator in the field of
semantic advertising and targeting. Early in 2009 we started working primarily with publishers that have a bulk of
unclassified content – mainly news and general interest – enabling
them to classify the content and sell it at higher CPMs. We found a
sweet spot here in helping publishers to capitalize on a secondary
premium class of inventory. Now, as our business has grown, we
see a huge emergence in the role ad exchanges are playing in the
buying and selling of non-guaranteed inventory. That has pushed
our market expansion beyond just publishers, with a trend toward
deals with buying platforms, where we are able to provide semantic
attributes to assess and increase the value of each impression.

In that there is a shift toward buying audience and addressable

media by buyers, how can semantic/contextual targeting
remain relevant?

We are actually seeing that semantics, because it answers the

needs of so many players in the online advertising ecosystem, is
complementary to audience strategies at both the publisher level
and more broadly in the exchange marketplace. First, where an ad
appears is still very relevant and important to advertisers,
particularly large brands. Over and over we see that the context of
the content for an ad placement has direct relevance to the overall
effectiveness of an ad, whether those measurements are
performance, engagement or brand metrics. While audience is
clearly important, there are great tools out there helping brands
reach the right person at the right time. In fact our company has
attracted as advisors inventors of both contextual and behavioral
advertising systems, so we know well the value of these
technologies. Obviously, the ideal situation is to reach the right
audience in the right kind of content at the right time. We make that
possible with semantics in a more sophisticated way than traditional contextual plays, because we can understand
nuances and meaning based on context, rather than simply matching keywords. For example, if an advertiser is
using audience data to find in-market car buyers, there are semantic ad categories where that ad will simply be
more relevant to that audience. We can make that a reality at a huge scale, in real time. At a more practical level,
we also help content owners create better audience segments, by using semantic classifications to feed and flesh
out those behavioral definitions. Today the industry is embracing data and algorithms that will bring the most value
to a given impression – using audience data in conjunction with semantic classifications and attributes simply ups
the ante, and therefore the results that an advertiser can achieve with any given campaign.

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We’re also seeing a heightened trend toward transparency and providing a safe environment for advertisers.
Semantics unlocks a huge opportunity for brands to make sure their ads are running in content that is first of all not
objectionable, but even more interesting, in content that is most favorable to the brand message and campaign
goals. This is an exciting area for us, and we are seeing more and more interest from advertisers in using
semantics to ensure that their ads are running where the content best supports their campaign objectives.

Why did you decide to abandon the semantic ad network business? What were the challenges?

We made a strategic decision to focus on our core business, which is our semantic advertising platform. As we all
know, the ad network space is pretty crowded, and there are a lot of great networks out there already. Semantic
classification is one attribute that a network can leverage to optimize performance, and we think that the networks
that will succeed are the ones who will be able leverage many data attributes. We concluded that it makes the
most sense for us to focus on our core capability, which is to understand the meaning and sentiment of any piece
of content, and we focused all our efforts to do this better than anyone else. We see enormous opportunities with
our partners to leverage our data in all sorts of creative ways. We can play in the network and exchange space
where it makes sense, with the right partners, as we continue to grow our publisher/advertiser footprint and work
with demand-side platforms.

Talk about your initiative regarding the sale of white-label solutions of your semantic targeting technology
to publishers. How is it being received? What is the optimal target of your sales efforts?

We’ve had some top notch results from this initiative. We’ve seen the most traction with publishers who have large
amounts of unclassified or diverse content. We’re able to find valuable content that publishers just can't access
easily – for example, business content in the news section. It's very easy for publishers to incorporate the new
“semantic business” inventory into their current slate of products and packages.

As we work more with publishers, we also see the opportunities to find “new” categories, like Parenting or Green
Technology. While many publishers have content in these categories, they don’t have an effective way to
aggregate it. This is also the case with different types of hot topics, around an event or a happening, where the site
content strategy and tools may not support building a whole section, but advertisers would be interested in buying
those impressions.We can do that dynamically. Essentially, we see the obvious low-hanging fruit opportunities
beginning to grow into more strategic selling strategies.

Down the road, we see the opportunity to link semantic classifications to the value of any content. With the way
content is consumed and approached today, it is simply not effective to only look at packaging and pricing content
based on sections. We see a movement toward every impression being an informed impression. From our
perspective, semantic attributes can have a direct impact on the value of a particular piece of content, and in turn
on the CPM it commands.

Is the increasing focus on privacy concerns around behavioral targeting and cookies an opportunity for
semantic technology in that it is cookie-less?

Absolutely. We avoid all the problems that result from cookie rejection and deletion. Semantic technology can infer
the consumer’s interest, and in turn assign targeted advertising, based on the current page content, without the
use of cookies at all.

Any plans to combine your tech with behavioral targeting?

Actually, the two technologies make a very effective, complementary team. Partners with an existing behavioral
targeting system should also use semantic targeting to target ads based on content meaning, improve consistency
and make segment creation more granular.

For example, a behavioral system will identify a visitor to a news site as a “news intender,” which is not of value in
an audience play. Semantic technology identifies the user based on the specific URL, and defines interest based

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on the specific content of that article – so instead of a news intender, we can make it possible to identify that user
as a technology enthusiast.

Why is semantic targeting an important tool for brand marketers?

It comes down to enabling an ad to be placed in the most favorable content for the brand. Whether it is an issue of
avoiding negative and objectionable content, or simply finding the best content match, semantics allows a level of
understanding of content that has not been available before. Brand advertisers are very concerned with the
uncertainty of content on the Internet. We’ve seen advertising contracts that specifically prohibit the display of ads
alongside content that is potentially damaging. Failure to meet those standards results in a penalty or voiding of
the contract, so publishers and advertisers both lose out. Social networks in particular are feeling the effects of
advertiser trepidation.

Semantic targeting is able to detect content that is best for brand image and even identify Web pages that attack a
specific brand. Once a threatening environment is detected, a semantic system gives various options to the
publisher, allowing them to change the ad or remove it automatically and on the fly. By contrast, using old
contextual systems, if a consumer blog mentions a brand name, it might trigger the serving and placement of an
advertisement for that brand, even if the blog is trashing the product. We have all seen this phenomenon and it is
no wonder that some major advertisers are delaying full entry into the Web until these problems are solved.

What's your view on ad exchanges?

We believe the ad exchanges will play an increasingly essential role in the industry. Exchanges have introduced an
extremely efficient way to buy and sell media, and as the platforms become more and more sophisticated, they are
providing greater value to the buyers and the sellers. We think the exchanges will be the platform for buying
unguaranteed inventory.

Obviously, there will always be a market for the direct selling of premium guaranteed media to advertisers. There is
a huge value in that, in the specific campaigns running on specific sites over particular timeframes.

That said, most content sites have large volumes of inventory that can't be sold in this way. Exchanges will allow
media companies to sell their non-guaranteed inventory more efficiently and with greater control than ever before.
And as companies like ours get integrated into these platforms, there can be greater transparency into what an
advertiser is actually buying than ever before. This is good for content companies as well as advertisers.

Will real-time bidding (RTB) and demand-side optimization be an important new feature for exchanges? Or,
is it all hype? Could Peer39's semantic technology work in a real-time bidding environment?

We’re talking a lot about real time bidding these days. Clearly, you have to be cognizant of market trends, and the
ideal situation has you anticipating what is coming next. RTB is a huge opportunity for exchanges and for us at
Peer39. Part of our core capability is providing semantic classifications dynamically – which makes us perfectly
positioned to add tremendous value to the RTB process.

As far as demand-side optimization, we see a big opportunity here as well. We are fortunate in that we made the
decision to laser-focus on our core capabilities and our core technology. We integrate with the new demand side
platforms, to provide the value of semantics as part of their strategies. As these platforms proliferate, we see only
upside for our business and the value we can provide in the total ecosystem.

What is the biggest challenge when building a technology company? Finding talent, funding, shifting
markets, or another?

First, the key thing is having a solid product that provides value to the market today, and can be part of evolving
that market as it grows and changes. We are fortunate to have that kind of technology, and to have made some
hard decisions to stay disciplined and focused on making sure that we are the best at what we do – understanding

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meaning and sentiment of any piece of content out there. This is what has made us attractive to investors, and
we’ve succeeded in securing good funding in a tough market as a result.

The challenges really grow out of that premise – maintaining the discipline to make the right choices and stay
focused on a plan and execute that plan. Clearly, talent is key to that strategy. You want committed people, people
who understand the business and can evolve as the market changes and the company grows. We’ve also been
fortunate to have some incredible industry advisors that provide vital insights that increase the brain-trust
exponentially.

It’s also really important to choose the right partners. In the early stages, it helps tremendously to have clients who
are collaborative and forward thinking, who want to try new things and who share a vision of where the market is
going. This way, you know you’re building the right capabilities to scale the business. That’s why we are proud of
what we’ve been able to accomplish this year, and see 2010 as another huge growth year for us.

I think if you do those things – stay focused, work well to deliver for collaborative clients – then you can build a
successful profitable company that attracts the right talent and great clients.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

October 21, 2009 – 6:42 am

304
Peerset Human Interest Data Providing Psychographic
Targeting Capabilities Says CEO John-Baptiste
Mike "JB" John-Baptiste is CEO of Peerset, an advertising technology company.

AdExchanger.com: What is Peerset?

MJB: Peerset is an ad targeting service focused on

leveraging social psychographics to connect a marketer
with a user. Social psychographics is a category of
consumer data we are helping the market understand
and embrace. Think about it most simplistically as user
generated content that is most reflective of people's
interests (better than polls and better than tracking web
visits). Core to our IP is that our software understands
the relationship between human interests(i.e. based on 5
things someone says, we can predict their other likely
interests). Our first product, Peerset Advertising, can be
used by marketers, agencies, social networks and ad
networks to predict the likelihood that a specific user's
interests are matched well enough to a specific
advertisement to recommend that ad to them. Peerset
can either deliver the ad or deliver the user and have
other services deliver the ad.

Discuss your competitive set.

We believe that the competition is less about a specific

company and more about "business as usual" in how
marketers and agencies plan and execute display and
search advertising. We believe that consumer's interests should play a bigger role in discovering what options are
available to advertise online. We believe that beyond the endemic websites that make sense to an advertiser it is
important to market to an audience wherever they are spending their time and therefore the WHO(the person)
should be considered as important as the WHERE(the website). We support initiatives around re-targeting, real-
time bidding and ad exchanges as efficient vehicles to access relevant users.

In that we leverage, social data in advertising, we do get discussed in the same breath as companies like
33Across, Media6 and Lotame. Those companies are all making bets to one degree or another that if you can
identify Influencers in the social web then you can be more efficient with your advertising. Some use the social
graph and others don't but it's still about the Influencer. Peerset doesn't have anything to do with the social graph
and with identifying Influencers. Peerset is focused on Interest data and predicting relevant audience segments
and individuals based on Interests.

Facebook and Myspace we hope will be customers of Peerset and two years ago we filed a patent for our science
and service in this area. They may try to create their own Interest-based predictive systems and I would consider
that to be competitive and inevitably a violation of our patent. We are speaking with Myspace.

How do you see display advertising evolving over the next 12-24 months?

I'm not the type of guy that likes to predict things but I can tell you what I hope will be the key drivers to increase
more dollars into online advertising.

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Creative - I hope that advertisers don't think of display advertising as throwaway and reach and rather continue to
invest effort in learning about consumers and their web behavior to improve the messaging and design of video
and non-video ads to keep users engaged.

Measurement - I hope that the click-through as a standalone metric continues to lose its popularity and that we as
an industry find other metrics and data that can be used to constantly improve the marketing experience online

Targeting - I hope that marketers continue to diversity their media allocation mix away from picking websites and
towards audience sets. To do this they really need to understand the consumer at the individual level and
that means analyzing relevant data.

Can you give us some detail on how you create your psychographic datasets? Please feel free to get in the
weeds. And, is their a shelf life for these datasets?

Since 2005, Peerset has been collecting and processing human interest data. Initially this data came solely from
crawling the social web for anonymous non-PII UGC. Data record #1 may include (Age=37, Gender=Male,
Location=San Francisco, Interests=Tennis, Soccer, 30 Rock, Toronto Maple Leafs) whereas data record #2 may
include (Age=24, Gender=Female, Location=San Diego, Interests=Surfing, anthropology, Twlight, chocolate,
Job=researcher. We built a proprietary system that studies millions of these records.

There are two types of datasets.

Dataset Type A - Interest Correlations - every single keyword(interests) in our system is associated with every
single other word in our system and so there is literally a rank order from 1 to x,xxx,xxx that demonstrates the
correlation of interests. You can imagine then how this info would be used when considering whether or not an
xBox360 advertisement should be shown to a user that lists things like birds,John Mayer, Starbucks, etc. in their
profile.

No shelf life for most Interests. Our data shows that interests don't change a lot. If you like Scarface today, you'll
like it Scarface five years from now likely.

Dataset Type B - User profile - where we have partnerships with social media companies or other entities with user
level data, we create anonymous unique profiles in our system that include explicit information and predicted
information on each one of them. So if Heinz comes out with a new mustard brand and they want to start an
awareness campaign for it, we can dynamically create a user segment of people interested in Mustard or Heinz or
Hot Dogs or....

--Key to understanding a big part of our value is how Peerset brings scale to targeting. A huge limitation to the
targeting sector is that most services don't scale well. Why? Because they rely only on actual user action (i.e.
visiting a travel site and typing in Las Vegas). Peerset only relies on explicit action or data as a starting point. We
expand from the explicit data to predict a much broader group of interests and therefore targets. Try going on
Facebook to their self-service ad platform and type in a keyword to see how many users they can find with that
keyword. The limited number of users that query will give you is a good example of how current targeting
approaches sabotage themselves because of their inability to scale.

What is the sweet spot when prospecting for clients? Are particular verticals strong, for example?

For agencies - our solution works in most marketing segments. Some verticals might be larger than others (i.e.
Cosmetics vs. Equestrian Sports) but that has more to do with the market size vs. our technology limitations.

What's making brand (awareness) marketers hesitate in bringing their brand budgets online?

Current measurements are not a substitute for experience and I believe that budgets haven't shifted quickly
enough to the internet because the promise of the internet was about measurement and perhaps that expectation

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was always unrealistic. You can accept that someone watching live tv or listening to live radio will experience the
ads. You can't prove it necessarily but marketers accept this anyway. The same cannot be said about a typical
banner ad(marketers will not assume that the banner will be noticed) so the click and the action has been forced
into the spotlight. For me it comes back to my point about (Question #3) what I hope for. If marketers get the ad
creative right and get the ad in front of the right person we can take pressure off of the old metrics and accept that
viewership are noticing those ads alongside their content experience.

How does Peerset help the publisher?

• Money - placing targeted ads we secure from advertisers

• Targeting technology - giving publishers the opportunity to optimize their own inventory by making better
recommendations of ads to users based on user psychographics(interests)
• Insights - we can help them understand their audience more completely by:
1. Packaging their users into marketing segments
2. Profiling users for general business purposes

Is it just social publishers you're helping?

Our value prop for social publishers is multi-layered. For non-social publishers we are helping them indirectly via
ad networks and exchanges who can re-target our social partner's users. Consider however that over time every
publisher is a social publisher or should be as traditional publishers incorporate social tools (bookmarking,
comments, chat, blogs, video, FB connect, etc.).

Are you buying through exchanges and yield optimizers to retarget users? How is that working? Any
success or challenges you can report?

Actively in partnership discussions. Nothing to announce yet. We see these relationships as the Fulfillment
component of Peerset Advertising. Many of these companies also look to us as a source of data that they can use
to help bring more intelligence to the cookied users that they are posting on exchanges for advertisers to acquire.

Peerset re-branded about a year ago from "Ontogenix". What was the reason?

The name was dorky. The name change was before I joined so I don't have all the details. "Onto" was for
Ontology. "Genix" I suppose was to suggest the science behind our IP. Peerset takes "Peer" for more the techie,
peer-to-peer notion and "Set" more for data.

How has momentum been since that time?

I wouldn't tie momentum to name change. For me momentum has been mostly around the point in time earlier this
year when we recognized that marketers are still using primitive approaches to plan and reach their target
audience. We can make a big impact here so long as people get to know of us.

Are their non-internet advertising applications for Peerset technology?

Absolutely but we are not focused on any of them for the time being in the spirit of focus. If you consider that at the
end of the day our core IP is about our understanding of the correlation of human interests and our
ability to predict things knowing that there are many applications to get involved with. Think about big research
sectors such as Pharmaceuticals or the intelligence sectors such as Homeland Security. Also think eCommerce
and consumer applications for things like dating or job search.

December 13, 2009 – 10:39 pm

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Social Targeting and Marketing

33Across Predictive Models Segmenting Audience In Ad

Exchanges Says CEO Wheeler
Email This Post

Eric Wheeler is CEO of 33Across, a social advertising technology company.

AdExchanger.com: Any update you can provide on momentum at 33Across? Hey, what does the name,
33Across, mean anyway?

EW: We're working with a number of major brands and media agencies - The 33Across SocialDNA™ platform
enables marketers to identify and anonymously target
people with strong real world connections to a marketer’s
existing customers. These "Social Proximity™" segments
are uniquely generated for a given marketer using social
graph data from websites that partner with 33Across. The
result is large, high propensity targeting segments
consisting of people with similar interests and purchase
behavior. The results are fantastic for both direct response
and brand advertisers.

33Across is a crossword puzzle reference. Usually there is

a long horizontal word in the middle of a crossword puzzle
around 33Across that, when solved unlocks the rest of the
puzzle. 33Across is the perfect metaphor for how we help
clients and their agencies leverage previously untapped
social data sets to solve their biggest marketing
challenges.

Whose "challenge" is 33Across trying to solve: the

social media publisher or advertiser?

We help both. Most advertisers are looking for effective

and scalable ways to leverage the social graph in their
programs. 33Across enables advertisers to utilize social
data both within and outside of social networks to improve
larger cross-publisher display campaigns. For publishers,
we are an incremental revenue stream for the data we license.

Are their advantages to the ad exchange model that social media advertisers and publishers may be able
to leverage?

The exciting thing about ad exchanges is the increasing amount of quality inventory that continues to become
available. Using 33Across, marketers can use our Social Proximity segments to target users across the web via
exchanges, not just within social media.

Can you identify the inherent difficulties of attribution related to media buying on the social web?

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We've found that many of our advertisers have advanced attribution models that measure networks, rich media
and advanced targeting side-by-side in there ability to drive direct and indirect (post click and post view) campaign
revenue. Although there are few standards from one client to another, we do see similar approaches that help to
provide apples-to-apples comparisons of different media and targeting in delivering on campaign objectives. Of
course, attributing online activities back to in-store purchases or behaviors like TV tune-in is still very hard, but by
working closely with the client and agency to integrate our data into more comprehensive views of cross-channel
tracking we can start to measure the overall effect of social targeting as part of the total media mix.

How do you see real-time bidding within the exchange model playing out - a potential benefit to the social
web?

The industry is continuing to embrace the use of custom data segments tied to real-time bidding on exchanges.
The benefit for the social web is that they will no longer need to rely 100% on revenue generated from ads served
within their network, allowing them to focus on being a best-in-class social tool and, in partnership with 33Across,
using their social data to improve ad targeting across the web via exchanges and networks.

In general, how is the media agency model going to need to evolve? Will it need to be more
entrepreneurial, for example? Or more technology-oriented?

Media agencies are going to continue to evolve in their ability to leverage data to deliver on client objectives and to
drive ROI. Technology infrastructure, data management, predictive modeling and segmentation are all parts of the
evolved media agency. Given the way in which most agencies are moving, I'd expect to see even more
entrepreneurial units connected to large agencies sprout up that are rooted in technology, data and have a ruthless
commitment to driving increased return for their clients. I call these evolved agencies Media T-1000's. They're
clearly media agencies, but they can do things you've never dreamed of before. We're building custom tools, data
segments and capabilities for them.

Is it all about addressable media now and less about the placement? Where does brand safety fit in?

With the growth of exchanges we're able to construct high-value audiences fueled by predictive data models
instantly. With Behavioral Targeting we moved from the page to the person. With Social Proximity Targeting we've
moving further into understanding the social connections around anonymous relationships and are able to activate
those connections across the web. This has as much value to brand advertisers as it does response advertisers.
We've put in place advanced controls that ensure we deliver into brand-safe placements.

Do you see more or fewer ad networks and ad agencies in the future?

There will probably be fewer networks in the next few years as consolidation grows and differentiation becomes
more critical. In the near term for agencies we'll probably see more Media T-1000's pop up inside, adjacent to and
independent from large media agencies as new models in agency/client collaboration are developed.

What would you suggest to young, digital media planners in order to hone their skills as they plot a
successful career in media?

Besides calling 33Across? They should get a broad understanding of search, data-driven display programs, and
start working with exchanges to appropriately integrate available 3rd-party data to improve client programs. The
media marketplace will continue to accelerate, in both the pace of programs and the sheer volume of data that can
be used to improve return. I'd also suggest that they take every opportunity they can get to understand, present to
and partner directly with their clients. Some of the best "account people" I've worked with were media planners. I'm
not sure exactly how the entire agency and client landscape will evolve, but I'm confident that there will be much
greater financial and operating alignment between agencies and clients going forward.

Follow Eric Wheeler (@EricWheeler) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

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September 8, 2009 – 4:55 am

310
HubSpot CEO Halligan Says SMB’s Need Scalable,
Efficient Marketing Strategy; Display Shouldn’t Be The
Focus
Email This Post

Brian Halligan is CEO of HubSpot, a social marketing optimization

company.

AdExchanger.com: What are the special concerns that the SMB

has when it comes to online marketing that HubSpot solves?

BH: SMBs have myriad specific concerns that can be summarized in

two general concerns: First, expertise. They know they need to get
involved in inbound marketing, but they don't know how -- where to
start, who to trust, how to balance different campaigns, and on and
on. Second, time. Even if an SMB figures out how to get involved in
social media, blogs and social media, they find they don't have the
time to really dig down beneath the surface and become an expert.
HubSpot helps SMBs solve both of these problems.

As you pull together all the online tactics (blogging, seo, social
media) into a single hub or marketing machine at Hubspot, do
you think there is room for display advertising? Does display
advertising work for the SMB?

Display advertising shouldn't be the focus of an SMB's marketing

strategy. Sure, there will be situations where it makes sense to use
display advertising, but those situations can't become your entire
marketing strategy. Display and PPC advertising is like a drug: once
you're hooked on it, it's hard to get off, and you have to pay more
and more to support your habit. In contrast, if you're creating content, engaging in social media and optimizing your
website for search engines, your marketing efforts will scale over time.

As you note on HubSpot's website, one of the Internet's key functions has been to create efficient
marketplaces. Is efficiency always getting better and will "real-time" be a part of it?

Yes, things are getting more efficient, and we're all better off for it. Advertising is a highly inefficient means of
matching a buyer with a seller. In advertising, a seller interrupts a potential buyer when they're not in the process of
buying. Inbound marketing removes this inefficiency. In means that sellers are producing signals (content and
relationships) that buyers find when they're interested in buying. That's a lot better for everybody, and real-time
tools like Twitter just make the system function more efficiently.

Lead generation has received a bad name via several high profile news stories in the recent past. How do
you overcome any misperceptions about your lead gen product? Or have you even needed to?

I don't think "lead generation" has received as bad a name as "cold calling" or "direct mail." The reason is related
to the answer to the previous question: Customers and business owners understand that the marketplace is
becoming more efficient. As a result, they're less willing to tolerate inefficient, annoying practices like cold calling
and direct mail.

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Considering the moving target of search engine optimization, it would appear that you would need to
"tune" the algorithm of HubSpot constantly, if you will. What's the trick to HubSpot staying
relevant/effective?

This is true across our company and product, not just for our search engine optimization tools. The key is great
people and an agile organization. Our team at HubSpot is a team of entrepreneurs. We're all constantly
experimenting and constantly testing new ideas, new products, and new ways of marketing. All that is in the DNA
of our company, and it shows up in the product, and helps the product stay on the cutting edge.

What trends are you seeing with your HubSpot clients in 2009?

The biggest trend we're seeing right now is increased adoption of social media. When we started our company
back in 2006, search engine optimization was the only thing most small businesses worried about. Today we're
seeing many small businesses focused on and getting returns from social media. Louis Page, a Massachusetts
fencing supplier and HubSpot customer, that's blogging and using Twitter is a great example. They're using these
tools to attract people to their website and drive
sales.

Am I dreaming or does it seem like MIT is starting to breed more and more marketing or advertising
technology companies? Why? What happened to rocket science as an MIT graduate pursuit?

There's still plenty of rocket science at MIT -- but you're right, there are a lot of marketing companies springing up
around MIT and Boston. Scott Kirsner, a blogger and journalist, recently wrote about this. Why is this happening? I
think it's because MIT is a data-driven culture, and marketing is becoming more of a data-driven business.

How did your background in venture capital influence decisions you're making with HubSpot today?

My stint in venture capital is actually one of the reasons we started HubSpot. When I was in the venture capital
industry, I was working with many startups who were doing old-fashioned outbound marketing -- cold calling, print
advertising and events. It wasn't working for them, and it was eating up a lot of cash. At the same time, my partner
Dharmesh was reaching a vast audience with his blog, OnStartups. We saw an opportunity for small businesses to
use these new tools for marketing, and we jumped at it.

I am happy to note that according to HubSpot's website grader, AdExchanger.com received a website
grade of 99.1/100 and ranks 10,095 of the 1,148,192 websites. Should I still enroll in HubSpot? Is this a
marketing ploy to make me feel better? If so, it worked.

Congratulations! That's a great score. Your site is well-optimized. As far as purchasing HubSpot, the product is
actually built for small and medium-sized business trying to do marketing online -- that means collecting leads,
blogging, optimizing for search engines, using social media and more. As a media site your needs are different.
You're not collecting leads, you're selling advertising. Because of that distinction, you probably wouldn't get the full
value out of HubSpot, and you're probably better off sticking with the free tools on Grader.com.

Follow HubSpot (@HubSpot) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 7, 2009 – 5:34 am

312
Lotame CEO Monfried Says Robust Data, Creative Assets
and Interaction Needed by Agencies in Social Media Space
Email This Post

Andy Monfried is CEO of Lotame, an advertising solutions provider

for the social web.

AdExchanger.com: You recently stated on your blog that "Data

is King" and go on to argue that - over time - purchase intent
data (i.e. ecommerce, search) is less valuable than the data
derived from a social profile/graph. Search marketers must
have just spilled their coffee. Is social the new search in online
advertising?

AM: No. Social is not the new search in online advertising. Search
and purchase intent will always have a valuable place in the world
of marketing, and actually, search and purchase intent can be
viewed as subsets of “social.”

At Lotame when we talk about “Social” , we are talking about the

360 degree view of a user. We are talking about how known types
of people behave, interact or engage with content or other types of
known people. It is the ability to look at users holistically, in real time, and understand who they really are and what
really interests them.

Imagine for a second you were a mobile phone company trying to sell your new phone. Naturally, it would make
sense to market to those users who have recently viewed or looked at a mobile phone, right? But, what if that user
was only interested in a new phone because they wanted the ability to watch comedy movies on the go? What if
that user really wanted a new phone so he or she can send group messages to the rest of their soccer team?
Having the ability to understand a user at their core, and understand who they really are, enables marketers to
become more tactical and efficient when trying achieve certain backend goals.

How will social ad targeting and display advertising exchanges work together, if at all?

Social ad targeting is really the ability to take a set of social data (deep understanding of people) and reach those
users with a targeted message no matter where they are online, or in this case, the advertising exchanges.

The process will look something like this:

1) Using a data platform, marketers will be able to build customized audiences using rich data from social
media or other social sites. Which today, seems like the entire web.
2) Using a decisioning platform, tied into various media or inventory sources, they will be able to determine
where they want to reach their users, either by media type (sports site, news site, social site, etc), or by
price (cheapest media – real time bidding).

At Lotame, we understand that these three pillars (data, decisioning, and inventory) can be complicated to build
and assemble, so we have been hard at work building a proprietary system that unifies all three.

What is your view on data exchanges? It would seem you are aggregating data which could potentially be
sold through a data exchange.

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Data exchanges are great if done correctly. These exchanges can provide real value to the digital community if
they are transparent and accountable. At the end of the day, we could hypothetically sell our data through
exchanges, but then again, we could also sell data directly as well. I think it really all depends on how these
exchanges address the needs and concerns of the publishers, the marketers, and most importantly, the
consumers.

Can you give us a sense of momentum at Lotame? Where are the strengths? Any weaknesses in the
marketplace given the economic downturn?

Momentum is fantastic. We just had our biggest month in revenue and the upcoming months also look promising.
Our strengths? Easy. We have an extremely talented and dedicated team who understand the current needs and
pain points of the industry. Our team also has enough foresight and intuition to see where things are headed. For
the past two years we have been building a system that looks at rich social data, specifically within “social media.”
It turns out that two years later, arguably 90% of the web has become social in one way, shape or form, and we
are able to capitalize on that data across the web. This, however, is probably also our biggest weakness. Because
many people view us as a “social media” company, we are still being bucketed in “social media” plans, when in
reality; we are able to extract the most valuable data points from across the web. With those data points, we can
build custom audiences. Marketers would find more value in Lotame by removing us out of the “social media”
bucket, and just accepting Lotame for who we really are: A next generation data and media platform built for the
social web.

Are view-through conversions accepted by your client base? Given the demand generation "pitch" of
social media advertising, it would seem essential.

View-through conversations are accepted by some of our clients; however, it is only a part of what we can offer.
View-through tends to favor the larger reach players since they are more likely to serve that last impression. Since
our technology allows for highly customizable consumer segments, marketers can adjust their campaigns,
audience, and media in order reach whatever backend goals they wish to achieve. Whether or not we agree with
those backend goals is another story.

Are media buying agencies keeping pace with opportunity in the social media space? How does the
agency remain relevant and successful going forward?

Yes and no. Media buying agencies understand they need to be in the social media space and they are indeed
spending money there, but they are mixing and matching old methods with new methods and that just doesn’t
work. If the agency is to remain relevant and successful going forward, they need to do the following three things:
1) Build robust and comprehensive data sets in order to really understand their users, 2) Develop enhanced or
social creative assets that will not only spark conversation, but will have a lasting impression, 3) Join the
conversation. I recently heard a phrase, “your customers are your most valuable assets.” If marketers aren’t
engaging and interacting with the most important asset - people, then no form of advertising will be truly effective. I
think that if the agency can pull together these three components, they will find lots of success in this evolving
digital media landscape.

Follow Lotame (@lotame) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 4, 2009 – 7:04 am

314
Media6Degrees Pancer Says Social Media Companies
Need To Focus On Creating Value For Marketers To Drive
Yield
Email This Post

Andrew Pancer is Chief Operating Officer at Media6Degrees.

AdExchanger.com: How would you characterize momentum

in 2009 for Media6Degrees?

AP: 2009 has been a great year for Media6°! We officially

launched our commercial product late last fall and have been
able to deliver fantastic results for our marketing partners. An
example referenced in Adweek on 6/28/09 cites a financial
services client who saw an increase in conversions of 167%. In
the travel category we have a client who is seeing over $40 of
booking revenue for every $1 spent with us. Across the board
we are hearing Media6° is among the top performers on client
media plans. As a result we have a very high renewal rate and
have been adding new clients at a steady clip every month. We
are now working with over 50 clients across every major
spending category. We are 100% focused on meeting our
client's objectives and delivering exceptional ROI for them.

Curious about a "typical" Media6° campaign.. For example,

is there a testing phase where you try to find the right
audience to meet the goals of the marketer's campaign? If
so, for how long? Can you understand whether an ad unit is
above or below the fold and optimize accordingly? In that
there is a ton of social inventory, it would seem a campaign
could be delivered very quickly as opposed to other web
destination genres, correct?

We function just like any re-targeting campaign. Only we add a

whole layer of scalability to the mix. We ask our partners to put a Media6° pixel on their site. This pixel is used to
identify a customer. We then look for that customer in our proprietary social graph. If there is a match, we identify
that customer's "network neighbors", the 10 people closest to that customer who are most likely to share affinity for
our customer's product. We then market to those individuals through display advertising.

Typically we like to observe pixel data for up to 4 weeks before launching a campaign. We then buy inventory
anywhere we see our audience, not just social networks. There is a ton of social inventory available but most of it
is not what we need. We pay premium CPM's to get the best inventory that will allow us to meet our client's
objectives. Neither we nor our partners benefit by purchasing $0.20 CPM ads that run below the fold 30 pages
within a user session. We also manage even delivery of a campaign as best as we can and we set daily caps to
ensure we do not have massive spikes.

Regarding your deal with Havas Digital, how is it progressing? Have you been running any brand
campaigns for them yet?

Havas has been a great strategic partner. They are very forward thinking in terms of how they view the use of
online data and we learn a lot from our interactions with their team. Our relationship keeps growing. We have run a

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variety of campaigns for them in the retail and CPG categories and continue to build momentum throughout their
companies.

Are agencies your key buy side partners? Or direct marketers? How do you see this evolving?

The majority of our business is through agencies. They are terrific partners. We have announced several strategic
partnerships to date. One being Havas the other ICrossing. We are currently working with most major agencies
and I believe this will continue to be the major strategic focus for Media6° for some time. An agency focus allows
us to sell our solution to a much broader array of clients than if we were to try and go client direct. We do very little
with direct marketers at this time but I believe this is an area of opportunity for us.

Are ad exchanges an important development in terms of monetizing social media? If so, why?

Ad exchanges are critical to the environment. They allow companies to eliminate waste and provide better results
to their marketing partners. We only buy inventory when we see a Media6° cookie. This eliminates the need for a
"daisy chain". We do not have to deal with loss from passing along inventory and we do not have to worry about
extra latency issues. As a result we can pay higher CPMs to our publishing partners.

How can publishers work with Media6? Are social media publishers concerned about channel conflict?

Coming from the publishing industry I understand the issues they deal with and the concerns that they have about
ad networks. At About.com, 3rd party networks were a very significant revenue stream yet managing channel
conflict was always top of mind.

Publishers should view Media6° and our peers as complementary, not a threat to their existing sales efforts. Right
now, many publishers would probably stop reading. But hear me out. We are not looking to buy the areas where
publishers are selling out at high CPMs. We are looking for individuals regardless of context. There are always
areas that are undersold. Publishers typically either a) run house ads, b) sell these sections on a run of site basis
c) bonus ads to manage ECPM down for larger advertisers or d) pass the inventory to ad networks.

For a portal I am not expecting to buy their Finance, Tech or Health inventory. I am going to get mail, news, sports,
etc. These are the areas that have huge audiences but lower advertising demand. If I can pay more for this
inventory than what a publisher would yield from any of a-c above, then it makes sense to work with me. Social
media companies benefit even more. They typically have smaller sales teams and higher volumes of unsold
inventory. Channel conflict is easy enough to manage through block lists.

How do you ensure brand safety for advertisers?

We only run on top tier sites and block any sites that would not be perceived as PG-13 or better. We have a huge
incentive to make sure our advertisers run in brand safe environments. We have had the occasional bump in the
road where an ad was on a top site but in against inappropriate content. We fixed the problem immediately and
worked with the publisher to ensure it would not happen again.

This is a very important issue for our industry and we are looking at new technologies to help manage campaigns
for our clients.

If you were a social media site publisher today, how would you be driving yield? In terms of display
placements on a social site, does "less is more" apply?

In order for social media companies to drive yield they need to focus more attention to creating value for
marketers. Your audience must to be your top priority, but if you want advertisers to pay the bills they need to be a
very close 2nd. I have seen too many social media sites, and traditional publishers for that matter, who think that
building an audience is enough to attract advertisers. That is not nearly enough in today's world.

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Media6° has a couple of social media partners who are providing advertisers with very good placement of larger
IAB units above the fold. They have only 1 or 2 ad units per page and these are strategically placed. Guess what?
Performance of advertising on these sites is significantly better than their peers. As a result Media6° buys this
inventory for much higher rates. And we are not alone. Most networks and advertisers would pay more for this
inventory.

On the publishing end we used to talk about brand and audience. You have a trusted brand and a desirable
audience so advertisers should take notice. But the new 3rd leg of the stool is data. The ability to tap into your
audience and market to them in more effective ways is fast becoming the requirement. Any publisher who does not
accept this is taking on significant amounts of risk.

Where are key areas for future growth for Media6° - more social media publishers? Improved technology?
International? Moving beyond standard display placements?

We will always focus on the core technology first. Our ability to identify and build custom audiences of socially
connected people is the driver of our business. It can be extended across borders and into other forms of
advertising. It's hard to look beyond the next 12 months but what we have on the immediate horizon are
international expansion and search related products.

We have already launched beta tests in both Canada and the United Kingdom. They are going quite well and I
expect to see material growth of non-US revenues in the 2nd half of this year.

As part of the ICrossing deal we announced on 6/15/09, we will be launching search based retargeting products.
We expect this to be a very big area of growth for the company in the 2nd half of 2009 and beyond.

What's your view on real-time bidding (RTB) in exchanges? Important development or hype?

We are experimenting with RTB in several environments. RTB has tremendous potential but it is still very early to
tell how important it will be. The ability to dynamically bid at the impression level is very attractive but how much
will it really move the needle? If yield/performance improvements are only on the margin it will probably not be
worth the effort needed to build and manage the needed systems.

Could Media6 offer data feeds with social targeting information that could help determine biddable value of
a single impression in an exchange with RTB? Why not open a social data exchange?

Media6° could offer data feeds that would allow others to tap into our social graph. We have done some
preliminary testing in this area and the results are promising. Down the road this may be something we offer. But
right now we are focused on our own sales and execution efforts.

Follow Andrew Pancer (@apancer) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 15, 2009 – 5:44 am

317
SocialMedia.com Focused On Turning Any Display Ad Into
A Social Ad Says CEO Goldstein
Email This Post

Seth Goldstein is the co-founder and CEO of SocialMedia, a social advertising platform.

http://www.SocialMedia.comAdExchanger.com: AdKnowledge acquired SocialMedia.com's ad network

last week as noted here by TechCrunch. Where does this leave SocialMedia.com?

We are excited about the transition of our ad network to Adknowledge. This move will allow SocialMedia.com to
focus solely on its core business of developing the first social advertising platform. We’ve been a pioneer in social
advertising since 2007, by building a Facebook ad platform that allowed app developers to manage, market, and
monetize their inventory. Now moving forward, the company is going to bring this level of holistic publisher service
beyond Facebook app developers, allowing web publishers to socially
enable their inventory across the web

Can you break down SocialMedia.com's business model? Where

does display advertising fit in?

We are 100% focused on developing the first social advertising platform

that allows publishers and advertisers to turn any online display
advertisement into a social ad, anywhere on the web. We are confident
this platform will power the next generation of social ads across the web.

How are you defining a “social ad?”

We focus on three different types of social ads, defined by social

relationships. The first type is a friend-to-friend social ad, which enables
the sharing of brand opinions between friends by tapping social
connections on social networks. Next are ads that elevate brand
awareness by broadcasting positive comments by individual influencers
(on platforms such as Twitter). Finally, we power ads that amplify brand
messages by aggregating community voices and sending the aggregate
social message to groups with a common interest. The reason that each
type of social ad is successful is because they all provide consumers with
more relevant message by relaying the message through a real person – whether a friend, an influencer, or a
shared community.

Who are your clients? Are holding company agencies buying from SocialMedia.com or is it primarily direct
response advertisers?

SocialMedia.com is no longer an ad network. We are a platform provider that allows publishers to offer social ads
to customers. These publishers work with agencies, brands, and sometimes direct response advertisers. We offer
the first advertising platform that enables these publishers to make their ads social. Anyone who wants to create
social online ads is a potential client -- publishers, advertisers, or agencies.

What's your view on the recent tumult surrounding companies such as Offerpal, SuperRewards, Zynga
and the concerns raised by TechCrunch's Mike Arrington?

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I think it's great to see the evolution of social media monetization towards a more sustainable ad model. Inevitably
incentive offers work for a small subset of advertisers -- and work quite well -- but there are many other ways to be
advertising socially and that is what SocialMedia.com is all about.

What's your view on data exchanges such as BlueKai and eXelate? Will SocialMedia.com participate or
does it already?

We think that the world of retargeting and data exchanges is very exciting given the promulgation of open
exchanges in advertising market places. We imagine a future where you can reach any consumer you want, at any
moment, anywhere in the funnel. But you still have to give consumers a message that resonates, and this is what
SocialMedia.com is doing by providing an increasingly social experience in ads.

How do you see the agency model evolving in the next 2-3 years? If you were running an agency, what
strategies would you be putting into place?

The agency model is evolving dramatically. The adverting agency industry is going to change as much, if not more,
than the financial industry has in last couple years, in terms of the need for transparency and efficiency. Agencies
are emerging as trading platforms, as buying platforms, and as investable pools of audience liquidity.

If I were running an agency I would:

1. Hire smart quants and traders from former hedge funds and Wall Street firms.
2. Set aside a budget for $10-100 million to buy access to proprietary data, join all available exchanges such
as Right Media, DoubleClick, etc., and utilize all of the data targeting technology available like you
mentioned with BlueKai and eXelate.
3. Leverage all the dynamic creative units coming onto marketplace including ours - SocialMedia.com.
4. Work with ad clients on a hedge-fund-like model, i.e. collect a management fee but keep any upside from
an increase in performance.

What's SocialMedia.com's pitch to brand marketers? How do you overcome concerns about brand safety
in social media?

Brands don't have a choice about participating in social: they have to otherwise they will not be brands for very
long. Given that they must participate, they must also be careful of their actions. Brand must engage in social in
way that preserves and protects, as well as enables and amplifies their core brand qualities at scale.

Brands must think about how to use all the different social channels -- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace,
Foursquare, you name it. In order to reach millions of people at scale brands have to establish their brand
qualities, and site-specifically shape those qualities into different environments (e.g. fan page on Facebook,
account on Twitter, badge on Foursquare). Brands must make the move from one-off sponsors and applications to
establishing a comprehensive and pervasive presence on social media networks. Companies like
SocialMedia.com can help them with that.

Follow Seth Goldstein (@Seth) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

November 23, 2009 – 2:08 am

319
Traffic Tools: Serving, Quality and Attribution

Ad-Juster Technology Bridging Ad Server Discrepencies

Says Pres Lewis
Email This Post

Mike Lewis is President and Co-Founder of Ad-Juster, an ad

server discrepancy management company.

As you have said in your release, Ad-Juster looks to solve

"two of the digital ad industries major pain points: 3rd party
reporting and discrepancy identification." Can you share
momentum you have seen with Ad-Juster's product in
2009? And, who needs this the most, in your opinion? The
publisher, the advertiser or the ad network?

ML: We at Ad-Juster have been overwhelmed by the positive

response that we've received from our target audience. We
emerged from beta in April of this year and in only 3-1/2 months
we have collected a very impressive clientèle and continue to
attract major publishers. In an environment where publishers are
struggling and budgets are tight, Ad-Juster continues to close
sales at a rapid rate. Our ROI is clear, publishers save money
using our system. Since we offer a publishers significant cost
savings, this economy in many ways is helping our sales
process. We have also received a very warm welcome from
AdMonsters. AdMonsters has helped us identify and refine our
view of the digital publishers' pain points in the area of
discrepancy and third party reporting. Our core customers today
are primarily online publishers and ad networks, however our
system has clear applications and benefits for advertisers as
well.

What is the current state of standards around ad serving

and reporting? What needs to change, if anything, in your
opinion?

We think that the Interactive Ad Bureau (IAB) has done a great

job over the last decade working with both publishers and
advertisers to standardize everything from placement sizes to terms and conditions to accounting rules for
impression and click counting. However no standards exist in reporting today. This can be observed by any
publisher that is reliant on more than one third party ad server to collect billing numbers at the end of the month.
Every technology has its own format and system for delivering reports, whether it be email, direct login, or in the
rarest of cases an API for direct connection. The IAB has recently released a draft specification for a universal
report, which, if implemented by all third party ad servers, could help simplify the problem. Unfortunately as it
stands today, we don’t think this specification really goes far enough to lay out rules for how data should be
exchanged and what implementations will be available for publishers and advertisers to use this data. The
proposed IAB solution may also encounter some technical challenges and some quite possibly serious adoption
challenges – and it won’t truly be useful until it’s 100% adopted by all ad serving companies, publishers and
agencies. We believe this is where Ad-Juster comes into the picture. By connecting to each ad server platform

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using their native interface, centralizing that data, and normalizing it into a defined standard, Ad-Juster serves as
the reference implementation of the IAB's Impression Exchange System (IES). We further simplify the IES
specification since we do not require a new unique identifier to be managed by publishers, we use only the
information that is currently contained in the ad server's ad tag to correlate and reconcile daily delivery information,
hence no adoption or technical changes by all ad platforms is required – Ad-Juster is usable today.

How can yield optimization companies benefit from your company? Many manage relationships between
100s of ad networks and millions of publishers, after all.

Yield optimization is a complex and model intensive process. Many of these systems make delivery decisions
based on the current performance and value of many ads available for selection. However, these decisions are
often made with the assumption of either an expected delivery or a fixed expectation of discrepancy. In some
cases yield management tools will allow for manual adjustment to discrepancy expectation, however none that I
am aware of make these decisions on precise real-time discrepancy data. By providing yield management tools
with a more accurate view of the ad delivery landscape, they will be able to make better decisions on what to
deliver and when, from an effective CPM (eCPM) perspective. The bottom line is that yield management
companies today are optimizing on the wrong numbers. They are calculating net effective CPMs based on
publisher side data. Ad-Juster can provide them with the 3rd party data so they can better manage yield based on
the right numbers.

Ad-Juster would seem to be another tool in the world of media delivery verification such as company like
DoubleVerify. Any plans to provide conversion verification?

Ad-Juster does not really see itself as a verification tool. Our system provides business intelligence to our
customers by pulling together large sets of readily available information, aggregating it, correlating and reconciling
it, then presenting it to our customer in an easy to consume format that allows for shorter time to reaction. For
example, one of our primary audiences is the ad trafficker within a digital publisher's organization. Their job is to
make sure that campaigns are set up properly and going to deliver in full. Their job, before Ad-Juster, consisted of
collecting information from potentially dozens of 3rd party ad servers, pulling their delivery data into a single
spreadsheet, and figuring out which 3rd party campaign line items matched their locally served placements. This
process could take up to a few days depending upon the complexity and depth of the publisher's advertising client
base. With Ad-Juster, the trafficker can get right to tasks of optimizing campaigns, identifying and repairing mis-
trafficked campaigns, and adjusting campaign parameters to meet contractual obligations on a daily basis simply
by setting up a report which will be delivered to their inbox each morning. We remove manual and error prone
steps from the process of digital ad serving. Most publishers don’t pull all 3rd party data on a daily basis due to the
time constraints and work involved, so due to the daily delivery task performed by Ad-Juster, we also provides the
added benefit of optimizing on a more timely basis and identifying trafficking errors that cause discrepancies more
quickly.

Does the ad exchange model represent any special challenges in ad serving and discrepancies?

The largest impact ad exchanges have had on the industry has been on the breadth of advertisers that publishers
now have access to. While 3 years ago a small publisher may have only done business with 3 different advertisers,
that same publisher may do business with 10-20 in any given month. This has greatly increased the complexity of
that publisher's ad trafficking operations. They are often now faced with the options of hiring more internal staff or
outsourcing trafficking and reporting duties to specialized service companies. The value of a single Ad-Juster
report to give them a view of their digital ad operations becomes more and more valuable as this breadth
increases. Another complexity that ad exchanges bring is that they represent another hop in the delivery of ad
content. A publisher delivering an ad exchange tag may have 2 or more additional ad server calls made before the
final advertisement is delivered. Each new level of hopping represents more work to track down potential errors
and more opportunity for discrepancies to occur. Ad-Juster helps to manage this complexity by automatically
discovering 4th party ad tags when possible as well as allowing users to manually map these relationships with our
trafficking module.

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It would appear that rich media ad serving companies such as PointRoll and EyeWonder may provide even
more complexity. Can Ad-Juster help with digital video campaigns?

The more complex the rich media and the larger the file sizes, the larger the problem of discrepancies becomes.
Trends are moving in favor of an Ad-Juster solution. Increasing complexity in rich media tags is only one area
where Ad-Juster provides tremendous value. We currently decipher and interpret creative ad tags for standard
impression tags, click trackers, impression trackers, video tags (start of video, 25%, finish tags), and a wide array
of other exotic tags. We can then use each of these unique identification elements to map the locally served
creative to multiple third party delivery elements. We can separately track each of these and provide the publisher
with a single view of these various dimensions of their performance. This problem will only continue to get more
and more complex as rich media continues to evolve and creates more and more different ways to deliver this
content.

In that Ad-Juster sees many campaigns, it could provide insight on industry norms such as average
impression discrepancy rates for particular ad networks, publishers and advertisers. Or by verticals or
horizontals. Have you considered a "Dow Jones Industrial Average", so to speak, for key metrics you
track? (PubMatic's Ad Price Index could be another corollary.)

Our privacy policy currently prohibits us from doing this in any manner, however it’s interesting you ask this,
because some of our publishing customers have pointed out the value we could add here. Over time, if we find
interest in opting in to such a program we may certainly pursue it for those publishers wishing to opt-in, however,
our team believes that the only thing more important to our customers than timely accurate data is security,
therefore a publisher would have to fully opt-in to any future offering we may provide before we’d share their data
in any form. Any program we might develop will be done in a manner which will protect all information specific to
individual publishers and advertisers and will have sufficient data samples to make reverse engineering such
numbers impossible. It would be incumbent on us to illustrate the benefits of such a program. Our customers' data
is very sensitive, so such a program would have to add such tremendous value to the individual companies and
the industry as a whole, that its adoption advantages would far outweigh any perceived risks.

Does Ad-Juster see more traction with brand or direct response marketers?

Most of our publishers today are considered "premium" publishers and are selling both directly to brand teams and
agencies on a CPM basis, and since CPM rates tend to be higher than direct response, I’d say today it’s had the
most impact on brand marketers. However, even premium publishers often outsource some degree of inventory on
a CPC or CPA basis to a network specializing in that. Since Ad-Juster can retrieve and reconcile every ad delivery
metric (Impression, Clicks, actions, or any measurable event), it’s really relevant to both.

Why should brand advertisers care about Ad-Juster?

While most brand advertisers have the contractual advantages in their relationship with publishers, there are still
significant reasons to want access to real-time delivery and discrepancy information. The "cost" of managing digital
media today is significant. Much of the fees paid to agencies by brand teams are incurred as part of the friction
costs of executing on digital media. Ad-Juster reduces those friction costs, allows the publisher to more readily and
accurately optimize a campaign and reach their delivery goals, and thus in the long-run, saves the brand team
money. While the direct revenue risk to a brand from under-performing campaigns is small since advertisers will
only pay publishers based on their own delivery counts, there are several indirect friction costs in managing media
that is under-performing. The primary cost or risk which the advertiser or agency exposes themselves to is
contractual reinsertion. When campaigns do not perform fully, often times this means under performance is rolled
over into the next month or year. This contractual modification can represent a substantial percent of monthly
operating expenses. The second impact to advertisers' cost is the need to set up and maintain publisher access
accounts on their ad servers reporting system. While we do not currently work directly with advertisers, our plans
are to extend our automatic reconciliation services to them with the intention of dramatically reducing this internal
cost of doing business. Ad-Juster allows the agency to operation more efficiently and spend more time on the
analytics and creative aspects of campaign management and less on manual labor and billing reconciliation.

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How do you see the agency model adjusting (no pun intended) in the next few years? Do you view directs
or agencies as your sweet spot in the future?

We don't necessarily see a preference between directs and agencies, both pose and suffer from the same
underlying issue of non-centralized data. We believe the biggest change that will occur within the digital advertising
industry over the next several years in the area of reporting and discrepancy reconciliation will be the centralization
of delivery data. To reuse the Dow Jones analogy, today the equities markets finalize the day's trades in a central
location every night after trading has ceased. This central location is referred to as a clearing house. Ad-Juster
believes it is positioned to offer a solution to the need for a central clearing house in digital advertising.
Aggregating, correlating, reconciling and redistributing daily "truth" data back to the publishers and advertisers who
will now be able to remain in sync with each other through the life cycle of each digital campaign. This will truly
revolutionize the way digital ad operations are done today.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 3, 2009 – 12:32 pm

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AdSafe Media Pres Monat Sees Exchanges And Networks
Benefitting From Risk Management
Email This Post

Helene Monat is President, AdSafe Media, an

advertising technology company.

AdExchanger.com: What challenge does

AdSafe Media solve for marketers?

HM: AdSafe Media was founded with the goal of

helping brands implement safe and successful
digital advertising strategies. While many brands
and agencies have adopted best practices for
advertising on the Internet, the complexities of
the ad-serving ecosystem can yield significant
problems, specifically risks to brands in terms of
content adjacencies (i.e. the content that
appears next to advertising). AdSafe technology
provides brand marketers with the first
independent, third-party service to protect their
integrity and equity. AdSafe's suite of products
enables marketers and agencies to safely and
successfully execute digital advertising
strategies by preventing brand campaigns from
being displayed in potentially harmful online
environments.

How can AdSafe help bring brand awareness

dollars online and serve the brand marketer?
Any examples?

Many marketers are hesitant to fully commit to campaign-level digital strategies because they feel the online world
lacks the same brand safety and security of off-line media. Without the proper infrastructure, brand marketers will
continue to be tentative with their online spending. At AdSafe, we are developing a platform that provides brands
with the tools to safely and effectively manage digital campaigns by mitigating concerns about content
appropriateness. We believe that all members of the ad ecosystem should work collaboratively to elevate digital to
the primary media channel for brand marketers – a goal that has a significant upside for all the constituents of the
online advertising world.

What's your view regarding ad exchanges? A "haunted house" for brands?

We see exchanges as an inevitable evolution of the current ad-serving model and one that provides significant
benefits in the current economic climate. One obvious benefit of the exchange model is its efficiency. As marketers
continue to look for ways to increase value, we believe that exchanges will allow marketers to make their dollars
work harder. That said, we also see the network model as delivering distinct benefits, specifically when it comes to
accessing premium or targeted vertical content. Both models have their advantages and potential challenges. We
believe both can benefit from the greater transparency and control for advertisers that AdSafe can provide.

What are the data points your ratings system evaluates? Is it predictive or entirely based on history?

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The AdSafe ratings system scores pages, sitelettes and sites over time on a daily basis and by using historical
tracking data. We also forecast for future site ratings. We initially provide individual scores for 8 categories that
align with IAB and IASH standards, including adult content, violence, offensive language, spyware/malware, etc.
Our rating system combines our proprietary network analysis platform, URL and site history analysis, multiple
semantic filters, image analysis, events analysis and our Human Scorer’s analysis/validation procedures for our
algorithms, which are updated every 24 hours. These evaluation tools allow brands marketers to make the most
informed decision when considering a website for an ad campaign.

Would you qualify your services as "compliance" - a stock market term that may fit in this new automated
world of advertising?

We define our services as "risk management" rather than "compliance", because our platform provides tools for
brand marketers to define their own unique rating thresholds and for ad networks and ad exchanges to have a
standardized, industry-wide, objective rating system. Ultimately, it is up to the brands, networks and publishers
using our service to decide the guidelines they choose to follow. We provide the tools to rationally and effectively
make that decision.

Given your rating system, it would seem to be a good fit for impression-level bidding in real-time (RTB).
Any thoughts on how RTB could be an opportunity for AdSafe Media?

We agree that AdSafe media is a good fit for impression-level bidding in real-time (RTB). We are currently in
discussions with multiple companies who also see the significant advantages of a seamlessly integrated approach.

Please discuss the current momentum for AdSafe Media. Any trends you can share regarding the
company's business or its clients?

AdSafe Media has been focused on its proprietary, patent-pending technology for the past 16 months. We started
sharing the capabilities of AdSafe with ad networks, brands and digital agencies in early July. The response and
interest has been so positive, it even exceeded our expectations - such that we are working to add additional talent
to our AdSafe team, in our New York headquarters, in our West Coast office, and in our soon-to-launch London
office.

How does AdSafe Media work with web publishers?

AdSafe's tools and opportunities for web publishers are another really important component to ensure that all
members of the ecosystem benefit from a standardized and independent third-party rating system. We have
different services for small-to-medium publishers and for larger publishers.

Where do you see the sweet spot for AdSafe in terms of a target market? How does the revenue model
work?

AdSafe has developed its technology to serve each of the major segments of the online advertising ecosystem –
brands/agencies, ad networks, and publishers. But AdSafe’s ultimate value proposition is to enable major brand
marketers to shift a greater percentage of spend to digital by providing a safe and transparent environment for its
online campaigns. We anticipate a robust market for companies to secure themselves online, and are excited
about the future of the space.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 9, 2009 – 6:39 am

325
Anchor Intelligence CEO Miller Sees More Fraud Occurring
In Clicks Than Impressions
Email This Post

Ken Miller is CEO of Anchor Intelligence, a traffic quality solutions provider.

AdExchanger.com: You have an impressive list of client testimonials

on your site. Can you discuss recent momentum at Anchor
Intelligence? Any impact from the economy?

KM: In the past two quarters, we’ve seen the number of inbound inquiries
into Anchor Intelligence increase by more than 400%. Market conditions are
forcing advertisers to scrutinize spend more than ever before; as a result,
they are no longer willing to accept traffic that doesn’t convert, or comes
from undocumented, questionable sources. Secondly, the growth of ad
syndication and exchanges has led to a strong demand for transparency
and accountability. Ad sellers who can’t identify where their best and worst
traffic quality is coming from are being squeezed out as advertisers are
going elsewhere. As a result, many ad networks and search companies are
turning to Anchor Intelligence to proactively manage and optimize their
traffic quality.

Regarding customer wins, we recently announced our partnership with

Ask.com, through which ClearMark scores every ad click across the globe
for Ask.com and its partners. The public commitment by a top 4 ad provider
to deliver the highest-quality traffic to its advertisers represents a major
victory for advertisers.

A great advantage of our solution is that satisfied customers benefit further

from having their partners and affiliates also use ClearMark. As a result, we
have a several additional partner announcements coming up very soon.

What are the challenges that ad networks and agencies face regarding
ad event quality?

One of the most pressing challenges regarding ad event quality is that many ad networks and agencies are
completely caught off guard when victimized by malicious actors. Whether it’s the result of placement violations,
malicious ad code, or outright publisher fraud, a single misstep can lead to a major ad partner going elsewhere to
spend its money.

Today, there are literally hundreds of thousands of shell sites that exist for the sole purpose of exploiting online ad
spend. It’s very common for an ad network, agency, or advertiser to have some of its inventory served on these
shell sites via another ad network, an ad exchange, or through syndication. When this happens, an advertiser may
see its click through rates spike, without a corresponding increase in conversions. As a result, the advertiser may
discontinue its spend out of fear of brand erosion or fraud.

For ad sellers, it’s difficult to stay on top of the ongoing threats to traffic quality. Without the ability to differentiate
between a malicious event and an irregular ad campaign, ad sellers are pressured to throw out some of the good
traffic to avoid charging for any of the bad.

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You have said that your Anchor ClearMark system provides a metric similar to a FICO credit score for each
ad event. What are the data attributes of your FICO score? Any weightings that deliver the final score?

Anchor Intelligence believes that there is more value to be assigned to an ad event beyond binary conversion
measurements. Since conversion rates on ad clicks are so low, there is a ton of traffic that may not have
associated conversions but should obviously not be treated equally across the board.

ClearMark scores each ad event on a continuous scale that ranges from 0.00 to 1.00, with the lower end
representing invalid traffic and the higher end representing high quality traffic. The scoring algorithm uses a myriad
of different data including reputational attributes at the audience, site, referrer, and network level. It also leverages
historical observations such as conversions, engagement, and malicious activity such as outbound spam to create
behavioral profiles. You can imagine that an ad network, even in the absence of a reliable conversion-tracking
program, can leverage ClearMark to differentiate the traffic it sends to its advertisers or make optimization
decisions.

How would an ad network, for example, install the ClearMark system? Is the fraud protection system
hosted by Anchor or the client ad network?

The ClearMark system is software as a service that uses click logs, similar to the way that traditional web analytics
work. Clearmark receives click logs in a number of ways, ranging from a lightweight javascript or pixel
implementation to more customized backend integration. The majority of our customers have deployed the
ClearMark system via backend integration to facilitate integration with their billing and reporting systems.

What is the revenue model for Anchor Intelligence?

Anchor’s revenue model is based on the volume of ad events scored. As a result, our business grows with that of
our customers.

In that click quality data enables optimization, is Anchor Intelligence prepared to integrate into real-time
bidding (RTB) systems?

We have invited a few companies to test a beta integration with their RTB systems to measure lift. Our beta
partners fully recognize the value of inputting traffic scoring results into their real-time bidding platform.
Furthermore, we’ve launched a beta with several advertisers using a similar bidding framework that dynamically
optimizes keyword spend. So far, we’ve seen very positive results!

On average, what percentage of clicks are fraudulent? And, what is the actual cost savings in percentage
terms that Anchor Intelligence's technology provides versus no implementation?

Anchor Intelligence categorizes traffic into valid and invalid. While invalid traffic includes attempted click fraud, it
also includes other invalid clicks such as double-clicks and robotic traffic. The percentage of invalid traffic varies
tremendously across numerous dimensions (such as platform, geography, and ad type). Invalid rates range as low
as the single digits to as high as the high thirties. Because the range varies tremendously, we have not seen value
in publishing a single industry-wide number.

What’s more compelling is the improvement in traffic quality that customers experience from using the ClearMark
scoring system. We’ve consistently seen invalid traffic rates drop by half while volumes have increased within just
a few months of deploying ClearMark.

Keep in mind that click fraud is just a single dimension of traffic quality, albeit one that has gotten a lot of attention
in recent years. Early on, Anchor recognized that optimization of the entire spectrum of traffic quality would result
in better returns for advertisers rather than just focusing on generating refunds. This comprehensive view of traffic
quality has served our business extremely well.

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Is there more fraud in clicks or impressions? Where do you see the fraud occurring in the future?

There is definitely more fraud occurring in clicks than in impressions. Fraudsters are far more likely to profit
through CPC fraud than through CPM/display fraud, especially given the frequency caps set by the majority of ad
networks. That said, we’re seeing an increasing amount of fraudulent activity occurring in richer ad formats such as
rich media and full page ads since, again, the payout for these types of products makes them attractive targets.

How is reporting provided to the client beyond the FICO? Does reporting offer insight into fraud patterns
in geography, behavior or context? Is there any post campaign qualitative analysis?

Customers receive scores per ad event in real time from ClearMark. Using this data, customers can make
optimization decisions based on traffic quality. In addition, customers have access to the ClearMark Reports, a
dynamic online reporting tool that shows aggregations of the score results by multiple dimensions such as
geography, referrer, time period, and even down to the IP.

Using ClearMark Reports, customers can surgically manage their traffic, as opposed to making broad-stroke
decisions. We also provide an API to enable our customers to access our reports in an automated fashion and
integrate them with their existing dashboards.

How do ad exchanges fare through your system? Can you identify for us any recent fraud patterns
through the exchange model? Particular vertical silos whether on the advertiser or publisher side?

Ad exchanges create interesting challenges for ad buyers and sellers. Clearly there are substantial benefits gained
from using an efficient ad marketplace. However, because of the multiple redirects that may occur in the fulfillment
of an ad on an exchange, there are many opportunities in which traffic quality can be compromised. Referrers are
often masked, traffic sources are frequently turned on and off, and affiliates rotate their traffic through multiple IDs.
As a result, tracking the root cause for traffic quality issues without a third party solution becomes challenging.

Fortunately, Anchor Intelligence is scoring traffic for many customers who buy and sell on exchanges as well as
the exchanges themselves. As a result, we’re finding that quality as a whole is improving as buyers are proactively
managing their traffic sources.

Follow Anchor Intelligence (@AnchorIntel) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 17, 2009 – 2:49 pm

328
CIO Goldberg Says ClearSaleing Is Seeing Benefits of
Marketers Being Held More Accountable
Email This Post

Adam Goldberg is Chief Innovation Officer and co-founder of

ClearSaleing.

AdExchanger.com: What trends are you seeing in your

ClearSaleing clients in 2009? Can you describe
momentum for ClearSaleing this year?

AG: Our clients are not reducing their online ad spend—in fact,
it's increasing in many cases. ClearSaleing is helping clients
tie their ad buys to their profits. If an ad is creating profit, it
makes sense to buy as many clicks/impression of that ad as
possible. The fact that so many companies have dropped out
of the action also means our clients can spend more because
there is less competition for those same clicks and
impressions.

As marketers are being held more accountable to achieve

profit goals, and not just higher return on ad spend numbers,
we're seeing more people turn to 3rd party data sources so
that they can learn even more about the types of customers
they're attracting from different ad buys and technologies. For
example, one of our current clients is tying applicant credit
scores from online loan applications to the ads that drove the
application in the first place. The fact that our technology can
integrate all of this standalone data makes these types of
measurements and insights possible.

ClearSaleing's business is growing this year as clients see the

need to adopt technology that can track profit across media,
grow leads and increase ROI results. With our technology,
clients are now confidently buying 'top of the funnel' types of
ads because they can use attribution management modeling to measure the performance of each marketing
element. It is the evolution beyond 'last click' reporting which does not take into account the purchase path a
customer follows from initial search to conversion.

How do you differentiate from other attribution management companies in the space such as Atlas or
DoubleVerify?

We don't really recognize DoubleVerify as being in the attribution management space. They are an ad auditor
which means that they make sure the ads you are buying are truly reaching the market you desire so that you are
not wasting money.

Atlas is considered a player in the attribution management arena. Atlas is a Microsoft company that has a bias
toward proving that their display advertising increases profit when combined with search ads. ClearSaleing doesn't
have that sort of conflict of interest.

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Many companies are claiming to offer attribution management as part of their solution. Most PPC management
products that claim to offer attribution actually cannot due to limitations of their data (solely API data, and solely
PPC focus).

In contrast, ClearSaleing was built with attribution management as the core component of its platform.
ClearSaleing easily integrates with back office systems to track conversions that start online and are completed
offline. Without such integration, accurate attribution management is not possible.

ClearSaleing tracks all forms of online marketing, not just search or display. Examples are comparison shopping
engines, emails and affiliate programs. ClearSaleing differentiates itself from many vendors in the space in that we
also track search engine traffic and integrate that data into the purchase path. ClearSaleing shows how organic
search results are integrated with paid sources.

Additionally, ClearSaleing is building some of the most sophisticated attribution models using high-end statistical
analysis that will be part of our platform later this year.

Is there a perfect model for online attribution and can it be achieved? After all, it would seem you need
ClearSaleing cookie in every consumer's browser in addition to a ClearSaleing ankle bracelet on
consumers which tracks in-store sales.

Given that ankle bracelets are not likely, we want to emphasize that we focus on measuring the effectiveness of
our attribution models by the most important metric: profit. If our client's profit increases as a result of the new
attribution models we put in place, then we know we are moving in the right direction. Also, the advanced
attribution models we are developing include an "uncertainty" factor that allows us to quantify the influence of ad
sources that are not tracked.

ClearSaleing is 'self-learning' in that purchase path trends become more obvious over time as more data is
gathered. Marketers, to start, often don't have any idea what their purchase latency is or what the most common
purchase paths are. As they monitor this information, they can continue to modify their settings for more precise
attribution modeling and optimization of their advertising portfolio.

How do you provide attribution metrics for consumers who delete cookies regularly?

Our current out-of-the-box models do not account for customers who delete cookies. It has been reported that
between 10 to 25% of people actually delete cookies. Therefore, our samples are able to capture anywhere from
75 to 90% which provides us a very statistically sound sample size to draw conclusions from.

Most all Javascript solutions have the same issue with cookie deletion. Many studies on cookie deletion are
overstated since many people make assumptions that anti-spy software automatically deletes cookies, which most
don't.

What is your view on ad exchanges? And, is it an important development for ClearSaleing?

Ad exchanges increase the effectiveness of campaigns, enhancing optimization and utilizing the long tail. Adding
advertising analytics and attribution management capability provides a means of using the long tail to maximum
effectiveness, therefore increasing profit/ROI.

Ad exchanges increase the efficiency by which our clients can purchase online advertising. Our platform enables
our clients to make the best decision possible when working with ad exchanges to determine the value of the ads
they are purchasing.

Not all ad exchanges, however, are 'created equally' or are of equal value to advertisers. Using analytics and
attribution, marketers can see the complete picture of the entire purchase path. This helps marketers to focus their
ad spend on what is working for them.

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You're a Midwestern tech company. What are the advantages of NOT being in the "alley" or "valley"? Any
disadvantages?

We travel as necessary; it is a virtual world and so much business can be conducted these days via webcasts etc.
We also employ social networking to help build the brand. And it goes without saying that it is cheaper to run a
business and to hire talent in the Midwest vs. the coasts.

In the 'valley' or the 'alley' all employees are looking for their next move, especially in the online advertising space
where there is a shortage of talent. However in the Midwest there are not as many job opportunities in our space,
therefore our employees stay much longer compared to the coasts. We enjoy greater employee retention.

We also have the support of our state, Ohio, in terms of special programs that support innovation. There are only a
handful of companies focused on what we do in the Midwest and Ohio state government wants to promote that.

How does ClearSaleing work with publishers today? It would seem that if publishers share data with you, it
could make ClearSaleing's life easier, no?

Our integration with DoubleClick for display ad impression data allows us to get information about what our client's
customers are doing on other web sites. This tracking is an important component of our attribution management as
our customers' web sites cannot track their client's offsite behavior. This information is probably best aggregated
and delivered by the ad serving vendors who have already integrated their tracking code across an extremely
broad set of publisher sites.

Why are proper attribution metrics important for publishers?

Better attribution will allow publishers to more accurately value their inventory.

Attribution management reveals what customer touchpoints are really performing; providing a better sense of
customer behavior and the ability to assess what is leading to conversions and profit. By collecting this data and
using analytics publishers can develop far more effective, more profitable sites.

Are you seeing more DR or brand campaigns from your client base? Where do you see this going?

We see more DR when we start with a client. Search typically gets the largest percentage of their online ad spend
and search is primarily a DR vehicle. However, we teach our clients that brand advertising should be treated like
DR campaigns. A brand campaign is only successful if it leads more consumers to your site/store to make
purchases.

Our purchase path analysis (chronological sequencing of ad clicks and impressions) show how brand and
awareness ads may start the consumer down a path that leads to a conversion from your store or site. Attribution
then allows us to give profit and revenue credit to all of the ads that were involved, therefore, we can show how
brand ads contribute to the bottom line. Without proper attribution DR can tend to be over-credited, and therefore
set unrealistic expectations (e.g. if I double my search budget, I will double my sales).

A general question for you: What will media buying agencies need to do to remain relevant in the future?

Media buying agencies will need to provide their clients with accurate, profit-based reporting. No longer will simply
cultivating and maintaining a good relationship with clients be enough. Media buying agencies, just like their
clients, are being held accountable for justifying spends.

Follow Adam Goldberg (@AdamSGoldberg), ClearSaleing (@ClearSaleing) and AdExchanger.com

(@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 8, 2009 – 7:17 am

331
CEO Pellman Says Click Forensics Preparing For Real-
Time Bidding On The Exchange
Paul Pellman is CEO of Click Forensics, a traffic quality management company.

How is Click Forensics addressing the display advertising marketplace beyond clicks?

While most of our clients are focused on the CPC space, we do have a number of ad network and publisher clients
with significant CPM and more display-oriented businesses that
see unique value in our current approach. We've even seen a
number of ad networks offering blended CPC and display ad
solutions, which can deliver even better results for their partners.

These ad networks are using our click scoring insight to filter out
invalid and poor traffic, better manage their various inbound traffic
sources, and thereby make real-time optimization decisions to
increase the overall CPC and display traffic quality they deliver to
advertisers and partners.

We are also continuing to enhance our offerings to better manage

traffic at the pre-click impression level, which is essential for
ensuring display ad quality. As a result, ad networks and others
will be able to use our technology in new ways to provide
additional insight and value -- namely, impression-by-impression
traffic quality scoring that can be incorporated into the ad serving
or routing decision. This involves not just taking the existing
scoring approach and delivering it faster/at the impression level (a
significant technical challenge in and of itself), but also revisiting
how to score impressions differently than clicks, by leveraging
different impression-level attributes and heuristics. We're are
already working with select clients on this and plan to have some
interesting results we can share soon.

What special challenges does an ad exchange present from a fraud perspective?

It's clear that ad exchanges provide significant benefits and efficiencies in the buying and selling of online media.
But they also present additional challenges from a traffic quality and transparency perspective -- mainly because
ad exchanges typically add another intermediary layer between the fulfillment of media between publishers and
advertisers. This creates more risk of masked, nefarious activity from fraudsters and cyber criminals, and makes it
more difficult to identify good quality traffic sources from bad.

The resultant use of third-party ad tags, multiple redirects and overwritten referring URLs makes it difficult to
uncover these traffic quality and brand reputation issues without a robust third party solution like the one Click
Forensics offers. Fortunately, our efforts around impression scoring and our existing relationships with some of our
clients who are actively buying and selling media on the exchanges allows us to provide this added insight and
protection.

What trends are you seeing in online advertising fraud these days?

We've been tracking overall traffic quality trends for the last four years through our quarterly Click Fraud Index,
which is the industry's leading independent click fraud reporting service. The Click Fraud Index provides

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statistically significant industry CPC data collected from online advertising campaigns for both large and small
advertisers across all leading search engines and more than 300 ad networks.

During this time, we've noted a number of interesting trends. Lately what's very clear is the increasing
sophistication being utilized by fraudsters and cyber criminals, most notably thru the use of botnets to perpetrate
collusion fraud. This happens when a user's PC gets unknowingly infected with a virus or malware that can, behind
the scenes (typically in a "Zero-iFrame" window), be scripted to click on ads from a collection of sites controlled or
owned by the fraudster. In pretty rapid order, a fraudster can control a large network of PCs to generate fraudulent
clicks from thousands of diffuse IP addresses across hundreds of different/rotating sites.

One other interesting trend has been an increase in scripted attacks against ad networks. Historically, we've seen
higher incidence of attacks against the top search engines. But as these top players have continued to increase
their advertiser protection and fraud detection capabilities, the fraudsters are more and more looking for less
protected environments that can lead to higher returns on their malicious activity.

Is fighting fraud based outside the U.S. more difficult than domestic?

Fighting fraud is really no different in the U.S. versus internationally. It's becoming more difficult no matter where
you are. We truly operate in a borderless world.

However, we definitely see significant differences in click fraud rates across the globe, as noted through our Click
Fraud Index statistics and trend data. As you might expect, third world countries and other countries with less than
ideal internet security tend to have higher rates of click fraud, as it's easier for fraudsters and cyber criminals to
maliciously infect these PC's. In addition, we do still see Click Farm activity, which tends to be more concentrated
in low wage countries.

When does the government and the legal system get involved in what you do?

We've not really seen much government or legal system involvement. That said it is interesting to see some of the
media providers using the legal system as an avenue to fight back against fraudsters and scammers. Microsoft's
recent Microsoft vs. Lam lawsuit shows that the industry is getting more forceful in its efforts to take action to
protect their network and their advertisers. In this case, companies are using the legal system to send a clear
message to fraudsters that they're not only being watched but that there is significant financial incentive NOT to
commit click fraud. We're also seeing it as leading ad networks and publishers continue to look at third party
solutions like Click Forensics to uncover fraudsters for possible similar prosecution in the future.

Where is the big opportunity for Click Forensics? Helping ad networks, advertisers or publishers? Who's
getting hit the hardest?

Click Forensics believes it's important to offer solutions to all players in the online media industry. We've always
said it will take a community approach through which everyone -- ad networks, publishers, advertisers, search
engines and independent third parties -- work together to help solve the problem of click fraud and improve traffic
quality and transparency. This is similar to how other types of cybercrime (malware, spam, etc.) are handled as
well.

We have a significant advantage of being able to help all these parties because of the robust community data set
we have, which includes data on traffic sources and conversion data from ad networks, publishers and search
engines. This rich data set allows us to continually build and optimize our heuristics. In particular, the deep and rich
conversion data we get from our numerous advertiser clients provides unique perspective and insight.

That said, lately the brunt of the responsibility for traffic quality typically ends up on the ad network. Advertisers
tend to hold their agencies or ad networks accountable for quality traffic, and publishers want to make the most
money possible from their content/visitors. It's the ad network that has to balance these competing goals and we
help them do just that. Ad networks can improve their top and bottom line by proactively managing their publisher
networks and screening new traffic sources effectively to deliver higher quality traffic to advertisers. Their efforts

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seem to be paying off. Over the past year ad networks have made significant progress helping to solve the traffic
quality problem by using tools like ours to better control the traffic they deliver to advertisers. And it's showed up in
the recent drop in the industry click fraud rate we reported for Q2 2009.

What types of media are the biggest offenders? Why?

Invalid traffic is typically generated from clicks on text ads, so no specific type of media is immune to attack or
more susceptible, for that matter. The kinds of botnets or scripted attacks that I described previously can (and do)
occur against all types of media. Obviously, there is more incentive for malicious fraud in the content network,
where publishers share the CPC revenue, so those networks are more prone to invalid activity. But it's not specific
to any type of media.

What is the revenue model for Click Forensics?

We offer a SaaS solution that's priced based on the monthly volume of traffic that we process and score for a
customer.

How will the increasingly real-time nature of online advertising affect Click Forensics?

We're big believers in RTB and the positive impact this will have as more and more traditional media is transitioned
online and as online media campaigns focus more on buying specific, targeted audiences. It's also important as an
avenue to improve overall media buying efficiencies as the existing costs to execute an online ad buy are just too
expensive as a percentage of total media spend.

Click Forensics is already taking this into account as our real-time click-by-click scoring API allows for improved,
real-time filtering and traffic routing. And our early efforts around true impression scoring will allow us to provide
traffic quality scores as a component of the ad serving decision.
10. How is the consumer faring these days when it comes to fraud and online advertising?
Consumers are only impacted by fraud in two ways:

1. When advertisers pass along the cost of fraud in their goods and services, or -
2. When they encounter a page containing malicious JavaScript or malware.

The impact of the first point is hard to measure. But the second can have all sorts of strange side effects such as
search results being manipulated, or destination sites being substituted, or even having your machine blacklisted
because it's the source of so many invalid clicks.

We've noted that these botnet and click fraud attacks are many times related to other fraudulent activities, such as
identity theft or SPAM attacks. So in this sense consumers not only play a role in helping to stop fraud and poor
quality traffic, but they also have a vested interest to ensure their computers are protected from such attacks.

Follow Click Forensics (@ClickForensics) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

August 11, 2009 – 9:00 am

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Click Forensics CEO Paul Pellman On Display And Search
Traffic Quality
Paul Pellman is CEO of Click Forensics, a traffic quality management company which released "an upgraded
version of its Yahoo! TQ Forecast feature" last week.

AdExchanger.com: Can you explain the problem CF is

solving a bit more in detail - with an example? And,
how does an ad network send search traffic?

PP: Sure. Most performance-based (cost-per-click) ad

networks have a relationship with one or more of the major
search ad providers (Yahoo!, Google), either directly with a
feed from that provider or through an intermediary. Some networks send all of their search traffic to these feeds
(getting back a set of ads from the search provider). Other networks use one or more feeds as a "backstop" for ad
categories in which they do not have direct advertiser relationships. The major search providers all employ some
form of quality-based pricing which adjusts prices paid by advertisers based on that quality of traffic being
delivered from the distribution network. So, for example, ad networks providing traffic to Yahoo! receive a score
each week indicating the level of quality that Yahoo! feels they're delivering to advertisers. This score ranges from
0 to 10, with 10 being best quality. This "Yahoo! TQ Score" directly determines how much commission an ad
network receives for traffic delivered to Yahoo!.

Unfortunately for ad networks, the formula for computing the Yahoo! TQ score is proprietary to Yahoo!. In order to
prevent networks from "gaming the system," it's necessary that it be somewhat opaque, but conversion rates play
a large role in the calculation. So this is the problem we've solved for ad networks. Click Forensics provides a
Yahoo! TQ Forecast feature that allows ad networks to accurately predict the scores their traffic will receive from
Yahoo! so that they can take action before delivering poor quality traffic. For example, an ad network may decide
that a specific
publisher has traffic that will damage his Yahoo! TQ score and so he may choose to monetize that traffic differently
instead of sending it to Yahoo!

What trends are you seeing in terms of traffic quality from display that you track these days?

While we have historically specialized in performance-based advertising (cost-per-click), we are seeing major
opportunities in display emerging right now and it's an area we're particularly excited about. "Traffic quality" in the
cost-per-click space is largely about eliminating invalid traffic and scoring valid clicks based on their propensity to
convert for advertisers. In the display world "traffic quality" is a broader issue. Advertisers need to know more than
just: "did that click come from a human or a bot?" They need both audience verification (how many people saw my
ad?
how many times were they in the target demographic/geography?) and content verification (was the ad above or
below the fold? was the associated content appropriate for my brand? were competitors displayed more
prominently?).

We're seeing that ad networks want to apply the same level of performance management to their display
campaigns that they've historically applied to their CPC campaigns. The end result is more transparent,
measurable results for advertisers.

December 13, 2009 – 5:41 pm

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Up To 80% Of Campaign Impressions Delivered Incorrectly
Says DoubleVerify CEO Netzer
Oren Netzer is CEO of DoubleVerify, an online media verification
company.

AdExchanger.com: In your recent release highlighting your $3.5

million raise, you noted your impressive list of new clients. Can
you provide us more detail about the trends you're seeing in
campaigns, creatives and verticals in which DoubleVerify's
technology is being implemented? Does the economic slump
have a positive impact on DV's business?

ON: We have been positively surprised by the amount of demand that

we've been seeing this year. The economic situation is certainly one
driver of this. The chain of events that led to the economic slump also
made everyone realize the importance of things like accountability
and compliance. But overall, the real reason for the huge demand that
we are seeing has to do with a much more positive effect - the fact
that digital advertising is now a key component of brand advertisers'
marketing plans and that the budgets committed to digital advertising
have become significant. This had prompted advertisers and agencies
to ask for more accountability and transparency from their media
partners. It is our job as an industry to make sure we deliver this - if
we expect advertisers to continue shifting budgets online and for
digital advertising to become a mainstream marketing vehicle for
them, we need to give them the peace of mind, comfort and proof that
their money is well spent. We as an industry will all benefit from more
accountability.

How does the revenue model work for DoubleVerify?

We provide our service to the agency/advertiser or to the ad

network/exchange directly. In both cases, our revenue model is volume-based.

What is DoubleVerify's technology actually verifying? And, how is this different from a feature that, for
example, a third-party server can tell you such as the URLs of where the ads are being run?

DoubleVerify is doing a full compliance verification of the campaigns - looking at each line item in the campaign
and verifying it for compliance. This could include verifying that ads are not delivered on inappropriate sites, or that
ads are only showing up on sites that have been pre-approved by the advertiser, but this also includes verifying
that the ads are delivered above the fold, that they are getting the proper share of voice, that ads are delivered on
the right channel, and over two dozen other compliance parameters that we measure. Most of these cannot be
verified through a pixel or a third party ad server, since the third party ad server has very limited visibility of the
page on which the ad is actually being delivered. In fact, due to nested IFRAMEs that are a result of ad server
redirects, most of the time the third party ad server can't even tell what page the ad is being delivered on. What
makes DoubleVerify unique is our ability to "bust" through the IFRAMES and identify where the ad is actually
delivered, and our ability to send our proprietary crawlers to the page to do a more thorough analysis of the page
and to "screenshot" the page with the ads on it.

How do ad exchanges present special challenges to advertisers that DoubleVerify is attempting to solve?

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Ad exchanges have more layers of ad server redirects and less transparency than standard network buys. The
biggest issue for advertisers in this context is the fear that their ads will show up next to inappropriate content. We
solve this problem by proactively and preemptively working with exchanges and networks to verify their inventory
for inappropriate or unapproved sites and promptly remove them.

Can you explain how this would be integrated into an ad buyers existing ad server? How does the buyer
extract the data?

There are two points of integration - our tracking pixel, that the buyer drops into their third party ad server, and a
feed of the advertiser's insertion order or media plan details, that usually needs to be exported from MediaVisor or
some other campaign management tool that the agency uses.

Our reporting is then available to them via our user interface and real-time email notifications.

Any thoughts on whether DV's technology can be used in a real-time bidding (RTB) and serving
environment given the limited execution time of RTB?

We are exploring various ways which I cannot elaborate on yet.

How can publishers participate? In some ways, there's a "TrustE" seal of approval potential, if you will.

DoubleVerify will allow publishers that comply with certain campaign compliance criteria to be eligible to carry a
"seal of approval".

Any plans to verify context? If so, do you or would you try to match your algorithm to the ad network on
which the campaign is running?

We are doing something similar today, which is classifying sites into one or more content categories, based on
both context and affiliation. We have close to 100 content categories that we use. Our advertising clients rely on us
to protect them from running next to inappropriate content, so our data has to be consistent across all media
platforms.

Can you identify the biggest issues you see with ads being served incorrectly? Where is the most waste?

Ads being delivered next to inappropriate content is a big issue for advertisers. So are international impressions,
below the fold ads or ads delivered to the wrong audience, and those are also the issues we find more frequently.
In fact, we sometimes find up to 80% of a campaign's impressions being delivered incorrectly. This has become so
important to our clients that some of them have mandated the use of DoubleVerify across their entire online
advertising spend. Interestingly enough DoubleVerify is even more prevalent with these clients than their third
party ad server is.

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

June 2, 2009 – 7:11 am

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Mpire CEO Matt Hulett Says Verification Space Could
Change The Ad Industry
Matt Hulett is CEO of Mpire, an online advertising solutions
company.

AdExchanger.com: Mpire's AdXpose appears to give

advertisers insight on placement and context. Yet, the trend
these days seems to put more importance on targeting
audience and addressable media. In your opinion, why does
AdXpose belong in today's marketplace?

MH: AdXpose belongs in today's marketplace because the industry

is rife with huge inefficiencies in media spend. When ads are sold
and never seen, or are placed on nefarious, fraudulent or just plain
inappropriate sites or channels, no one wins – except the
arbitrageurs and C-list networks that profit from 30% of all ad
impressions online. Marketers are footing the bill, and until they put
their collective feet down by implementing AdXpose and acting on
the learnings provided, the wrong behaviors and content will be
rewarded and incentivized, and the online advertising ecosystem will
continue to suffer.

As for audience targeting, we also recognize that marketers and

agencies today care as much about who saw an ad as where or if it
was seen. While the beta version of AdXpose does not include
audience verification, this insight will be delivered in an upcoming
version.

How are brand awareness marketers aided by mPire's AdXpose product?

For brand marketers, AdXpose is an ad diagnostic and verification tool, a click fraud defense tool, a brand
engagement tool and a buy optimization tool.

AdXpose verifies where an ad was placed, anywhere on the Internet, regardless of whether it was placed via a
network, exchange or through direct sales. It can tell whether the ad appeared on a legitimate or blacklisted site;
whether an ad was ever seen; which networks and publishers rated highest and lowest in terms of engagement,
page position, and viewership; whether the click-through was generated by legitimate or fraudulent means; how
the viewer engaged with the ad content; and more. Other features, coming soon, will verify and confirm audience
viewership at the DMA and demographic levels.

This deep insight allows brand advertisers to shift budget from networks and publishers - or even site sections or
pages - where content is inappropriate, where engagement or viewership is low or nonexistent, or where the wrong
audience is reached, and reallocate it to more appropriate channels.

How will ad exchanges play into the development and growth of AdXpose?

AdXpose is useful for verification and optimization on all levels of a media buy, either direct to publisher, via a
network, or via an exchange.

In the exchange environment, AdXpose’s site-level performance and engagement data is very compelling, since it
enables and encourages marketers to buy via multiple networks with confidence. Many networks daisy-chain to

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other networks downstream to the point where the marketer or agency has no idea where their ad ended up or
how it got there. This is a complete non-issue with AdXpose because the technology tracks exactly where ads
appear.

Given the relative difficulty faced even by sophisticated digital agencies when it comes to tracking and confirming
whether a given network displayed a given campaign on a given site (we have heard from a particular media
director at a major agency holding company that they actually have to email their network account execs to
determine if an ad was served on a given site), we feel the proliferation of exchanges suits our product well and
creates a lot of opportunity for AdXpose.

What are your thoughts about demand-side optimization and real-time bidding? How will mPire
participate?

Given that we come from an ad network background, we are obviously speaking with the folks in that space about
how AdXpose could become an input in the optimization algorithm set. That said, AdXpose floats above that
particular fray for now: agencies and marketers desire an agnostic, third party verification, and once we enter the
network or exchange equation in any non-transparent way, that status is at risk.

How did the development of Widgetbucks inform the eventual creation of AdXpose?

While tweaking our WidgetBucks offering, we experienced a brief “eureka” moment that eventually led to the
creation of AdXpose.

When we were optimizing our shopping widgets for performance on our own network, our CTO quipped, "We can't
optimize ads that are never seen." When we looked in the mirror and realized we saved 20% in CDN delivery costs
just by using the AdXpose In-view feature on our network, we decided to see what other data was available, on our
own and other networks. The resulting insights and transparency made us quickly realize that we were onto
something huge, and that a commercialized version of our in-house tools and reporting made sense.

We like to say that, since we just spent two years building an ad network, we know a lot about what's wrong with
the model. We certainly learned the hard way about things like domain masking, site list manipulation, impression
fraud and arbitrage. We baked these lessons learned and best practices into AdXpose.

Does a company like DoubleVerify and others with their ad tracking capabilities compete with mPire's
AdXpose? How do you differentiate?

I think our biggest differentiation from DoubleVerify, MediaTrust and others is that we come from the network
space, so we're really developing the solution from the inside out – where the issues really lie – as opposed to from
the outside in, where there's probably a higher level of trial and error, and quite a few blind spots.

Also, we're a very hands-on company – for instance, our CTO is very involved in addressing a client's technical
and data analytics challenges, and I’m also very involved on the account management side. We provide this level
of service because we've seen and understand the patterns and engagement behaviors driving the data, and can
point this out to help our clients act on the data quickly and profitably.

If you're a publisher, what are you doing today to insure a profitable future?

For publishers, AdXpose provides a check and balance system, guaranteeing and reporting transparently on, at
the very least, above and below the fold, geo and audience targeting, and viewership/engagement. Marketers will
eventually demand a third party audit for this data, similar to tear sheets for the offline world.

If advertisers are running CPC campaigns, what does it matter if their media is running at the bottom of a
page?

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If they are buying a CPM but monetizing on a CPC or CPL/CPA/CPE model, then it's obvious why this matters. If
it's a straight CPC, AdXpose is valuable because it screens for fraud. Specifically, we have seen many instances
on network buys where a certain site or channel performs at an admirable but unsuspicious click-through rate (say,
0.5%) but has a non-existent "engagement" rate (0.00001%). This means no human has entered the ad unit via
mouse movement, yet the ad is still clicked. This is surefire fraud and it's not traditionally detectable. AdXpose
protects performance marketers against this.

Is Widgetbucks still growing? Can you share recent trends? And what are future plans for Widgetbucks?

WidgetBucks is growing. Active publishers continue to grow at a rapid rate. We work with more than 100 CPM
advertisers and we are tracking for our first two billion-impression month. And we are adding new shopping feed
partners regularly.

I read your Xconomy story in May and hope you don't mind me turning your insights on you. What
problems are your customers telling you to solve today?

Agencies want to know how to monitor and optimize networks. They also want help teaching marketers why they
should pay for services that do this.

Exchanges, networks and publishers want to better understand their own distribution and performance, in order to
optimize placements and raise CPM's.

Marketers want safety and assurance, but expect agencies to provide it.

It's a very exciting time to be in the verification space. It is very early and we have a chance to help define the
model and the future of what could be an industry changing business.

Follow Matt Hulett (@matt_hulett), AdXpose (@adxpose) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 2, 2009 – 8:09 am

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Mpire Announces AdXpose Deal With WPP Group And
GroupM’s MediaCom, Discusses Risk Management
Mpire announced in a release today that over the
course of four months, WPP Group agency,
MediaCom, implemented Mpire's AdXpose
technology for a consumer electronics firm resulting
in what it says was significant performance
improvement by, among other things, "removing
underperforming sites from the network buy." Read
the release.

AdExchanger.com followed up with Mpire CEO

Kirby Winfield...

AdExchanger.com: Are you surprised about the

number of "underperforming sites"? What are
some of the characteristics of these sites?
Specific types of UGC, images, etc.?

KW: I am not at all surprised. I spent 10+ years in the search market, so I've seen the types of publishers and
problems that can exist in a blind or unregulated environment. To me, the non-premium CPM display market,
although it predates search, is way behind when it comes to quality control and fraud prevention. Impression fraud
and unseen inventory, specifically, are rampant.

Advertisers, platforms and publishers have not traditionally viewed the impression-based ecosystem through the
lens of transparency or site-level performance. Optimization generally occurs at the 10,000-foot level, with
advertisers typically viewing performance at the network or exchange line, where items like passed tags, URL
spoofing, URL padding, and specific publisher underperformance are simply not visible. The CTR and impression
totals always magically turn out the way they should - it's what informs those totals that advertisers need to be
concerned with.

The good news is that there's finally a focus on establishing some standards, and creating a marketplace where
transparency, trust, accountability, quality are commonplace.

As far as characteristics of the sites, here are some red flags: hyphenated domains, unusual TLDs, movie sites,
foreign UGC, Manga/anime sites, cricket/rugby/soccer sites, work from home sites. Of course, you have to be able
to see the referrer URL to even catch these red flags.

AdExchanger.com: Is the brand marketer showing more interest in running awareness campaigns from
your vantage point?

KW: Brand marketers continue to see consumers' online media consumption grow to match television in terms of
time spent, so they know they need to find ways to reach online users with their brands and messages. The
challenge to date has been that they've had to trade reach for risk mitigation, buying narrow tranches of traffic and
audience and ceding (to the belly-fat and teeth-whitening shops) the impressions representing 50%+ of time spent
online. Also, they've had little ability to measure beyond the click - a performance-specific metric.

With services like AdXpose, brands will have more visibility into whether or not they got what they paid for, how
their investment performed, and actionable information that will allow them to optimize their media and creative
strategies. Some of our agency clients actually use AdXpose to support a cost per engagement model, which has
been embraced by some major brand advertisers.

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AdExchanger.com: How do risk management tools fit in the agency strategy going forward? And why?

KW: First, it bears noting that "audit-based" point solutions or site ratings services really only protect brands from a
portion of risk (bad content), without using data to decrease fraud, improve performance or otherwise support
growth in online spend.

As I mentioned before, advertisers have had to trade safety for reach. With a "risk management tool," advertisers
can increase their reach with much more visibility, confidence and reliability than they've had in the past; without
feeling like they're putting their brand at more risk.

As agencies move to in-house DSP's and face questions about conflicts of interest and arbitrage/neutrality,
solutions that provide transparency will play a big role in easing client concerns. We see agencies adopting and
implementing transparent verification solutions at scale across 5%+ of all non-premium display buys within 2010.

By John Ebbert

December 15, 2009 – 12:36 pm

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TagMan GM Baron Says UK Media Agencies Need
Technology Leadership – And Build or Buy Tech
Jon Baron is Co-Founder and General Manager of TagMan.

AdExchanger.com: What challenge is Tag Man

solving for advertisers? How do you help
publishers?

JB: TagMan addresses a challenge facing all

businesses involved in digital media.
At all levels of the digital media business (creative
through to publisher placement through to
buying/selling) there is a transition from 'talking'
about data-driven services – to actually doing it.

The tangle of platforms offering buzz-services such

as behavioral, bidding, re-targeting, user insight,
content manipulation, data-point creative etc – all
have their own 'special sauce' and all need to be
tested/rolled out before a decision can be made on
their effectiveness.

The challenge(s) are that each service requires their

own 'serving and tracking tags' to be inserted across
publisher and client sites alike; often a time
consuming, costly and political exercise in itself.
Throw in other concerns such as data-ownership,
transparency and contractual obligations putting
extra stress on an already complex issue. The final
straw – is the recent research that demonstrates a
proven 'latency' on page load times that each tag can
cause. This can mean a loss in sales, delivery or
tracking.

TagMan is the single, vendor/publisher/agency agnostic system (and single piece of code) through which all and
any tags can be deployed safely,instantly, efficiently and without a serious 'associated commitment' contract. IT
need only deploy this one tag and then AdOps/Marketing takes over from that point onwards - a faster, more
efficient way for an industry to manage their partnerships and internal requirements. For advertisers, removing
duplicated commission payments is a simple and accurate product of using TagMan as well as saving lots of time
and energy by being able to add, edit and remove tags in seconds, and being able to see any user's full path to
conversion (including natural search keywords).

Specifically for the "exchange" model, it's the ability to do all your pixel tagging and data collection from a single
piece of code. TagMan enables advertisers (and agencies) to own cookie-level data and port it between
exchanges using a global cookie ID. That provides a simple way to harvest and act upon user's behavioral data –
by building rules to automatically fire re-targeting and behavioural targeting pixels; ideal for exchange buying.

For publishers, firstly, and very simply, TagMan allows them to manage 3rd party tags quickly and cheaply in our
drag and drop web-based interface. This means that their technology teams are liberated from the marketing
needs. It also means that any 3rd party 'data collection deals' can be managed instantly by operations, ensuring

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complete control of 'where and how' data collection tags are placed. On the flipside, agencies/clients who use
TagMan, makes it easy to deploy a publisher's own tag.

Example: Publishers often have the job of demonstrating why their premium inventory is more valuable than
liquidated, whole-sale networks. TagMan helps demonstrate the effect that premium display inventory has on the
path to consumer action. By having a single view of the customer across all channels and using TagMan attribution
methodology, it's simple to show the direct influence quality publishers deliver to consumer action. Today, big
publisher groups are looking to use TagMan to differentiate their inventory from this commoditized space whilst
also becoming a system on which to easily centralize the many differing legacy systems that are inherited when
acquiring a company.

What is your sense of the UK online ad market versus the U.S.? Any key differences?

We work in both (half our revenues are in the US) and the differences are most clearly to do with scale. The scale
of campaigns in the US dwarfs that in the UK, which is why US-owned businesses dominate the sector - they have
the scale to invest and suffer setbacks. In terms of sophistication, there's not much in it except to say that
advances in both markets are focused in different areas. In the US, we're finding much quicker acceptance of
TagMan's strategic importance - for example, how it can help agencies harvest data and thus win back their
competitive edge as digital threatens to disintermediate them. In the UK, disciplines such as search and affiliates
have reached very sophisticated levels, which is why issues like de-duplication are the most common reason to
come looking for us. De-duplication is a buzz term used by many, but comes as a standard benefit with TagMan,
which covers the complete path to conversion (including your natural search) – and you don't have to pay a hefty
ad-serving contract to access the service.

How do you differentiate and compete with other attribution products in the marketplace such as Atlas
Engagement Mapping?

In practical terms, you get complete control and ownership view of your data and choose what GooMicroYoo get to
see, own and use. TagMan means you can track all of the ad-serve elements plus natural search, receive raw data
feeds, track unlimited events in the path to conversion, identify keywords used in PPC and natural searches, and
lots more. Most importantly, it means you can fire pixels conditionally based on all or any of that information.

More broadly, our key difference against all ad-server owned container tags, is that we fix the cause not the
symptom. So many problems that have emerged as online marketing has become more complex have their root in
campaign tracking and the tags that do it. We are the agnostic solution for organizing all the tags that now sit on
clients' pages (including Atlas, DoubleClick, Google Analytics, Omniture and the rest) into a single tag and
interface and showing the complete associated connections between all of them. So, while all those technologies
are brilliant at what they do, they also cause their own questions and concerns. If you really want to track user
engagement - and attribute effectively - you need everything that your ad server, web analytics system and search
tracking technologies can tell you in one, independent system – that will not take the data with them should you
cancel your contract. That is what TagMan is for.

Are media agencies in the UK prepared for the evolution toward a digital future? If you were running a
media agency today, what steps would you be taking to ensure a profitable future?

It's happening. Media agencies' issue is not that they don't understand digital but that their business model
(commission on media buying) doesn't stack up when ad space is virtually infinite. The strengths that they need to
build and charge for are their understanding of users, how advertising influences them, and, therefore, what brands
can do in 'media' to grow their businesses. The first step would be to get a world class CTO on the board. Second,
buy or build technology that reclaims control of data from the media owners and ad servers (yes, that means things
like TagMan). Third, hire lots of great analysts to derive actionable insight from all that great data.

Digital completely changes the large media agency proposition so that they have to compete on what they know
(data) rather than rates achieved through buying power. Smaller, specialist agencies like The Exchange Lab
(http://www.theexchangelab.com/) and Infectious Digital (http://www.infectiousdigital.com/) are doing a great job in

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this area in the UK as are US agencies such as Varick Media (http://www.varickmm.com/). TagMan provides the
ability for all agencies to take a step towards a data-driven business.

How did TagMan begin? Any future product lines you can share - such as video?

TagMan founder Paul Cook's previous business, Redeye, had been doing engagement mapping/attribution for
years within its media mix product. For his next project, Paul started an ad server, Positive Feedback, with
incredibly advanced reporting. But, alongside this, he'd long seen the problems that the proliferation of tracking
tags, as well as the technology behind them, was causing (and would cause) the sector. So TagMan was
conceived as an informative content management system for tags.

The next release of TagMan will feature game-changing features, not limited to: full attribution management (so
you can assign a proportion of sales commission to each channel), the ability to tell whether a display ad was
actually viewed (or remained under the fold, for example) and a suite of features that assist businesses that require
"Real Time" features such as real-time datafeeds, which are currently delivered nightly.

What is your view on ad exchanges? Good for TagMan?

Symbiotic to our business. Even basic targeting, like re-messaging, can easily improve results by 10 times so ad
exchanges will allow advertisers to improve ROI from display. CPMs will/have gone down initially, they'll rise in the
medium term as the ROI rises. TagMan helps advertisers and agencies get better value out of the exchanges by
allowing them to collect crucial data on users and re-target them when they're exposed to exchange-bought
inventory. So, yes, we love them.

Also, exchanges emphasize the point about how the large media agency proposition has to change from being
about their buying power to their ability to harvest and act upon user data.

In your opinion, relative to the size of the market, why are there so many ad networks in the online ad
space in the UK? Are publishers more willing to sell their inventory through ad networks, for example?

On one side, publishers in the UK have probably been a little slower to understand the way their content strategy
needed to change to deliver ad inventory agencies were willing to pay for - hence they have always had lots of
inventory spare to drop into the networks. And, second, the barriers to entry are lower in the UK, allowing lots of
entrepreneurial folk to launch 'networks' quickly and make a living out of it. The fact that Right Media, initially, only
sold to ad networks has also probably got something to do with it. But, if you really look at the numbers, as in the
USA – there are only a handful of serious networks that have exclusive relationships.

Are there any tags that your system cannot handle - or are prohibited to handle due to other companies'
contractual requirements?
We have yet to find a tag that does not plug-in seamlessly; technically or contractually. The ability to place unique
'conditions' on the tags also means you can have complete control on who, where, what and how long – a tag gets
placed.

In regards to your case study on the duplication of payment to affiliates by advertisers, how is Tag Man
helping "de-dup" the process?
This study (available on our site here) was crucial. The entire industry knew duplication, where more than one
channel claims the same sale and thus has to be paid commission, was a major problem but, in many ways, it was
a state secret. We were delighted that so many people took part and were so frank with their responses. In
essence, we found that - on average - 13% of all CPA commission payments were thought to be duplicated. For
major e-commerce advertisers like Thomas Cook, we've found duplication rates of 20%-30%. TagMan solves the
problem simply by housing the tags that track which channel delivered a conversion in one place - that way you
can see exactly who delivered what click (or view) and who, therefore, should get the commission. It of course
raises all kinds of complex questions over who should be attributed commission for a sale but TagMan will show
you all the ads any user has been exposed to and the actions they took across natural and paid campaigns
allowing advertisers to make an informed judgment.

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Follow TagMan (@tagman_news) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

September 3, 2009 – 8:03 am

Back Office

INVISION CEO Watkins Says Advanced Television

Advertising Tools Becoming A Necessity
Christine Watkins is CEO of INVISION INC., a provider of advertising sales management systems to the broadcast
and cable network industries.

http://www.invisioninc.comThe advertiser is looking for better attribution models across all forms of
advertising these days including TV. Please discuss INVISION’s transition from a primary focus on tools
for traditional television ad sales to an expansion into advanced televisioin advertising brought on by the
digital channel.

CW: It simply comes down to listening to our customers (network ad sales teams) who are listening to their
customers (advertisers and agencies). The television advertising marketplace is facing unprecedented pressure to
evolve as advertisers and agencies demand levels of flexibility and accountability on par with internet advertising.
In response to these buyer demands, television ad sellers
and ad delivery technology vendors are rapidly
implementing advanced television advertising capabilities
such as interactivity and addressability.

If ad delivery technology vendors are already offering

your customers advanced television advertising
capabilities, why does INVISION need to get involved
now?

Though dynamic (internet-like) ad servers might be the

sexier organisms in the advanced television advertising
ecosystem, business will not get done at any level of scale
without highly flexible ad sales management tools such as
our DealMaker. We learned this harsh lesson with internet
advertising in the late 1990’s when the spreadsheets and
bailing wire being used for ad operations tasks began to
collapse under the weight of the sales being enabled by DoubleClick, NetGravity and other early internet ad
servers.

Couldn’t the existing television sales systems, such as DealMaker, or internet-only equivalents (Operative,
Solbright Google/DoubleClick’s DART Sales Manager, etc.) handle the current “weight” of advanced
television advertising activity?

I think there are some lessons to learn from earlier emerging advertising platforms such as mobile and cable video-
on-demand (VOD). Every new platform goes through a phase where its scalability is limited by consumer adoption
(increased consumer usage drives inventory capacity). Thus, the ability to bundle the emerging platform with your
primary advertising products becomes a key evolutionary step in getting the new platform to state where it can be
profitable on a standalone basis. For addressable and interactive television advertising, I believe it will be
traditional television, not internet advertising, that serves as the bundled “big brother.” However, though

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DealMaker is an extremely scalable product, we know that we are going to have to make deep functional
alterations to handle advanced television ad deals.

Why alter your existing product? Wouldn’t it be easier to build a standalone version of DealMaker just for
advanced television advertising?

A standalone system will not break down the barriers that could easily stunt the growth of addressable and
interactive television advertising. First off, this creates a personal return-on-investment roadblock for the television
salespeople whom we will be relying on to accelerate advanced television advertising. During the “bundling
phase” that I describe above, addressable and interactive advertising will typically be tiny portions of overall
television deals. Thus, they will also drive relatively tiny fractions of the commissions being earned by the
respective salespeople. By requiring a distinct set of tools and processes for the execution of the non-traditional
deal elements, we are increasing labor in return for stunted compensation. If I were a salesperson in such a
scenario, I would press the buyer to shift deal dollars to the traditional (easy) side. Additionally, a distinct set of
sales tools for emerging elements becomes a barrier that ends up feeding the salesperson anxiety already
inherent with any new product.

Wouldn’t increased commission rates on advanced television advertising deals address the “return”
problem you outline?

It sure helps, and I am a huge proponent of this approach with any emerging ad product being introduced to a
traditional sales team. However, as addressable and interactive advertising do reach scale, this solution becomes
economically unreasonable. Simultaneously, the advanced portion of your business has now graduated above
“rounding error” status. You’ve reached a point where it is more important than ever to manage all of your
television ad business, traditional and non-traditional, within a single set of sales management tools. A simple
example is revenue reporting. If you need to pull data from distinct databases and then merge them into a
spreadsheet simply to monitor the pace of your business across platforms, you are going to hit problems with
information accessibility and accuracy. When the advanced ad dollars were insignificant, so was this issue but not
anymore. Factor in the basic economies of scale of having traditional and advanced capabilities in all of your sales
tools and processes, and it becomes apparent that the standalone solution is inadequate during the emerging,
maturing and matured phases of addressable and interactive advertising.

What is INVISION working on beyond addressable and interactive advertising?

From an ad operations perspective, interactive and addressable television advertising can be viewed as hybrids of
traditional television and internet advertising. Thus, our work upgrading DealMaker for advanced television will
serve as a base for eventually enabling full digital and cross-platform capabilities. Prioritized by how the respective
ad opportunities are of importance to our customers and prospects, we should be well positioned to tackle all of the
following:

• Television Video-on-Demand (VOD) – cable, satellite or telcos

• Broadband Video
• Internet Display
• Mobile (Apps, WAP & Video)
• Digital Video Recorders (DVR)
• Interactive Television (iTV)
• Electronic/Interactive Programming Guides (EPGs/IPGs)

Follow AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

October 13, 2009 – 6:21 am

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Venture Capital

2010 Brings Improvement, M&A Says Index Ventures’ Dom

Vidal
Email This Post

Dom Vidal is a partner at Index Ventures, which backs - among others - OpenX, Criteo and Adconion, an ad
network.

AdExchanger.com: What sets Index Ventures apart from

other venture firms?

DV: At Index, we invest in technology and life science

companies from early through to the growth stage of their
development. We're global in our outlook and investment
philosophy, and this geographic diversity is one thing that
makes us different. Many other VCs only invest in companies
that are 'in their own backyards,' but we work with
entrepreneurs and businesses spread around the world in
addition to our many portfolio investments across Europe,
over 25% of our portfolio is US based and 10% in Israel. The
real value of this is that it puts us in a great position to help
our companies expand geographically when they are ready.

We also have a great group of partners who bring very

different areas of expertise to the table people who are
leaders in their fields and know about a huge variety of
sectors including consumer internet, IT infrastructure,
enterprise software, semiconductors, clean tech and
communications.

What are a few critical skills you like to see in an early

stage start-up's CEO?

I generally focus on our growth fund, so I tend to look at later stage companies that have established themselves
as leaders in their field and need help taking their business to the next level. But regardless of the stage of the
company, the things we look for in CEOs and entrepreneurs are consistent. In a nutshell, we're looking for great
leaders; people with a lot of ambition who think big and are able to motivate others to do the same. This type of
person is able to recruit the best talent in the industry to join his or her company, which is vitally important, and
also able to help the team they assemble navigate through the ups and downs that any business will face over the
course of its lifetime. Great leaders have a vision that they are able to clearly articulate and convince other people
to buy into.

What's your view on demand-side platforms (DSPs)? Just another ad network? Or possible a new, huge
opportunity?

Personally, I'm a little dubious about the real potential for demand-side platforms. I do think that there is room for a
demand-based company today, because the way ad networks are currently set up leaves room for someone to
better organize the inventory. This isn't as relevant for bigger publishers who don't need anyone to aggregate

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demand, but does play a role with the smaller, long tail publishers. So there is space for these types of companies,
but I would not bet on it being a huge market. Over time, I think the industry will make fundamental, structural
changes to become more optimized and efficient, and this will get rid of the need for extra players.

There has been recent criticism about how the venture capital community can unnecessarily involve itself
in the day-to-day, operational aspects of their investments - when they often don't have ops experience.
How do you respond?

Regardless of a VC's level of operational experience, I've been in the ad industry for 10 years for example, the
goal with portfolio companies should always be to concentrate on the areas where you can add the most value.
I've found that VC firms can be most helpful with recruiting top talent to portfolio companies and opening doors to
help the company make business deals or form partnerships. We shouldn't be trying to take over the day to day
management of a company - that's what the CEO is for. But, based on our extended networks, we are in a great
position to help our portfolio companies with introductions to key team members or a partner that could end up
having a huge impact on the business.

What's going to happen to ad networks that are arbitraging and just living off of arbitrage? Is there still a
future for them?

I see this as an issue with the entire value chain not just the ad networks. The question should not be how a
company can get a slice of the pie, which is what a lot of people are focused on now, but how they can make the
entire pie bigger. The businesses that I've seen that are able to add significant value to the industry, publishers and
advertisers, are based on truly different technology, and I think this is the key. New technology can fundamentally
impact how something in the value chain works, adding 20-50% more value, which is a real step change. We've
seen this with some of our portfolio companies, like Criteo and OpenX.

Businesses that are trying to take their own little piece of the pie are going to have a difficult time. The industry is
going to see a huge wave of consolidation and the ones who have the best technology, which are adding real
value, will win. There are too many people in the middle right now. This also sets up a great opportunity for new
leaders to emerge. If new companies are able to go public and assert their position in the industry, they will be the
ones to drive this consolidation not just Google, Yahoo and MSN. I see a lot of this movement happening in the
next two years and think it will lead to less fragmentation overall.

How is the funding climate looking today? Are you seeing improvement?
On the funding side, there is still money available for great businesses. On the company side, however, the difficult
market has put pressure on businesses that might otherwise have done well. These companies will have a hard
time raising money. When the overall industry is expected to decline for the first time ever, there are fewer success
stories. But the good news is that it becomes more obvious who the winners will be - there isn't as much
unnecessary noise. In this climate, you have to truly be doing something different to be successful it can
t just be
more of the same.

Do you have any other thoughts about the industry?

We're expecting a relatively better year in 2010, but think that it's going to remain a very challenging environment.
The strong will survive, but I would expect to see some of the mid-level players get weeded out.

We've also seen Google step up this year in areas outside of search. They are doing a great job using technology
to track money from the network and add real value. This is going to force other players in the industry to try and
keep pace. You really have to think about how to bring more technology into your network if you want to try and
compete with Google.

Follow Index Ventures (@IndexVentures) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

December 16, 2009 – 1:08 pm

349
More Ad Networks Coming, Not Less – Says Jeremy Liew
of Lightspeed Venture Partners
Jeremy Liew is Managing Director at Lightspeed Venture Partners, a global venture capital firm, and frequently
writes on the LSVP blog.

AdExchanger.com: In your April 6 LSVP blog post, you say

there will be more ad networks not less. Why?

JL: There are four elements that you need to be able to run a successful ad network:

1. Access to inventory - which has become commoditized by the ad exchanges.

2. Good data for targeting - which is becoming commoditized through companies such as Lookery and Blue
Kai
3. Good targeting algorithms - which is often over-rated - more data usually beats a better algorithm.
4. Access to advertisers/sales execution - which has become the gating issue, and there are lots of good
sales people who have a spike with advertisers in a geography, demographic or vertical area who can now
set up shop on their own.

Through your entrepreneurial lens, who and/or what models in the advertising tech world is taking
advantage of this valley in the economy right now? Any predictions on ad tech models that get funding in
the next year or two?

If I knew, I'd be an entrepreneur, not a VC! VCs are better editors than authors. Hopefully I will recognize that great
idea when they come pitch me.

Early strength with ad exchanges has been in performance display advertising / direct response. Do you
see brand advertisers participating in the exchange in the future?

Yes. Brand advertising hasn't been as measurable as performance advertising, so it has largely required a leap of
faith. But as the metrics improve, we'll likely see brand advertisers also making the jump.

Large, "premium" publishers are trying to steady their falling CPMs by cutting out their former network
partners. Are large publishers getting it right with this walled garden strategy? Any better ideas?

One of the ways that publishers can maintain their premium has been to do more integrated campaigns and this
intrinsically works better when you're vertically integrated versus when sales is disaggregated from the rest of the
publisher. I think that this will continue to be a viable strategy.

How must the media buying agency model evolve in the increasingly, digitally optimized world of online
advertising?

Some agencies are already trying to create their own exchanges (WPP etc). They control the advertisers dollars,
so they really are in the drivers seat.

Will Google own the display ad exchange model eventually? And, assuming privacy can be overcome, do
you see search retargeting as a driver in this ownership?

It isn't clear that Google will win the exchange model. It isn't clear who will. We're still in the early stages. Search
retargeting is one driver of value, but as data gets commodized (see Q1 above) it won't be the only way to drive
value. Direct sales execution will be of key importance and that hasn't been an area that Google has historically
excelled in.

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Follow Jeremy Liew (@jeremysliew) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger.com) on Twitter.

April 21, 2009 – 7:01 am

351
Jeff Crowe Of Norwest Venture Partners On The Digital
Media Buying Space
Jeff Crowe is Managing Partner of Norwest Venture Partners.

AdExchanger.com: With investments in Brand.net and Turn, obviously Norwest Venture Partners (NVP)
appears bullish on the digital media buying space. What drove NVP to invest in each of these companies?

JC: Overall, we have been bullish on the digital advertising space for several years and continue to look for
investment opportunities in that arena. Regarding Turn specifically, we saw an opportunity to invest in a great team
and powerful technology platform for advertisers. Over time, we
believe that significant value accrues to companies in the online
advertising space who have deep technology capability, and that
is certainly playing out for Turn now, with their leading demand
side platform. Regarding Brand.net, we invested in a team with
deep domain expertise and ability to execute. Moreover, we
believe that brand advertisers today want digital advertising
solutions that make it easy for them to buy online media that
meets their quality, reach and frequency requirements, and
Brand.net’s offerings meet those needs uniquely well. Both Turn
and Brand.net have seen sharp growth in 2009, even in the midst
of a sluggish year for online advertising.

Has your prior experience as President and COO of DoveBid,

Inc., a business auction firm, given you insights into how the
auction model may become an important part of
advertising?

DoveBid was one of the first companies back in 2000 to offer

real-time, online bidding for used assets and excess inventory.
Real time bidding back then quickly resulted in higher pricing for
sellers because more buyers were easily able to target their
purchases more effectively. Moreover, the flow and liquidity in the
markets grew significantly, benefitting all players. The parallels
from those days to what we are seeing now with the introduction
of real time bidding in today’s advertising exchanges world are striking. I believe that we will see similar increases
in volume, liquidity and pricing for online advertising with the increasing adoption of RTB.

What are the attributes of a good start-up company board?

A start-up board should be able to help the management team with strategy, business development, recruiting and
fund raising. A good board will have the operating experience, strategic perspective, personal networks and
access to funds to help in the appropriate fashion. It will also have the right combination of patience and high
expectations to help the management team navigate the ups and downs of start-up life.

What types of investments is Norwest Venture Partners looking to make today?

We are investing actively across all investment stages across multiple geographies, from Series A start-ups to later
stage growth equity companies in the U.S., India, China and Israel. Over the last 12 months we have invested
anywhere from $1M to $50M in companies. In the U.S. we are looking at investments across the spectrum of
information technology including digital media, consumer internet, business and consumer services, enterprise
software and infrastructure. We continue to look at opportunities in the digital media space.

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What's the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs make when dealing with the VC community?

Most often we do not invest in a start-up because we believe that the product / market combination will not yield a
big enough outcome – either the product offering is not differentiated enough or the market opportunity is too
small.

What do you enjoy about being a VC? Any downsides?

It is fascinating to continually meet sharp, motivated entrepreneurs who are pursuing new ideas. The intellectual
stimulation of being a venture capitalist cannot be beat. I also really enjoy working with the management teams of
our portfolio companies to grow their businesses. The downside for me is having to say no to many of the
entrepreneurs who come to us looking for funding –- having co-founded a company myself and raised venture
capital back in the ‘90s, I can relate to their position.

Do you expect M&A or even the IPO market to pick up in the coming year? What's your view on 2010?

With the rise of the stock market over the last 6 months, M&A and even IPO activity are now picking up for
technology and media companies. Just last week, one of our portfolio companies, Lifesize Communications,
announced its pending sale to Logitech at a very nice return for employees and investors. We believe that the U.S.
and world economy will improve somewhat in 2010, and we expect enhanced growth opportunities for our
companies. But we don’t try to predict future moves in the stock market and therefore don’t know whether M&A
and IPO activity will continue to heat up or will slow down next year. So we are always counseling our portfolio
companies not to expect an exit in any specific time frame, but to manage their businesses for the long term.

How does the "Alley versus the Valley" look to you today? Noticing any trends?

We continue to look for investment opportunities in both the Valley and the Alley. Obviously the flow of companies
is greater in Silicon Valley, but we see very interesting media and advertising businesses in NYC. Innovation is
flouring in both locales.

Follow Norwest Venture Partners (@NorwestVP) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger)on Twitter.

November 18, 2009 – 6:32 am

353
Yield Optimization

Optimizing AdMeld Style With Co-Founder Ben Barokas

Ben Barokas is co-founder and chief revenue officer at New
York City-based AdMeld.

AdExchanger.com: How many participating publishers

does AdMeld have?

Ben: AdMeld has about 50 publisher customers, including The

Huffington Post and WorldNow. The rest are comprised of a
variety of big names which we can’t talk about publicly just yet,
but hope to announce soon. You can read more about
Huffington Post here: http://www.admeld.com/news.html.

What is your target publisher market? Can any publisher participate?

AdMeld exclusively serves large, premium publishers. Our system produces optimal results for publishers with at
least 50 million remnant impressions a month—though most of our customers have many more than that.

Do you consider your company's model full-service or self-service?

We are a full-service company.

What are the advantages of a yield optimization company?

There are three main advantages to using AdMeld. First, we increase publishers’ revenue from remnant
inventory—typically by 30% to 300% for AdMeld customers. Second, we save publishers’ time and resources by
providing consolidated network reporting and delivering a single network revenue check each month. Third, we
protect publishers’ brands with services and tools that minimize channel conflict, inappropriate ads, etc.

What are the advantages of your company's offerings among all the yield optimization companies?

AdMeld is the only ad network optimization company that’s exclusively focused on serving large, premium
publishers. This shows itself in our technology, which was built to optimize ads in real time on heavy traffic, high
frequency sites; our team, which is comprised entirely of publishing veterans; and our service ethic, which is white
glove, 24/7. Large publishers trust us because we deliver results and we understand their challenges first-hand.

Explain your company's revenue model.

We collect a 10-15% fee on the gross revenue our customers generate through our platform.

Can advertisers or ad networks buy through your company?

Yes, ad networks can purchase inventory from our clients through our platform. Advertisers have also expressed
interest in this capability as well.

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If not, will either of these two be able to purchase through your company someday?

As we said above, currently networks can purchase through our platform. When it comes to advertisers, we’ll
explore that direction if our publishers want us to, but we don’t plan on getting out ahead of our customers with that
type of functionality.

What kinds of inventory are you "optimizing"? Static display, text? Rich media? Video?

Currently we’re “optimizing” display ads.

How do you see advertising exchanges impacting your business now and in the future?

We’re big believers in decreasing friction in the marketplace and giving publishers lots of options—that’s why we
integrate with all the exchanges.

Can your yield optimization service be integrated with other ad management platforms?

Absolutely—AdMeld is compatible with every major ad management platform. We’re agnostic in that way.

Where do you see your company's product line evolving in the next 18-24 months?

We’ve got a lot of exciting things in the works, including a bunch of enhancements to our optimization engine and
tools to give our publishers even more clarity into their inventory. That’s our primary focus today and in the future—
allowing publishers to maximize their ad revenues while minimizing the operational risks and complexities.

Follow AdMeld (@admeld) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

April 8, 2009 – 7:58 am

355
Improve Digital Driving Publisher Yield In Ad Network
Saturated European Market
Janneke Niessen is CEO of Improve Digital, a publisher yield optimization firm based in the United Kingdom.

AdExchanger.com: How did Improve

Digital begin?

Publishers are facing a shift in the online

advertising ecosystem where performance
campaigns, ad networks and exchanges are
playing a more and more dominant role. In
2007, over 40 percent of the UK online
advertising budget was spent through ad
networks and exchanges - few people would
argue with us if we stated that this number is
higher today. Having worked for many large
publishers in yield management and with
extensive experience in ad operations, we
were looking for an efficient way for
publishers to manage these multiple revenue
sources and create their optimal
monetization mix. PubMatic’s ad revenue
optimization technology combined with
Improve Digital’s premium yield optimization
technology (in beta) provides the answer,
lifting revenues between 60 percent and 300
percent.

Today, 90 percent of our customers are in

the premium segment, and include the
largest newspaper and magazine publishers of the world. Our goals are closely aligned with those of publishers:
increasing revenues from premium sales, ad networks, exchanges and performance campaigns while protecting
the publisher’s brand and reducing efforts. Our typical client is looking to balance increasing revenues from
discretionary inventory in harmony with growing revenues from their direct premium sales strategy.

What were the challenges in starting the business?

As we were the first to offer ad network optimization in Europe, our initial role was one of educating the market.
However, publishers quickly recognized the benefits it offered them and embraced the concept, and ad networks
optimization is now is an established practice.

So do you resell PubMatic's yield optimization services? How does that relationship work? Seems to make
sense that Improve Digital would be bought by PubMatic in the future.

Improve Digital represents PubMatic’s ad revenue optimization platform exclusively in Europe, and has its own
premium yield optimization technology in beta. The two technologies complement each other, enabling Improve
Digital to offer premium publishers a full yield optimization solution. The two companies have a strong partnership,
enabling them to work closely as a global team. Europe is a complex and fragmented market that requires in-depth
local understanding of each region and this is a key element that Improve Digital brings to the table. At this point
our focus is to extend our successful company into more markets .

356
What's your company's target market? Is it geographical?

Our target market are the premium publishers. In Europe, 90 percent of our publishers are premium ones that are
seeking to monetize unsold ad space and balance this with their premium direct sales strategies. When it comes to
ad network optimization, PubMatic and Improve Digital operate as one global company servicing the top publishers
around the globe. Publishers benefit from local sales and service staff in Palo Alto, New York, London,
Amsterdam, Hamburg, Paris, and India. Our service team speaks over ten languages and we monetize ad space
in over 275 different countries. For our premium yield optimization technology, we do not work with resellers and
focus instead on providing our services directly and expanding our geographical reach.

Do you have any sense about the differences between U.S. and European publishers? Is the ad network
more palatable to larger European pubs, for example?

The biggest challenge of working in Europe is probably that the markets are so diverse and the audience is highly
fragmented. In each region different players are important and the attitude towards networks and exchanges varies
enormously. In general the fragmentation of Europe has led to fewer ad networks of a certain volume in each
market than there is in the US, however Europe is catching up rapidly. The differences in Europe are cultural, and
servicing the resulting needs goes way beyond speaking the local language. Global or pan-European publishers
might have central management, but the crux of their success lies with their regional offices, each of whom works
with local partners to meet the needs specific to their local market. Each geographic region, each publisher, each
website and each placement requires a different mix of networks. Only best-of-breed automated optimization
combined with local service and market knowledge can make that happen. That’s why we’re very excited about
our unique strategy with PubMatic, where we combine the leading global technology platform with the best of local
sales and service across Europe. No other solution provider can match that. As an example, PubMatic recently
rolled out a global currency release that allows it to integrate into ad networks that report in any currency
worldwide, convert that currency on the fly for optimization purposes, and then customize reporting to whatever
currency the publisher prefers.

Does the yield optimization model eventually turn into an ad exchange? How do you see the model
evolving?

We work with over 350 relevant networks and thousands of publishers, so we’re already among the largest global
advertising platforms in the world. However, our key mission is to help publisher’s monetize their inventory by
maximizing their yield and revenues. This makes us the number one partner for premium publishers in the
industry. Exchanges are trading platforms, but publishers require significant service to help them with creative
controls, brand management, billing, reconciliations with networks, etc. PubMatic provides world-class service and
technology.

What’s your value proposition for ad networks? Why wouldn’t ad networks go direct to the publishers?

We are able to connect networks instantly to a large pool of premium publishers in multiple markets in an efficient
way. Our dynamic default technology ensures that networks no longer receive impressions they cannot, or do not
want to monetize, resulting in higher CPM’s and happier publishers and networks.

How do you see the demand-side buying platforms affecting Improve Digital? At some point do you see
agency buying platforms buying directly from Improve Digital?

The publisher decides which networks / platforms are able to buy their inventory. Our platform is agnostic in this
sense and is able to connect to any platform or network. Sometimes connecting to these platforms can be highly
beneficial, but at other times it is not, and that is a decision that in the end only the publisher can make. The
objective is to create efficiencies for both the network and the publishers, and growing revenues for both parties.

What's your view on ad exchanges? What's the European perception? Are there still challenges around
"brand safety" for example?

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Brand safety is a huge issue in Europe and something that we help publishers to protect. With open exchanges it
can sometimes be more challenging, but with our creative control technology, it is easy to manage – and eliminate
- bad creatives. We recently launched a white paper to share our experience with the industry, and offer the do’s
and don’ts to protect brand image.

Are you using PubMatic’s real-time bidding (RTB) offering on behalf of clients? Will RTB play an important
role in Improve Digital’s future? Why or why not?

Real time bidding plays a key role in enabling a more efficient and dynamic advertising market and increases the
revenues for both networks and publishers, but the decision to enable this always lies with the publisher.

For us real time bidding plays an important role in the future as there are great benefits for all parties involved –
better ad quality for users, which improves the overall user experience, higher ROI for advertisers making them
increase the budgets, and increased revenues and higher CPM’s for publishers.

Where's the larger part of additional revenue for publishers when working with a yield optimization
company: workflow consolidation or getting paid the highest price possible by a collection of ad
networks?

We bring publishers more money, because our real time self-learning technology is able to match the right view
with the right network and campaign in a much more efficient way than any other system. Every 15 milliseconds
the mix of ad networks is adjusted for that exact moment and placement. It will adjust for spikes and ebbs during
the day or the week and it also finds the ideal network mix per placement. As a result, we see increases in revenue
of between 60 percent and 300 percent. Straight-forward, central, multi-currency reporting and automated
integration with over 350 local and international networks also generates an increase in revenues and saves
publishers time and effort. The efficiencies in managing all parties involved also allows publishers to increase their
focus on their premium sales.

Follow Janneke Niessen (@janneke_improve) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

October 2, 2009 – 6:40 am

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Pubmatic’s Rajeev Goel Talks Yield Optimization
Email This Post

Rajeev Goel is CEO and Co-Founder of yield optimizer,

Pubmatic based in Palo Alto, California.

AdExchanger.com: How many participating publishers

does Pubmatic have?

Rajeev: We have over 5,500 large and medium publishers

using PubMatic including eBay, Kiplinger , Inc./Fast Company,
Sugar Network, United Press International, and many more.

What is your target publisher market? Can any publisher

participate?

We work with mostly large publishers in high value verticals. We recently launched PubMatic Premier, which brings
a new level of technology and service to large media companies with over $5 million in online revenue.

We also do let smaller publishers use our self-service platform to help them manage their pre-established networks
because it provides value to them and it gives us a huge amount of rich data that we use to enhance our
technology and publisher revenue lift.

Do you consider your company's model full-service or self-service?

We re a full-service company, and full-service is where we provide the biggest benefit to pubs. Our PubMatic
Premier offering gives large pubs a dedicated team of six people that learns the specific needs of that publisher
and provides a range of support. There is a Strategic Partnership Manager, who is the main day-to-day point of
contact that leads an experienced team to focus on performance, ad network relationships, yield, analytics and
24/7 technical solutions support.

What are the advantages of a yield optimization company?

In general, publishers are struggling with managing the fragmented demand for their non-premium inventory. They
spend a significant amount of time managing ad networks and other non-premium relationships, disproportionate
to the revenue they generate from these relationships. PubMatic turns this reality on its head on behalf of
publishers, by solving a few key challenges very well that lead to 30% - 70% higher publisher revenue and
significant ad operations benefits:

1) We help publishers navigate the massive number of ad networks out there. Publishers get pitched by ad
networks non-stop, and it is sometimes difficult for them to distinguish between a good sales pitch and
what is really best for them. So a very large part of our service is providing our ad network expertise so we
can provide them with the optimal mix of
networks that is going to perform the best for them – and that means for both revenue and that fits their
creative needs best.

2) Once we get them set up with the right networks, our ad price prediction engine determines how each
ad network is pricing the publisher s inventory in real time. We examine every impression uniquely and
route it to the ad network that can best monetize the impression. By looking at dozens of parameters and
predicting pricing in real time, we are able to drive significantly higher revenue for the publisher.

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 3) In addition to the revenue-generating technology, we provide publishers with a variety of services to
simplify ad operations. We provide consolidated revenue reports, consolidated billing, and ad quality
controls to protect the publisher s brand. All of these services allow the publisher to allocate their ad
operations resources to higher value premium
inventory.

What are the advantages of your company's offerings among all the yield optimization companies?

I outlined it pretty well above and I don t want to get too much into the marketing pitch here because the readers
of this site know this space on a much greater level than the general public. I will admit that there are similarities in
service between PubMatic, Rubicon Project and AdMeld (not really YieldEx as you sometimes mention), but I fully
believe that our technology is superior.

We re transparent about our technology and we publish whitepapers to show people our technology is not just
marketing – it works, and it allows us to provide ongoing, scalable revenue lift. It would be extremely difficult for
another company to catch up to us on this level because with machine learning it continues to improve based on
the data it collects, and we also continue to put a great deal of resources into advancing it. We were the first
company in this space by almost a year, and in that time we built the largest engineering team focused on this
problem (over 30 people), so we have a massive advantage to technology and see that as a key differentiator.

We have another white paper coming out in the next two weeks on our solution that maps the relationship between
frequency and eCPM for a particular ad network and then automatically allocates impressions for the most yield.
I ll give you an advanced copy.

Explain your company's revenue model.

We charge publishers a percentage of the revenue that we optimize and manage on their behalf.

Can advertisers or ad networks buy through your company?

We do not work directly with advertisers, but our AdFlex solution allows ad networks to buy directly through us very
easily. We offer ad networks flexible inventory on demand, in a way that meets their media buying needs and
provides publishers with added revenue lift. Earlier this year, we extended AdFlex with an open API that makes it
even easier for ad networks to buy, with a wealth of customized targeting options. AdFlex has been a very big
success for both the ad networks that need to fulfill campaigns and publishers who love it because of the revenue
lift they receive.

If not, will either of these two be able to purchase through your company someday?

Well, like any smart company, we hope to always be evolving in order to meet the needs of the market and our
clients. Right now, we re entirely focused on perfecting what we re already doing.

What kinds of inventory are you "optimizing"? Static display, text? Rich media? Video?

We optimize all types of display ads - whether its text, banner, rich media, or ads in video players.

How do you see advertising exchanges impacting your business now and in the future?

Exchanges provide publishers with another option for monetizing their ad

inventory. We re excited about connecting with ad exchanges to offer this to our publisher clients. In fact, we have
already partnered with one of the largest ad exchanges, Right Media, to offer the wealth of networks on that
exchange to our publishers.

Can your yield optimization service be integrated with other ad management platforms?

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We have integrated with other ad management platforms. For example, we have
open APIs for integrating with ad networks and buy-side dashboards. We have
integrated with various exchanges, as previously mentioned. We have XMLenabled our publisher reports, so they
can be readily integrated into publishers portals and other ad management platforms.

Where do you see your company's product line evolving in the next 18-
24 months?

We are focused in a few key areas:

1. Continuing to drive the industry s best technology with respect to optimizing a publisher s inventory for
maximum revenue lift.
2. Additional services for publishers, to make managing their non-premium inventory increasingly easier.
3. Expanding our portfolio of ad network offerings – going beyond the few hundred that we already offer to
provide even more ad networks.

Follow Pubmatic (@pubmatic) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

April 7, 2009 – 7:49 am

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Hundreds of Data Points Available With PubMatic’s Real-
Time Bidding Says CEO Goel
Email This Post

Rajeev Goel is CEO of PubMatic.

AdExchanger.com: What will demand side

optimization provide for the advertiser/agency?
Can you quantify performance improvements an
advertiser might see in comparison to futures or
reserved bidding/buying?

Real time demand side optimization will provide

advertisers and agencies with the ability to better
target individual web users with the most relevant and
timely ads while at the same time increasing
advertiser ROI. With real time bidding, the advertiser can finally target an ad for a web user on an individual basis,
rather than grouping individuals and making an “average” decision across all of them.

Note that there are great benefits for all parties involved – better ad quality for users, which improves the overall
user experience, and higher ROI for advertisers, which means they will be willing to spend more money advertising
online. For this reason, it’s extremely important that publishers move forward with working with real time bidding
solutions, and PubMatic has seamlessly enabled its marquee publisher partners to do exactly that with its
pioneering solution launched in January 2009. Our publishers don’t have to make any investment to support this
important capability – we provide it to them as a benefit of their working with PubMatic.

Are there any publisher benefits? For example, could real time bidding turn remnant into premium
inventory?

There are tremendous publisher benefits. In addition to the improved user experience I mentioned earlier,
publishers will see increased revenue per ad (higher eCPM). Each ad buyer has access to proprietary data about
the web site and the user on the web site, and real time bidding allows the buyer to pay up to the full value of that
impression. At PubMatic, we’ve seen publisher eCPMs increase by anywhere from 10% to 40% when they
participate in PubMatic’s real time bidding program. As more and more advertisers buy on a real time basis, I
expect this benefit to expand significantly. This is the main reason why it’s extremely important for publishers,
when evaluating optimization solutions, to look for one with the ability to provide them with real time bidding
capabilities. If they don’t, they are compromising their visitors’ web experience and leaving money on the table.

How long before real time bidding and spot market "buys" achieve scale in the online display ad
marketplace?

The reality is that real time bidding has already achieved scale. There are hundreds of millions if not billions of
impressions per day already being monetized in this fashion.

Will futures/reserved buying "go away" someday with the exception of sales through a publisher's direct
sales team?

No, futures / reserved buying will likely never go away. You can look at other media to see this – in TV there are
the “up fronts” which are reserved buying, but then TV time gets transacted throughout the year. Reserved buying
and real time buying serve different advertiser needs, so we will have both for a long time to come.

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How many customers are currently using your RTB offering and when will it become widely available?

PubMatic is the industry leader in RTB for publishers. No other company in the space has this capability. We have
thousands of publishers utilizing it already, and it’s widely available across the PubMatic platform. It’s a reality at
PubMatic and delivering significant publisher benefits – both in terms of increased monetization of 10 30% but
also improved web user experience.

What are the challenges for PubMatic in offering RTB?

Offering RTB requires significant technology capabilities and investment. We literally share hundreds of data points
on a per impression basis with numerous buying partners. This requires a significant understanding of a
publisher’s business rules, investment in data center capabilities to allow for real time communication, extremely
high uptime for server processing, and a very advanced optimization platform to manage real time and non real
time buyers alike. Because of the advanced requirements and heavy investment, it doesn’t make sense for 99% of
publishers to do this on their own. They must partner with PubMatic to do this, as no other publisher optimization
provider provides this service.

Does PubMatic provide its own trading platform/interface so that clients may access PubMatic's RTB?

We work directly with hundreds of ad networks and exchanges, including most of the top 50 in the US and nearly
every exchange. They all have the ability to access our real time bidding interface to get access to some of the
best inventor on the web across our premium publishers.

Does PubMatic's RTB work with any ad server?

RTB works with any ad server. Every partner who we have talked to about RTB has been able to connect with us
to make this a reality.

Is any additional infrastructure implementation for PubMatic's RTB required such as co location or
cloud?

We have very strict guidelines on transaction time, in order to make sure that the web surfer’s experience is not
compromised in any way. Because of this, we do have to figure out how to work with our ad network and exchange
partners to manage the speed of the decision making process. This usually requires that our equipment and the ad
network or exchange’s equipment be physically located within specific geographic distances.

Are your publishers' URLs exposed in the RTB process? Is there potential for channel conflict with your
publishers?

Naturally, buyers of media want to know that they are buying media that is safe for their advertisers. That requires
a certain level of transparency on behalf of the publisher. We give publishers the ability to control the level of
transparency that they want. Ultimately, the publisher needs to feel that the transparency allows them to get
maximum value for their media while at the same time being congruent with their direct sales efforts. As I
mentioned earlier, futures/reserved buying and real time bidding are two very different products from the buyer’s
perspective, so there is very little chance for channel conflict to occur.

Are all of your publishers part of the program or is there an opt out?
Publisher control is paramount at PubMatic, as the publisher is our ultimate customer. As a result, we allow
publishers to opt in or opt out of real time bidding.

Follow Pubmatic (@pubmatic) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

May 12, 2009 – 7:11 am

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Rubicon Project On Mediaweek Article
This post follows up on an article this week by MediaWeek's Mike Shields in regards to concerns publishers have
about agency demand-side platforms (DSPs). Read the article. In the article, Shields said that Rubicon Project met
with some of these publishers. A Rubicon Project spokesperson provided the following responses.

AdExchanger.com: Did Rubicon Project meet with "about a dozen of the Web's biggest publishers" last
week?

RP: No - the overall number was far greater, but in general, yes. And since the Mediaweek article, still more major
publishers have been reaching out to us to find ways to solve some of the pressing problems they are facing. We
are always meeting with our publishers to discuss how they can regain control over pricing and effectively leverage
available channels. As for any one specific meeting - too soon to say.

Do large web publishers fear agency demand-side platforms?

Historically, technology and/or platforms that have been designed specifically for the demand side have been
wonderful for buyers, but have driven a loss of control and leverage for publishers. That's the root of publishers'
fear about these platforms, which Mike Shields documents clearly in his interview quotes from Kyoo Kim of
MSNBC, for example. Publishers are expressing this concern to us - privately and publicly - more than ever lately.

December 2, 2009 – 1:32 am

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YieldBuild CEO Edmondson Says Microsoft PubCenter
And Google AdSense Making Beautiful Music Together
Paul Edmondson is CEO of YieldBuild, a yield optimization company.

AdExchanger.com: Please describe the momentum you're seeing

at YieldBuild. For example, how many participating publishers are
a part of your optimization offering these days?

We're really happy with our growing publisher base. While we want to
respect our publishers' privacy, we can say that we have thousands of
publishers, from very large social network and content sites to small
blogs.

What is your target publisher market? Can any publisher

participate?

Any site that meets our supported ad networks' guidelines can begin
optimizing their ads the first day with YieldBuild. Since we have special strength in optimizing contextual ads, our
sweet spot is with content-rich sites that get a good portion of their traffic from search. However, a lot of direct-
traffic sites have also seen impressive revenue gains using YieldBuild.

Do you consider your company's model full-service or self-service?

We operate completely under a self-service model. A publisher can provision an account and begin optimization in
less than a half hour.

How does Microsoft AdCenter's Publisher text ad network compare to Google's AdSense? Data points
would be payout, contextual match, customization capabilities, etc.

Microsoft pubCenter (adCenter Publisher) is an excellent adjunct alongside AdSense, where it complements
Google's offering beautifully. YieldBuild features category-aware ad allocation, granting pubCenter, for example,
more prominent ad exposure than AdSense in categories where it consistently outperforms Google. Contextual
matching has been strong, although Microsoft still doesn't have the same breadth of advertiser inventory as
Google. We've seen, however, RPC (revenue per click) often making up for lower CTR due to less-targeted
contextual matching. Really, though, it's publisher-specific, and it's better to have YieldBuild test and make the
determination of what network goes where.

I should add here that pubCenter is one source of contextual ads as part of our Premium Text Ad Program, which
includes other high-quality text ad sources as well.

Other than Google and Microsoft's networks, how many networks and platforms are you optimizing on
behalf of publishers?

In the contextual sphere, we also support Yahoo Publisher Network and Chitika, and among display networks we
support Advertising.com, ValueClick Media, Tribal Fusion, and BlueLithium. We also offer a primarily-display
International Ad Program that helps publishers monetize non-US traffic.

What are the advantages of your company's offerings among all the yield optimization companies?

We do a couple of things that are unique.

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First, YieldBuild performs sophisticated format optimization for text-based ads, intelligently honing in on the format
variants unique to text ads (things like background color, border style, font color and style, etc) that make a
difference in performance. We use our own proprietary optimization intelligence to narrow in on the format options
that are likely to do well, and then we test the possible permutations to arrive at a set of layouts that perform best.

Second, we allow publishers to maintain a direct relationship with the ad networks we support. So, for reporting
and payment purposes, your account is still active. Naturally, we offer a really fantastic consolidated analytics suite
that allows you to see your performance across all networks, too.

Please explain your company's revenue model.

We operate on an impressions-based fee (3%). This means that 3% of the time ads are served through us, we use
our ad network account IDs, while 97% of the time, we use the publishers'. This avoids the need for invoicing and
payment for our fee.

Can advertisers or ad networks buy through your company? If not, will either of these two be able to
purchase through your company someday?

Advertisers interested in reaching our large publisher base can work through any one of the ad networks we
support. Larger advertisers can contact us about participating in either our Premium Text Ad Program or our
International Ad Program if they'd like to reach our publishers' audiences directly.

What kinds of inventory are you "optimizing" besides text? Static display, Rich media, Video? Any
upcoming plans for other formats?

We support a number of display networks, although our optimization options are relatively limited (we can only
alter the position and size of the ad unit). We don't support optimization of other formats yet, and although we have
no current plans to support them, we might in the future. Our primary interest now is to reach publishers running
text-based ads, since that's our sweet spot and we have demonstrated strong performance improvements for
them.

How do you see advertising exchanges impacting your business now and in the future?

Exchanges are a large, and growing, part of the online ad picture. Their ability to allow advertisers to manage their
inventory requirements efficiently is unrivaled. We currently work indirectly with the Right Media Exchange and
imagine that we will continue to work with the largest exchanges in the future.

Any plans to take advantage of real-time bidding (RTB) and demand-side optimization tools?
We've seen some companies making early forays into RTB in this space, and while it sounds like a nice idea, we'd
like to see if it provides a demonstrable benefit to publishers before we invest in building the technology and the
advertiser base. Because we don't typically have a direct relationship with advertisers, we haven't yet taken
advantage of advertiser optimization tools.

Can your yield optimization service be integrated with other ad management platforms?
YieldBuild implemented on a Website is just a javascript snippet, so in this sense it's no different from any other ad
network tag. Most of our publishers use an ad manager to serve up our code; as long as they don't use iframes,
there should not be any issue whatsoever.

Follow YieldBuild (@yieldbuild) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

July 30, 2009 – 6:03 am

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Yieldex Q&A With Tom Shields: Optimizing For Publishers
with Direct Sales Teams
Email This Post

Tom Shields is Chief Executive Officer of yield optimization

company, Yieldex.

AdExchanger.com: How many participating publishers?

TS: We have announced Martha Stewart Omnimedia as our

first publisher partner. We are currently engaged with a
number of other large publishers that we are not publicizing
yet.

What is your target publisher market? Can any publisher

participate?

Our target market is publishers who have a direct sales force and who want to maximize their revenue on premium
inventory. While any publisher could participate, we are ideally suited for larger publishers who have their own
sales team.

Do you consider your company's model full-service or self-service?

We provide tools and technology solutions for publishers to gain a deeper understanding of their premium
inventory, and provide recommendations to help them optimize their yield. These tools are used by each
publisher’s in-house sales and operations teams. We manage the integration of the Yieldex solution, and provide
services to our publishers to ensure they are taking full advantage of our tools to maximize their revenue.

What are the advantages of a yield optimization company?

The manual spreadsheets that most operations teams are using now are insufficient to give sales the answers they
need to sell efficiently. Using a next generation tool like Yieldex BusinessIQ will help everyone in the organization
make better decisions, drive operational efficiency, and optimize revenue.

What are the advantages of your company's offerings among all the yield optimization companies?

We are the only one focused on the premium inventory that is sold by a direct sales force. For most large
publishers, over 70% of their revenue comes from less than 10% of their inventory, and the average CPMs of
inventory they sell are $10-20 vs $1 or less for ad networks. We enable publishers to manage, predict and optimize
this premium inventory. (See slide 6 of the IAB/Bain study.)

Explain your company's revenue model.

We are software-as-a-service with a monthly flat fee based on volume.

Can advertisers or ad networks buy through your company?

No. We do not sell inventory on behalf of our clients.

If not, will either of these two be able to purchase through your company someday?

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We have no plans to sell inventory at this time.

What kinds of inventory are you "optimizing"? Static display, text? Rich media? Video?

We optimize premium inventory, which is typically sold directly by publishers on a CPM or CPD basis, at a high
CPM. We support any and all creative formats deployed online today.

How do you see advertising exchanges impacting your business now and in the future?

Advertising exchanges are great for our industry, because they give publishers the ability to understand the
baseline value of their inventory in an open market. Larger publishers will continue to sell premium inventory
directly, because many ad campaigns will require characteristics that advertising exchanges have difficulty
providing (impression guarantees, exclusivity, online/offline packages, etc), but this data will allow BusinessIQ to
help them to make better decisions about packaging and selling their premium inventory.

Can your yield optimization service be integrated with other ad management platforms?

Yes, we are currently integrated with several ad serving platforms and several order management systems, and
are integrating with more of these based on client demand.

Where do you see your company's product line evolving in the next 18-24 months?

We will continue to provide solutions based on our DynamicIQ platform to help maximize premium inventory. We
are working closely with data vendors, ad exchanges, and sales management system vendors to expand the range
and value of the analytics we provide, and make the data more actionable for publishers.

Follow Tom Shields (@tshields), Yieldex (@yieldex) and AdExchanger.com (@adexchanger.com) on Twitter.

April 21, 2009 – 10:38 am

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Thank You and License

For more,
visit AdExchanger.com.

Thank you for reading.

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2009 AdExchanger.com

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