Australian Publishers form premium advertising exchange, powered by AppNexus, to create a competitive marketplace and achieve scale in mobile display.

Fairfax Media and Mi9 recently announced the formation of the Australian Premium Advertising Exchange (APEX), a joint venture company under the leadership of Pippa Leary, CEO (pictured below, right), designed to bring a broad and premium mobile programmatic offering to the Australian market.

Launching in early 2015, APEX is promising to be Australia’s first brand-safe, content-driven source of mobile advertising inventory; allowing buyers access to mobile inventory from more than 50 mobile properties owned and operated by Fairfax and Mi9, in addition to third-party publishers such as Daily Mail Australia.

ExchangeWire spoke with Leary, plus Marc Barnett, APEX, chairman (below, left), and Dave Osborn, head of AppNexus, Australia (below, right) to understand the objectives for APEX and premium publishers in the country.

EW: What is APEX?

MB:  APEX was first born two and a half years ago, in conversations with key local Australian publishers regarding where the market was headed.  Google were becoming more obviously a media business, with scale, reach, little value placed on a premium reader and the ability to find an audience anywhere. Leading with Microsoft Ad Exchange, we brought AppNexus to the table due to their experience with publisher coalitions in other markets. Our main goal was take the market beyond the fear that programmatic would erode yield and explore how to leverage the technology opportunity.

PL: APEX is a Private Marketplace of mobile inventory. For any DSP to transact, they must have a seat on the AppNexus console. Launching with a buyer beta in early 2015, we will work with the DSPs and Trading Desks to understand how it works, the best tiering options and product range. Initially, we’re motivated to remove the middleman, arbitrage and barriers that exist in the market – and enable buying and selling much more efficiently.

DO:  AppNexus will support APEX by setting up the platform and helping educate trading desks on how it works. A private exchange of this scale is new in Australia, so we’re utilising our experience from other markets where it’s been done – the best comparisons are France and Canada. In France, the top premium publishers have grown their business significantly via the private exchange.

EW: How will APEX be successful?

PL: The announcement equals 'open for business' – from here, it’s about constant engagement with the market and other potential partners. We’re open to any creators of professional, high-quality mobile content to join the coalition. It will be an iterative process, where we focus on responding to market demand and build out the products accordingly. The initial launch will include mobile display and in-app inventory for both phones and tablets. Eventually, we hope that APEX will include more than mobile inventory, with PC and video to come. We’re starting with mobile as it’s growing so quickly for all publishers, and is an area where innovation is needed.

DO: The platform will support creative features and formats, and must go beyond 320x50 to be successful. APEX will provide more scaleable premium ad format offerings to agencies and their desks. Mobile is the area where publishers are most exposed, it’s good to have a consolidated platform, that brings scale, to change the way mobile is bought and sold and to be more programmatic.

MB: APEX guarantees brands that their ads will end up on content being produced for Australian audiences, greatly reducing the risk to brand safety. Tech that purports to support brand safety is good, but can fail. People creating fraud can find ways to beat the tech – typically tech doesn’t lead the way, it just fixes problems as they arise. The only way to ensure safety is to know what you’re buying.

Innovation around creative formats and data will be critical to the success of APEX – we are committed to launching the best formats available which will give advertisers a view of what can really be achieved in mobile.

We see APEX as an industry play, not a publisher play; it will help support publishers to keep producing quality content. This relationship currently includes Mi9, Fairfax and Daily Mail who all have their own existing stacks and solutions – any potential partner can bolt onto APEX – any premium content creator looking to remain competitive against the likes of Google and Facebook should consider joining APEX.

EW: Why a separate company and not via the IAB?

MB: APEX wasn’t instigated by the IAB as the IAB has a broader remit than just premium publishers, such as classified and auction sites. It’s likely we’ll align with the IAB around standards and ad formats as we expand the product offering.

PL: Ad tech is changing so fast, it feels like a tech arms race.  APEX is about thinking strategically to stay ahead of the game, with a small agile board focused on making quick decisions and getting the job done well.

EW: Is it a remnant play for premium pubs?

MB:  APEX is not a remnant play, although all members will maintain their own direct sales operations with a portion of their inventory flowing into the exchange for bidding by agencies. APEX brings scale, efficiency, a unified voice and opportunity to work together in the market against bigger international rivals.

EW: Why choose AppNexus as the platform?

PL: After assessing several platforms, we chose AppNexus because they are not competing against APEX – they only do one thing – AdTech. AppNexus are also a key conduit for locally based publishers to what’s happening in Silicon Valley, Madison Avenue and Europe.

DO: AppNexus values align with publishers who want to remain independent and foster an open ecosystem. As a tech platform, we tick the boxes being robust, flexible and with global scale capabilities to do what APEX need to do. AppNexus also has the credentials. We know through experience what it takes to run a publisher coalition and can provide the support and playbook to enable it to happen.

EW: Do you see publisher coalitions happening elsewhere in developing markets?

DO: The biggest hurdle to making it happen is getting the publishers aligned to work together, and realise that they’re no longer each others’ biggest competitors. Buy-in needs to come from senior management of premium content pubs as it’s about having a vision for the future of the business, not just ad sales. In less developed markets, there appears to be more buy-side control and less publisher heft.

EW: What’s the future?

PL: We hope to be live and trading in late Feb/early March building out segments, educating the market and testing new formats built specifically for mobile. Cross-device comes later. We’re following AppNexus' lead on that, as they’re industry leaders in developing solutions for that space.

MB: The ultimate success is that the market sees value in premium content. It's not about increasing yield or revenue – it’s bigger than that, about how publishers continue to sustain the ad-funded model and extract the right amount of value for their content.