Brandon Keenen is Senior Director of Sales at AOL (UK). Here Keenen discusses advertising.com product development, why AOL inventory will not be made available to third party buyers via RTB and why everyone is or wants to be an ad network.

Can you give some clarity into the current agency offering at AOL/Advertising.com? Is Advertising.com still operating as a separate entity – or is it more of a holistic approach?

The two compliment each other extremely well. Not many top ad networks have access to premium audiences that are unavailable to the competition. AOL audiences have always been of a high quality, with loyalty to the brand and high levels of engagement. Combining the advertising.com network and Adlearn technology, with the O&O properties we are able to find and create unique audiences utilising proprietary and third party data to it's optimal use.

Advertising.com has had a formidable reputation for building strong ad tech? Can you give some overview on the current offerings in the market – and what buyers can expect from you over the coming 12-24 months in terms of data and optimisation solutions?

I would put the advertising.com/aol product team against any team in the business. Lead by Seth Demsey in the US and Shiv Bhaduri in the UK we are creating products that are better than we could buy anywhere else, at alarming speed. Advertising.com has had RTB functionality in the US for a few years, we in the UK have been waiting to catch up. Good news, we have it now! RTB enables us to locate the best users for our clients brands which, combined with adlearn’s decision making algorithm, advertising.com's expertise and our unique audience reach, forms the best advertising solution in the market.

A global launch is set for June for a new product built in the UK that will be at the forefront of real time technology and targeting systems. Additionally, Project Devil was launched last month in the UK and has seen better than expected results with a 4x increase to CTR. Project Devil is cleaning up the web by delivering engaging, beautiful, interactive ad formats. So far the response from agencies, press and the public has been overwhelming. This is where online advertising needs to be and we are there first. For us, it's a race to the top of the funnel, not the bottom. We have bought Pictela, goviral, Studio Now and 5 Min Media, which shows our commitment to innovative technology that delivers high quality engaged experiences.

To answer your optimisation question; I have yet to hear any client tell me that any other technology optimises better than Adlearn. With the ability to frequency cap at tag level and test and retest placements and audiences over 6 billion times an hour according to which campaigns work best and where, across thousands of different domains, the optimisation works pretty well.

You’ve been pretty vocal on three-letter acronyms like RTB, DSPs, SSPs and the “perceived” decline of the ad network. Do you think that big ad nets are still relevant in the data-driven display space?

All these businesses are ad networks masked as something new. Name a business and I will tell you why they are an ad network. They are all staffed with smart people many of whom came from advertising.com They all have ways of doing things a little differently, but at the end of the day they are all variations of ad networks. Retargeting companies are building ad networks, agencies are building ad networks (ATD's), SSP's are ad networks, DSP's, exchanges etc etc. RTB is just a way of buying or selling inventory; it is not a network, but not a stand alone business either is it? It's a way to buy. Adlearn and advertising.com buy with RTB and a complex algorithm as a strategy to the bigger picture. If we can buy in real time, hedge or option ahead of real time and make more yield it's a strategy. Fortunately it seems to work better than most.

The retargeting pool is a place where everyone is playing and I don't think we should stop, but the big ad networks, especially those with proprietary data sets, need to be utilised to find new users. Scale can be the death or life of a company and in the case of finding audiences, scale helps a lot. We can find audience segments, we can build lookalike models and we can dynamically retarget in real time which, to me, is very relevant and doesn't smell of death any time soon.

How is AOL/Advetising.com differentiating itself from other ad networks and third party buyers in European market?

Europe is an interesting one. With the purchase of goviral we can get back to Europe quicker. We still have successful owned sites across Europe so data is not a problem, it's just timing. Watch this space.

Do you think third party ad networks with no access to proprietary first party data and content are going to struggle in this market?

I hope so. Seriously, if you don't have something unique or interesting I think you might struggle. If you’re buying OPD, other people's data, there will be a risk of saturation and data churn. Yes you need to buy OPD, but it needs to be just a part of the strategy. Anyone can buy it, it's what you do with it that matters, and having your own data gives you a great head start.

Will AOL make inventory available in real-time for agency trading desks and other buyers?

Why would we? Exclusive audiences that engage is the key and we want to keep that advantage. You may see AOL's name in a few of the exchanges, but that is from the old Time Warner days and it's misleading, the inventory does not exist in that capacity. Other publishers should think about retaining their audience as well. After all, they are the ones that have the agreements and relationships with the consumers. Being the guardian of that relationship is hugely important to us. With that said, the new aol is not afraid to innovate. We have some seriously smart people. If there's a business model that makes sense for the consumer in line with EU legislation then we will look at it.

Would it not make sense – given AOL’s access to proprietary inventory and data – to build its own DSP solution?

The only aspect of a DSP that we dont currently provide is the ability to enable trading desks and agencies to plug directly into our network. Despite the fact we don’t offer this, we are already well on our way to becoming a major player in the space. My point is, ad.com has been cherry picking inventory and audiences for 10 years at scale better than anyone else. Now that we are RTB enabled, the possiblities are endless and we intend to make the most of every one of them.

As the market moves more towards automation do you think it’s going to be possible to service both publishers and advertisers?

Is automation the key? We have always had a best in class publisher partnerships team and agency delivery teams. They run as two units, servicing their respective sides of the business. Whilst automation is going to become more and more important for online advertising, I think there will still be a long term requirement for good people, and good customer service, within the business too. Automation is a nice marketing tool and essential in some tasks, but cannot fill every need that a client has. Several companies today market automated solutions then staff back rooms full of am's to make it all work. Publishers won't win in an all automated world, nor will advertisers who want high touch points, unique audiences that engage with a brand. Ultimately, an advertisers goal is to bring down spend, whilst maintaining good ROI whilst a publishers goal is to increase revenue whilst protecting their brand. Automated technology might enable us to find the ‘fair’ rate for both sides, but human support will be there to ensure that this is the case.

What’s your view on ATDs and agency strategy to build private market places? Is this a threat to AOL’s display business?

No. In theory it makes sense, but publishers are wary of agencies, and many will stick with Ad Networks in order to protect their businesses meaning that Private Market Places will lack scale. They will serve their purpose for an agency revenue model, but they will always need scalable audiences. Adlearn enables us to be a major player in this area. The threat will be one facing aggregator networks who rely solely on retargeting across other networks and have no technology or properties of their own..

A recent comscore report showed AOL having the second highest video views in the US market? How big is the online video ad opportunity for AOL given its focus on premium content? And what is it doing to win the big brand TV budget that’s now in play?

Video is hugely important to us. goviral, studio now, 5 min media and Adtech for Video are all part of our wider video offering. Video engages people, it gives brands a chance to create experiences online, it's memorable and it works. We need to do more to secure tv money, but focus is important to us. Timing and product is everything. Patience.

Google has giddily predicted that the global display (video, mobile, online) market is heading to $200 billion by 2015. Where do you think this demand is going to come from? Will third party buyers, like AOL, look beyond the agencies and attract new buyers into the market?

IAB Statistics show that online ad spend is growing YoY with other mediums (notably press and outdoor) losing out. As more and more of the population become ‘internet savvy’, so the growth of the online advertising industry will increase. To add to this, convergence will drive offline spend into online eg. as people watch video content online, TV budgets will move across. Likewise, with newspapers on ipads (press spend) and music on Spotify (radio spend). Better targeting and results will also drive search spend into display

We have strong relationships with clients across the globe and will continue build on these. We pride ourselves in offering top quality service to clients, both direct and agency, to ensure the best results. By providing the best possible results, they will spend more, enabling our business to continue to grow.