COLOGNE – With some 200 years of publishing heritage, Sweden’s largest local newspaper group solved digital advertising viewability two years ago and has since served only viewable ads. The reason was pretty simple, according to Fredrik Strauss, Head of Programmatic for MittMedia.
“One of the developers said ‘Why do we even serve the ads no one sees? It’s just taking bandwidth and also it creates a lower click rate,’” Strauss says.
So it’s with a bit of bemusement that Strauss ponders all the discussion about ad viewability while attending the DMEXCO advertising and media trade show. In this interview with Beet.TV, he explains why having a variety of digital partners is so important and the value of first-price auctions.
MittMedia’s operations include 20 websites, 28 daily newspapers, digital media, commercial radio, web TV, direct mail and apps. When it first got into programmatic selling, it tried to sell all of its inventory and used just one partner for remnant space.
“Nowadays we use several partners in order to monetize better each unsold impression,” Strauss says. “With PubMatic we are putting them in our header bidder wrapper and they are one of those important partners that we have.”
Partner integration turned out to be a big step forward for MittMedia. “You’ll probably find out that one partner is better than another one. But it gives stability and that is one thing I would say.”
Having seen first- and second-price auctions for its inventory, Strauss prefers the former “because we quite often see that the price between first and second is so huge.”
MittMedia invested in its own data management platform to stem data leakage and ensure greater accuracy and more efficient campaign results. Strauss says no one knows exactly what to expect from next year’s implementation of the European Union’s GDPR regulations governing the use of consumer data, but he’s expecting positive changes.
“As a media group, we have an opportunity to get the consent from one user for our whole universe. If we have first-party data and consent, then we can get better business,” he says.
This video is part a series that examines programmatic from both the seller and the buyer perspective. It is presented by PubMatic. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
