Digital players bid to remove jargon from digital
Google and the IAB are mounting separate charges to increase brand and publisher awareness of the complexities of the real-time advertising sector, particularly on mobile, with an emphasis on simplifying the landscape and reducing jargon.
The online advertising giant has already kicked off a charm-offensive on media-owners and planners convincing them of the benefit of using real-time bidding (RTB) technology to sell ad inventory and buy ad inventory.
Reducing the amount of jargon used by those in the programmatic ad trading is a particular emphasis of the scheme, which ultimately aims to build audiences for its ad-serving products, such as Doubleclick, plus a host of its ad formats.
Damian Lawlor, Google’s managing director of media platforms for northern and central Europe, says the series of “roadshows” are geared towards making brands and media owners realise these technologies are no longer “on the horizon”.
Lawlor adds the scheme also intends to allay publisher fears that selling their technology will result in lower ad prices, plus perceptions that using this technology could limit their ability to do deals directly with advertisers.
“Bringing data to the conversation helps win over the cynics,” says Lawlor, adding the number of impressions on Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange has more than doubled in the last 12 months.
This charm offensive on the advertiser market forms part of a wider industry charge to increase client-side awareness of the potential benefits, as well as pitfalls, of the automated trading sector – particularly as web access via mobile becomes mainstream.
Meanwhile, advertising trade body the IAB is concurrently running an education drive to address the issues of display advertising unique to mobile devices.
Particular areas of emphasis include differences between in-app and browser based ads, campaign reporting issues when users’ connection is lost and privacy issues such as alternatives to using iPhones’ unique identity codes (UDID). A measure prohibited by Apple itself as of last week (1 May).
The IAB has begun this scheme by circulating an FAQ document among its members and brands, with the eventual publication date set to coincide with its annual flagship IAB Mobile Engage conference later this month (16 May).
Alex Kozloff, IAB’s head of mobile, says: “This came out of our last agency ambassador meeting and is not so much for the heads of mobile out there… it consists of the kind of questions that a lot of the mobile specialists are feeling the pressure to answer.
“There’s a particular need for education in the mobile programmatic trading sector.”
An early draft of the document seen by Marketing Week contains advise on how to resolve campaign reporting, i.e. campaign discrepancies, a problem which often occurs when trading and delivering ads using automated technology from third parties.
Similarly, Kozloff also explains the trade body is working in close quarters with the information regulator the ICO to ensure advice dispensed to brands is in keeping with current mobile regulatory guidelines.
