Simon Aurik is Chief Commercial Officer at Yieldivision, a specialist exchange trader based out of the Netherlands. Here Simon talks about YD's current positioning in the market and the opportunity in the European exchange market for the company.

Can you give an overview of how Yieldivision is currently positioning itself in the European display market? Is it a DSP? Is it an exchange trading expert?

YD is a new breed media agency with unique technology resembling that of a DSP. We are experts in media buying and therefore we provide a division with specialists in exchange trading. Our clients are Direct Advertisers in various industries like travel, finance, telco and shopping. Additional we are also a strategic supplier (a.o. media consultants and creative agencies). Our scope is the entire European market.

Can you give a snapshot of the Yieldivision model?

YD offers expertise in exchange trading – and has extensive knowledge of real-time targeting and audience-based buying. Our specialism also covers personalized retargeting and optimization. YD clients also benefit from our custom reporting, conversion attribution as well as our specialists and industry intelligence.

Our business model: we generate our revenues out of the margin we achieve for our clients from the publishers. YD doesn’t charge her clients for strategy, adserving and consulting.

How has your offering changed over the past twelve months to fit the evolving display space?

We have extended our reach immensely so we can now buy traffic and (re)target audiences within any of the large ad networks, exchanges and yield optimizers.

Our creative optimisation was taken to a next level: usage of a customized dynamic banner based on the interest shown by the user has become the standard rather than an exception. This is similar to what the likes of Criteo are currently offering - but where they offer a quick to start standardized solution we focus more on a tailor made offering to the style and requirements of the advertiser.

A much larger part of traffic is being bought through RTB (real time bidding). We will win relevant impressions more often and reject irrelevant impressions more often based on enriching the impression with data. Also we have custom built reporting that offers real-time online access to dashboards that offer very detailed and varied market insights for our advertisers.

Do your Dutch clients have a better understanding of the exchange eco-system than other European markets?

Yes I believe they do. The UK market and the Dutch market are quite similar, but other European countries like France, Spain, Italy are a couple of years behind. They need to grow to the next level before data-driven exchange trading becomes the norm in these markets.

You are currently working with a number of large international brands. How difficult is it to do data-driven media buys across different markets. Is the exchange eco-system sufficiently evolved in places like Spain and Italy to make this kind of trading possible?

In some segments it is really a challenge to do data-driven media buys in the different countries/regions. From an advertiser perspective there aren’t any issues. They want to use their insights and combine with market data. Data-driven buys with European niche publishers is working - but it remains a long term process.

Is the absence of an established data market holding back exchange trading here in terms of growth? Will it be possible for companies like Exelate and BlueKai to establish themselves – and more importantly scale their data trading model - in Europe?

Exchange trading is growing rapidly. The advertiser’s demands are changing. They are now looking to move more into retargeting and put more resource into data budgets. But most European publishers simply aren’t ‘ready’ yet.

Actually, it is an issue of trust and knowledge. Many premium publishers, scarred from experiences with ad networks in the past, remain unsure as to whether they should do data deals with data exchange companies. Only data exchanges that have guarantees to protect brand and audience data will win the publishers as their clients. I expect within the next two years companies like eXelate and BlueKai will scale their data model into the different countries and niche segments.

Where do you see the big opportunities for Yieldivision in the coming year? Will you concentrate on markets like the Netherlands and Germany? Will other markets like Spain and Italy come into the reckoning too?

We are still working hard in the Dutch market - and continue to deliver for our clients. Apart for the Netherlands though, YD will look to expand into Germany and the Nordics. We also see Spain as one of the most interesting countries in the European market. We believe we can deliver our services to clients there in segments like travel and telco.