Impressions pass 250 million in a single day
Just two months after formally launching in Australia, Australian trading-technology company Brandscreen has announced that the number of Australian ad impressions in the new 'real time exchange' ecosystem has just passed 250 million per day. Brandscreen also announced that the number of websites now marketing their inventory through ad exchanges has passed 500,000 and is growing by approximately 10,000 sites per day on a global basis.
According to Julian Tol, co-founder and CEO of Brandscreen, the ad exchange ecosystem in Australia reached critical mass far earlier than expected and the total market for real-time enabled ad sales which is currently $50 billion, will be approximately $250 million in 2011.
“When ad exchange trading was launched in Australia in October this year, a number of online publishers stated that the arrival of ad exchanges was great news for buyers, but predicted that supply constraints would limit growth of the ad exchange sector in the Australian market.
“While ad impressions from publishers such as NineMSN, Fairfax Digital, Yahoo7, News Digital Media and Sensis MediaSmart are still limited, the 250,000,000 milestone means that the market has passed a crucial tipping point.
"Ad exchange trading is undeniably shaking up the global digital media buying market," said Mr Tol.
Until recently, online media sales happened directly between agencies and publishers, or were handled through 'Ad Networks'. These networks aggregated supply on one side, and demand on the other, and brokered deals between buyers and sellers. A typical ad network will capture about 40 cents in the dollar for performing this role.
In March this year, Google switched on 'AdX2', the first 'real time ad exchange'. Brandscreen partnered with Google and a number of global agency groups to launch ad exchange trading in Australia in October this year. These exchanges allow platforms such as Brandscreen to buy users in 'real time'.
Since launch the 'real time' ad exchange ecosystem has managed to capture 10 percent of the entire US online display market (about 30 billion ad impressions every day). Many analysts believe this is how the majority of digital media will be bought and sold in future. Ref: http://www.businessinsider.com/mary-meekers-web-2010-11#-15
In order to buy media through ad exchanges, agencies must use a 'Demand Side Platform', or DSP. Just like a stockbroker, a DSP has a 'seat' on each exchange and co-locates high speed bidders in exchange data centers. The job of a DSP is to aggregate supply, optimize buys, execute trades and clear funds.
From an agency point of view, DSPs offer a way to capture a larger share of revenue by cutting out the ad networks. The agency can deliver significantly better ROI to their advertisers because the underlying technology connects supply and demand far more efficiently and the agency can control all the valuable campaign and user data which ad nets used to monopolize. http://www.digidaydaily.com/stories/survey-marks-seismic-shift-to-digital-in-2011/
VivaKi (Publicis), PHD (Omnicom Media Group) and Ikon are the first three agency groups in Australia to create their own 'Trading Desks' and start using Brandscreen DSP’s trading tools for local and global campaigns. Brandscreen’s DSP will allow them to bid and optimize across several exchanges in real time as well as managing the buy and creative placement, executing the trades and clearing the funds.
Brandscreen has seats on all of the world’s major real time ad exchanges including Google, Rubicon, Pubmatic and AdMeld. Each of the seats on these exchanges includes co-located high-speed bidding agents operating inside each ad exchange, which enables access for Brandscreen’s agency customers.
Brandscreen is a privately-owned Australian technology success story, and is one of the world's leading advertising technology companies.