COLOGNE—Unification remains a key driving force at Verizon’s Oath, which recently unified its adtech stack under the name Oath Ad Platforms. “I’m really optimistic about the opportunity going forward,” says Simon Halstead, Head of Open Demand, EMEA.
He’s not alone, according to IAB Europe research about attitudes to programmatic advertising, Halstead explains in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent DMEXCO 2018 conference. The survey shows that 90% of advertisers, agencies and publishers across Europe are talking about investing more money in the coming months, says Halstead, who is Chair of the IAB Europe Programmatic Trading Committee.
“The optimism is there. There obviously have been some headwinds, particularly in the last eighteen months to two years around trust and transparency, and we are seeing some evolution in hybrid models,” says Halstead.
From the buy-side, he’s seeing “more engagement from advertisers and agencies in the decisions they make. Some more direct contracting. But this to me feels part of maturity of an industry reaching a grown up state.”
Part of that maturation is growing adoption of ads.text for brand safety, abiding by the new GDPR rules to protect consumers and “really try to shorten the supply chain or be clear about who has the right to sell this inventory and who has opportunity to position it.”
Under Oath Ad Platforms, the new stack includes a unified demand-side platform, a native and search marketplace and programmatic access to Oath inventory through its own supply-side platform and some 40 ad exchanges, as Martech Today reports.
In addition, the Oath Publishers Suite enables publishers to monetize their video “but also has additional tools like video syndication, so they can actually pass their content on to other partners and they can grow their pool of content and compete.”
Digital advertisers continue to move away from traditional last-click attribution models while seeking categories of buyers and their behaviors, according to Halstead.
“What a buyer is looking for is efficient pricing decisions, really well-driven machine learning and optimization and understanding, and the ability to build data segments to help address their audience. And I feel we’ve made really significant progress in that space.”
On the mobile side, Oath now has a combined supply-side platform for display and mobile inventory, mobile video and in-app, and a separate video platform “which can also take account of some of the needs of video syndication in the more complex video environments.”
This video is part of a series titled: “Finding Success in a Time of Transformation.” It is presented by PubMatic. For segments from the series, please visit this page.
