Updated Below. One of my first questions to AdMonsters Publisher Forum Keynote Mike Smith, General Manager of Core Audience and VP of Revenue Platforms and Digital , was, “What the hell is a supply-side trading desk?”He smiled wryly, probably because what sounds like the latest industry buzzword is a pretty apt…
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Consolidation in the digital ad technology industry has started a new trend: going full stack. For some time, publishers have had to choose between one unified tech stack (ahem, DoubleClick) or piecemeal point and multi-point solutions connected by duct tape (aka, integrations). But full stacks appear to be on the rise,…
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Workflow can be the bane of ops' existence. The order’s journey from sales to ops to inventory and other stops can be a perilous one full of treacherous platform crossings and other hazards – it can make Frodo Baggins’ excursion to Mount Doom look like a walk in the park.…
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Ask someone to explain what “programmatic” is and they will invariably use the word “automation.” Makes sense, but automation for whom? For buyers, programmatic platforms certainly automate the purchasing of media across sites. For sellers, programmatic brings hundreds if not thousands of buyers their way without sales having to pick…
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Gawker co-founder and CEO Nick Denton sent the digital media world into a tizzy Wednesday by announcing he was stepping down as president and replacing himself with a group of senior managing partners to oversee the media empire. As I scrolled through the list of the anointed, I saw one…
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Long weekends updating inventory for a massive bookstore during my college years helpd me realize that scanning Universal Product Codes made a painful process much more tolerable. In fact, I refused to let my mind wander and consider what a tedious practice inventory management was like before UPCs and handheld…
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“This industry is literally 20 years old,” comments Michael Alania, EVP at Outsourced Ad Ops and witness to the at-times insanely rapid evolution of digital advertising and the operations role at its core. “You look at where we are now versus where we’ve come from, it’s pretty staggering. And with…
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Last week at the BrightRoll Video Summit during Advertising Week, I heard Ben Jankowski (Group Head of Global Media at MasterCard) say, "If you've figured out programmatic, you're either a genius or an idiot." I feel confident saying I haven't figured out programmatic, and I hope this improves my odds on…
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In the past, the acronym CPA had a simple connotation for publishers: low payout. Particularly in the post-bubble digital advertising world, CPA campaigns seemed a desperate alternative when CPMs had hit rock bottom. But more than a decade later, Epom Head of Sales Andrew Lebowski argues that in the age…
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For publishers, mobile is an itch spreading over greater sections of skin, tingling more ferociously every second. Scratching doesn’t make it worse, but certainly fails to relieve the symptoms. Publishers continue to struggle in their mobile monetization efforts: because there’s little incentive for direct sales to evangelize the channel (particularly when…
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