» It was probably the biggest reason why Google scooped Invite Media for 70 million odd dollars last year - namely its global partnership with Vivaki. It was announced last week that Invite will remain Vivaki's preferred DSP partner for the next two years. According to the announcement Google will also help Vivaki buy video and mobile in real time. Interesting. In a recent blog post Marco Bertozzi, Managing Director EMEA at Vivaki Nerve Center, outlines why the partnership has worked so well and how the alliance will help Vivaki innovate in new growth areas of the exchange eco-system such as mobile and video:

The announcement today of the renewal is significant a) because it has been renewed! We have worked well together and we want that relationship to continue and b) our renewal comes at a time when others are just creating their first deals and they are basing them on very spend related terms rather than strategic and product led. These deals are designed to create opportunity for the clients, not deliver a low cpm. It’s an exciting space and the VNC

» There is the definitely a lot of development on the DSP front at the minute. Everybody seems to be positioning themselves as a DSP partner in the Europen market. Eager to get a slice of the growing automated display budget, there have been a lot of pitches to the agency big wigs. And the US players are now starting to arrive. Turn has been an "established" DSP player for a while in the US. It is now looking to leverage some of those global agency relationships to establish a bridgehead in Europe. It is announcing today that it is opening a dedicated European office to service its clients here. Turn, which has a strong relationship with Omnicom in the US, is the preferred DSP partner for Omnicom in the Netherlands, and it has no doubt got secondary agreements with other big agency groups across Europe. This is interesting developments, as it shows that the European exchange is evolving very quickly. A couple of months ago there was only two real-time platforms available, now there are five. This will probably have a big effect on RTB here too, as agencies look for more inventory to be made available in real time. Publishers will no doubt have to follow the money. Here's the press release in full:

Turn Inc., the industry’s only end-to-end platform for managing data-driven digital advertising, today announced an expansion into the European market with its new London office. From central London, Turn’s European sales and customer service will support agency and brand customers in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and other markets.

“We have experienced tremendous demand from European advertising agencies and direct brands for the Turn Media Platform. The natural next step is to build a presence in Europe,” said Bill Demas, President and CEO at Turn Inc. “The London office embodies our excitement to provide these vibrant markets with the most effective data-driven digital advertising along with the necessary infrastructure to deliver on a global scale.”

Delivering thousands of campaigns annually and analyzing billions of impressions daily, the Turn Media Platform is the world’s most scalable, automated and interoperable solution for privacy compliant data-driven digital advertising. From its centralized self service platform and through Turn’s optimization algorithms and real-time analytics, marketers automate media buying and audience targeting across multiple inventory sources to achieve campaign performance, delivery, and custom audiences at scale. These sources include ad exchanges, aggregators and direct publishers.

“In order to grow the digital channel, agencies need powerful tools that streamline workflow, manage tremendous amounts of data, create scale and deliver performance,” said Franc Goebbels, Strategy and Development Director at OmnicomMediaGroup Netherlands. “Turn gives us the service and functionalities to optimize campaigns in real time and deliver the absolute best results by taking advantage of a winning formula – right ad, right time, right place and right price.”