ZenithOptimedia

Its great to see the passion and enthusiasm of the artists, and the work speaks for itself.

Amazing and inspiring.

The biggest announcement then was the launch of the Microsoft Ad Exchange in Australia.

It is coming to help address one of the key challenges for Agency DSPs growth in the market place: reaching scale.

So far for the past year, the Google Ad Exchange has been the main source of inventory for most players.

The launch of the Microsoft product that provides access to a network that reaches most Australian online users is a game changer.

Not only it significantly increases the inventory now available to Agency DSPs but it also offers an alternative partner for smaller publishers who are keen to seize this opportunity but could not have the technology to manage it themselves.

Another element that will support the overall market for growth is the focus on premium inventory.

Too often the Ad Exchange space is accused of containing only long tail sites and poor quality inventory.

This perception is often based on a certain misunderstanding and some local publishers have already seen the benefits to open their premium sites to Agency DSPs and experienced improvement in their inventory yield management.

In stage one, the Microsoft Ad Exchange is offering Ninemsn inventory only. On the 9th of November, Microsoft also announced a deal with AOL and Yahoo to distribute their inventory in their ad exchange in the USA. We could anticipate some implications for Yahoo!7 in the future here.

But overall, it is a strong signals for premium publishers to come onboard and for marketers to be confident in the capacity of DSPs to trade qualitative inventory.

With brand safety as a focus, Agency DSPs can also go beyond what most ad networks and ad exchanges deliver.

They operate to brand safety guidelines, though these are at URL level and don't catch hijacked sites or specific content on generally acceptable sites.

Vivaki Audience On Demand brand safety operates on Peer39 technology which involves contextual page scanning, to allow buyers to exclude specific content areas, and to ensure that unacceptable content is caught at site and page level.

It is not a blocking technology, but real time checking.  So it checks content and returns before a bid is made, rather than blocking once the bid has been accepted.  

Qualitative growth is therefore on the agenda.

Of particular interest are the stated programming types that attract the highest rates of live multi-screen engagement. Of course the nature of this content being live or near live, current event, and or arguably low engagement genres like reality and cooking shows make this a great opportunity for brands to drive action from the sofa.

I'm getting excited.

Click here to download:

Multiscreen.pdf (570 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

Multiscreen.pdf (570 KB)

This is very interesting.  http://percolate.com 

One the one hand you have a service that proposes to curate your RSS and Twitter feeds for a better more relevant stream of the "best and most interesting" content.  And on the other you have a business offering that proposes to allow business to understand and explore the associations consumers have beyond  the brand - offering insights into consumer mind-sets and preferences.

Read more from their CEO here http://www.trendcentral.com/tech/first-fridays-james-gross-co-founder-of-percolate/

The world's biggest, loneliest marathon. Initiated by Sony Ericsson.

http://bit.ly/tqZxRy 

Nice idea from an agency in the network called Vonotaire based in Sweden.

This idea allows runners to log their individual running of a half or full marathon via their choice of running  app, on  given day to participate in a global contest,

I like how its uses existing running apps as an entry point - thereby amplifying an existing behaviour, and of course their passion for running, but does not seek to ask you to use a new app altogether..