An article from MediaWeek (courtesy of AdExchanger):
Web Publishers Fear Agencies Demand-Side Platforms.
In short, most of the agency holding companies are either building or (for the most part) white-labeling platforms that allow them to incorporate data from a number of sources to make informed bids on ad impressions in real-time (as opposed to pre-negotiated deals done via a direct sales force). From this article, it seems that publishers are scared that these platforms will not only depress the value of their ad inventory (a lot of which is still sold via direct sales), but also enable agencies to make money by buying inventory and then re-selling it at a marked-up price.
Unless agencies undertake a radical re-shift of where they invest human capital (more engineers and quants, less client services folks), I doubt they’ll have the requisite skills to continue to innovate their product. At the same time though, I wonder whether online publishers are doing what they can to capture and leverage their own data about who comes to their site. It’s probably not a silver bullet, but making use of their own data would be a start to making sure the benefits of innovation are shared between advertiser and publisher.
Thanks for reading. Please tell me why I’m full of it, or have completely misread the situation in the comments.
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