Eric Picard on Networks, Exchanges and Automation
Eric Picard is clearly one of the smartest people around. Its no wonder he’s one of Microsoft’s online advertising thought leaders.
He’s providing an overview of manual vs. automated optimization, and the pros and cons of exchanges for both publishers and advertisers. Blind bidding is bad for both the advertiser and publisher.
As campaigns run, if campaign goals aren’t being met, there is a flood of data to review in order to make the appropriate changes to the marketing and creative mix. Just as goals can be translated into a media plan, they can also be translated into business rules for automation. The end result? An automated agency.
But is this a good thing? Lets turn to the panelists. However, ironically, there’s a technical snafu that held up Eric presentation, and could “de-optimize” the panel.
Strategy will continue to be done by humans. Execution and optimization will be automated. And, until we can track online ad exposure to offline conversions, we’ll still need people to place value on the media and its effectiveness in the real world.
Automation will provide more data to enable better decision making. But decision making should ultimately stay in the hands of real people. People who don’t have the strategic hat on will need to reconsider their role in the media buying and planning process.
While relationships are important, media is a commodity, and the media buying process should be more about supply and demand, and less on relationships. Automation can tremendously reduce the amount of sales friction in the buying process. The value of the impression is in the impression itself. When free markets are infiltrated by people who don’t understand the value of the media in the marketplace, people can artificially bid-up the value of the impression, which reduces the overall ROI on the marketing effort. Automated markets need to be smart, not just free.
“The most important, most valuable ad bought is the one that the buyer sees.”
Tags: automation, eric picard, exchanges, microsoft, OMMA