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Predicts on AdExchanger.com!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Marketer .................................................................................................................. 3
Publishers............................................................................................................... 5
Investment .............................................................................................................. 8
Data ....................................................................................................................... 11
Global.................................................................................................................... 33
Creative, Display.................................................................................................. 37
Video ..................................................................................................................... 39
Analysts ................................................................................................................ 41
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Marketer
• We believe the rise of locally targeted display advertising will provide a significant revenue opportunity for
publishers with geo-location information.
• Several studies including the Harvard Business Review April 2008 article have demonstrated performance
lift from combining display and search campaigns. Our view is that platforms that make it easier to flight
and track these combined campaigns will emerge.
• In our experience, the ability to execute integrated buys across interactive media such as online display,
mobile, and video will provide the necessary scale to hasten the movement of awareness dollars from
offline to interactive media. Emerging platforms will support integrated campaign management with
combined reach and frequency reporting.
• Rumors that ad networks will disappear over time are highly exaggerated. Anticipate the emergence of
new models that provide a service layer to mask the complexity of ad exchange and data buying.
Mark Redetzke, VP, Ecommerce & Digital Marketing, Bluestem Brands, Inc.
• 2011 will be a watershed year for digital addressability. We'll see the fusion of offline and online data at
scale by year’s end
• Privacy concerns will persist, but legislation will not be passed mandating ‘Do Not Market’ for behavioral
advertising
• The DSP category will try to evolve to become a marketer's overall dashboard for all marketing as
attribution gets folded into DSP functionality.
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Anonymous Big Brand Marketer
• Data-driven display brand advertising begins chewing into TV dollars in a meaningful way. Most marketers
switch on no-brainer ads on mobile platforms (such as search). QR codes become ubiquitous. Data and
privacy legislation doesn't change the landscape drastically, but at least some players get serious heat.
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Publishers
AdExchanger.com reached out to the web publishers for their
predictions about the digital advertising ecosystem in 2011.
• Advertisers will remember that the what and where are important, not just the who, and the "surplus" of
inventory will quickly shrink.
• The famous Luma slide will change again as most of the players on the chart will have to "pivot" to survive
and that will require a big funding round, which few will have the ability to raise.
• Mobile Advertising will celebrate its 10th year of it being its year.
• If Facebook comes out with a new contextual ad product offsite, publishers will re-architect their pages,
deleting banner inventory that was once given to the networks.
Josh Jacobs, SVP Brand Advertising Products and Global Marketing, Glam Media
2011 is the year that we will see premium publishers start to claim their place in the exchange/RTB ecosystem. In
2011 we will see:
• Standards which allow publishers to merchandise their own data and premium classes of inventory,
• Premium & exclusive inventory access coupled with preferred media agreements, and
• Publisher protection and analytics tools.
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This will serve advertisers by allowing for more impactful and creative executions at scale (and make RTB much
more interesting for brand advertisers), and Publishers by making them more equal participants in the marketplace
and allowing them to open new pools of premium inventory in ways that enhance their sales efforts.
• The ad ecosystem depicted by the famous banker slides will continue to be wild and wooly. Innovation will
displace and/or move the frontlines back and forth with these things certain: a) consolidation amongst
players in the ecosystem has to and will happen; b) ad technology will become more commodified (or at
least the leads will be shorter); and c) scale matters.
• I predict the industry will continue to work hard to find ways to make it easier to buy and sell digital media.
Some innovations are adding more complexity to the ecosystem. The ecosystem is already too complex.
We really need innovations that make everything easier.
• Online advertising is due for a correction, but not in the form of plunging budgets, rates or yields.
• Instead, the still immature ecosystem itself will get pounded by principal sellers and buyers intent on
slashing the VST - the "Value Subtracted Tax" charged by hundreds of intermediaries who've enjoyed a
remarkable run despite enduring global recession.
• Networks, exchanges, data vendors, DSPs, SSPs, ad verifiers, measurers and the rest of the VC-fueled,
tech-driven online ad underworld will be held to account for performance over promise and challenged to
live or die by the very numbers they push on publishers and advertisers.
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Publishers – Kirk McDonald, Time Inc.
AdExchanger.com reached out to the digital advertising community
for their predictions about the digital advertising ecosystem in
2011.
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Investment
• First, we will see the rise of Data 2.0. Data 1.0 is the raw or
lightly processed data points we see today. This data is
very inconsistent and thus very difficult for algorithms to
extract signal for targeting purposes. Data platforms will
begin refining and scoring this data to produce highly enriched data that is consistent, predictable, scalable
and of very high quality. Data 2.0 will be the foundation of next generation "smart" segments that will
provide significant signal and thus lift to targeting engines.
• We will begin to see consumer privacy policies implemented in technology platforms. Now that self-
regulation is firmly in place and direction has been provided to industry, technology platform providers will
begin implementing reporting and enforcement tools into their solutions.
• Finally, we will begin to see consolidation in the online advertising ecosystem. Too many players have
point products or features while the buyers and sellers need full solutions. Look for roll-ups or mergers to
simplify the landscape as larger players fill out their product lines.
• Demand side platforms and supply side platforms exploded onto the scene in digital advertising in 2009-
10. DSPs and SSPs were all about efficiency, optimization and scale. Now it is the turn of data
management platforms. Platforms which enable superior audience management and targeting through the
sophisticated use of data will give strategic advantage to both advertisers and publishers alike. DMPs will
be the next high stakes battleground in 2011.
• Consolidation will continue as ad networks continue to look to incorporate data, targeting and non-display
formats into their offerings. Related to that, the innovation and trends we've seen around targeting, data,
and platforms will move into search, mobile, video and email. Also related - CPM's will continue to rise in
2011.
• 2011 will likely be the year we see legislation take shape in the area of privacy, largely driven by the
WSJ.com/WhatTheyKnow and similar series of articles.
• We'll also likely see Facebook continue to be a critical and growing component of the display landscape,
and the share of dollars spent there (currently around 9%) will grow towards their share of impressions
(currently around 22-23%).
• Creative, creative, creative - while 2010 was the year of the science of advertising (data, retargeting, RTB,
etc), in 2011, we'll start to see a renewed focus on the art of advertising. Why? Because advertisers are
starting to realize that creative has a multiplying effect on the success of their campaigns - combining the
art and science in a thoughtful way can lead to 4x-10x lifts in performance.
• Where to even start... I think we'll see acceleration of the consolidation that we've been talking about for
years on the ad network side, but the overall number of companies in the online advertising ecosystem will
continue to rise.
• 2011 will see a billion dollar M&A event in ad tech, at least 2 ad tech companies going public and one (or
two) deals that we all scratch our heads about and wonder how the acquirer could have possibly justified
paying up that amount (possibly the billion dollar outcome? not sure).
• I also suspect we'll see some kind of public hearing on data and privacy in Washington, followed by very
little in the way of incremental regulation (plenty of grandstanding, however).
• The trend towards building companies that solve problems closer to the marketer and publisher will
continue; innovation will keep moving away from the core towards the edges.
• Marketers and publishers will finally start to digest the massive wave of innovation that washed over them
in the past few years. The emergence of ad tech solutions that actually provide real and large
improvement to marketing ROI will speed this along. Services and solutions that help marketers and
publishers figure out how to navigate the landscape and implement best practices will flourish.
• Towards the end of the year, the smartest entrepreneurs will start thinking about how to reinvent the core
platforms to better support the needs of the best emerging applications. A dynamic similar to the
software/hardware co-evolution of the '70s and '80s will begin, creating similar strategic opportunities.
• 2011 will be the year of social for ad tech with implications rippling across the industry.
• Massive shift in display inventory (Facebook nears 50% of total display ad inventory).
• Breakout success for targeting using social data (33Across, Media6, xGraph, etc.).
• Notable privacy breaches as companies try to utilize social data effectively before the rules for its use are
clearly defined.
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• There will be less consolidation in the ad tech market than people anticipate, largely because there is still
too much venture money flowing into startups and established companies. Most consolidation that does
happen will be modest private-to-private transactions and small tuck-in acquisitions rather than big dollar
M&A by the large online players.
• Data will continue to increase in importance, with both the buy-side and sell-side looking for solutions to
help access, manage and measure both first party and third party data so that they can stop pushing
dollars, audience and inventory through middlemen.
• Networks and exchanges will look to expand from just display into multiple online ad types/channels,
particularly video and mobile.
• An entire ecosystem of companies will develop around Facebook ads, similar to what happened with
Google AdWords.
• iPad and its clones will open up large inventory for brand advertising - lean back media consumption
pattern will attract brand advertisers.
• Audience buying will be the main driver for brand ad spend on online media.
• Advertisers will demand cross channel attribution intelligence on media spend.
• 2011 will be the inflection point for social media advertisement - social media advertisement will move from
experimental budget to real spend.
• Continued consolidation of Ad Networks and commoditization of DSPs.
• Android will increase mobile ad inventory by an order of magnitude - agencies/advertisers would be able to
buy scaled audience on mobile.
• Publishers will realize that concurrent users is a better measure of a site's value than monthly unique
visitor.
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Data
AdExchanger.com reached out to executives in the data tech
space for their predictions about the digital advertising ecosystem
in 2011.
• 2011: Display growth rate to double and at least a third of all display advertising will be personalised.
• Measurable performance where display can act as a cost of sale and new technologies that enable display
to be a real-time communications channel - which is more effective than Search and as immediate as
social media - will lead to new marketing dollars flowing into this channel at an unprecedented rate.
• Online video will begin to achieve strategic parity with TV advertising in terms of media planning in 2011.
Online video will also become a serious testing ground for TV creative and will eventually drive creative
development for broadcast TV to the point where TV commercials routinely become re-purposed online
video assets rather than the other way around.
• Companies will be forced to allow consumers to opt-out out at a ‘tag level’ in response to to new EU
privacy legislation and others.
• Wider uptake of attribution reporting/understanding sees dollars move away from brand paid search terms
towards organic search display retargeting/extension.
• Someone needs to 'manage' all these predictions on Adexchanger as the industry evolves: Agnostic,
boutique agencies will win back direct-to-vendor dollars and handle more supplier review
processes/paperwork/analysis etc.
• Terry Kawaja will release a Monopoly Board which pivots into a DSP
• Data and targeting combinations will be key for 2011, as campaigns will layer more data for
implementation and analysis pushing the capabilities of both the supply and demand side. This will lead to
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three things 1) new premium advertising opportunities that will be bought in a non-guaranteed
marketplace; 2) bring on ops and analysis infrastructure as companies try and tie more data together from
point multiple point solutions on an adhoc basis. 3) Corporate consolidation as bigger companies need to
incorporate technology solutions across their media.
• Procurement at the brands begin paying attention to how agencies are making money on the trading desks
and the squeeze begins.
• The mass consolidation of ad networks begins in order to shore up and protect the assets that they have
built and invested in.
• A major agency loses an entire piece of digital buying business to the non-agency trading desk solutions
(DSPs).
• In 2010 exchange markets were dominated by direct response and performance-based campaigns.
There’s one more big hurdle to get the large brand spenders into the exchanges. 2011 will be the year we
get better at identifying high quality inventory and start to see bigger brand budgets and an influx of new
advertisers. There’s just too much efficiency for them to ignore.
• Truly scalable, audience-based, media strategies require algorithmic sophistication far in excess of today's
status quo and 2011 will test the computational mettle of those seeking to combine media, data and
advanced bidding strategies to deliver performance at scale. As RTB utilization gathers steam, many
market participants will discover that their dominant strategy - retargeting - only scales so far, and beyond
that limit performance drops off quickly.
• RTB won't get all the audience attention. Leading publishers and media sellers will find increasing
advantage in the application of audience data to create compelling impression level media packages,
accessing new revenue streams, offering superior performance for their advertisers and creating greater
relevance for their consumers.
• My prediction is that the need to move more Brand dollars online will drive the next changes across the
industry.
• Ad Networks will be forced to further redefine/refine their value propositions if they want to stay relevant in
a world that is less driven by clicks/conversions
• Mobile is still a training ground and will get another revenue boost as the brands try out different
approaches (but it will take at least until 2012 before solid models emerge)
• Technology will emerge/adapt to cater to the brand's needs and deliver successful campaigns that have
metrics other than clicks and conversions.
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Scott Meyer, CEO, Better Advertising
• Meaningful Transparency Technology Displaces Conversations about Privacy - By the end of 2011, every
creative unit in every behavioral campaign served online will bear the Advertising Option Icon. Consumers
and advocates no longer will be able to claim that our industry is hiding anything about data collection, and
anyone who thinks self-regulation can’t possible work for our industry will find their views relegated to the
same trash bin of history as the views of haters back in the early 1970s, when the Better Business Bureau
introduced self-regulation for the advertising industry as a whole after numerous complaints Agency buying
platforms and large ad budgets in mobile will both become far more prevalent than in 2010. But, 2011 will
go down as the year that our industry learned to self-regulate effectively.
• There will be widespread adoption of the DAA's Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral
Advertising, which provides consumers with a notification icon for behaviorally targeted ads and a clear
choice to opt-out. This proactive initiative to protect consumer privacy will satisfy the FTC's suggestions for
doing so and will prevent a 'do not track' list from being implemented.
• The majority of online inventory (display, rich media and video included) will go through some sort of
verification and all players will be held accountable in some way. Increased accountability will lead to
increased trust, which will lead to more brand dollars online for everyone.
• 2011 will be the year that brand advertisers go "all-in" to web and mobile display advertising, driven by
engaging new formats and audience-based reporting.
• Online display advertising will continue to look a lot more like search advertising through the aggressive
use of data and the rapid adoption of RTB. In other news, the sun will rise in the east almost every day.
• Brand safety will fade as a concern for advertisers when the supply-side publishers and ad nets embrace
the need for greater transparency and accountability. Brand safety vendors will find new business models
to pursue.
• The adoption of RTB and the use of ad exchanges will finally bring about the consolidation in the ad
network world that has been predicted every year for the past 5 years. (Please save this prediction to re-
use next year. And the year after.)
• The industry will finally put to bed the use of CTRs and last-view/last-click conversion as measures of
online display advertising effectiveness.
• Two primary drivers of an accelerated Brand $ shift to Digital: 1) Quality online video inventory has
reached sufficient scale and 2) new analytical offerings in the market allow for brands to measure the
offline impact of digital advertising (~85% of consumer spending still occurs offline) across multiple
verticals.
• Advertisers and Agencies begin to "de-silo" their marketing efforts: It's becoming less and less relevant to
label a marketer as "digital" vs. "traditional". These worlds are colliding at blinding speed and for "always-
connected" consumers the distinction is meaningless. The marketers that focus on the interplay of these
environments will be the ones that win.
• Rise of the Data Management Platform: Advertisers, Agencies and Publishers are struggling with how to
synthesize and rationalize all of their data sources and data sets. DMPs will play a valuable role this
process, thus driving further data adoption by the ecosystem.
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Josh Shatkin-Margolis, CEO, Magnetic
2011 will be the perfect storm against search engine marketing and in favor of display advertising:
• There will be an almost doubling of targeted display buys enabled by data exchanges, ad exchanges and
demand-side platforms.
• Search engine marketing spend will be flat and display spend will grow as offline dollars that move online
predominately move to display.
• Attribution model becomes major focus as people realize search has been given too much credit and
display has been given too little.
• Data is king and in 2010, we saw an increased adoption and acquisition of valuable third party data for true
audience targeting anywhere on the Internet. In 2011, continued success from data-centric targeting will
urge marketers to become more sophisticated about how they target AND just as importantly, how they
can bring their own first party data to the table. This is the year that marketers take control of their own
data by seeking tools and technologies to better understand their ideal prospect and to achieve more
efficient audience targeting. In figuring out their data strategy, marketers will also become more cognizant
of consumer data sensitivities. Early adopters will start to experiment with innovative ways to deliver on
the promise of consumer transparency including 1) in-ad disclosures, 2) non-legalese verbiage on
websites that clearly explains data collection and usage in plain English and 3) more advanced consumer
tools and registries that shows exactly what data is being collected.
• 2011 is the year buyers will stop paying for unseen ads. Blind ad networks will become transparent. Ad
servers will buy or partner with analytics companies to augment their offerings. And display impressions
will get the SEM treatment of algorithmic bidding based user engagement as a proxy action for
downstream conversion at a defined rate, driving efficient media valuation and increased spend.
• Publishers and 3rd party data sellers will become more sophisticated in their data handling capabilities and
will look to do more direct, transparent selling of their data as opposed to letting data exchanges do all the
selling for them.
• Data “theft” will decline as tools (like the one we're releasing very
soon) begin to shed light on "non kosher" practices, which will single out a few "bad players" among the ad
networks and forcing a more direct approach to acquiring data (i.e. paying for it!).
• Enriched data will become the “must have” advertising accessory, as online data leaders build real
analytics abilities resulting in proprietary, branded data sets mimicking the process of the offline data
world.
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Data – Siddarth Chaudhary, Adobe/Omniture
AdExchanger.com reached out to the digital advertising community
for their predictions about the digital advertising ecosystem in 2011.
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Platforms, Networks and Exchanges – Part I
AdExchanger.com reached out to platforms, networks and
exchanges for their predictions about the digital advertising
ecosystem in 2011. This is part one of their predictions.
• EB: Yahoo! bets big on display advertising, either: (1) launching a huge platform investment (including
multiple acquisitions across brand, DR and core infrastructure), or (2) going 180 degrees opposite,
concentrating its human and financial capital in publishing, and outsourcing its display ad platform to
Microsoft, as it has done very successfully with search.
• AA: At least one highly-publicized incident of an ad-related privacy breach resulting in felony criminal
activity and/or death.
• The standardization of formats and technology will accelerate the growth of online video as well as provide
the scope for audience buying (BT) within video. The importance of standardization in the video space
cannot be overstated. Standardization through VAST and VPAID are key in breaking down format
barriers, and the operational efficiency that standards such as VAST bring rapidly increases the amount of
available inventory.
• The use of data will demand a more discriminating view as its true value continues to be examined. The
notion that data is "simple" to use will be challenged. Advertisers will take more control of their own data
assets and audience definitions. Data ownership and usage rights issues will reemerge. RTB will
progress, however with the realization that this is a nascent technology with corresponding unmet technical
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and operational capabilities. Premium publishers will push back on being valued solely on price. The long
needed media transaction platform for the premium buy/sell relationship will emerge to satisfy brand
marketing requirements.
• The current furor over privacy will die down as true bad actors are removed (e.g., history sniffers), and
consumers realize the good guys never tracked them personally to begin with.
• Advertisers and their agencies will begin to think and plan more holistically, measuring how marketing
activity in one channel or strategy might amplify or interfere with another -- and they'll begin to optimize
spend with these interactions in mind.
• Marketing will continue to evolve towards a more scientific discipline, with less spend going toward vanity
buys like homepage takeovers, and more spend going towards measure-and-optimize strategies.
• Ad Networks will call themselves DSPs, because DSPs are really just Ad Networks.
• In banner-video spend will be as big as pre-roll spend because of its scale and targetability.
• The use of Email lead generation will become the alternative to overpriced Google search.
• First, I'm sticking with CONTEXTWEB's 2009 prediction on AdExchanger that 2010 and 2011 are the
breakout years for RTB. The RTB pony is riding hard-don't bet against it.
• Second, content rises again. As brand dollars, brand safety concerns and bidder appetite for more
attributes rise, audience PLUS content wins.
• Third, there used to be 400 ad networks and now there are 400 DSPs-in part because Appnexus has
become the Adify of DSPs. Watch for specialization across DSPs and a separation of those that have
planned for high scale computing and those that will struggle with their infrastructure.
• In 2011 we will continue to see a focus on results on the part of advertisers, and this will extend to brand
awareness campaigns and top of funnel metrics, not just traditional response campaigns. I expect that the
industry will see a continuation of the shift towards advertisers wishing to be more relevant and targeted to
users' interests and intent. This trend manifests in two ways: 1. An increase of advertisers seeking to
provide related information and relevant offers to the right people. 2. Being a part of the ongoing "dialogue"
that consumers are having across both the web and social platforms. Lastly, I'm seeing tremendous
interest in providing relevant and helpful ads, in just the right context, across mobile devices. Mobile
contextualization and value will be a very interesting and active space in 2011.
• I would say that you can always count on change. For instance, looking back at some of the predictions
made about 2010, some came true but others did not. I do think that for 2011 advertising spending will
continue to funnel towards digital, that privacy and fraud concerns will still be front and center on
everyone’s minds, and that the industry will continue to change or perhaps consolidate. I also believe that
more and more traditional branded advertisers will work with service providers like us to maximize their
online campaigns. It is tough for advertisers and agencies to catch up with technology and optimization at
this stage and so they will need to rely on strong partnerships.
• Continual blurring of the lines and further consolidation in the display space, specifically among ad
networks, agency trading desks, DSPs, and ad serving technologies. Technology companies will become
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the primary (acquisition) target of established media and agency holding companies as this will allow them
to keep as much of the advertising value chain in-house.
• Convergence of digital mediums. Ongoing innovation (e.g. evolving platforms, operating systems,
browsers and devices) and faster adoption rates in the mobile space will bring mobile and display even
closer.
• Data for targeting and optimization will exceed other assets in its importance, as ad exchanges become
more liquid and accessible.
• Advertisers and their agencies will pay more attention to access and leverage of their data by others and
will push for greater transparency and controls by their buy management and inventory brokerage
partners.
• Social, mobile and digital video will accelerate their growth and further enhance the fragmentation of digital
media and grow the demand for cross channel campaign management.
• Cross-channel campaigns will become a standard for premium brands who look to communicate with
consumers wherever they are and with greater consistency of messaging and data. Solutions that offer
efficiency and maximize performance I multi-channel campaigns will benefit.
• DSPs, targeted ad networks, and ad exchanges have tackled some of the biggest problems in media
buying, but the industry as a whole still has a lot more ground to cover... To start, so much innovation has
gone into the spot market display business, which is a ton of ad inventory, but a very tiny percentage of
total ad spend. The telling trend is the advertisers' interest to not use context as a proxy for audience, to
move dollars from the upfront market to the spot market with a level of predictability, and to manage
marketing with accountability and as a P&L. We are banking that 2011 is the year we start to take all of this
DNA and advanced solutions and extend past digital and into other mediums. Media consumption is
holistic and across multiple mediums- TV, print (yes, print is still alive and still 2-3x larger than digital
spend), out of home, spot, search, display and mobile. Ad spend and technology solutions should also be
across mediums. I believe DSP's and exchanges will migrate across mediums as well in 2011.
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Platforms, Networks and Exchanges – Part II
The most important number to watch in 2011 is the average CPM on RTB exchanges. I predict it will cross $3.00.
That number is a tipping point with significant ramifications.
• With the rapid adoption of audience buying this year, it seems our industry has been obsessed with
targeting and media optimization. In 2011, I expect that the buzz will pivot to data- to the point that we'll
need to update that overused John Wanamaker quote to, "Half the money I spend on data is wasted; the
trouble is I don't know which half." Data will also facilitate the adoption of multi-touch attribution models.
Instead of looking at "last click" or "last ad" models, marketers will leverage the data available to analyze
the effectiveness of multiple touch points of users' experiences.
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Rob Leathern, CEO, XA.net
• We're going to see some really exciting developments that bring the concepts of 'social media advertising'
and 'social media marketing' together in 2011. The two trends that are only beginning are that (1) certain
savvy, large advertisers are taking more control of the media that they buy and the interactions they are
having with their customers. It's not that transactions are turning into 'conversations', but also that (2) both
things need to happen and need to be managed (Twitter, Facebook, user reviews, etc.) in order for the
marketer to be successful - and (3) as a result, you'll see more creative become a big focus for brands
(and I don't JUST mean thousands of iterations, I mean actual interactive creatives that engage users).
• The new portability of data means that clients can develop customer contact strategies across touch
points. Data, and the insights it drives will be the catalyst for marketplace buying decisions rather than
external factors like the old-media upfronts. Marketers and their agencies will develop new planning
methods and competencies to drive new program opportunities.
• 2011 is the inflection point for the currency cycle of innovation. Companies with true competitive
advantage and strong partners will explode; everybody else will stagnate or implode.
• The number of ad networks and DSPs will continue to increase, though the definition will keep getting
fuzzier. The technology is table stakes for the new ecosystem.
• Publisher yields will continue falling, despite all the new solutions. There's simply too much inventory.
• Agencies will continue moving demand onto their buying platforms and clients will move dollars directly to
DSPs. There's a big storm brewing here.
• The new “ad network” is a DSP and vice-versa. As exchanges make it easier to reach scale with
technology, display advertising will be even more ROI focused. DSPs will be the way to deliver on desired
outcomes for an advertiser. Networks that do not have DSP-like technology will build, buy or license it.
• Data will NOT be sold independent of the impression. Anyone running display campaigns understands
that optimization is a soup that includes all kinds of data ingredients and changes in real-time. Buying data
independent of the impression forces advertisers to make suboptimal choices. Technology will solve this.
Data providers will figure out how to bundle it with the impression or they will die.
• Agency trading desks mature. As they staff up and try to run and optimize campaigns with their own
people, they will finally understand that ad networks provide real value. Who knows how they will react.
2011 will be serious. 2011 will be the last transition year of mad men becoming math men. Last year was fun
because doing anything different than business-as-usual was a win. This year, people are making big decisions
and the stakes matter more. Small lifts on small budgets don’t matter much. Large lifts on large budgets matter a
lot.
Thus:
1. Performance will out. End results for the marketer will truly matter
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2. Rigor will increase. How results are delivered will matter: privacy; economics; scalability of the solution, the
team and the business model within the ecosystem.
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Platforms, Networks and Exchanges – Part III
AdExchanger.com reached out to executives from platforms,
networks and exchanges for their predictions about the digital
advertising ecosystem in 2011. This is part three of their
predictions.
• 2010 was the year of gaining access to audience data. Media-buying DSPs and ad networks asked us to
believe that access to data implied the ability to use it. As clients raise their eyebrows at lackluster
audience-targeting performance, however, the buzz will center on the ability to use data to drive results for
advertisers. Ability to use data, not merely access, will drive the audience-buying stories of 2011.
• 2010 was a year that saw more adoption of previous innovation than introductions of new technology.
While it is exciting to watch technology innovations round themselves into whole products and find market
adoption, I hope to see more break-through thinking introduced in 2011 - if you have an idea, talk to me
about it.
• Big advertisers will realize that they are using audience-centric ad strategies but inventory-centric
measurement and execution tools. 2011 will be the last year that inventory will be the dominant pivot
point.
• The DSP layer will expose the unruly margins being charged by current arbitrage players.
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• Agencies will figure out that one DSP won't fit all. Two to three DSPs will be needed across the agency.
• Retargeting will be exposed as the “emperor’s new clothes” of ad targeting.
• Mobile will lay the groundwork for a 2012 ad explosion.
• 2011 is the year of the click. The ad exchange infrastructure, user data, targeting technologies and
dynamic creatives have finally materialized to yield user CTRs that rival search. RIP, false view-based
metrics... the click is back.
• Major advertisers will begin the process of looking towards smaller, more nimble agencies, who are heavy
in engineering, and creative talent – and less reliant on media planning and buying. 2011 will be the
beginning of the trend of "smaller independent shops" taking away significant business from larger more
established agencies and holding companies.
• New technologies and abstraction layers will emerge that reduce complexity in digital advertising - making
online ads more relevant for users and digital agencies more profitable.
• "Audience Planner" becomes the hot, new job title at interactive agencies.
• Audience data is utilized to personalize publisher content, not just display advertising.
• Retargeting helps calm the privacy debate. Here’s my logic: retargeting becomes so commonplace and
pervasive in 2011 that consumers are exposed to retargeting campaigns constantly. Consumers will begin
to understand how audience targeting works through their personal experiences with retargeting and
become comfortable with the practice. Awareness, education and experience leads to acceptance by
most consumers.
• Privacy and targeting are going to run headlong into each other in 2011. The industry has got to figure out
a way to resolve that problem. I don't know if we'll see legislation this year or next year, but I predict in the
next few years we're going to see it. A lot of businesses have built their revenue models around the ability
to follow people as they move around the Internet and track what they're doing without their consent. I
believe we’ll be forced to move to an opt-in model over the next 1-3 years.
• Also, we're going to see brand budgets start to spend in real-time bidded inventory or use programmatic
buying. The fastest growing segment of new spends in 2011 will be brand budgets.
• Display advertising technology will become even more sophisticated, including the ability to drive
automated real-time creative optimization, driving substantial levels of campaign performance and ROI for
e-commerce companies and advertisers.
• Online advertisers will realize huge benefits from shopper-specific (personalized) technology that
combines real-time creative optimization with real-time bidding and buying - allowing e-commerce
merchants to maximize display campaign reach & results.
• Performance display ad campaigns will become substantial complements to traditional search campaigns
due to the greater scalability, reach and ROI.
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Vlad Stesin, co-founder, AdGear
• Widespread emergence of "private pipes" between agencies and premium publishers as both parties
create controlled environments where advertisers can benefit from the holy trinity of quality of formats,
context and data – but at a price.
• Facebook display network becomes the golden standard in data for display, making data companies feel
more pressure and pivot towards business models emphasizing more transparency.
• As brand advertisers push the ecosystem towards richer, bolder formats, SSPs play an increasingly
important role in enabling brand dollars to pour in.
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Agencies – Part I
AdExchanger.com reached out to the agency community for their
predictions about the digital advertising ecosystem in 2011. This is
part one of predictions from the agency world.
• The transactional media space will face several serious threats. Data privacy and price transparency
issues will team up to sour major advertisers on the notion of buying media with networks and exchanges.
A top 50 advertiser will get headlines in the trades after spurning the networks and exchanges entirely.
• US Governmental regulation may not come in 2011, but it will loom large enough to create a business
climate where online advertising players are separated into "white hat" operations and "everything else."
Smart digital companies will create contingency plans for scenarios where governmental regulation kills
third-party cookies. Or worse.
• Consolidation will continue, but in a haphazard way that keeps everybody scratching their heads.
Publishers will acquire agencies. Agencies will acquire technology companies. Advertisers will acquire ad
networks. It won't make sense until everyone takes a step back and looks at the big picture - It will all be
about acquiring smart digital talent.
Vik Kathuria, Managing Partner, Mediacom Interaction - Digital Investment Group, WPP Group
• Audience-based Buying: The premise of the Exchange is to give agencies access to large pools of liquidity
with a public auctioning system, with full transparency to ensure efficient pricing and tracking. Ad exchange
platforms and their attendant real-time bidding ("RTB") capabilities will be an important factor in delivering
an efficient and liquid "marketplace" for buying and selling data-driven audiences, offering enhanced scale,
behavioral targeting, audience segmentation and improved transparency. This will aid in driving down
overall cpm's for advertisers for part of their media bought thru audience based buying vs. the traditional
content / site based digital buying.
• In the past two years, data has powered new buying approaches. In 2011, our ability to drive conversation,
intent, and purchase will require equal attention to the message and the media. With data's role expanding
from informing the 'where' to 'what', dynamic creative optimization will be applied as brand-builders seek
real-time messages for real-time delivery. Data visualization will become a new form of content while
functionality and mobility will have a lead role in more creative conversations. In the deluge of data in
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2011, simplicity is key to focus on the data that matters, and the media and message that drive
measurable actions, not just attention.
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Agencies – Part II
AdExchanger.com reached out to the agency community for their
predictions about the digital advertising ecosystem in 2011. This is
part two of predictions from the agency world.
• Video starts its rapid ascendency towards becoming THE standard digital ad type, causing rich-media in
particular to take a hit. Marketers stop troubling over whether or not to do web-specific video creative as
research and results show that their TV spot can be effective if its delivered using targeting data and is
relevant to the customer.
• Time to bring out the 2011 (digital) crystal ball and swap thoughts about what comes next in this dynamic
industry of ours.
• I believe we will see a continuing shift of marketing dollars towards Performance Display, the goal to
generate an ROI by targeting individuals with intent rather than simply shouting at the crowd.
• Techniques such as site and search retargeting will grow as part of this, but whilst 2011 will be filled with
lots of attribution modeling talk, it is unlikely to the 'year of attribution' - that will be for next year’s crystal
ball. Or the next.
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• DSPs will continue to grow in popularity as a way to access exchanges BUT will not be the end all be all
that folks think they can be. Buyers will start to realize the necessity for proprietary inventory, algorithms
that provide unique opportunities. The DSP hype will mellow a bit as marketers and agencies decide how
best to use these platforms.
• RTB will remain the most important acronym on the supply side.
• Data will become more transparent, as big companies will attempt to utilize data exchanges to manage
the purchasing of their data more directly. Instead of buying blind segments, marketers will be able to buy
specific companies data using these platforms and know if there has been explicit consent or not.
• Attribution will become even more important in a client's vocabulary - and not only conversion attribution
on the media they are buying, but attribution across the data they are buying as well.
• Several "premiere" or well known media brands/publishers will band to form premiere private ad
exchanges. These exchanges will further prove the potential for exchange based buying and the power of
information asymmetry.
• There will be consolidation of providers of enabling technologies such as DSP's and DMP's, not ad
networks.
2011 marks a new transformation for the Audience Marketplace in three words: Consolidate, Build, Scale. In 2011
Cadreon believes:
• Major consolidation across the DSP, DMP and other service environment will take place, so we should all
expect to see fewer logos on Terry Kawaja's chart by the end of the year.
• Building new and proprietary data assets will become a necessity to rise above the commoditization of
third party data. Cadreon will begin to work with advertisers to build client-side data platforms, to
successfully leverage internal data assets across their marketing activities. Additionally, cross-channel
(i.e. display, video, TV and mobile) audience-based buys, leveraging identical centralized data-sets will
become a reality.
• More and more media companies will supply have value inventory to the trading desks through premium
marketplaces.
• Audience-based buying across multiple channels - at scale - will become a reality.
• Cross channel measurement. Measurement and more specifically attribution will be addressed for
advertisers not only to understand the impact of display beyond the last click, but between display, search,
social, video, and mobile.
• Cross channel targeting and insights. In 2009, the use of search data for display retargeting became
mainstream. In 2010, we saw advertisers begin to use audience insights from targeted display media,
which is a low risk, cost effective test ground for understanding customer segments, and incorporating
those insights into their full media mix. In 2011, we will see both of these trends expand and advertisers
will leverage data and insights between display, website analytics, email, video, mobile and offline
channels such as direct mail.
• 2011 will be the year that marketers and agencies begin to take back full control of their digital advertising
investments by utilizing buying platforms as the central tool for targeting, performance, and audience
intelligence.
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Kurt Unkel, SVP, VivaKi Nerve Center
Normally one would create a top 10 list for a request like this, but in keeping with this marketplace’s theme of
efficiency, here are my top 8 predictions for 2011.
1. At least two DSP will be bought in 2011 – could be ad-serving or web analytics providers rounding out
their offerings or could be SEMs accelerating their expansion into the more lucrative display marketplace.
2. Google will put display ads into Gmail – it’s not evil if it works, and Yahoo and Microsoft have known for
awhile that mail works.
3. The Top 15 ‘premium’ publishers will be operating transparently via exchanges by year’s end – it
may not be on the open market, but rather thru private exchanges, but we will see the top sites embracing
the operational efficiencies of the exchange world more aggressively.
4. At least three DSPs will support ‘BYOA’ by year’s end – couldn’t agree more with Darren Herman on
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this one. The ability to either create your own or integrate a 3 party set of optimization rules will be at the
core of a ‘true’ DSP. How you pay for it and license & protect it will be interesting...
5. There will be 4 video exchanges by year’s end – however, the private aspects of these exchanges will
be what fuels the growth in Video in 2011, as scarcity will continue to constrain liquidity too much for viable
open marketplaces to really thrive at the scale that's in demand.
6. At least 5 publishers will enter the ‘branded’ data marketplace – sites that offer deep consumer intent-
based insights will want to work transparently with buyers vs. being aggregated and blended together with
other sources.
7. The OBA initiative will bring the clash between media buyers and sellers over data ownership to an
end – this may be a reach, but if all BT sources must be registered and transparent, many data capture
tactics employed today will have to be more rigidly audited by the media buyers and their clients. This will
lead to more scrutiny and due diligence by buyers of BT then has ever existed at this scale before.
8. Clients will make up 25% of attendees at industry events by year’s end – The focus and scale of the
exchange-centric marketplace and all the education efforts that agencies have developed to support it, will
result in a substantially higher number of clients (i.e. marketers, not agencies) attending events.
• An independent Mobile Ad Server will emerge as the leader in the Mobile space. Advertisers will no longer
have to rely on site served placements.
• The concept of serving customized dynamic creative based on 3rd party data (DCO + Audience Targeting)
will continue to gain momentum, and will become more widely used
• Apple will open up their platform, allowing for Flash to run on all devices.
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Publisher Technology
AdExchanger.com reached out to the publisher technology
community for their predictions about the digital advertising
ecosystem in 2011.
Programmatic buying will increase at least 4x globally. Contributing factors will be:
• Further improvements in audience targeting and creative optimization will drive advertisers to shift more
budgets to display, away from search, TV.
• As big publishers get more comfortable with sell-side tech & audience selling,there will be a huge increase
in the scale & quality of biddable inventory.
• Mobile and video inventory will begin to hit RTB, cross-platform audience buying will begin to take hold.
• RTB will emerge as a meaningful channel for guaranteed buys, branding campaigns.
• Data management will get white hot as large publishers begin to more strategically tap the value of their
first party data.
• I fear that in 2011 we'll see a BP-scale data disaster that makes the AOL search spill, the Google street
view kerfuffle, the Rapleaf hubbub, and the Facebook/MySpace id leaks look like minor disturbances.
Cleanup and recovery will be costly for the offending company. Regulators and privacy advocates will use
the debacle to bring their protests to a feverish pitch, but a split Congress (remember ex-Representative
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Rick Boucher?) will stymie any attempts at privacy legislation. In a lucky twist, legislative gridlock will give
commerce, content, and advertising companies a little extra time to get their data house in order.
• Premium marketplaces emerge to drive more value to holding company trading desks. Advertisers are
already preparing to increase the amount they spend on real-time bidding inventory next year, making
RTB the hottest area in display. The increased desire for premium, audience-based buying will make
trading desks far more valuable for both premium publishers and advertisers looking for better intelligence
and campaign analytics. Trading desks are already creating closer relationships between publishers and
advertisers/agencies. As more money flows through the trading desks, the intermediaries who don't own
inventory are going to feel the pressure created by the new buying model, and premium sellers could be
the main beneficiaries.
• RTB will remain the #1 driver of increased revenue for publishers. The most advanced publishers will
begin to have RTB campaigns sold and controlled by their own sales force. Transparency and control of
data will continue to be the #1 hot-button issue of 2011 - for consumers and publishers alike. However,
continued market education will alleviate a lot of the fear and lead to improved solutions that benefit all
parties.
• In 2011 publishers will start to seriously rethink all of their third-party data relationships as they wrestle with
issues around privacy, transparency, the value of their data and the impact these issues have on their
businesses.
• Data collectors will deploy improved methodologies and use better practices for how they connect with,
use and share the data they are "allowed" to collect from publishers.
• Brand dollars continue glacial migration to digital with spending on building owned assets and Facebook
amplification.
• Twitter advertising drives traffic but agencies are slow to adapt to a real-time channel creating
opportunities similar to early days of Search.
• By EOY 2011 for vast majority of advertisers Google = Display same as Google= Search.
• Delta between Search and Display spend continues to widen as Google focuses on local, mobile, location
based search advertising.
• Advertiser interest in massive and realtime link economy (Google, Twitter, Facebook, Bitly) and
accompanying data begins shifting market power back to Publishers.
• Premium publishers will de-emphasize ad exchanges and any other sales channels that do not fairly
compensate them for the value of their brands and audiences.
• Focus will shift from systematic pricing and buying of spot inventory to systematic pricing and buying of
forward inventory.
• The RFP step itself will be de-emphasized as orders are booked directly through automated channels.
• A robust digital scatter market will emerge for transacting "last minute" guaranteed, transparent inventory
as a middle ground between the spot and forward markets.
• Straight Through Processing (STP) defined as system to system buying and invoicing will become a reality
in 2011 and drive transaction costs down.
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• In 2011 publishers will awaken from their slumber, realizing that many of the third parties with which they
do business extract more value than they add. Agency Groups and portals invested heavily in technology
over the past four years. Now it’s the publishers’ turn. To monetize platforms like mobile and video, more
and more publishers will invest in innovative technology, employing multiple data sources and advanced
sales & pricing analytics to package their inventory for agencies and exchanges.
• A blessing and challenge is that our industry and tools are starting to work more closely together. I think
we'll see more "are they friends or foes?" situations like the recent AppNexus vs Google post. It's like a big
game of Risk.
• In 2011, the display ad galaxy's focus will turn from armies of clone impressions on exchanges, to
premium inventory managed by Jedi ad ops teams, and balance will be restored to the universe of buyers
and sellers. In other words, publishers will they turn their attention from how to squeak a little bit more from
the low-value inventory, to how do they capitalize on their strengths in context and related audiences.
Agency trading desks will begin to enable (and prefer) guaranteed buys of audiences directly from
premium publishers through new programmatic interfaces, instead of RTB in a sea of impressions. And
publishers will embrace solutions that provide inventory transparency and accurate availability to take
advantage of these new sales channels.
• 2011 will feature ad technology focusing on the unmet need for publisher revenue enhancement via core
ad pricing, dynamic channel allocation and sales operations. Despite a tremendous amount of attention
paid to emerging data and privacy issues in 2010, there remain a number of 'first order' problems that have
not as yet been addressed: pricing, sales channel discipline, market indexing, channel management.
These are high leverage opportunities which will (re)emerge to move recent data and targeting hot topics
to the back burner. Call me a contrarian, but we may well see investors and deep pocketed acquirers
begin to pay close attention to businesses featuring real technology for publisher revenue and margin
enhancement.
• The ability to buy premium audiences at scale will swing ad sales back to premium publishers.
• We just witnessed a record quarter for digital revenue, and the surge will continue next year as more
advertisers shift their brand messaging online.
• Technology enhancements by premium publishers will drive higher digital ad spending In addition, better
inventory analysis, improved understanding of ROI, and a complete picture of how online ads affect offline
behavior will make premium publishers far more appealing than ad networks or exchanges.
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Global
AdExchanger.com reached out to companies based beyond North
American borders who concentrate on growing their data-driven,
digital businesses regionally as well as internationally and asked
them for their predictions about the digital advertising ecosystem in
2011.
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• Main obstacle of growth in Europe will be to find the right people to operate the automated space.
However it’s not as new a market as PPC was in 2001. It’s the first time that new technologies are entering
the existing market, but you need experienced people to operate them.
• 2010 was the year of the DSP and RTB infrastructural innovation. Expect 2011 to see the next wave of
marketer focused product innovation coming from demand side service/tech hybrid businesses.
• Most advertisers are only scratching the surface of what is possible via database
integrations and segmentations. 2011 will see greater customization and integration of advertiser data
sets into RTB powered valuation and optimization engines.
• As marketers take greater control of their data, expect to see them demanding and adopting more
sophisticated models for conversion attribution (beyond last click). This will unlock greater upper funnel
marketing budgets.
• The industry will proactively engage in public dialogue around cookie based ad
targeting. Consumers will be better informed on the 'value exchange' of data usage versus free content
and will have visibility and choice around what/how and if.
• Some of the large media agencies will announce media trading offerings, backed by white-labeled,
managed services provided by DSP companies, and likely arbitrage with little or no financial transparency.
• Everyone will brand themselves a media trader, whatever type of display he/she works with.
• A dozen new acronyms and a 3D ecosystem map
• Automated Data Driven Audience Buying vs. Guaranteed Content Driven Media Buying: The share of
audience buying will increase even more, thus strengthening the position of Demand Side Platforms
(DSPs), Sell Side Platforms (SSPs) and Ad Exchanges.
• Within that context, prices on AAA+ web properties remain under pressure whereas price levels on high
volume sites (eg social media) will increase.
• The combination of data, pricing levels and technology will continue to make display advertising more
effective thus driving the growth in that segment of the online marketing mix.
• Video will continue to be a key driver of online marketing growth as more and more video content is
licensed by producers to websites on a ad revenue share basis.
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Search, Display
AdExchanger.com reached out to the companies active in the
search and display communities for their predictions about the
digital advertising ecosystem in 2011.
• 2011 will be the year of Search ... yes, Search! Though many exciting things will happen in social, mobile
and display the biggest sea change in 2011 will happen in Search. Search is the largest online ad channel
so any significant change has a big impact on marketers. Search hasn't changed much since Google
became a verb but there are major changes taking place that will impact the scope and economics of
Search while dramatically improving the consumer experience ...
• Now that the Yahoo/Bing merger is complete, Bing is the first large scale competitor with both the money
and focus to significantly mix things up in old school Search.
• Search marketing is reaching beyond the generic search box. Amazon, Quora, Kayak and many others
are generating new ways for marketers to engage consumers expressing their intent.
• Search becomes more than text. Through innovations like Google Product Ads and Search retargeting
marketers will be able to engage consumers with richer creative, leading to deeper customer engagement.
• Stand-alone, display-only DSPs become the exception rather than the norm as advertisers demand tight
integration with other channels including search and social.
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• Last-click and last-view attribution takes its last gasps before being put to rest, replaced by multi-event
attribution models that value all ad interactions. Intelligent attribution showcases the value of exchange
buying in a mix of advertising tactics.
• Advertisers become hyper-sensitive about their data. Gone are the days of multiple publishers, networks
and platforms all managing retargeting programs. With the necessary reach in the exchanges, advertisers
limit data-sharing to trusted partners offering full control and transparency.
• Performance-based display advertising becomes more accessible to and effective for small businesses.
• For years, online display advertising spend has been dominated by large brand advertisers and focused
on impressions. The growing list of serious players in the performance-based display space (Google,
Facebook, et al) are taking what they have learned from CPC and applying it to self-service display
campaigns. Expect broader adoption of display advertising by small businesses primarily due to their
comfort with the CPC pricing model.
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Creative, Display
AdExchanger.com reached out to executives at companies
involved in creative and display technology for their predictions
about the digital advertising ecosystem in 2011.
• 2011 is going to be the year of rich media. While last year rich media comprised just 6% of online display
ad impressions, we believe that number will double next year. Whether it is AOL’s Devil ads, the OPA’s
large units, the IAB’s new ad format competition or the work that Pictela has done to revolutionize rich
media, the industry is providing marketers with an exciting new set of tools to create and serve immense
amounts of brand content into display advertising.
• Creative automation technologies will emerge. 2010 saw a plethora of advances in targeting and bidding
capabilities that enhanced the ability to purchase unique audience segments, but what lagged was the
ability to mass produce creative for the seemingly unlimited audience segmentations now available to
marketers. In the coming year we’ll see more and better creative capabilities to more completely deliver
on the promise of sending the right message to the right person at the right time.
• Demand-side fragmentation will increase. Display is still highly concentrated on the demand side; the
largest 1,000 or so advertisers still drive 90%+ of industry spending. Increasingly, the sophisticated tools
that have been available at the high end of the market will become economically viable for marketers with
smaller budgets.
• As we continue deeper into a recession we will see more deal based advertising. Groupon and
LivingSocial were right to make those inroads early. Sites like Gilt, and PLNDR are being really innovative
with their sales strategy and its paying off for them.
• Location based advertising was big in 2010, and it will continue to get even bigger in 2011 as Facebook
expands the technology behind its location platform Places. Mobile advertising is of course the larger trend
associated with location based advertising, and that is also a hot trend.
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• We can always hope for more smarter better google, twitter and facebook ad units. Social ads are really
exciting, and they have never before been possible. What comes with that is smarter better metrics.
• Last year we saw some advertisements online that allowed you to click facebook connect and suck your
permission based info into the video ad to create a powerful experience. This is in the dynamic ad space
that still use the upload photo trick to get custom content in the ad. I personally find this super interesting
and predict we will see more of this for sure in 2011 and beyond.
• Facebook will follow in Google's footsteps and announce their own flavor of AdSense. Coupled with more
efficient distribution tech (RTB, audience targeting) this will continue to drive momentum around display
advertising as it continues to become the direct marketing tool of choice next to mail and search. However,
the biggest driver of growth in display ads will not be direct response but brand marketing, which will have
started to gain serious traction by the end of 2011. The main obstacle currently standing in online
branding's way is a lack of impact. Since this is mostly due to poor creative execution and low placement
quality, innovation and control will move from companies focus in on distribution optimization (DSPs, ad
servers, exchanges, networks) to those catering to the edges (advertisers, agencies, publishers).
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Video
AdExchanger.com reached out to the video advertising, technology
community for their predictions about the digital advertising
ecosystem in 2011.
• The growth of addressable video ad expenditures will be more than 50 percent year over year.
• TV budgets will start to make a move to online video.
• All publishers, big and small, will have some type of video content on their site by the end of 2011.
• More than 20 percent of all non-search digital spends will be bought via some type of DSP platform.
• Horizontal display ad networks will begin to experience revenue loss due to DSPs/Agency Trading Desks.
• We will begin to see large growth in video syndication in 2011.
• The test of online video for efficiency and effectiveness took place in 2009 and 2010. The research shows
that online video is more effective than TV, and that by using video advertising in concert with TV
advertising, ad campaigns see better results. Moreover, personal experience demonstrates that audiences
are consuming more and more video content through the computer, the iPad, and other connected
devices. A significant shift of money from TV to video is starting to come to fruition, and I predict that in
2011 that shift will be more fully realized.
• I believe that 2011 will both prosperous and tumultuous for advertising and media companies. Online ad
companies will find continued growth, but exits for start-ups and their investors will continue to be sporadic
and newer, lower-cost competitors will continue to enter the market. TV companies will find themselves
continuing to rule to roost, but increasing audience fragmentation and "Over-the-Top" distribution will
threaten the business models of many incumbents and we will see the the growth of next-generation TV
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ad companies. Finally, the print industry will continue to face tough times and tight margins. Unfortunately,
the iPad won't be the "silver bullet" to save them in 2011 as many hope and expect.
• Paid access to content through pay-per-view, subscriptions, or incentive for data will become more
prevalent, especially with trends showing that consumers are open to paying for valuable content and
services as seen with mobile apps and subscription services such as Pandora. Abundance of non-paid
paths to content will be the biggest challenge for paid access, and will be balanced with increased ad-
supported distribution supplied with ad-friendly content creation, premium content alteration, and archival
content exploitation. Network bias and possibly device bias will become more critical in shaping content
distribution and access, and monetization will have to be shared between content owner and distributor no
matter the network or device.
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Analysts
Daniel Salmon of BMO Capital Markets and Joanna O'Connell of
Forrester Research offered their predictions about the digital
advertising ecosystem in 2011.
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Copyright © 2010 AdExchanger.com.
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