The AdMonsters Ops conference was a mixture of provocative conversation, time spent with good friends & education for all. We’ve put together five key themes from the event that we hope motivate you and your team members.
- GDPR is here and it’s important.
On day one of AdMonsters Ops, Rob Beeler, Chairman of Admonsters, jumped on stage and set the tone: we are all in unchartered territory. Throughout the event, we received a mixed bag of feedback from publishers on GDPR – some have done nothing and some are fully prepared in tandem with their own in-house legal counsel. One thing is certain, we are all playing the waiting game to see what happens next. Emry Downinghall, Vice President of Advertising at Chegg, urged attendees to better educate users on what publishers and SSPs do with data. This will help all publishers come out on the winning side of GDPR.
- We all crave simplicity.
In today’s data-driven world, publishers are overwhelmed by new ways of monetizing and measuring. Some of this is good and some of this produces frustration and confusion. There was a sense of urgency for SSPs to band together and DSPs to identify and stick to the same important metrics, eliminating the clutter of CPC, CPA, CPH, & CPM. Whatever the future holds, we hope to see more focus on time on site & user engagement.
- Ad quality and the lack of it bothers everyone.
Ad quality remains a top point of frustration for publishers, users, and frankly, SSPs. None of us wants to deal with a poor, disruptive ad experience. Publishers explained that ad quality is often why senior leaders do not want to invest in programmatic. Sovrn has led the fight against fraud in ad tech for years and we will continue to partner with our buyers to mitigate what results in heartburn for all.
- Viewability is here to stay.
Viewability is in the limelight now more than ever. Publishers are consistently looking for the best ways to actually improve viewability and many are still hesitant to make changes. In order to improve upon viewability, publishers may have to deal with short-term loss in order to achieve long-term gain. Andy Evans, CMO at Sovrn, spoke about Viewable Engagement Time and the importance of not only taking into account viewability but also the amount of time the user is active on the page. Products like these help create incremental, quality inventory for all publishers.
- Rethink Everything.
Tom Goodwin, EVP of Innovation at Zenith, challenged the attendees to think about what it would look like if we’d never known about marketing or advertising. In order for us to break away from what we have done for years, we need to understand people by becoming more personal and move to new structures by breaking down silos. Sovrn aims to think differently in all that we do, resulting in a one-stop shop for publishers of all sizes.
