Admeta's Ola Tiverman discusses the state of automated media buying in the Nordics and its offering in the local market.

What inroads are Admeta making into the SSP space in the Nordics?

We offer a white-labelled private ad exchange, as an alternative to the SSP. Our solution is much better suited to premium publishers that are concerned about their own brand and want to maintain a direct relationship with their clients, the advertisers and agencies. We provide RTB demand and external campaigns as an integrated complement to the publishers’ own sales in their private ad exchange.

Can you explain the value proposition behind the Tango Ad Platform? What differentiates it?

WhiteBox Tango is a white-labelled private ad exchange for premium publishers, that allows the publisher to maximise performance advertising revenues while having total control of their brand safety, pricing, products, sales channels, etc. It allows data driven advertising and automated advertising integrated in the internal optimisation. Our core is our automatic optimisation power where we leverage the efficiency of performance campaigns in real-time for each single impression.

Do you think it is primarily performance-related advertisers who will make the first jump into programmatic buying and RTB? Or can you see brand-focused advertisers engaging in this space too?

Yes, I think performance and especially retargeting advertisers will move first. However, the technology is of course also suited for audience targeting etc., so there are brand-focused advertisers there as well.

How does Admeta engage the buy side?

We connect to major international as well as local DSPs that can buy on RTB. We also provide a self-service interface where demand partners can place campaigns that can run on virtually any WhiteBox Tango publisher. However, I want to stress that the main business still is the direct sales by our publishers. Our publishers are the ones engaging the buy side, using our tools.

What sort of percentage volumes are some of your publishers seeing through RTB channels versus direct? What needs to change to see this increase?

This varies by publisher and over time. On average, there are only a few percentage points won by RTB, the majority is monetised by the internal campaigns in the publishers private ad exchange. But some publisher’s have run 100% RTB some times too. As soon as the RTB bids and budgets become more competitive versus the internal campaigns, the RTB share will increase automatically in our system.

Is there a risk of conflict by serving both buy and sell? How do you manage that?

Yes it is a risk, especially in an automated ad trading situation. We don’t think it is wise to be both an SSP optimising for and paid by the sell side, and at the same time a DSP optimising for and paid by the buy side. We choose to concentrate on the sell side. Making our sales side happy includes making their customers (buy side) happy as well, by offering more efficient ways to buy advertising.

Where are you seeing most demand coming from right now? Ad networks? Agencies? Independent trading desks?

Independent DSPs and trading desks are increasingly providing demand to our publishers, but the majority of the demand is still seen directly from advertisers and agencies.