Happy Friday! 12.10.2018
Three Is The Magic Number
Happy Friday!
Welcome to the third newsletter, there’s lots to cover this week: Big leadership changes at Xandr, Apple & Teads partnering on video & BuzzFeed doubling down on programmatic. Beyond this Integral Ad Science released their 2018 media quality report, so the key facts from this are what rounds the newsletter off this week!
Let me know what you think about all of this on twitter @SimonJHarris & if you think anyone should sign up send ask them to sign up here
Big Changes At Xandr
The big news this week is post the AT&T acquisition, AppNexus Co Founder & CEO Brian O’Kelley is stepping down from his operational role, effective immediately:
The news of the change was broken by Xandr CEO( & former Xaxis legend) Brian Lesser in a memo to staff:
Some have speculated O’Kelley’s razor sharp opinions & independent mindset made him incompatible with a “subservient role to Xandr CEO Brian Lesser” Others commented that life at a corporate giant simply may have not have been desirable for a product focused entrepreneur who wanted to take AppNexus public in order to retain control & independence. Speculation aside this change is sure to have a big impact.
So what next for O’Kelley beyond Xandr? It is well known that he has invested in close to 20 companies including startup Amino Payments, which is headed up by Integral Ad Science founder Will Luttrell & given his passion & drive for creating industry defining products I’d expect Brian to remain active in this area, despite the fact that he probably doesn’t need to. I think that’s a good thing for AdTech.
Apple & Teads Partner On Video
Whilst the story above came as no surprise to many, news that Apple has appointed Teads to be the official seller of Outstream video advertising in Apple News did:
In the UK Agencies & advertisers will be able to buy video ad inventory across a swathe of news brands that publish via the platform. Apple News reaches around 11 million Brits & Apple is said to have chose Teads as they believe their product is non intrusive & this will protect user experience.
Buyers can use Apple data gleamed from iTunes & App installs to target their campaigns, but will not be able to do so on a self service basis via their preferred DSP. This makes sense for Apple & was to be expected given the increasingly aggressive blocking of AdTech tracking they have implemented over the past 12 months.
The market for Outstream in the UK is around £1 billion currently but Apple News is said to account for up to a third of many UK publishers traffic and to date this has not been monetized with video. This means there is a fantastic opportunity for Teads to grow the size of the market significantly. The industry is watching closely both to see if Teads can execute successfully & if the proposition evolves over time to be more friendly towards an industry that historically has been at loggerheads with the Cupertino based giant.
BuzzFeed Double Down On Programmatic
A full 12 months after testing the waters with programmatic BuzzFeed are doubling down on it. There’s a great article with all the details on AdExchanger this week by @SarahSluis which you should check out here:
BuzzFeed has increased supply from 1 billion impressions per month a year ago to over 3 billion impressions per month currently, clearly the leadership sees the benefit of offering buyers a diversified advertising proposition where the demand side can take advantage of the extensive 1st party data Buzzfeed collects on its users across across a range of formats.
Not only do Buzzfeed offer interesting options for targeting from a quality perspective they seem to be doing a solid job as well: My research shows the majority of their supply has above average expected viewability & the proportion of impressions expected to have greater than 60% viewablity is 20% higher on their site than the U.S. display market in general. Basically lots to like for traders like myself.
Despite a successful expansion of programmatic advertising BuzzFeed have said they remain committed to Native & from this perspective they are now very much like other news vendors who offer a diversified advertising product, albeit Buzzfeed have come to this diversified revenue model from the opposite direction to most traditional publishers.
Integral Ad Science Media Quality Report
There’s an abundant supply of high quality media available to buyers, but you need to know what you’re doing & if you don’t you will potentially get burnt by brand safety breaches & ad fraud. Integral offers a wealth of products to measure and manage these challenges. They just released their H1 media quality reports which are a treasure trove of stats on viewability, brand safety & advertising fraud.
Ad fraud is rightly a big concern for advertisers & despite the advent of initiatives like ads.txt, Integral found the rate of fraud in optimized display campaigns has got marginally worse YoY:
This slight uptick may depress some, but bear these three things in mind 1) With effort you will be able to beat the optimized rates comfortably 2) Programmatic buys are now safer than direct bookings & 3) Many DSPs are now offering refunds on any invalid impressions inadvertently purchased, so whilst fraud management will remain a cat and mouse game, we can at least reduce the cost of fraud to zero for advertisers.
Outside of fraud brand safety is top of mind for advertisers, this years stats show the level of brand risk in desktop display buys has crept up slightly across the board although the levels of high risk content has remained relatively constant:
We live in increasingly turbulent times so the growth content classed as moderate risk could well be hard news biting, as with fraud this may seem daunting but this challenge is equally manageable. The first stage should be understanding the detail, so when you get the chance download a full copy of the reports from Integral Ad Science here for all the key facts.
Finally some personal news: This week I was named one of the 25 most influential people in AdTech. If you get the chance connect with me on Twitter & whilst you’re there follow the folk in the Tweet below, they all made the list & offer great insight into the industry we are fortunate enough to work in!
Have a great weekend
Simon