The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

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By Stephen Lepitak | -

May 31, 2016 | 3 min read

Guardian US CEO, Eamonn Store, and one of the judges at the inaugural Digital Trading Awards in the USA, discusses on of the key areas of debates in the ad tech sector in 2016.

The Guardian US' header bidding strategy will be determined by the reader experience over everything else, the newspaper's chief executive has promised.

Speaking to The Drum while promoting his sponsorship of the inaugural The Drum Digital Trading Awards US, taking place in New York later this year, Store discussed the company's experimentation with the digital advertising format, adding his belief that conversation around header bidding was more prevalent in the US than in the UK.

"For the Guardian US, programmatic isn’t like an and/or thing. Its not like direct and programmatic are separate"" he stated. "For us programmatic is weaved through everything we do. Whenever we are trading with partners of clients, often programmatic is the engine through which the solutions are delivered.

"Whether that is through branded content or direct digital buys, the agencies are now looking increasingly for PMPs [private marketplaces] or digital solutions that will last them across the whole breadth of campaigns. so for us now, it’s a growing part of our business that is critical to the future of what we do."

Store continued to discuss header bidding, a maturing digital advertising format, and how the newspaper planned to explore the opportunities it brought to commercial partners.

"The header bidding conversation is more advanced than it is in the UK. It's a question that is coming up with more frequency from our agency partners. The important thing for us to test is to understand the impact of header bidding from a reader experience and we need to convince ourselves that from a reader’s perspective there is no latency or any kind of areas that in any way prove detrimental to the reader experience. Only once we get passed that stage will we look at it as a viable commercial proposition."

The Guardian US is one of the sponsors of The Drum Digital Trading Awards US, which is open for entry at the moment, with the aim of celebrating the best digital buying strategies across America.

Deadline for entry is 3 June with the winners being announced at a ceremony taking place on Wednesday 21 September at the Edison Ballroom in New York. Store's fellow judges include: Mack McElvie, CEO of SalientMG; Trevor Johnson, director of global agency development for Facebook; Jana Jakovljevic, head of programmatic solutions for Spotify, and Joe Kowan, head of programmatic worldwide for Group M Connect among several others.

The Drum Digital Trading Awards USA are held in association with Media iQ and partnered by The Trade Desk, OpenX, the Guardian US; and the 4A’s. The awards recognize programmatic performance and are open for entry at digitaltradingawards.com

Eamonn Store Header Bidding Technology

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