Thomas Promny is Co-Founder of German yield optimizer, RevenueMax. Here Promny discusses the company's offering, the development of the German RTB market, and some of the supply-side concerns and opportunities around impression-level buying in Germany.

Can you give some overview of the RevenueMax proposition?

TP: RevenueMax helps publishers and premium advertising networks increase their advertising revenues. The company was founded in June 2010 in Hamburg, and we're the first German startup in this space. Currently we're focused on the German market.

Today we have some hundreds of websites under management and we're optimizing some hundreds of millions of ad impressions per month.

How are you working with publishers – and how is RevenueMax helping publishers generate more revenue?

TP: We always adapt to their particular business models and sales strategies. For instance we never work directly with advertising customers or agencies to prevent cannibalization. We maximize publisher's revenues by creating a competitive environment for their traffic among currently some dozens of advertising marketplaces and exchanges. This allows us to generate significantly higher eCPMs for the publishers.

Are you enabling publishers to put inventory through RTB? If not, is this on the RevenueMax road map for 2011?

TP: We're convinced that a large part of the traffic will soon be traded through RTB. But there still are quite some big barriers in terms of knowledge and technology. I feel that the massive adoption of RTB in Germany will take off next year rather than next week. We're already working on the integration of some networks that will enable real time bidding on our inventory - but we don't expect this to be a huge revenue driver this year in Germany.

Currently we're putting more effort on the eCPM increase through optimizing traffic delivery between "traditional" exchanges and marketplaces.

What insights can you give on the RTB marketplace in Germany? Are German publishers still wary of real-time bidding? Is there enough demand in the market to support this type of trading strategy?

TP: Currently there is very little demand in the German market. But ultimately the logic in maximizing publisher revenues will drive RTB strategy. Even if publishers can only sell one single impression at a higher price through RTB they have to do it.

And we expect the volumes of RTB to be rising strongly over the next few years, so it's a good time to start now.

Publishers that we speak to are wary of RTB for two reasons. First of all, they're afraid of the technical complexity that most of them won't be able to handle. That's good for us because it's part of our business.

Second of all, some premium publishers are afraid of where RTB is going to take the whole display market: it could ultimately damage their premium publishing business model. It's not a problem for most publishers. But I believe this is not a totally unjustified position to take, because in the end RTB will create a market where the value of an impression is probably far less determined by great publisher brands but by the individual user producing that impression. For a publisher selling niche audiences in particularly high end lifestlyle verticals, like golf and finance, for €50 CPM, RTB might look like threat rather than an opportunity.

But I'm convinced that we will also see premium publishers benefit from RTB because they will sell a combination of great brand environment and targeting.

Do you think we will see more private exchanges on the sell-side? Will publishers build their own or partner with vendors?

TP: I see private exchanges as a temporary phenomenon. The lack of transparency is not the major reason that has kept online display so small and inefficient for so many years.

Publishers have a certain interest in the opacity they create but in the end advertisers are in the stronger position and they will demand more transparency and efficiency.

Will this encourage German premium publishers to commit more inventory into the automated channel?

TP: I don't believe that the few premium publishers that consider themselves too high quality to do anything innovative are the real bottleneck of this market. They have resisted new revenue streams, like Adsense, for many years. They won't be the first to adopt these new strategies, but when they see competitors making good revenues, they will follow.

Do you agree with Wolfgang Bscheid’s recent article on ExchangeWire that the German display market isn’t ready for RTB? Will adoption happen this year?

TP: As I said before, I expect RTB-adoption in Germany to take off next year. Wolfgang certainly is someone that knows the market very well and has lots of experience. I agree with him that RTB will only really take off when targeting data is made available in abundance at affordable prices and decent quality. As far as I know, even the US market hasn't yet met these criteria. But I can't imagine a future where this doesn't happen at all. It's just a question of time.