Where should decisions about which ad runs where be made? Ajay Sravanapudi, in his recent article on AdExchanger says a DSP is really just a feature on an exchange… A DSP simply uses [RTB API] of an exchange to buy media and run campaigns more effectively. The exchange has an ad server that can deliver […]
Advertising
Everybody’s an ad exchange (The Thin Exchange, 1)
Everybody’s a DSP? Everybody’s a marketplace. There’s this confusing moving about in the marketplace. AdECN was a pure exchange, and is now part of a publisher. Right Media, same thing. OpenX was a publisher tool, and is now running an exchange. AdMeld similarly. AppNexus was an exchange and is now a DSP (I think.) Same […]
The long siege of Corbenic
Darren Herman’s article on AdExchanger this week is more important than it might seem at first read: it’s the first time a major figure in our little adtech industry has pointed out that what we’ve built in terms of exchanges and platforms and data is just a small first step to what we will need […]
Kicked to the curb
I’m a believer in publisher’s agents (also known as publisher brokers or–the dreaded TLA*–SSPs.) I think it’s pretty obvious that they are a necessary precursor to a reasonably efficient marketplace**. But a lot of people don’t agree with me. Important people. Like Google, and Microsoft. I’ve written before that I think publishers showing up in […]
Duck, duck, goose on the demand side
Mike Walrath in an excellent article over at AdExchanger said “What we’re really talking about here is the race to build the next-generation digital marketing services company.” I would put it more strongly: the DSPs, the ad agencies and the ad networks are on a collision course*. Once upon a time it was pretty easy […]
We looked at the man behind the curtain. Then we got bored and looked at something else.
I am either proud or dismayed to report that Reaction Wheel is the top organic result on Google for searches like “Is Advertising Good or Bad?” For your amusement, traffic from these searches over the past year. Concern over whether advertising is good or bad peaked in November and has declined since (February is, so […]
In which we are the protagonists in the low comedy of our economy
This morning I was rereading Merton and Bodie’s “A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing the Financial Environment” in The Global Financial System: a Functional Perspective, published in 1995 but still immensely interesting*. This passage, though, ended the paper: In the traditional bank arrangement, there is a mismatch between the liquidity of the deposits issued by the […]
If the ad exchanges aren’t exchanges, what are they?
I should note that I don’t claim to have had an original thought in my post yesterday on why ad exchanges are not like financial markets/exchanges*. In addition to Huayin Wang‘s insight in the comments, @jonathanmendez points me to a Cogblog post touching on this, and Jordan Mitchell of Rubicon mentions his own post from […]
The limits of the exchange analogy in the ad marketplace
huayin commented on Open source the ad exchange just now on an issue that has been top of my mind for a while. He says We need to be cautious of the limitation of any analogy… In my 2c, Ad Exchange marketplace is an order of magnitude more complex than NYSE! The current ad buying/selling […]
Apple acquires Quattro
A couple of months ago I said Apple had to acquire some advertising DNA. Now they are, by buying Quattro Wireless. I’m not sure why Google, Apple and Microsoft all need to compete in all of each others’ lines of business. It seems to me that Apple’s incipient stranglehold on the mobile internet put Google […]