Of the many issues discussed on the panel “The Move to Auction-Based Media and the Demise of the Upfront” at ad:tech New York, one question in particular sticks with me–one that there’s no definitive answer to. It’s about resistance.

An exchange model for buying and selling non-premium inventory is logical. Its success has historical precedents. Its supporters and participants are starting to prove its value. But we need more education, and more empirical proof, to counter the push-back from those in the industry who feel threatened by the concept (more detail in an article I wrote for DM News here).

The ad:tech panel made this clear—adoption will not happen overnight.

eBay’s Howard Rosenberg described how TV, a less measurable and obviously more established medium than online, will be even slower to adopt the exchange model. While enthusiastic, he rightly explained that a lot still needs to happen. Buyers and sellers need to determine which inventory is appropriate for the auction marketplace. People need to start experimenting with the eBay platform to figure out how they’re ultimately going to use it. Question marks abound.

Yahoo!’s Todd Teresi was similarly open-ended and enthusiastic. He rightly expressed that it’s still early in the game (“… it remains to be seen where this will go. Don’t hold your breath that in the next week you’re going to see the Yahoo front page in the exchange.”), and that publishers will realize the many ways to sell efficiently with an auction system in time. With their commitment of a substantial amount of inventory to the exchange today, Yahoo!’s belief in the system is clear.

Howard also adeptly spoke to countering misperception about the model which was evidenced even in the title of the panel. He stated that an exchange will not kill the upfront. “It’s an adjunct,” he said. The two processes should work side by side. Similarly, an auction-based approach to selling non-premium inventory online will not hurt premium ad sales or devalue brands as long as publishers sell their inventory as two distinct products—one for brand advertisers and one for DR buyers. Pressing this point is crucial for broader industry adoption (more color here).

What are everyone else’s thoughts on how we can move the exchange discussion forward effectively?

(Disclaimer: Todd Teresi represents Yahoo! on Right Media’s board of directors. See related press release.)

Creative Manager was released into beta this week! This is a big improvement in creative trafficking—a better, faster, easier way to upload and edit creatives: multiple files at once!

• The grid-style display area lets you view creative properties at-a-glance: dimensions, display type, priority, description, clickURL, and file size.
• Each field is in-line editable, and the text wraps for easy viewing of lengthy descriptions and clickURLs.
• Select multiple creatives and quickly apply properties with a single click: add the same prefix (such as the trafficking date), associate creatives with the same campaign, change the display type from banner to pop, and more.
• Errors and warnings highlight in red, making mistakes simple to catch before any changes are saved, and clickURLs are immediately validated.

This initial release of the new Creative Manager supports image creatives (GIFs, JPGs, and PNGs) as well as .zip and .tar archive files containing multiple image files. Try it out!

See Trafficking multiple creatives in the Creative Manager.

We’ll be all over the place at ad:tech New York next week. On Monday, our CTO Brian O’Kelley and other technologists will put their spin on the future of online media and marketing on the panel “Technology Visionaries Sound Off.” Further evidence of our industry’s growing interest in the exchange model comes on Tuesday with “The Move to Auction-Based Media and the Demise of the Upfront,” a panel that will include Todd Teresi, Vice President of Sales Operations for our newest partner, Yahoo!

Come find us—we’ll be wearing our blue “bound together” bracelets—a statement on the power of the Right Media Exchange community.

Visit the ad:tech site

You may have caught our two ‘daisy-chaining’ posts earlier, and the explanations of why it just doesn’t apply anymore when you’re part of RMX. Along with ‘daisy-chaining’, ‘weighting’ is another strategy web publishers have used to monetize their sites: basically, it’s dividing your ratio of impressions amongst different networks in relation to the CPM they each deliver.

Ok, a word on this other strategy:

If ad network #1 is paying a $1.00 CPM, and ad network #2 is paying a .50 CPM, you might send two impressions to network #1, and one impression to network #2. Why? Because you want to get more chances to make more money…and #1 seems pays more on average.

That was the basic premise behind this. It was a way to leverage your bets. And it helped you monetize more efficiently.

Right?

Maybe not. (more…)