SECTION I: PREMIUM & BRANDING IN THE PROGRAMMATIC ERA

KEYNOTE 1: Our first keynote speaker of the day was Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising Google, who gave us a presentation titled “Programmatic for the People”.
- Programmatic buying moving from performance to also include brand.
- You get what you measure.
- Let's get that brand spend away from TV!

PANEL 1: “How are data & technology affecting change in advertising?”
This first panel was moderated by Erich Wasserman, Co-founder & GM, EMEA, MediaMath, with discussion between Curt Hecht, Chief Global Revenue Officer, Weather Channel; Anthony Rhind, Co-CEO, Havas Digital and Sean Cornwall, former MD, eHarmony.

Anthony Rind, Havas: "Know the value, not just the cost of data. What you're doing with data is improving your accuracy, not providing a 100% hit rate. Clients won't share their data unless they have absolute trust. Build attribution models based in comparing touchpoints of both converters & non converters, it proves display works.”

Curt Hecht, Weather Channel: “Mobile is the #1 thing I’m focused on. Mobile will make the Weather Channel global.”

KEYNOTE 2: Frank Addante, Founder & CEO, Rubicon Project delivered the second keynote of the day asking the question, “What is the future of programmatic trading?” He gave an entertaining breakdown of how we’re just “not that brilliant” as we’ve seen these cycles of adoption before. We’re over-complicating the space with acronym-junkie culture and relationship status is (still) complicated between agencies and publishers. Addante thinks the problem is born of still too many steps in the typical online display media ordering process, with the publisher market too highly fragmented. The solution? Easy and safe access at scale and we should make everything easier by automating all inventory (premium, non-guaranteed and remnant).

- There is fierce competition out there! The top seven publishers have 98% of the inventory.
- RTB is not an industry in & of itself, it’s just the "protocol" for ad trading, just like http is the protocol for the web.

PANEL 2: “How are vendors harmonising premium with programmatic technology?”
Our next panel, moderated by Kirby Winfield, Senior VP, Corporate Development, comScore, saw Gustav Mellentin, Co-founder & CEO, Adform; Brian Fitzpatrick, Managing Director, Europe, Adap.tv; Nerissa MacDonald, Director of Trading, EMEA, MediaMind and Phil Macauley, EU Managing Director, Quantcast.

Kirby Winfield, comScore: "Has the private exchange marketplace actually grown passed press releases?"

Nerissa MacDonald, MediaMind: "Publishers need to get involved with tech providers & understand the market."

Brian Fitzpatrick, Adap.tv: "I agree with Frank Addante, we need to put buyers and sellers closer together & the tech underneath."

SECTION II: APPLICATIONS OF REAL-TIME TECHNOLOGY

KEYNOTE 3: Our next keynote speech came from Mike Nolet, CTO & Co-founder, AppNexus.

Key message 1: The world is not as complicated as it seems.
Key message 2: The role of tech companies in this industry is shifting.
Key message 3: The opportunities are endless.

- Right now is when companies are built that will be the leaders for the next decade.
- Four components to a trading business: strategy, people, data & technology -- but VC funding & marketing can replace them all!
- It's time to differentiate! There is a world of opportunity to innovate. Criteo are doing a great job -- & they’re winning.
- The lumascape is a world of complication that no one needs.
- If you don't understand what someone is saying, it's probably not real.

PANEL 3: “The future of business models for data-driven publishers.”
The third panel was moderated by ExchangeWire’s own CEO & Founder, Ciaran O’Kane, with a lively discussion by Fabien Magalon, MD, La Place Media; Jon Slade, Commericeal Director, Digital Advertising, FT; Martin Van Der Meij, Yield Manager, De Telegraaf Media Group, Netherlands; Philip Missler, Excecutive Director, Internative Media and Tom Barnett, CEO, Switch Concepts.

- Publisher collectives are like herding cats.

Martin Van Der Meij, De Telegraaf Media Group: “Combine to support a publisher market, not an exchange -- automation is not necessarily an auction model. It's not about adding data to an impression, it's about scale. Premium publishers need to take back more control from the buy-side and also educate internally. There are 15 billion impressions in Europe, but most are longtail.”

6of6: This is something new we launched with ATS London 2012 -- six case studies on data-driven success stories, by six companies, confined to exactly six minutes. With a three-foot clock on the screen ticking down the seconds, each of these speakers raced to complete their in-depth presentations in record time.

1. Mauricio Leon, Commerical Director, Performics: “Delivering Value for Aviva in Real-Time”
2. Abdelkader Barjiji, Head of Operations, Adscale: "Impact of RTB on a transparent ad market place"
3. Damian Blackden, CEO, Adnologies: “Binary Refined: sustained performance advantage via Adnologies’ data-driven advertising platform
4. Mathieu Roche, Managing Director, Weborama: “Audience Targeting Strategies: applying 3rd party data targeting to improve campaign performance & ROI”
5. Laurent Nicolas, Founder & CEO, Alenty: “Ad-visibility: measurement & optimisation”
6. John Danby, Head of Sales, Media iQ: “Using Predictive Data to Power Performance”

Kirby Winfield ‏@kirbywinfield
6 pitches for 6 minutes - @mediaiq nailed it with predictive rtb modeling and showed under the hood - the realest preso thus far.

Romany Reagan ‏@msromany
#ATSL Really liked @adnologies 6of6 presentation, crystal clear information wittily presented. Well done.

PANEL 4: “A view from advertisers who are applying real-time technology to fuel media & marketing strategies.”
The most risque panel discussion of the day was moderated by ExchangeWire’s own Chief Strategy Officer, Paul Silver, joined by Andy Mihalop, Head of Digital, (you’re so) Money Supermarket; Josiah Amartey, Senior Online Marketing Manager, Virgin Media and Gavin Deadman, Digital Marketing Manager, PKR.

- Do banners work? Moving up the funnel from retargeting to prospecting, then though how do you measure prospecting?
- Moneysupermarket is now a trading platform, could become an agency in the future.
- 4th panel today wants to put the 'tech' back in adtech: "How platforms are scaling in the big data era."

Josiah dropped some jaws by dropping some “raw truths” in language that made Paul Silver blush, with the rest of the panel gamely rallying to create quite an interesting debate on whether or not display is dead.

Josiah Amertey, Virgin Media: "The size of the advertiser and in-house resources dictates who manages and runs the data piece -- in-house or agency. When people who currently run campaigns get to the CMO level, we're in trouble. Fix attribution or were f*cked."

Paul Gubbins ‏@Gu881n5
First time I have seen @thepaulsilver speechless! #ATSL

SECTION III: BUILDING THE BIG-DATA INFRASTRUCTURE

KEYNOTE 4: Our last keynote of the day brought down the house. More of a masterclass on real-time trading strategies than a presentation, Dr Boris Mouzykantskii, Founder, CEO & Chief Scientist, IPONWEB gave an incredibly granular breakdown of demand conflict in the media buying strategy entitled, “Breaking Down the Black Box”. With the opening statement: “The party controlling the Technology is a natural referee in the multiple conflicts embedded in media trading.”

- Mining huge amounts of data is expensive for its relatively incremental lift.

When the DSP controls technology, the cost affects them the least, they go with a sampling strategy (coin toss) buying strategy, when the agency controls technology, their main concern is media cost minimisation, when the advertiser controls technology, their top concern is quality maximisation.

He went on to breakdown many detailed case studies explaining, “These are extreme cases. Longer-term success for the controller of technology is all about finding the right balance.”

Key points:
1. There are inherent conflicts in RTB decisioning between advertiser, agency & DSP/ATD.
2. Bidding Strategy, Data/Fraud treatment have huge impact on results.
3. Technology controllers make decisions to balance these conflicts.
4. Transparency & ownership of these decisions are critical!

Adform ‏@AdformInsider
@LBiMedia: Mind blowing session of the day goes to @IPONWEB, whose economic of bidding strategies left a few jaws on the floor#ATSL

Paul Silver ‏@thepaulsilver
You know a presentation is technical when no one knows what to tweet #atsl @iponweb #awesome

PANEL 5: “How platforms are scaling in the Big Data era.”
After such an impressive presentation we were back for our final panel of the day moderated by Brad Terrell, VP & GM, Netezza & Big Media Platforms, IBM joined by Abhinav Gupta, VP, Engineering, Rocket Fuel; Gary Turkington, VP, Data Engineering, Improve Digital; Jonathan Wold, Chief Buying Officer, Criteo; Maureen Little, VP of Business Development, Turn and Dawn Smith, VP Global Solutions, Digitaria.

- Maureen Little gave us a lovely afternoon haiku about their data cloud platform.
- Technology needs a human to operate it!

Maureen Little, Turn: "If we were playing the buzzword drinking game, we'd be loaded."

Gary Turkington, Improve Digital: “If you have a problem and throw data at it, you usually end up with two problems. Now we have unprecedented access to large datasets, previously only thinkable for multinational institutions.”

Maureene Little, Turn: “Having open systems is vital, we need open standards. RTB is the first adopted tech standard & look how the industry has grown. Advertisers: be sure to make the conversation about you. The privacy debate involves all of us -- everyone needs to care about it and work on a solution.”

Then closing out the day we had...

Three Case Studies from Leading Buyers: “How agencies are building their own data infrastructure of the future.”
1. Thaer Namruti -- Data & Analytics Director, EMEA, Starcom Mediavest Group: “How Starcom Mediavest Group is Building it’s own Data”
2. Chris Stark -- Product Director, Infectious Media, “Big Data Presentation”
3. Ciaran McConaghy -- Marketing Solutions Director, Fabric Worldwide, "How Agencies Are Building Big Data Structure"

After an informationally-dense day of facts and debate Burt. closed out the day with a networking drinks party in the lovely front restaurant of the BFI building overlooking the Thames. The conversations continued into late into the night, with everyone making new contacts and new friends. Watch our Flickr and Twitter accounts for party photos coming soon!!

Some Top Tweets:

rubiconproject ‏@rubiconproject
Paul Silver: people from 22 countries & 56 cities at #atsl today.

Nikki Desai ‏@Nikki_Desai
Data is information, using it is knowledge, monetizing it is wisdom #atsl

BetweenDigital ‏@betweendigital
Russia's #1 largest internet audience in Europe - the next big RTB opportunity? #ATSL

FrankAddante ‏@FrankAddante
@BlackPlastic let's just say "We use data for ads to keep Internet free" it's like "Smoking kills" on tobacco ads, didn't hurt them #atsl

Paul Silver ‏@thepaulsilver
One of my main takeaways from yesterday is that Europe is overtaking the US in terms of adoption and innovation. #atsl

ONESIXTY2 ‏@ONESIXTY2
seems that "scale" has been the most-used word today at #atsl. does someone have any data on this? (1st or 3rd party)

carlcosta ‏@carlcosta
#atsl just remember doesn't matter how much tech you have, a fool with a tool is still a fool

Paul Silver ‏@thepaulsilver
Will someone turn that f*cking phone off! #atsl

**COMING SOON** Videos of our keynote speakers. Watch this space!!