May 9th, 2011
Video: The Shift Is On
Last Thursday, I participated in a panel at Digiday: Target that focused on what I call “Transactional, Audience-Based Media Buying.” That is, data-driven media buying at scale across exchanges, using third-party data. Here’s the video.
Ad Exchanges have their place in today’s advertising landscape, but its proponents often don’t see the forest for the trees. There are serious issues with both the technology and the business dynamic that enable this type of media buying, as it exists today. Among them:
- An overtaxing of our ad delivery infrastructure. You can see this in action when the page you’re trying to load in your web browser hangs while waiting for an ad exchange to figure out which advertiser should get the ad view.
- Questions concerning how third-party data companies both get their data and marry it to cookies representing individual users.
- Concerns about end-user privacy.
- A business dynamic that puts content creators in a precarious position, as the automated marketplace places immense downward price pressure on content.
The folks at Digiday were kind enough to invite me to share some of my views on this marketplace, some of which were entirely at odds with other panelists’ views (which made for an exciting panel discussion). Shawn Riegsecker of Centro did a fantastic job moderating.
