Programmatic trading standardisation "a fool's errand" says Turn senior vice president of product management
Turn's senior vice president of product management, Joshua Koran has spoken against calls to create an industry standard for programmatic trading, describing such moves as "a fool's errand".
Speaking to The Drum, Koran, who joined Turn from Yahoo where he was involved in the design of its behavioural targeting system, explained that those who called for standardisation across programmatic trading could aim to create a "standard taxonomy" using the IAB's 200-300 categories and sell those as standard, however he was sceptical over such a strategy being effective.
"If we were to accurately classify all brands, all publishers and all segments and content, it would be closer to Wikipedia, which is tens of thousands of categories and even Wikipedia isn't accurate for the world. So I don't believe that having a standard taxonomy is the way to go.
"To me, every brand has a unique definition of their audience, there's no reason why they should have to map their definition to some high-level standard and then use their high-level standard to reflect back over those opportunities. They can go direct," explained Koran who argued that brands simply need to recognise their target audience and the best path to reach them.
He also discussed contextual selling, where online users with an interest in cars or sports could be targeted in real time while browsing a relevant page, their emails or even a news story.
"We know they are interested in autos based on previous activities," he explained.
"The original model was 'I'm going to look at who goes to Yahoo Sports' and if they go there enough then they must be interested in sport but for different sports brands - say Nike versus the National Football League - they're all interested in sports but it's different sports and a different audience so trying to say this different category is 'Sports' isn't very useful to those brands."
Koran explained that granular detail would need to be drilled down in order to reach audiences with specifically targeted adverts.
"Now, you define your audience and I will show you how to reach them within their context. That's how I see it working because then the buyers keep talking audience and don't have it amount to some arbitrary taxonomy that maps out to content. That's how I see the world developing but there is a voice that says that you can classify everything into 200 categories."
He concluded his point by comparing the system to that of a library, stating that each subject would be the like a book on the Spanish-American war and asking whether it would be classified as America, history, Spanish history or war and the complexities around such specific labeling.
"It's everything, there's no wrong answer. So trying to classify everything as one thing is a fool's errand, it's not going to happen.”
Writing for The Drum last week, Rob Dreblow, head of marketing capabilities at the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), said that “transparency has become the biggest challenge facing many advertisers, mostly thanks to changes in the way media and particularly digital media is bought and sold.”
The Drum is launching the Digital Trading Awards to reward clarity, transparency and client service when it comes to digital advertising. Find out more at digitaltradingawards.com
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