DataView: The DataXu Blog
Category: ad optimization
- The other meaning of “ROI”
09/07/2010 | Categories: ad optimization, data driven decisioning, digital media, display advertising, DSP, Mobile, mobile advertising
Every advertiser seeks better “ROI” (return on investment). Since we launched the first version of our platform — less than a year ago! – it’s been gratifying to see many big brands and agencies embrace our solution to drive better ROI from online display.But “ROI” has another meaning, and it’s equally important: “Rate Of Innovation”. This kind of ROI is measured by how quickly a company can innovate in response to a new opportunity or problem. And as digital transforms the media and advertising landscape, it’s increasingly apparent that the winners will be determined by Rate of Innovation.
So today, we’re thrilled to announce the launch of the industry’s first Mobile demand side platform (DSP). This is a sort of homecoming for many at DataXu, who came to us from Enpocket, a trail- blazing mobile marketing company with a reputation for innovation and high customer satisfaction.
Indeed, the DataXu “tribe” — employees, customers, partners, investors and friends – is formed by a shared belief in rapid and relentless innovation, in rejecting “good enough”, in solving hard problems for customers, in the power of technology to improve business, and more importantly, our lives.
As a repeat winner in the business of growing digital media companies, I’m often asked “how do you tell the winners from the losers”? it’s actually pretty simple: look to a company’s rate of innovation. In times of disruption and change, “snapshots” are not meaningful; you need to see the “motion picture”. So if you’re a brand or agency evaluating ad tech partners, dig into both kinds of ROI! And stay tuned for a steady stream of innovations from DataXu …
- DataXu MarketPulse: Ad Price Volatility Is Opportunity for Advertisers
05/21/2010 | Categories: ad exchanges, ad impressions, ad optimization, ad optimization platform, advertising optimization, digital advertising, digital display ads, digital media, dynamic decision systems, efficiency, MarketPulse, media, ROI, trendsYesterday, we distributed what we hope will be the first of many “DataXu MarketPulse” newsletters. Designed to highlight compelling trends in the digital advertising space, the DataXu MarketPulse was created in response to our customers’ requests for visibility and insights into the rapidly evolving world of biddable digital media.
DataXu MarketPulse, May 2010
Extreme Price Volatility Across Ad Exchanges Presents Opportunities for Buyers
DataXu analyzed the price paid for ad impressions across ad exchanges over the past 30 days, and discovered that the average daily price varied by over 100% during the period.
This analysis is drawn from our leading cross-exchange advertising optimization platform, which evaluated over 175M unique user visits and hundreds of billions of ad impressions from all of the major suppliers of biddable display advertising during the measurement period.
“With the tremendous growth of exchanges for bidding on digital display ads, we are seeing a persistent price volatility across all points of supply,” said Mike Baker, CEO of DataXu. “This presents innovative advertisers with a huge opportunity to boost media effectiveness and efficiency. But to do so, they have to move beyond static media buying to dynamic decision systems that keep pace with the volatility.”
Advertisers know that exchange-traded inventory varies in value, but this significant volatility in prices for fungible placement opportunities may serve as a wake-up call. When it comes to display ads, are you confident that you are getting what you pay for?
Over time, across large campaigns, such price variances can have a significant impact on ROI, if an advertiser is not employing the right analysis and tools to ensure that their higher cost impressions are also the highest value impressions for their specific goals.
The Average Daily CPM Price for Display Ads Across Exchanges Varies by Over 100%
The fluctuation of ad CPM prices outpaced other dynamic values — even during a period that included the stock market’s “flash crash” and the Goldman Sachs’ investigation.
DataXu’s MarketPulse explores the data that defines today’s digital advertising marketplace. Stay tuned for future insights from DataXu. For a pdf of this report see DataXu MarketPulse: Ad Price Volatility, May 2010 and to sign up for future MarketPulse newsletters, send an email to marketpulse@dataxu.com.
- Welcome to the DataXu Blog
09/14/2009 | Categories: ad impressions, ad optimization, data, dynamic bidding, MIT, online advertising, real-time bidding, RTBHi, and welcome to the DataXu blog. On this blog, the DataXu team and I will share our take on online advertising and its future. Big things are happening. Specifically, the advent of “real time bidding” on individual ad impressions is happening, and it is set to revolutionize online advertising for agencies and brands. That transformation will be a large part of our focus here.
I’ve been in the industry for a long time now and have seen one advancement after another, but in my view nothing before compares to what is going to happen in the months ahead and the transformative effect real-time bidding will have on the advertising industry. I expect a couple of years from now we’ll all look back and shake our heads in amazement at what passes for online advertising management today.
Who and what is DataXu you ask? We are a Boston-based company launching today with a real-time online advertising optimization platform. Our core technology was developed by my co-founders, an MIT aerospace professor and his PhD students. Its original purpose was to quickly sort through massive quantities of data (what they humbly refer to as a “complex combinatorial space”) in support of NASA’s Mars Mission planning. DataXu’s founders – from the distinct but highly data-driven worlds of aeronautics and online media – recognized a unique opportunity to apply these analytic innovations to improve upon the current inefficiencies of online media placement. In the words of John Wanamaker (who many consider the father of modern advertising), “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” We’re out to solve that problem.
As a starting point for our conversations here, I thought it would be helpful to briefly discuss what we mean by real-time bidding. As you likely know, the first generation of ad exchanges has operated for several years now and relies on the use of “static bidding,” which allows an advertiser to list a bid price and receive impressions by the thousand that meet the bid. The new generation of ad exchanges—being led by Google and Yahoo—is all about real-time bidding, which replaces the static bidding paradigm with dynamic bidding at the impression level.
This means that an ad buyer, for the first time, can automatically review and differentially value each individual opportunity to buy an ad impression in real time, while a consumer browses the web .The ability to buy advertising in this manner will result in a dramatic efficiency gain for buyers and sellers alike (that’s right, less manual media management!). With our platform, advertisers can greatly increase their ability to drive sales and other web conversion actions.
There is obviously much more for us to talk about in regard to DataXu and the industry overall, and you probably have a lot of questions about where this is all headed. Hopefully you’ll visit this blog often to ask those questions, and share in the discussion about where online advertising is going. In the meantime, please visit our web site often to hear more about what we’re up to. Stay tuned. We will dive deeper into the online advertising market and technologies in future posts.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to continuing the conversation.
Mike Baker, President & CEO
