ExchangeWire rounds up some of the top stories in the European ad tech scene, and in this week’s edition: WPP poised for Dunhumby swoop; ExchangeWire Research survey now live; IPONWEB appoints first GM for BidSwitch; Questions over Google's viewability pledges, and Yahoo rumoured to unveil new mobile offering. 

WPP to buy Dunhumby?

WPP is waiting in the wings to purchase data operations business Dunhumby from under-fire retail giant Tesco, according to reports, as the world's largest advertising holding group continues to place data and ad tech at the core of its offering.

The reports first surfaced earlier this week, with some media outlets mooting a potential price tag of £2bn for the data management company, which made headlines last year with its purchase of social data firm Sociomantic for a reported $200m. Neither party has commented publicly on the reports, but early reports cite sources close to the planned raid on Dunhumby.

The initial reports predated the confirmation that Tesco is to offload its online content business Blinkbox, and fixed line broadband business Tesco Broadband to fellow ISP TalkTalk for an estimated £5m, plus the news that the retail giant is to close 43 physical stores, plus slash £250m from its budget, amid a wider turnaround plan.

Tesco has just emerged from a hellish 2014, where the purchase of Sociomantic (via its Dunhumby arm) counted as a rare highlight amid headlines chronicling its ailing bottom line and, most damningly, an accounting error of £250m that wiped billions of its stock market value.

More interestingly, any such purchase would further advance WPP's data and ad tech strategy. The holding company last year placed big bets on ad tech and the use of data, having sold Open AdStream to AppNexus, while at the same time investing $25m in the ad tech firm for 15% of the company, following the full integration of Xaxis and 24/7 Media, along with its purchase of Bannerconnect, plus the rollout of its cross-screen offering Xaxis Sync.

Quite how Dunhumby would fit into the WPP offering remains a subject of speculation, but this title published several articles heralding the 'Rise of the Data-Driven Bidder' in 2014, and how most media budgets will be invested via such channels, similar to Amazon's media business. No doubt the vast swathes of Tesco ClubCard data (housed within the Dunhumby fold) would aid any such aspirations held by WPP.

ExchangeWire has it on good authority that WPP aims to give its (relatively) recently launched data consultancy Ohal a major push in 2015, as it seeks to further help clients piece together online and offline data to establish a single customer view.

ExchangeWire Research 2015 survey now live

As part of its ongoing expansion, ExchangeWire's new research division has this week launched its debut survey to help gauge the development of programmatic advertising, by building robust actionable data on the market.

The survey is now live for all readers to participate in, and help build data around the programmatic advertising industry, by clicking here, participants are automatically entered into a prize draw to win £250 worth of Amazon vouchers.    

ExchangeWire Research is headed up by Rebecca Muir, ExchangeWire, head of research and analysis, and was founded to mark the growing prominence of programmatic advertising among ‘mainstream marketers’, by helping them better understand how it fits into the wider marketing mix.

Muir (formerly of Google, Marin Software, and Quantcast) will fashion the new division to provide exclusive, global and localised research, plus analysis of media buying trends, in both the ad tech and marketing technology sectors.

ExchangeWire undertook its foray into primary market research last year when it canvassed attendees of its recent ATS conference series, with Muir publishing her analysis of the findings earlier this week.

She said: "The single most important factor in achieving success, cited by 28% of respondents, was the ability to create actionable data.

"There was very little interest in 'big data' before January 2012, after which considerable growth occurred.

"But there have been far too many cases of organisations collecting data for the sake of data; as if success is linked to the amount of data that has been amassed. Instead, the focus needs to be on creating 'actionable data' – data which leads to an outcome."  

IPONWEB appoints first BidSwitch GM

IPONWEB has appointed ad tech industry veteran Bob Walczak to the newly created role of general manager for BidSwitch, in a move similar to its recent appointment of Nathan Woodman as GM of demand solutions, as the Russia-based outfit attempts to further bolster its global profile.

In his new role, Walczak will manage the entire BidSwitch business and initially focus on building out the global services and operational teams to meet the growing business’ needs, and will report to Dr Boris Mouzykantskii, IPONWEB, CEO.

At present BidSwitch facilitates more than 100 supply and demand technology partners globally to connect and trade media across the display, mobile and video ecosystems. The company developed BidSwitch to give ad tech and media companies a fast method of gaining access to supply and demand side inventory sources.

Unlike an exchange, BidSwitch operates as a middleware layer; routing and filtering the bid stream to ensure that buyers and sellers have access to as much (or as little), non-fraudulent supply and demand as they require.

BidSwitch operates as a separate commercial entity, completely independent from IPONWEB’s core platform development business, although the company claims it intends to make "significant capital investments in BidSwitch" to ensure its future growth.

Commenting on the appointment, Mouzykantskii, said: "IPONWEB has a vision for an RTB and media trading ecosystem that is open, transparent and easy to access; BidSwitch is the key enabler of this vision.

"The BidSwitch business has grown significantly over the past 12 months and we felt it was the right time to bring a GM on board; someone with both a deep understanding of ad tech and the strategic requirements of the landscape; combined with the leadership skills and experience to successfully scale the business."

Prior to joining IPONWEB, Walczak was FM & VP of product at PubMatic, and before that he was a co-founder and CEO of Ringleader Digital, a company that launched the industry's first mobile third-party ad serving technology platform.

Google announces roll out of viewabilty reporting, but questions remain

Google used the circus that is the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week to unveil its global rollout of ad viewability reporting across its platform, that lets advertisers know whether or not their ads have been seen, skipped past or served off-screen.

In a blog post announcing the rollout, Neal Mohan, Google, VP, video and display advertising, said: "In the coming days, we will start to offer viewability reporting for video campaigns available to all marketers and publishers using our DoubleClick platforms, as well as for the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

"We’ll soon have this capability for reserved inventory Google's TrueView pricing model, where they only charge advertisers for ads that web users engage with." This move echoes similar commitments promised by AppNexus in 2015.

However, the move was met with caution by marketers. Commenting on the announcement, Bob Wotton, ISBA, director of media and advertising, said: "ISBA welcomes Google’s attempt to give advertisers more visibility into the number of video ads that are actually seen by users. 

"It is a step in the right direction. However, this must and should also mean that the search giant should not charge or will reimburse advertisers for advertising that isn’t viewable and doesn’t meet the Viewability standard. In addition, there is a discussion to be had around the Media Rating Council’s Viewability Standard that has been implemented in the US. Seeing an ad for two seconds, with 50% in view, surely is a very low bar to meet when talking about ‘viewable’ impressions.”

This also comes the same week as Digiday published an article citing the intricacies of Google's recent global advertising deal with Mondelez International to ask whether or not Google was using YouTube to tighten its grip on ad tech, by using such deals to further envelop brands into its tech stack.

Yahoo preparing major mobile advertising push?    

Yahoo is poised to unveil a self-service mobile advertising platform that will leverage last year's purchase of Flurry, by letting advertisers place ads across the recently acquired network, which includes titles such as the Guardian, as it aims to take a chunk out of Facebook and Google's hegemony of the mobile advertising market.

The reports first appeared in US-based website The Information, and cite sources close to the developments, asserting that the full disclosure will be made next month at Yahoo's debut mobile developer conference next month.

Yahoo has yet to publicly comment on the reports, but Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO, has frequently spoken on record about her belief that investing in mobile advertising products will be key to the turnaround of the company.

Writing at the time of the announcement of the Flurry acquisition, Gareth Davies, AdBrain, CEO, and ExchangeWire columnist, asserted: "In my view it’s the latest move in the ongoing war of the Silicon Valley giants to gain a ‘single customer view’ across screens as consumer media consumption segues from desktop, to mobile-first, and on into the ‘mobility era’.

"Yahoo has bought a huge mobile data set, and publisher network through the sheer numbers of mobile app publishers that have downloaded the Flurry SDK. Plus on top of that the Flurry acquisition brings to Yahoo’s table a raft of organic app engagement data, such as historical ad impression, click and conversion data.

"So what Yahoo has basically bought is a phenomenally large user base of mobile users (something it had been lacking). This is the new paradigm for a ‘mobile-first’ world where the key aim for marketers is to strive for a ‘single customer view’.

"The importance of which cannot be overstated, especially as things like connected cars and wearable tech become more commonplace in the market.

"Google and Facebook – the clear market leaders in mobile advertising with a combined marketshare of 75% according to some sources – have been massively investing in creating a single sign-on, which creates a single view of customers across screens, for years now."

Since then, Facebook has relaunched the Atlas platform, which has promised advertisers a "singe customer view", through its logged-in database of literally billions of cross-screen users, a move that has significantly upped the ante with Google, which is widely reported to pocket half of all money spent on mobile advertising.