Mary Keane Dawson, Group CEO, myHealthPal
We have the first signs of a much more transparent RTB story emerging in the mobile piece. We had better, as it's going to be the template we will need to use for how we embrace advertising via wearables.
Nicky McShane - VP, business development, Xaxis EMEA
Mobile’s meteoric rise as a ubiquitous platform alone has already brought a 157 per cent increase in ad spend year-on-year, yet there’s so much more innovation to come as we respond to mobile’s ability to reach consumers at unique times and in unique places. Sophisticated technological advancement, tethered with consumer hunger for continuous software and hardware development, offers a massive chance for advertisers to obtain real business advantage. Couple this with 46 per cent of 18–34 year olds viewing their mobiles as their primary screen, there’s no denying the channel’s importance and its absolute integration into modern-day life. With further exponential growth expected, there’s equally no question that RTB is shaping up to represent the future of the mobile ad marketplace. Twitter’s $350m acquisition of mobile RTB powerhouse MoPub, alongside Millennial Media’s investment with AppNexus to launch the first large-scale programmatic offering for mobile are proof enough.Why all this sudden interest? The benefits for mobile advertisers to adopt RTB are clear. Although there is a lot of mobile inventory, still not enough of it is properly monetised and RTB provides a better way to achieve this. If advertisers embrace the opportunity that RTB represents, and consider both their inventory quality and adaptability for different formats, the landscape of the mobile ad market will then change radically. However, in order to tap into the full mobile RTB opportunity, the industry will have to solve the problem of targeting and measurement across devices. That will be this year’s challenge.
Marco Bertozzi, executive managing director EMEA, Vivaki
We are all desperate for mobile RTB to be the big winner this year. Mobile spend is on the up, but it is still vastly out of sync with usage and there is a reason for that. The user sees the mobile as a device that makes their life easier, it adds value and is useful. The advertisers see mobile advertising as complex, black box and adding little value. Until we can close that gap we will continue to see mobile drag its feet. Most people like to quote tracking and reporting as the issues, I am not sure it is. Those barriers are being overcome and since the idea of fingerprinting seems to have become acceptable now in all its different forms there is a lot of scope for progress. As the big players such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter start playing seriously in mobile RTB, using persistent identity to join up screens we will see a lot of growth easily delivered. The problem in mobile is that there are so many companies who in the main all do the same up to the last 10 per cent where they each have a USP. That means we have far too many companies knocking on the door, telling tales about each other and leaving advertisers cold. If we can improve on all these areas then we will see growth and 2014 will no doubt be a good year for many and a definitive improvement on previous years.
The deadline for entering the awards is this week, with agencies entering expected to have had a UK presence for at least 6 months. The awards will be handed out on 24 April Marriott Grosvenor Square. For more information, see
The Drum Digital Trading Awards.
