Back in the digital equivalent of the Industrial age, clients and agencies alike, would specify sites, on demographic or specialist interest grounds, allocate budget and often negotiate directly with publishers. Space was allocated and invoiced by publishers and ads where served into the slots in line with the pre planned schedule.
The proliferation of media options on the supply side, and volume of advertisers on the demand side, necessitated an automated route to market. Subsequently we saw the rise of the network, blind, semi-blind and transparent, grouping sites on demographic, behavioural, or topic lines. Ad commerce grew, however a price was paid in transparency. Black box purchasing meant the inner workings could not be seen. This raised questions from publishers and advertisers alike: where’s the money going? How much is the network making? How much benefit am I getting?
A more equitable solution has been provided by technology. Real-time bidding enables advertisers to gain visibility on what is being purchased and analyse performance for each advertising variable. The metric for purchasing has become closer to the value of the inventory sold to the advertiser. Advertisers gain control over the way in which they target, re-market, and bid according to the conversion value. Publishers benefit because they have a broader range of advertisers bidding for their space, and crucially, they get a fairer slice of the cake.
The market is still evolving, tracking continues to evolve for the majority of advertisers, and a fuller understanding of the impact of varying traffic sources is encouraging more advertisers to test real-time bidding of display inventory.
So what does the future hold? The principles are now set, transparency and tracking are showing where the value is for the market. The barriers to entry have been removed. Advertisers are increasing, but supply side is also increasing as consumers spend more time online.
Real-time bidding is become a part of the majority of client schedules, and will continue to grow in popularity as its value is realised. Now is the time to test display spends by bidding in real-time. Your agencies can help. Opportunities still exist to purchase inventory at low cost, and where target sites have become heavily bid, you can still manage your spend effectively against conversion targets.
By Henry Lewington, MD Barracuda Digital.
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