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Category: Yahoo!

• Mike Baker in 140 Characters
  07/23/2010 | Categories: advertising, demand side platform, digital advertising, digital media, DSP, events, Google, innovation, media buying, trends, Yahoo!

  Per our recent blog post, DataXu CEO Mike Baker was a busy man this week. He was in L.A. Monday for an OMMA AdNets panel in the afternoon and Dapper panel in the evening. Then off to Chicago on Tuesday for a panel at the Right Media Open.

  With 3 panels in 2 days, Mike had plenty to say; in fact the Twittersphere did a great job of capturing some nuggets from each of Mike’s panels. But if you weren’t at the events, we thought these 140 character sound bites might be confusing, see the below for some additional context and detail from Mike Baker…

  • @audiencescience tweeted “#ommanets We’re at a time where every new feature is a company – Mike Baker – DataXu”

  • MB: This was part of a discussion regarding the increasing complexity of the media buying and ad technology space. Here I was making the point that instead of existing companies innovating to include new features, what seems to be happening is that entirely new companies are popping up with products that could have simply been rolled into existing technology platforms thus the space gets more complex and crowded.

  • @YahooAdBuzz tweeted (to the wrong DataXu handle – we’re @dataxuinc) “Mike Baker @dataxu says machines can do a better job than people at consolidating a media plan #RMO”

  • MB: At the Right Media Open, I was on a panel about the evolution of agencies in the digital media world. I’ve always been of the mind that machine-learning technology, like that of DataXu, can handle the tactical execution of media buying and planning, allowing overburdened media buyers  to focus their energy and time on more strategic marketing initiatives.

  • @gregoryhills tweeted “M. Baker appreciates volume discoutn [sic] OMG got from GOOG, but doesn’t understand why they’d use tech from supply side to do allocation #RMO”

  • MB: As I wrote about on Forbes.com a few months back, Google’s acquisition of Invite Media and expansion into the DSP (Demand Side Platform) space is exciting and validating for DSP technology, but there are still some concerns around Google’s neutrality.  Google is the largest digital media seller, yet they’re going to remain an impartial  buy- side advocate for OMG?  Seems unlikely.

  Stay tuned for more event news and updates and remember, you can always find us on Twitter at @dataxuinc!

  
  
• DataXu’s Mike Baker Makes the Rounds – 2 days, 3 Events
  07/12/2010 | Categories: advertising, data, digital advertising, digital media, display advertising, events, media buying, online advertising, performance, Yahoo!

  They say you can’t be everything to everyone, but for DataXu CEO Mike Baker you CAN be everywhere with everyone.  Next week, Mike will be speaking at 3 different industry events.

  

  12:15 p.m. PT, Monday, July 19, 2010:

  OMMA AdNets – Los Angeles, CA

  An annual OMMA event, this year’s OMMA AdNets seeks to uncover the value in the many layers of the digital advertising ecosystem. Mike will be speaking on a pre-lunch panel, at 12:15 p.m. PT, titled “Simplify the Stack: Fighting the New Cost and Complexity of Media Buying.” Moderated by David Szetala, CEO, Clix Marketing and joined by panelists from Razorfish, Click Forensics and Catalyst, Mike will discuss strategies for improving the efficiency of the media buying process.

  7:00 p.m. PT, Monday July 19, 2010:

  Dapper Fixing Advertising Panel – Los Angeles, CA

  Co-hosted by the Rubicon Project, Fixing Advertising Los Angeles will explore the tremendous changes and opportunities in display advertising today as innovations in user data, intelligent media buying, and dynamic creative drive new efficiencies and performance gains – at a remarkable scale. The panel will also take a deep dive into the ways that the new data-driven ecosystem is affecting publishers, including insights into which data is owned by publishers, how well they are represented by supply-side platforms and whether or not they are capturing enough of the value chain. The panel will be moderated by Peter Kim, General Manager, Yahoo! Smart Ads, and joining Mike as panelists will be executives from The Rubicon Project, Triggit and more.

  2:30 p.m. CT, Tuesday, July 20, 2010:

  Right Media Open – Chicago, IL

  Yahoo’s Right Media Open is an annual event that brings together online advertising leaders to share insights and discuss industry challenges.  This year’s event will be keynoted by Terence Kawaja, Managing Director, GCA Savvian and Randall Rothenberg, President & CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Mike will be on a panel alongside executives from Cadreon, MEC and MediaBank to discuss the question, “How Are Agencies Evolving to Meet the Digital Future?”

  Stay tuned for additional insights, content and recaps from these events.

  
  
• DataXu Joins Yahoo’s Demand-Side Platform Pilot Program
  03/15/2010 | Categories: demand side platform, display advertising, DSP, innovation, real-time bidding, RTB, Yahoo!

  Big news today: Yahoo has today announced their demand-side platform pilot program (see Yahoo’s announcement). This marks a significant milestone in the emergence of demand-side platforms and real time bidding because the industry’s largest publisher is embracing this new paradigm.

  We are pleased to be one of the demand-side platform partners selected to participate. Yahoo has a great history of innovation through leadership when it comes to display advertising, and we look forward to working with them—along with major agencies and advertisers—to create a sustainable ecosystem that makes digital advertising more effective. We share Yahoo’s vision that innovations such as RTB will benefit all participants.

  
  
• Shortening the Cycle Time for Data Driven Insights
  03/11/2010 | Categories: algorithms, data, media, media efficiency, Yahoo!

  In a recent Q & A in AdAge, Scott Burke, a VP of Engineering at Yahoo, shared some great observations about the use and valuation of data by marketers today. Two points, in particular, resonated with me, as they reinforce key aspects of our mission here at DataXu:

  1. Shortening the cycle time for data-driven insights will benefit everyone involved in online advertising.

  2. “It’s not about how much data you have, it’s what you do with it.”

  In the article, Scott mentions how Yahoo strives to accelerate their decisionmaking internally, and do so in an “iterative loop” of hypothesize, test, learn, repeat—a paradigm that describes our platform’s learning system quite well. Scott also echoes our philosophy that the ability to derive insights from data more quickly will make all parties involved in advertising more effective. We built our platform to analyze enormous amounts of data with unprecedented speed, in order to make highly informed decisions about the barrage of ad impression opportunities available at any given second on the Internet. We also recognized the value of learning from each of those decisions, to continually improve the system’s decisionmaking data models and algorithms going forward. This dynamic, closed loop learning model – especially when combined with real-time bidding – gives our clients a distinct advantage over more static approaches to buying media online. We extend the continual learning outward from our system, too. Our clients gain timely, granular insights from their campaigns that they can apply to better inform a range of marketing efforts.

  The ability to leverage data in this dynamic way can also extract more value from the data itself, as the quote from Scott in my second point above illustrates. It can be challenging for marketers to anticipate what type of data will have the most impact on a campaign’s success, but when applied within an intelligent system, you can pick out the signals that matter for the specific campaign. More data isn’t always better. But more advanced decisioning can make limited data do big things or elicit the select, valuable gems among larger sets of data – both tasks that are nearly impossible for an individual to do without the benefit of some powerful technology. (For more on my thoughts about the role of data in display campaigns, please see a recent column I wrote for ClickZ.)

  It’s great to hear validation in the marketplace that what we offer our clients is relevant and meaningful. The amount of data marketers have at their disposal is growing by leaps and bounds, so our goal is to continue to develop the best system for using that data to improve media efficiency and lower customer acquisition costs.

  
  
• Yahoo’s Right Media Upgrade Is on Target
  11/17/2009 | Categories: demand side platform, DSP, media buying, real-time bidding, Right Media, RTB, transparency, Yahoo!

  AdAge wrote a great article today regarding Yahoo’s announcement about the next evolution of their Right Media Exchange, offering more premium inventory and better transparency for advertisers. It’s encouraging to see all of the participants in our market – from inventory suppliers to demand side platforms – offering up exciting new features and innovations that will offer real, measurable value to advertisers. I also see it as market validation of the opportunity that real-time bidding for auction media represents.

  Beyond any press releases or marketing hype, however, the real validation for these developments will come from advertisers themselves. As I speak with agencies and advertisers each day, I am hearing firsthand about both their reservations and their expectations for this new media buying paradigm. These conversations are what keep our entire team grounded and focused on the end value we want to bring to our clients. In my view, the eventual leaders in this space will be the ones who keep listening – and keep responding – to the real needs of advertisers, as Yahoo has clearly done in this case.