Imagine: Buyers and sellers collaborating

It’s probably unfair to say the relationship between media sellers and media buyers is adversarial – it’s far too complex to boil it down into one word. But it’s also not always collaborative, which has become increasingly obvious as two major issues in digital advertising grow: viewability and ad fraud. Sellers and buyers each have their own concerns about these problems, and that’s not good for the industry. It’s in both sides’ best interest to work together to combat these problems, and yet the current advertising ecosystem isn’t really set up to encourage that collaboration. Perhaps, argues Rob Byrnes, senior director of programmatic sales at Gamut, an online ad sales firm, it’s time for that to change. Byrnes says better deals could be negotiated with more openness between the two sides, and problems such as viewability and click fraud could be addressed more effectively. Byrnes talks to Media Life about the future of media selling and buying, how the move to programmatic impacts negotiations, and why transparency can help build trust between the sides.

What’s the difference between a partner and a vendor/seller?

When you look at it through the lens of direct sales, within the RFP planners identify what they’re trying to accomplish.

The programmatic channel evolves-right now the way we do it is we have a simultaneous conversation, we talk about what we can accomplish through direct sales and programmatic. That’s one element of achieving a partnership-understanding what the agency’s goals are, what’s most important to them-is it scale, visibility, viewability, ownership, etc.?

And I think programmatic becomes too much of a transaction and less of a negotiation. It’s about taking the same touch and feel that comes with direct sales and explaining what your offering is all about.

Programmatic would be better served if it had that same approach.

Right now the trading desk is so overwhelmed, and maybe that’s what has led to this transaction-based [situation]. So we’re taking the conversation to the planning team, talking to them and the trading desk simultaneously in an effort to build out that partnership.

Why do you say vendors don’t have a future in the digital landscape?

I don’t think the intention is that they don’t have a future in the industry, it’s more about how do buyers and sellers interact in the programmatic landscape.

It’s more transaction-based. Thinking of it as a transaction and coming to the relationship as a vendor does a disservice rather than coming to it as a partner. So it’s really about behaving more as a partner than vendor when using programmatic.

It’s interesting, buyers and sellers serve the same customer essentially. Sometimes we forget that.

If Campbell’s is customer, both the buyer and seller are helping in the goals of Campbell’s. And at the end of the day they need to sell cans of soups and tell the customers why they need their soup and not [another brand].

The folks buying and selling the media have a significant role in helping achieve that. Sometimes I think we lose sight that we have a common goal, so it’s not just about the transaction. The whole industry would be better served if people thought of programmatic as a premium channel for being able to achieve a goal.

So it’s not that vendors don’t have a future in the business, they absolutely do.

How can a partner work with an advertiser on viewability, fraud and transparency?

I think the way a partner can best work with that is essentially giving the customer what they want.

Viewability and fraud are results of a race to scale.

Publishers have discovered through programmatic channels and exchanges it’s become a little easier to make money. Some pubs are out there earning more than they expected just by connecting to an open exchange. For some sites that are creating the viewability and fraud issues, it’s about how many impressions can I fit on a page?

The other side is discovering we need some controls on this, it’s not just about finding impressions where there’s a cookie on a page that matches. Digital compared to the traditional media outlets-everything they sell is viewable, in the sense it’s not guaranteed that everyone will see it, but nothing will impede the view of the ad on a magazine page, TV screen, on radio, etc. Every ad is viewable or audible, whereas with digital an ad can be registered that no one has seen, because it’s sitting at the bottom of a page. It comes back to how many impressions can I squeeze on a page as opposed to making sure I’m doing what I need to help the client.

You could still earn as much revenue from a better partnership as opposed to just loading impressions onto pages.

Do you get to learn and know the offending publishers/sites and help advertisers avoid them?

We’re currently partnering with Forensiq, and they identify impressions we come across that could be fraudulent, and we eliminate those from the pool. We’re taking a hit against inventory, but there’s so much inventory out there that if you cut off 40 percent and say it’s not valuable, you’ve automatically added more value to what’s left.

So what you were earning, say the 35-cent CPM you were getting for fraudulent traffic, you’ve added that 35 cents back into what you’ve established as valuable.

Once you’ve established there’s something of value, buyers are willing to pay what it’s worth. Some things cost more than others, and there’s a reason for that.

Are these advertisers’ problems or sellers’ problems?

I think they’re sellers’ problems.

It’s a challenge for advertisers and maybe it’s back to buyer beware. So maybe it’s a little bit of both.

It’s an unfortunate buyer beware because it’s easy to lose track of what’s going on. With traditional media, there’s not as many outlets, there are only a certain number of TV networks or radio stations, and it’s easy to get access.

Part of the programmatic challenge is the buyer doesn’t necessarily know where they’re going, they’re just following the scent of an audience profile, and that’s different than traditional media. It’s a shame on us as publishers for enabling that, but it is buyer beware. I salute the buying community for putting pressure on publishers to say, “You need to make sure what I’m getting is a real impression.”

Why do you think vendors/sellers fail to offer solutions? Is it because it’s all about business and the bottom line?

Part of it is that, and they also haven’t had a reason to not do it.

But it’s beginning to come about.

It was easy to do and nobody called anybody on it. Now the buying community is getting smarter and applying pressure here. They said “This isn’t going to work for us.”

Traditionally the selling community reacts to what the buying community asks for. Buyers control what sellers create.

How will programmatic impact this buyer-vendor-partner dynamic?

It’s already impacted it, it has enabled the unknown. So up until this point, media transactions have been transparent.

When MediaVest buys from ESPN, they know exactly what they’re getting and when they’re getting it.

When they go through programmatic, there’s some that’s transparent and there’s some that isn’t. They’re following beacons of an audience profile, and it’s easy and fast, and they see results. There may be some fraudulent traffic, but it has the ability to solve the problem.

Programmatic replaces what used to be run of network, efficiency and scale versus your total media plan.

It’s your scale play to help build efficiency to get a better bottom-line CPM. That’s a way programmatic can help solve this problem and be transparent-if you know which publishers you’re buying and eliminating the fear of fraud and viewability.

Tags: ad fraud, digital advertising, media buyers, media planners, media sellers, online fraud