By now you’ve heard that Yahoo! has agreed to acquire Right Media (read Terry Semel’s post here). This is fantastic news for both companies, Exchange members and the industry in general. Here’s why.

Yahoo! believes in the transformative power of the Exchange. As a leader on the web, it can bring our shared mission to change online advertising for the better–to create a truly efficient and fair market–even closer to fruition.

Yahoo! has been a great partner to us, continually demonstrating its commitment to the Exchange and all that it stands for–openness, fairness, greater efficiency, value and opportunity–as a fundamental vehicle for driving our industry forward. Yahoo!’s acquisition of Right Media further validates all that our company and Exchange members have worked for, and it means a bigger part of the world will understand the value of that work. This is a true milestone for the Exchange community.

The benefits of this new relationship are clear. Yahoo! will add considerably more supply and demand to the Right Media Exchange, increasing liquidity in the market and broadening the opportunity for advertisers, publishers, networks and technology providers alike to grow their businesses. The deal will also leave us with access to more resources to continue to accelerate the pace of innovation on the Exchange.

It’s important to reiterate publicly that the acquisition will in no way afford Yahoo! any unfair advantage in the Exchange. A level playing field is one of the foundations of the Exchange and its success–it remains level. The fact that the Right Media Exchange will operate as an independent division of Yahoo! ensures this.

It’s equally important to note that this is very much a milestone in the continuing story of Right Media. The entire team and I are committed to seeing our vision fulfilled, and we’re excited to continue to work to make that happen.

There’s still a lot of friction in this industry that prevents buyers and sellers from working together to everyone’s mutual benefit. I believe that the Right Media Exchange has done a lot to eliminate that friction, and this deal is a great catalyst to an even more efficient interactive ad market.

So hack day has come and gone.

It was fun and, no doubt, proved that even more time-saving, revenue increasing features could be added to make Direct Media Exchange that much more useful for our publishers.

The play-by-play follows, but I won’t tell you the winner until the end of the article. Also note: these are merely mocked-up ideas. Technological hurdles or other constraints could hinder us from actually incorporating them into the application. They may make it in, and they may not. But appreciation goes out to all those who participated: these are some great, potential features for our platform. (more…)

Like all exchanges, the Right Media Exchange’s effectiveness and usefulness is due entirely to its community of users — if there’s no one to trade with, even the most sophisticated platform has little value. We’re therefore always trying to spur trading through the Exchange through the open and transparent exchange of information. That’s why we’re pleased to announce that, as of today, we’ve added a community forum to the Right Media Exchange, open to all of our seatholders. This follows our rollout of the Direct Media Exchange, which launched with discussion forums built-in. That discussion forum, now very active, has become Direct Media Exchange’s best source for support and optimization tips.

We’re confident the Right Media Exchange’s new community forums will be a similar success. We’ll be using them to make announcements, solicit feedback, answer questions, and offer some insight into what’s coming in future releases. We’ve seamlessly integrated our forums with the rest of the Right Media Exchange; if you’re a participant, we hope you’ll stop in and start a discussion of your own.

It’s a good question to try to answer now and then, especially if you like your zzzzzs but you’re heaving too many late-night ohhhhs.

Here’s a shot at what might be troubling you if you’re responsible for sales executives calling on agencies and advertisers for ad dollars. Brood on these for a bit and we’ll deliver some insomnia relief later.

1. Unsold and undersold inventory.

It’s 3:00am and you’re reliving yesterday’s heart-pounding snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory. There you are, proudly presenting your record-breaking performance at the quarterly review. You know things are heading the wrong way when the CEO and CFO glance knowingly at each other. It falls to the finance guy to call you out:

“Why the hell are we paying ad serving fees higher than the revenue we earned on more than half a billion ad deliveries?”

2. Sales productivity.

Toss, turn … Maybe assigning one full-time rep to sell excess inventory to ad networks wasn’t such a great move. The CFO wouldn’t have cared as much if we weren’t also paying sales commissions on those deals. But he has no idea how hard it is to keep salespeople.

They all want to sell the same easy deals on the home page and section fronts. They all sell the same targeting parameters, sponsorships and rich media slots. And they leave me with tons of available inventory they say only the networks will buy.

How can I keep all my salespeople focused on selling the value of my site and audience when I have all this leftover inventory to get rid of?

3. Operational inefficiency.

Toss, turn … Then the CEO wants to know why, with all this unsold inventory, we turned away a great new advertiser and underdelivered others. He asks what we’re doing wrong? The marketing guy was a big help, telling the CEO that he delivered the users and new inventory I asked for, so he’s clear of blame. I start telling them about high-frequency impressions nobody wants, but they tune out and move on.

I ask my ad ops group for recommendations. “How about firing any sales exec who sells inventory that’s already sold?” gets the most high-fives.

Toss, turn … 3:45am … Might as well get up and start working on the problem. But where to begin? We’re making the calls, winning awards, expanding the audience, creating new products.

We need better sales training in the basics, that’s for sure. This is advertising, people. Do we understand our prospects’ marketing objectives and what they want to accomplish with their online advertising? Are we making the match between that and the value of the audience we deliver?

As for the leftover inventory, is its value really different from what we are already selling successfully? Are there tools that can help us uncover the value, bring more potential buyers to the table, and get them on board easily?

What about these ad exchanges I keep hearing about? Maybe there’s something there. Can a couple hours sleep and a couple of phone calls fix what’s ailing me?

As a company with “Media” in our name, it was a natural for me to check out the session at Web 2.0 Expo called “Media 2.0: How Web 2.0 is Transforming Traditional Media”. The following is a paraphrased look at what was said in the session.
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