Balancing short term demands with long term strategy

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As the digital landscape evolves so the companies within it have to adapt as well, but actually we all live in a short term world. Both publishers and agencies have their work cut out for different reasons but all too often good strategic decisions are being strangled by short term demands. This challenge has never been more obvious than right now.

I have been talking daily to organisations both in our group and externally about how we plan and adapt for the future, we can all see the major digital portals for instance having to sit and scratch their heads a little about dealing with the here and now but planning for the future. Take a Yahoo or a Microsoft, they have both embraced the new world of exchanges and yet somehow want or need to protect their network offerings, the two don’t sit easily in reality. As strategies they should be rewarded in their approach of embracing the exchange world, but instead they are under pressure to deliver their targets based on a 2010 estimation, when the world was entirely different. Was it that different? Were we not all talking about exchanges etc back then? Well yes we were but the spend was not backing up the rhetoric, 2011 is a different story. Audience On Demand, as the biggest exchange trader in the UK has accelerated incredibly, and that growth is having an impact. Look at Specific Media who but a year ago was recruiting staff and buying Myspace and a few short months later is making redundancies, that’s how quickly things move.

We are though at a juncture, and it’s for that reason we need some patience from the bean counters. 2010 did not properly represent the Exchange growth, 2011 is closer to the truth but 2012 will be big. As the long tail of Ad Nets is absorbed into the more focused addressable media hubs and digital consolidation continues, the likes of the Yahoo or Microsofts will begin to see the benefits of the exchange infrastructure and will be able to let go of the old DR network approach. They will start to reap the spends that once went to the Ad Nets, but this time via exchanges.

It is refreshing to see the strategy Yahoo are playing out in the us. There was an article today in fact on this in Adage – click here. They are going to take a hit in the US with their strategy of blocking the Ad Nets, Criteos and others from buying their inventory. Yes short term that is going to hurt them, longer term its a great move and will pay back undoubtedly. We are seeing a significant adjustment in the digital ecosystem.

Agencies are evaluating just as fast, less from a revenue perspective, more from a structural perspective. If you designed an agency today, would you do it the same? I doubt it and yet the upheaval required sometimes makes people think twice and come up with a number of reasons why they should not do something even though in the longer run it makes perfect sense. This requirement to change however on agencies and publishers comes from a number of key trends;

consolidation of digital, we have all seen the stats that show the big digital companies control a huge percentage of the total spend and audience, even within the exchange space you are dealing with a few big partners. I believe that clients are starting to see a new digital landscape that is not 40 sites on a plan. They are realising that actually they can achieve almost all they need with API buying, Audience On Demand and Search, its a shift, everyone is looking for scale and efficiencies.

Globalisation of media and advertising. Most pitches are becoming global, not all, the recent in for ZenithOptimedia of RBS proves that, but many are. As such as the clients think more globally then they look to the agencies to do the same, and the more you think like that the more the scale partners of Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Facebook etc become important to them and us.

Commoditisation drives value. This is an interesting development for me. Years of being told by Microsoft and Yahoo etc that their inventory is ‘premium’ has rarely been backed up by any real insight except their own research. Now we have commoditisated huge swathes of inventory through DSPs and exchanges we are being able to see what value inventory has and what performs. We see the volumes of money we spend with these companies through the DSPs and what eCPM we pay for them, none of this is determined by a person or a power point slide or negotiation. Tech has decided, results have decided and demand has decided and the patterns are very interesting indeed. After millions of pounds of spend through Audience On Demand we now see the true value of inventory and yet it has never been more commoditised.

Technology is in fashion. Of course tech has always been in fashion but never more so than now. It has been developed for agencies in a meaniful way. Demand Side Platforms for exchange trading, Bid optimisation platforms for search and API buying, these things have been designed to help us drive efficiencies and improve performance and we really see the opportunity now. It’s brutally competitive though and VivaKi have decided to work with the best partners and then develop tech that links all those partners up providing an interface to work with, this we see as the great opportunity, if you then add that to new streamlined teams and workflow, you have a heady mix that can deliver fantastic performance and service.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us with a lot to do and we need more people to take up the challenge and either drive the change through their organisations or give the people who have to do it a break so they can work through this transition. The end result though is the ship has sailed, the change is underway and we need to embrace it or become a dinosaur.

Festival Inspirational Madrid

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Yesterday I flew to Madrid for the Festival Inspirational, Spain’s largest digital event run by the IAB in Spain. I was asked by the Spanish team to present their amazing project of The Pool. It was a privilige to be invited as so many great people worked on it in Spain so it was important to try and do it justice.

The project has been run over ten months and involved no less than 10 leading advertisers and the same amount of publishers. These were the top three publishers from broadcast, news and the digital pure plays. They all worked together on the project and that was unique in itself, companies that normally work in competition all working together. The great benefit of everyone working together like this was the fact the meetings became a great opportunity for the partners to share and learn from each other.

The event itself http://www.festivalinspirational.com was huge with 1800 delegates, a truly inspiring gathering of digital professionals, I was given the last slot before lunch so really wanted to make sure we delivered something succinct and interesting. The presentation contained an overview of The Pool project globally and then focused on the Spanish project.

When you see how The Pool can work, it is truly impressive and I look forward to getting the results back from the UK Lane and being able to present in a similar fashion in the UK and hopefully with some support from the IAB..

VivaKi Nerve Center: The Pool field trial goes live

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Its taken some time I cant deny but we are now live with a great array of publishers and clients. Heineken, Samsung, O2 working with Microsoft, Youtube and Channel4 – that is not something you see often! Its really exciting and the subject of choice formats is never so relevant. The ASq, VivaKi’s own video Ad format has now been fully researched in US, China, Spain and is going to be in France, making it the most research format on the planet. The VivaKi clients and beyond VivaKi clients will be able to choose the ASq safe in the knowledge that it will be good for their clients and the publishers will also deliver a great user experience.

As we move through the initial trials and results the plan will be to roll out to other publishers and really make a consistent format cross publisher and indeed cross markets for our advertisers. Below is the coverage in NMA yesterday with some input from Ed Couchman from Channel4.

Channel 4, YouTube and Microsoft trial ad selector video ads with Heineken and O2

Channel 4, YouTube and Microsoft are the first UK publishers to launch trials of an ad format that lets viewers pick which ad they want to watch from multiple brands ahead of video-on-demand content.

The three-slate ad selector format, called ASq, has been developed by Vivaki as part of The Pool, its global research project kick started last year to identify the best ad format for the online industry (nma.co.uk 7 October 2010).

Advertisers Heineken, O2 and Samsung are the first to run campaigns using the format across the three publisher platforms, the latter of which will have exclusive use of the ad-selector format for six weeks. Vivaki will then work with ComScore to examine consumer response to the ads, including metrics, such as brand recall, view-through rates and intent-to-purchase, ahead of a full market roll out next year.

Vivaki has already established the ASq three-slate format as a standard in the US, where 30 publishers are running the format, according to Vivaki Nerve Centre’s MD of EMEA Marco Bertozzi (pictured). He said the format has seen strong results in the US market, adding that results have shown 300-400% increases spanning across metrics including view-through rates, purchase intent and brand recall.

“This is the first time three major publishers and three of the UK’s leading clients have been brought together to work on such a project and we are really excited about the results and moving towards better monetisation of the space,” said Bertozzi.

Channel 4’s commerical controller of Future Media and Advertising Ed Couchman said ASq roll out marks the latest iteration of its existing ad selector format Ad Elect, which allows viewers to choose which ad to watch from different creatives from the same brand. Adidas, M&S and Red Bull were among the first brands to sign up for the format earlier this year (nma.co.uk 3 March 2011).

Couchman said the new format ties in with its strategy to offer advertisers a different “creative canvas” beyond driving incremental reach to TV campaigns.

Meanwhile YouTube revealed its own in-slate video ad format in the UK a few months ago. However, The Pool trials represent a collaborative effort to understand the effectiveness of the selector format over the traditional pre-roll format. All three publishers will use campaigns from the same advertisers Heineken, O2 and Samsung.

Link to story is here

My piece in Exchangewire on AOD going mobile

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Marco Bertozzi Discusses The Vivaki Mobile Partnership With Google, RTB In Mobile And The Rollout In Europe
Posted: November 10th, 2011 | Author: ExchangeWire

Marco Bertozzi is Managing Director EMEA at Vivaki Nerve Center. Here he discusses the Vivaki mobile partnership with Google, RTB in mobile and how to execute mobile buys as well as track performance without the cookie.

Can you give some overview on the recently announced mobile partnership with Google?

In November 2010 we renewed a long-standing partnership with Google, and in doing so we announced our intention to scale video and mobile display advertising on Audience on Demand™ (AOD). Over the past summer we have successfully beta-tested AOD video with a number of major clients and launched this in market a couple of weeks ago.

The latest announcement signals the advent of AOD mobile and initially means AOD will be given access to AdMob mobile advertising inventory through Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange. As AdMob publishers and developers make their inventory available on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, AOD, which has been testing the new model, will be able to buy the mobile ads for marketers in real time. The ads will run inside mobile games, news apps and content.

It will help us deliver the AOD standard to our agency’s clients as we bring mobile to scale, and will provide us with unprecedented insight into the operational elements, targeting, the creative assets that work best in this environment and importantly how mobile ad serving is embraced by the consumer.

What inventory will you be running campaigns across? Will it all be apps based?

Apps (avia admob) and mobile inventory via DFP are being leveraged in this particular instance. We will also be incorporating additional inventory from other sources, but in the very near term, the focus is on AdX’s new capabilities and gleaning a clean, in-depth understanding of the opportunities it presents for clients.

Does VivaKi see mobile as a pure DR channel?

Not at all. All clients want to reach the right consumer at the right time. Mobile, Video, Display, Search, etc… – all of these have value to clients. It’s our job to help our clients unlock this, which is a fundamental objective of our addressability strategy as an organization. AOD is all about reaching the right people at the right time on the right screen. We have seen clients across all sectors leverage mobile so far, and as we can bring the targeting, trust, and scalability to this addressable side of the mobile marketplace, we expect to continue to see such adoption by all clients.

That being said, we do expect clients with performance-based metrics to be amongst the first to test and develop strong POVs. That has been and will always be their nature. But it does not mean mobile is a DR channel.

Will we see significant volumes of mobile buying from VivaKi in the European market?

Our approach is to connect the buyers (clients) with the sellers (publishers and conduits) in the marketplace as demand warrants. The European marketplace is large and sees variation within different regions – it’s developing for display of all sorts and every market is moving at a different pace. Audience On Demand™ is technically ready to go and we will move as fast as the demand and supply.

I’m anticipating that the UK will pick up very quickly – there is huge demand on all sides so this should be very rapid and I know our AOD teams in France, Spain and the Netherlands are also keen to get going so this should also progress quickly.

The benefit of having a streamlined approach and structure across EMEA is the ability to share learning rapidly and benefit from this. Paul Silver, our Head of Product for AOD UK will be working with other markets to enable fast roll-out.

How are you buying? Will you trade through Invite? Are you buying in real-time? Is that possible?

VivaKi is technology neutral and our primary goal is to support client needs. We recognize that AdX is not the only source for mobile activity and Invite Media is not the only DSP to access mobile inventory and support targeting and campaign management. We are currently in discussions with other inventory sources and platforms to support mobile, which we expect to be available in early 2012.

This is entirely about real-time buying in the mobile space, so yes – it is possible and it is possible at scale with AdX. This is what we’re eager to better understand and see what “truths” we’ve developed on other channels translate to mobile and what new “truths” we uncover.

How difficult it is to target across mobile inventory without a universal cookie? When the cookie is not available, what targeting parameters are you using?

This is something that has been and will continue to be a hurdle relative to other channels. The ideal state that most desire is one where frequency and actions on other channels can inform decisions in the mobile channel. This ideal state is not a reality (yet), though there are means to incorporate insights from other channels to power decisions made on the mobile channel. For example – the context of the page, the geography of the impression, and the time of day are factors common across all channels. We have strong insights about how these factors influence advertising results and we incorporate those into our campaigns on all channels. So although targeting consumers across multiple channels and having each feed the other in real-time isn’t here yet, using what we’ve learned elsewhere to make a smart decision in the mobile channel is something we’re very confident in doing.

Is there still a big issue around tracking campaigns through the mobile channel given the lack of an established mobile ad server?

Tracking in mobile is still a challenge, and every honest participant in this industry will tell you so. The not so honest participant will try to confuse you with where cookies can be set vs. where they cannot be set – it is not at parity with the standard display space. The mobile channel also has the added complexity of the in-app tracking vs. the mobile web tracking, which are at a different places with regards to tracking.

The mobile standards such as the newly released MRAID will go along way with technology providers going down the same path. We are actively working with several partners to develop and also explore best in class solutions that will benefit our advertisers from a tracking and reporting perspective while respecting consumer privacy. We are looking to quickly close this gap so that we can introduce to our clients a standard measure for mobile and scale their use.

Can we expect to see other integrations with other mobile inventory sources, like the Microsoft ad exchange, in the coming months?

Without a doubt – those conversations and opportunities are already happening.

Campaign Forum piece on Fru Hazlitt AOP speech

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Marco Bertozzi in Campaign Magazine Forum section 26.10.11

After the presentation by Fru Hazlitt at the AOP forum I was asked to to comment on the idea that data was suffocating clients. Almost all people I spoke to felt the same, Fru had hit the wrong note at the wrong time and that she and ITV were out of touch with what people actually wanted. Data is one of the biggest subjects at the moment and a crucially important planning tool.

The fact remains that ITV dont want to lose control of their VOD and the idea of programmatic buying and exchanges threatens that situation. However they need to look to their competitors in Sky and C4 to see their innovation..article below

Vivaki Nerve Center Partnerships with Evidon and Weborama

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I thought I would add in the releases around Evidon and Weborama in case some people are not subscribed to the various news sources. They are exciting partnerships, Evidon in the area of privacy and Weborama around data, tech and inventory used to power Audience On Demand in EMEA. So many data and tech partners are US, this partnerships adds to our approach of partnering with people rather than demanding or bullying them into working together.

Vivaki Nerve Center partners with Weborama in European deal
Mark Banham, 25 October 2011, 10:56am

Vivaki’s research and development arm Nerve Centre has formed a Europe-wide strategic partnership with emarketing and behavioural targeting company Weborama.

Weborama will provide local media, data and technology across Europe for VivaKi Nerve Center’s Audience On Demand (AOD) trading desk, which focuses on the digital display media exchange space.
The company currently has partnerships with Vivaki agencies in France and Spain and the extended strategic partnership will cover all key European countries where including the UK, Netherlands and Germany.

Vivaki Nerve Center currently has existing global partnerships with Google and Microsoft.
Marco Bertozzi, EMEA managing director for Vivaki Nerve Center, said: “Our strategy has always been to deliver a consistent global approach to AOD, partnering with the strongest local companies to deliver the most advanced data solutions for our clients.
“In the exchange environment too many companies offer data and inventory either locally on a country specific basis, or globally.
“Weborama has a unique offer providing advanced technologies and the very best data, as demonstrated by their recent partnership with hi-media, across Europe. This ensures we really are delivering the best solutions for our clients.”

Alain Levy, chief executive of Weborama, said: “This partnership with the Vivaki Nerve Center will allow us to leverage the success stories we’ve had with the agencies in France and Spain and to extend the relationship to other European countries where we operate.

“Vivaki has been at the forefront of the ad trading game with the Audience On Demand platform, they’ve pushed us forward to deliver the best possible technology, data and media solutions to their clients, so we look forward to expanding this successful relationship with them.”

Earlier this month, Vivaki Nerve Center turned to Evidon to offer its clients the ability to ensure their online ads comply with the EU ePrivacy Directive in the UK and throughout Europe.

Evidon partnership

VivaKi strikes online ad compliance partnership
By Daniel Farey-Jones, brandrepublic.com, 10 October 2011, 04:11PM

VivaKi, the digital media arm of Publicis Groupe, has turned to Evidon to offer its clients the ability to ensure their online ads comply with the EU ePrivacy Directive in the UK and throughout Europe.

Smart Agencies Understand the Partnership Imperative

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In the time I have been writing for this blog, I have worked substantially with Google. The VivaKi Nerve Center are tasked with identifying key partners in their role of being the future facing R&D division of VivaKi. Google are one of our major Partners and because of this I invited Google to write my 100th blog post and to talk about the importance of partnership in this new media landscape that is evolving into a tech driven business rather than just a media one.

Simon Birkenhead of Google, Global Agency Leader for Publicis has kindly submitted the below post and I must thank Simon and the brave Comms team down at Google for letting him loose on my amateur blog!

Smart Agencies understand the Partnership Imperative

In January 2008, Maurice Levy, CEO of Publicis Groupe, and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, shook hands on the terrace of the Publicis building overlooking the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Their agreement, to join forces and partner in the deployment of new digital advertising technologies, kickstarted a radical transformation in the way that large agencies work with technology companies.

For decades agencies have been the masters of delivering effective advertising campaigns at the best possible value for their clients. A key strategy to achieve this was to maintain an arm’s length (some would say, adversarial) relationship with media owners to preserve objectivity and a strong negotiating position. The slow pace of true innovation in traditional media meant there was little pressure for this to change: agencies’ fluency in offline media required little 2-way interaction with media owners beyond discussions over pricing and tactical proposals.

However, the explosive growth of digital marketing over the past decade, and the associated emergence of Silicon Valley’s fast-moving technology companies, has instigated an urgent reappraisal of this adversarial mindset by the leaders of the world’s largest agencies. The increasing importance of data analytics as a key component of agencies’ service offering, combined with the lightning-paced evolution and technical complexity of the new digital marketing platforms, means that a closer working dynamic with technology companies is no longer an experimental initiative, it has become a business imperative.

When Maurice met with Eric in Paris in January 2008, which was also around the time I joined Google, Google’s product suite was largely limited to Search and our display network. Just three and a half years later, the conversations I have with agencies now cover mobile, online video, social, ad exchanges, global ad-serving platforms, rich media advertising, DSPs, analytics, real-time insights tools, data platforms and even enterprise software.

The pace & scale of change is truly mind-blowing:
● In 2008 Search accounted for just 3% of all media investment in the US and Western Europe. Just 3 years later this has tripled to ~9%. In UK, Search now represents at least 15% of all ad spend.
● Android has grown from zero to over 550,000 new activations per day in 3 years and, with iOS, is radically transforming how advertisers can engage with customers through mobile devices
● YouTube now streams 3 billion video views per day, double the volume just 18 months ago
● Facebook, Twitter & Google+ together have close to 1BN users globally, 50% of whom log on every day, half of these through mobiles
● In just 18 months, Ad Exchanges, DSPs and Agency Trading Desks have revolutionized the way display media is bought, challenging the business models for hundreds of existing display networks
● Google announced over 350 major new products or feature changes over the last 12 months alone, an average 7 per week. (To see what these were, visit http://www.google.com/newproducts)

As a Googler, with full access to our internal resources, it is a huge challenge to maintain my own knowledge of all these technologies and the associated opportunities they afford marketers and agencies. For agency account leaders, planners and buyers, who also have to be fluent in a similar suite of products from dozens of other digital companies in addition to all forms of traditional media, it has become truly impossible to remain true media ‘experts’. Every new layer of complexity created by technology evolution creates an even deeper requirement to nurture and build strong external partnerships. As Rishad Tobaccowala of VivaKi recently commented, “The world is too complex and moving too fast for any one company or team to do it all. We need to train people who are cross-bred and hybrid and who are willing to work together.” Tight-knit day-to-day collaboration at account team level with technology companies like Google have now become a necessity for agencies to keep up with all the potential options for connecting advertisers with their customers.

Many advertisers have also come to the same conclusion. A key component of many major media pitches recently has been the requirement for agencies to demonstrate the strength of their partnerships with Google and other players in the digital ecosystem, and how they can use these relationships to deliver additional value to their clients.

Smart agency leaders like Jack Klues, Laura Desmond and Steve King have realised that a close global partnership with Google would help their agencies to stay ahead. Today our global partnerships with VivaKi, Starcom Mediavest and ZenithOptimedia deliver immense value beyond the technology collaboration originally envisaged by Maurice & Eric in January 2008:
● Our industry experts provide deep insights into consumer & market trends that illuminate new consumer engagement opportunities for agencies, enabling their clients to lead rather than follow
● Our display, mobile & video experts work with agencies to create innovative, high impact campaigns for advertisers by pushing the boundaries of what is technologically possible
● Our product managers help agencies to understand and prepare for new marketing opportunities generated by technology change
● The joint research studies we publish each year with agencies deepen our understanding of consumer behaviour in this new digital realm and deliver the proof points needed to encourage advertisers to leverage these new opportunities
● Our training initiatives and digital media certification programmes, covering everyone from the top CEO to entry-level graduates, are helping the agencies to maximise the ROI from their digital campaigns and keep their teams operating efficiently and effectively
● Our ongoing partnership with VivaKi’s Audience on Demand trading desk is helping agencies & their clients to improve the performance of their digital campaigns through superior buying processes.

Yet despite all this, as I talk to agency leaders around the world, both inside & outside of Publicis, I still occasionally get asked what the value is to an agency from working with Google.

Agency leaders who have not yet figured this out, who are not actively encouraging their account teams to build a deep collaborative partnership with Google, may soon discover they are at a significant disadvantage to their competitors in this fast-changing market.

Simon Birkenhead is Google’s Global Business Leader for Publicis Groupe

A week at The VivaKi Nerve Center

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A week at The Vivaki Nerve Center

Monday

An early meeting with the WW CEO of ZenithOptimedia to discuss how the market is shaping up and what can be expected of 2012. As the conference season starts I am being pulled in a number of directions to make sure everyone who needs the latest info has it!

Later that morning a call with the boss, Curt Hecht, it’s a about planning stage and we discuss what we need to get done for 2012 and how we will work with the agencies. A lot of progress in 2011 for VivaKi and The VivaKi Nerve Center and so it makes for some great conversations for next year. More than ever we will be a very European organisation which is achievement in itself. a series of meetings with the major EMEA markets all to be planned.

A session on contracts, which seems to take up a lot of time at the moment, but we are making real progress with a number of contracts signed that will help power The Pool, Partnerships and AOD.

End the day back at the WW CEO’s office to finalise some notes for the conference and its my turn to start to prepare for the Exchangewire ATS event where I am on a panel with Nigel Gilbert from Orange, Gurman from MediaIQ, Breadon from AOL, Martin from infectious and hosted by Zuzanna at Microsoft. Will be a good day I am sure.

In the evening, I went to the Appnexus / Microsoft drinks and met with the founder of Appnexus, the new head of Microsoft, Andy Hart and a number of others. Bumped into Jakob of GroupM, always a pleasure and we had a little catch up and then I had to leave for dinner with Quantcast and Exchangewire down at BerryBros.

As usual you learn something on these nights and having spoken to a number of people from other groups, its clear to me that VivaKi are the most integrated and aligned group in this space, working hand and glove with the agencies. I hope over time this pays dividends for us all.

Tuesday – ATS Day

Arriving at the event really makes you see how far things have moved on in the last year. Ciaran’s first one was a big event but this really surpassed itself with 400+ guests. Unfortunately as the day went on it became clear that again it lacked publishers and advertisers. The more I think about this though, the more I think, why should they be there?

Morning sessions were OK but lacked direction, more moderation, different questioners and less keynotes would have improved the morning session. Keynotes fund these events but I feel having Mediamath and Rubicon and Appnexus all doing a turn is perhaps excessive.

Microsoft did a great session, slick presentation and I think surprised everyone, he even presented an Apple Ad, which was the talk of the Twittersphere..

The afternoon panel I was on was billed to be controversial, I knew it would not be, for two reasons. The first is we have said this before and the second is that people in the audience don’t want to stand out and make issues. The bigger these events become the more polite they will become. I had a couple of key themes I wanted to get across around the whole Ad Trading Desks.

1. We are not an Ad Network
2. We will cut back on Ad Network spend
3. We will be aiming to centralise all retargeting and we think it’s the right thing to do
4. We work with a number of DSPs just not in the UK and we know what is what

I made all of these statements as well as suggesting Ad Nets use client data across their campaigns and received no resistance so, if it was not controversial, it was not because of me! Feedback has been that it was too about positioning of each others company etc but you go where the questions take you.

All in all though, a good day, got to catch up with some great people from around the business and generally enjoyed it all.

Wednesday

We march on with an exciting morning meeting with a large European company that is soon to become Vivak’s first VNC Partner in EMEA. We have of course high profile relations with Microsoft and Google as well as other US companies, but this is the first at scale. We worked through the opportunities, what we need to do together and how we can help each other, a great start to Wednesday and we look forward to releasing that news soon.

Later that day, I 100% focused on The Pool. We have been delayed on this but we are ready to go again, very exciting, there is other info on The Pool elsewhere on my blog Later this year I am presenting at the IAB conference on Spain the results of the Spanish Lane and some of the work that’s been going on in the US, I am really excited about the results that have come from this work.

We have three great publisher partners and already two major clients so things are looking great in that regard, there will be more to come on that subject shortly.

The day ends meeting a team of senior Google Product managers who are trying to work with us to provide insight to power Audience On Demand. It’s these meetings that the Google partnership is founded on, not media spend and discounts. It was a really interesting session and we learned alot about what is coming up. Invite will be a very powerful proposition.

Thursday

A quieter day on the meetings and valuable time to catch up. I did meet up with the CEO of Vindico and team who have big ambitions in the UK. We work with them on The Pool and they are a great outfit. Its time we need to get over the control issue around video adserving, we have been through this once with display and its time we moved on when it comes to video. We are used to substandard, early 2000 type tracking and reporting which is not acceptable.

Friday

A chance to discuss everything we have been doing and seeing this week. A morning appointment with a client with a brief to talk them through all the things The Vivaki Nerve Center are working on, went brilliantly and we will be doing some great work I hope. They showed the kind of interest in innovation that makes it all worth while.

A run for the train from glamorous Slough with just enough time to read the placard under the stuffed dog at the station and down to Microsoft to present to their regional scale display teams and talk about the importance of agency trading desks. Quite a turn out and some great questions from the group, I hope we can act on some of the discussions and continue to grow our global partnership.

I end the week with some time to keep up momentum with The Pool, discuss with thepaulsilver the final touches of an exciting launch next week and what I am going to do when he is on holiday!