I applaud the 360 Tech Blog for their continual discussion of auction marketplaces and how they related to media. It’s definitely a subject we’re fond of here at Right Media, and we love more people getting educated on the possibilities of the model.

Publishers out there, how are you currently allocating your inventory?

Weighting -  This is setting the weight of each advertiser/campaign.  For example, you weight Network A with a weight of “3″, and Network B with a weight of “1″, Network A is sent impressions three times as much as Network B.  If you’re doing this, how are you deciding what weights to set?  How often are you changing it?

Percentage -  This would be deciding on a percentage of inventory to send to each network.   Same questions here, how often do you change this?  How do you decide what percentage to allocate?

Daisy Chaining - This is setting up your networks in a chain so that the top of your chain is your best network and you default impressions from one network to the next.  How often do you test networks at different spots in your chain?  Do you calculate how much you’re truly earning from your impressions?

Updated APIs:

• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Missing validation rules for size targeting have been implemented. Now size targeting is available only for campaigns and line items.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Missing validation rules for geography targeting have been implemented. Now geography targeting is available for campaigns, line items and creatives only.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Missing validation rules for daypart targeting have been implemented. Now daypart targeting is available for campaigns, creatives and line items only.
• Add back adapt_media_hex and adapt_click_hex fields to creative data type.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) An error is returned by CreativeService.add() or update() if a creative contains an invalid file marker.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Starting from this version all versions of API will use same URL namespaces in WSDL to avoid breaking C++ and Java clients on upgrades.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Missing validation rules for validated urls targeting have been implemented. Now vurl targeting is available for line items only.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Missing validation rules for querystring targeting have been implemented. Now querystring targeting is available for line items only.
• New field ‘allow_size_promotion’ in data type ‘line_item’.
• APIs LineItemService.listBySeller(), LineItemService.listByBuyer(), LineItemService.getBySeller(), LineItemService.getByBuyer() were available to SMAs only. They are available to all entities now.

Bugfixes:

• Campaign service didn’t check if pair of fields ‘description’ and ‘advertiser_entity_id’ in ‘campaign’ data type is unique.
• In some cases it was not possible to set unlimited budget for pricing types with delivery caps.
• InsertionOrderService.listBySeller returned too many IDs in some cases.
• Users could reset creative content hash to NULL in some cases (the fix in previos release was incorrect).
• CreativeService didn’t allow to set pop_expand_to_full_window to 0 for url creatives.
• CreativeService didn’t allow to set click_url to NULL in some cases when it should be allowed.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Data type ‘contact’ was exposing field ‘is_deleted’. It is removed from API now.
• Creative service didn’t allow to upload creatives with repeating file markers.

Updated documentation:

• The list of currently used SOAP toolkits and information how to build C++ examples have been added onto the example page.
• New API lookup() in all services which support integration codes.

API documentation: http://api.yieldmanager.com/doc/.

WSDLs for the beta production version:

• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/advertiser.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/campaign.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/contact.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/creative.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/insertion_order.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/line_item.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/pixel.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/publisher.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/section.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/site.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/target_profile.php?wsdl

WSDLs for the stable production version:

• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/advertiser.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/campaign.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/contact.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/creative.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/insertion_order.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/line_item.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/pixel.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/publisher.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/section.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/site.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/stable/target_profile.php?wsdl

Test version UI: http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-ui/.

WSDLs for the test version:

• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/advertiser.php?wsdl
• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/campaign.php?wsdl
• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/contact.php?wsdl
• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/creative.php?wsdl
• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/insertion_order.php?wsdl
• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/line_item.php?wsdl
• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/pixel.php?wsdl
• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/publisher.php?wsdl
• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/section.php?wsdl
• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/site.php?wsdl
• http://api-test.yieldmanager.com/test-0.19/target_profile.php?wsdl

Seth Godin has an interesting post about how competitors often feel that they’d do better if they were the only company of their type at a certain location.  His example consists of booths selling ferns at the Union Square Market (close to our New York offices by the way).

These fern booths probably feel they’d do better, but in reality it helps that it draws a crowd of people interested in those ferns, and it becomes known as the place to go to find them.

The Right Media Exchange is the same way.  I think most of our current Exchange partners understand this, but I know ad networks not involved with our exchange have wondered why they’d want to join an exchange where their competitors are already doing business.  The answer is obvious, but it’s hard for them to accept.  Because lots of other ad networks are doing business on the Right Media Exchange, it draws in more of the customers interested in ad networks, namely publishers and advertisers.

How is that a bad thing for their business to be a part of?

The 360TechBlog has a post up today about the Right Media Exchange and compares it to AdECN as well as the industry as a whole.

To tie it in, RMX Direct will be the publisher tie in to the Right Media Exchange mentioned in the post. Publishers will be able to work with networks in the exchange directly as well as manage relationships with networks who aren’t taking part in the exchange. Some might say we’re crazy for offering up the managing of outside networks who aren’t working with our exchange, but we believe in giving publishers choice and helping them make as much money as possible.