Catalyst S+F: An Entrepreneur Walks into an Agency - Ryan Huber - MediaBizBloggers

I can still remember the first time the advertising technology landscape was explained to me. It was three years ago, it was new, it was exciting, it was confusing as hell! Behavioral targeting, demand side platforms, this crazy thing called the exchange - everyone was speaking Greek; anyone who's seen the Kawaja Chart knows exactly what I'm talking about. My background at that time had been in owned and earned media, and I hadn't put much thought into the complexities of the display advertising landscape. So I took it upon myself to learn as much as I could, so I could apply what I learned to the startup I was working on.

The more I learned, the more I felt a good portion of the companies in the display advertising market ended up complicating and confusing the overall landscape, shrouding portions of the industry in "black boxes". As an entrepreneur trying to simplify life for consumers, this baffled me. The opportunities that I saw, and continue to believe in, focus on consolidating and simplifying the Kawaja Chart, while providing transparency to advertisers. While I won't go into specifics for every opportunity I see in the market, I do want to share a couple I personally would like to see addressed in the near future.

Target Audience Transparency

This is an area ripe with opportunity. Everyone today is selling some sort of targeted advertising data - from behavioral, semantic, demographic, psychographic, in-market, and intent-based, just to name a few, an advertiser has a wealth of data they can leverage. The biggest objective I have to data providers is their lack of transparency regarding the methodologies used to gather this information. While I realize a company has to protect its IP, but as an advertiser I want to make sure the data I'm leveraging was gathered legally and actually delivers what is being promised.

Companies like Double Verify provide a level of transparency providing advertisers a complete breakdown of where their advertisements ran, thus ensuring only brand safe publishers were served. This is the type of transparency I want to see in regards to targeted audience data. Now I'm not saying some companies aren't already pushing for transparency; Quantcast, for example, seems to be a good example of providing a higher degree of data transparency. Unfortunately, it's only Quantcast data that's transparent. Data aggregators still have a high degree of "black box" magic. The opportunity I see, is a data aggregator that validates the gathering methodologies for the data companies they aggregate, verifies the targeted audience against some sort of control, leverages historic categorical data to ensure the right data is utilized for the right campaign, and provides complete target audience transparency to the advertiser.

Engagement Metrics Transparency

Once you've decided on your target audience, it's important to measure and understand your audiences' engagement. This can be measured a number of ways - clicks, views, interactions, time on page, etc. Seems simple enough, right? Wrong! Say I use DoubleClick, Google Analytics, and Omniture to track my engagement metrics. Most likely, I'm going to get different numbers and see inconsistencies from each one of these services. Even when looking at something simple, like the number of ads viewed, there are numerous inconsistencies. How is this possible? Well, the devil is in the details.

When would you consider an ad viewed? Some measure an ad call as a view. The request was sent and the ad was called, but that doesn't necessarily mean the ad actually displayed on the page. Now imagine the ad actually displayed on the page. Would that be considered a view? Well, not necessarily. If the ad unit is below the fold, it's technically not visible. As you can see, there are discrepancies even with the simplest aspects of display advertising. This is driven by a lack of industry standardization, which yields lower transparency for an advertiser. While we can't force industry standardization over night, providing an advertiser controls and the ability to customize how engagement metrics are measured, seems like a logical and potentially profitable step in providing full transparency for engagement metrics.

If you haven't already, take a look at the Kawaja Chart. Now imagine this chart doubling in size over the next 2-4 years - this just isn't sustainable. While it's a given new companies will continue to enter this space and this chart will continue to expand. The real opportunities I see, lie in simplifying this chart and providing advertisers the transparency and tools necessary to make educated display media buys, leveraging the correct audience data and engagement metrics.