Mendel Senf is CEO of Yieldivision, an exchange trading specialist based in Amsterdam. Yieldivision operates in the Dutch and German markets and is now looking at offering its exchange-buying expertise to advertisers throughout Europe.

Can you give an overview of the service Yieldivision offers advertisers and agencies?

MS: We are a new breed of agency with a technology which allows us to buy inventory across multiple sources (exchanges, adnetworks, direct pubs and ssp's). Our technology enables us to base our media buying strategy on enriching the impression with data. This data is provided by our direct relations with data partners - direct and third party. We see technology as differentiating between the current market for traditional media agencies and ad networks. We are a media agency but our technology resembles that of a DSP. Our clients are Direct Advertisers in various industries like Travel, Finance, Telco. Also we are a strategic supplier for media consultants and creative agencies.

Our goal is to always work against performance metrics we set with our advertisers. These metrics can be a CPA goal, clicks or unique users within an audience for branding. The main focus in the end is to use our unique media strategy to reach the ROI goals of our client's total budget.

By combining existing technology with own developed targeting, bidding and optimization tools we provide a unique product for the European market.

What attracted Yieldivision to the ad exchange model?

MS: The main reasons for operating on the ad exchanges are flexibility, inventory and pricing. It’s one of the many ways how we service our clients.

What markets is Yieldivision currently operating in?

MS: We are currently strongest in the Dutch market. And we are looking to push strongly into Germany and Sweden. After entering these countries other markets will follow – possibly France, Spain and the UK.

Are you seeing display advertising moving through exchange models in these markets?

MS: I can definitely say that we see a lot of activity in exchanges in the UK and the Netherlands. UK is a bridge from the US into Europe. In Germany there’s more activity than in the Netherlands. Other countries like Spain, France and Italy are more traditional and will take time to move to an exchange model.

What exchange or automated platforms are you currently buying from? Are you still buying directly from ad networks?

MS: Currently YD is buying from the following exchanges: RMX, Google AdX, OpenX marketplace. We also buy inventory across a number of supply side platforms, including Admeld, Improve Digital and Rubicon. YD uses all kinds of sources for inventory. We strongly believe that traffic is a commodity. That’s why we buy from exchanges, networks and partners/publishers directly.

Is Yieldivision currently using RTB to trade ad inventory on the ad exchanges? And are you using any RTB technology to buy inventory to access this inventory?

MS: We have just started testing with RTB. The available quality inventory using RTB comes mainly from the sell side platforms. Not sure if we will see an increase in ROI. The big gain for us is operationally. No we are currently not using any DSP to buy ad inventory. We are in the advanced stage of building our own technology to buy across different inventory services.

Is the present move towards automated trading an opportunity for exchange trading specialists, like Yieldivision, to grab market share from bigger, less agile media buying agencies?

MS: Yes indeed. We see a lot of client movement in the current market. The YD client base is rapidly increasing, as well as the enormous growth of revenue streams. We see huge growth in the coming period as the demand for ROI driven marketing increases.