Angus McDonald, Managing Director at emerge Digital, explores why Australian publishers should follow a Darwin-esque approach to online advertising

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Change is uncomfortable, unfamiliar and not without pain but the result is usually pretty positive. As an adaptable species, you’d have thought we’d have learnt that by now and embraced change at every opportunity.

However, Charles Darwin’s quote is very apt for the change that is currently taking place in the Digital Media Display (DMD) industry. Real-Time-Bidding, the volcano of that change, has altered sales models DMD in the US and Europe, and my money’s on Australia being the next market to erupt this year.

Let’s look at the local landscape: large, independent premium publishers in Australia are selling inventory at high CPMs (relative to North American peers) to brands who want to be associated with premium content in premium environments. Sales teams are successful so why commoditise the sales proposition?

Data, RTB and changing media dynamics

Most Australian publishers we speak to are observing new risks to their business models that they had not anticipated. Namely, Ad Exchanges were dying but they’ve been reinvigorated by RTB and the most powerful catalyst of them all: DATA. Unintended leaks of data are flowing from Australian publishers’ sites through third party ad tags every day and, the change is that it’s falling into the hands of organisations like ad networks that use it against the publisher by targeting advertisers directly with a publisher’s audience data on cheaper inventory. In this way they are stealing advertising budgets from the premium publisher.

Change to a (global) solution?

Australian publishers naturally turn to their trusted global technology vendor partnerships for independent advice about a solution to manage this new dynamic that reduces the power of the publisher to manage the value of its own inventory.

The global technology vendor rubs its hands and confirms there is indeed a solution: join our ad exchange, and sell this new way before it’s too late. However, these same vendors are busy playing both sides of the fence selling ads to advertisers and aggregating inventory from publishers, while collecting user behavioral data along the way to “improve targeting”. If content is king, then the collation of this data gradually weakens the premium audience proposition, which has hitherto sustained the large publishers sales strategy.

Power to the publisher

The easy solution would be to join a global vendor’s ad exchange and make the pain go away.

But if we look back to Darwin’s quote, they would only remain the strongest or the most intelligence until the next competitor or competitive platform came along. It’s survival with a shelf-life.

Essentially, his theory would suggest Australian publishers embrace the change as part of their own business strategy. This might come in the form of their own ad exchange; a platform which lets the publisher, set the rules of how and when they sell their ad inventory and audience data and helps them keep control of their unique selling proposition, their audience.

That’s the Darwin approach to survival in online advertising.

Angus McDonald will be speaking at the ExchangeWire Ad Trading Summit (ATS) event in Sydney on March 13.

Learn How Media Buying Is Changing at ATS Sydney March 13 – EarlyBird Tickets Now Available to ATS Sydney March 13

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About Emerge Digital www.emergedigital.com

Emerge Digital is founded and staffed by seasoned ad technology experts and work with leading technology companies from around the world to bring ad exchange and data management technology solutions, which are serviced and supported in Australia, to Australian publishers.