The death of the ad network continues to be greatly exaggerated. They still have strong market share in the UK, and Europe - and are still making lots of money (Vegas, anyone?). But the arrival of DSPs and trading desks are slowly eating into the chunky ad network margin. Those that simply live off the fat of the arbitrage are going to be hit hardest. Those that add real value through tech, optimisation and data insight will prosper. Ad nets in specific verticals will probably do best. They will have a unique understanding of their market and audience, which agencies and advertisers are still going to need. The Digital Partnership is an example of a vertical network that leverages its B2B audience data to deliver a compelling ad net proposition. ExchangeWire spoke to Jon Vick (@JonnyVick) last week about the TDP proposition, and how it's fitting into the evolving media buying landscape.

Can you give an overview of TDP offering?

JV: TDP (The Digital Partnership) is a B2B specialist ad network that focuses on transparency and data-driven targeting. For advertisers TDP has 2 core channels:

- TDP's Premium Business Network. This channel focuses on transparency, with full visibility on where campaigns will run.
- The Premium Network combines highly targeted sector specific sites from some of the UK's largest B2B publishing houses, with niche independent B2B publishers.
- TDP's Data-Driven Audience Targeted Network. Within this channel advertisers can break down exactly who they want to target by specific business demographics, such as industry, company size, seniority and more. For B2B publishers, TDP offers highly relevant B2B campaigns at higher than average network CPM’s. In addition, publishers can create a new revenue stream, by sharing non-identifiable user data, which TDP will use to target across our network.

How would you differentiate your model from a typical ad network in the market?

JV: TDP is now in our third year of business. From day one, when the network landscape was already a crowded place, we not only wanted to differentiate ourselves by being the first B2B specific network, but also a fully transparent network. Two years on and with the overlay of our data-driven channel, we have firmly cemented our position as the network of choice for B2B campaigns, both brand and DR.

Can you explain how the TDP business audience targeting works – and the extent of the business data you have available to target B2B campaigns against?

JV: TDP's data-driven targeting works primarily via the Bizo platform. Roughly 18 months ago, we came across Bizo through one of the publishers we work with and for obvious reasons realised we should be working together in the UK.

Raw data comes to TDP in 3 ways, once a publisher becomes part of our network and implements the relevant data tags:

- Registration Data: Upon user log-in or sign-up, the publisher passes TDP the visitor’s registration data. TDP then cleanses, anonymizes and normalizes the registration data, so that it can be safely used on the internet.
- Proprietary IP Conversion: When a visitor on one of TDP’s publishers lands on a web page, the platform looks up the referring IP Address. This can provide data on segments such as company size and industry.
- Vertically Specific Publishers: Many of TDP’s publishers are narrowly focused on a specific vertical, for example construction. Users who are not registered to a site are “defaulted” into the functional area.

The final step in the data creation process involves Bizo’s algorithms which combine the three data types and works to erase any duplication’s. The data is then converted into targetable cookies and passed to our ad server, to then target users with relevant ads.

We now have targetable B2B data in the UK on almost 8 million users.

Your proprietary business-focused audience data is a key part of your offering. But is TDP likely to make its segments available to DSPs and other ad traders looking for third-party data?

JV: Currently our proprietary data is not being sold to third-parties. However, TDP is in discussion with all the major trading desks and DSP’s in the UK and will in the near future make the data available.

A recent ComScore survey suggests that increasing amounts of ad budget are being put through DSPs, agency-side trading desks and DEMs in the UK market? Is the ad network model under threat?

JV: As we all know, the agency holding companies are making a big move into this space, so inevitably some ad networks are under threat. We still believe, particularly within B2B and HNW, that there will continue to be a strong demand for contextually relevant, site specific buys and therefore niche ad networks, with the right approach to transparency. Take this week as an example. We have had sign off on 2 large SME focused campaigns from tier one agencies (both with access to in house trading desks). Both campaigns are very site specific, right down to the ad tags and volume per site and include solus emails and channel sponsorship. With bookings such as these and a constant flow of similar briefs coming through the door, it still feels like a fully automated world is a long way off, at least for this level of targeting. However, not all our campaigns are managed in the same way as these, particularly on the DR side. The key for us moving forward is the targetable data we have access to and our relationships with the B2B publishers. We expect our model will adjust naturally and new relationships will be built, as the demand for B2B data becomes apparent in the ad trading mix.

What will UK ad networks need to do to remain competitive? Is it better technology? Better targeting, optimisation and audience insight?

JV: I think definitely all of the above. Although, with the funding available to the agency holding companies and the likes of Google, a technology approach is going to be very competitive. Audience insight is probably the best way to describe our approach to remaining competitive. We are continuing to educate and extend our relationships with our publisher partners. We do this by helping them to leverage their data, to better target their own users internally. At the same time we create a new revenue stream for our publishers, with data based audience buys via TDP. We feel that other niche networks with a strong presence in a particular area, whether it’s automotive or technology, should be pursuing a similar strategy.

Ad nets have been looking to revamp their model of late. Some have decided to develop their own DSP technology; while others, like Orange, have opted to build out an exchange proposition? Will this trend continue – and has TDP any plans to roll out a B2B automated market?

JV: I do think that this is a trend that will continue. As I mentioned previously, we can foresee that TDP’s model could naturally change over time into more of a data exchange, if the demand is there. We expect this will be the same within other networks. In the broad consumer space and with the likes of Google increasing their bid for display domination, (with their acquisition of Invite Media and recent watch this space campaign), I would say it is unlikely that many UK networks will succeed labelled just as a DSP. Agencies will, if they haven't already, make their choice and stick with it. If it's not an internal trading desk or DSP, then there are already some big players out there to choose from.

Building our own automated B2B market, could definitely be a possibility in the future and is something that we have discussed with some of our partners. We have the relationships in place with the right publishers and access to like-minded technology companies, so why not?

What trends are we likely to see in the display market over the coming twelve months?

JV: If we go with the idea that the UK is roughly 12-18 months behind America, it is inevitable that we will start to see more and more campaigns coming through the agency trading desks. From TDP’s point of view, because we have access to such a niche audience, we don’t think at first this will be any different from how we currently book campaigns with the agencies. It will just be different people contacting us. We are already experiencing this with B3. Performance of the DSP’s and agency trading desks is bound to become a big talking point. At this stage we expect there are still internal teams within the agencies who will need to be won over, in order to run more tests on the trading desks.

Another thing to watch will be the decisions publishers make, in terms of, if and where they will be making their inventory available for bidding. Where vertical targeting is required, far more publishers than at present will need to start contributing both their inventory and data, for the impression-level buying market to increase in efficiency and performance.