Mobile advertising, and the application of programmatic media-buying technologies on the channel, is one of the key challenges facing the contemporary marketer. A week ahead of ATS Paris, ExchangeWire previews one of the event's stand-out panels that will debate this challenge.

A recent benchmark study conducted by the IAB's French chapter identified competency in mobile advertising as one of the key areas among any organisation involved in the media-buying sector, with 78% of respondents claiming the area was crucial to 'tomorrow's business'.

Yann Le Roux, Integral Ad Science, managing director, France, will chair a panel discussion addressing the subject, and matters unique to the French market at ATS Paris on 22 April.

Speaking with ExchangeWire, he said: "Fragmentation, measurement, small creative formats... challenges abound for mobile advertising. Is mobile not suitable for advertising? Or is it that we need to entirely rethink mobile advertising?"

Source: IAB

ExchangeWire also caught up with Paul Gubbins, Millennial Media, head of programmatic, EMEA, and ATS Paris panellist, (pictured) to explore the matter further.

EW: Given the above discussion title, what do you think are the three most important points to address and why?

PG: The mobile programmatic landscape has evolved tremendously over the past 12 months, but in order to continue that advancement there are three clear areas we need to tackle as an industry:

• Education. This issue falls on both the buy and sell sides, as there are still some that find themselves confused by the ecosystem and what it offers. Our focus for both sides of the ecosystem needs to look at how we communicate the benefits of mobile programmatic in tracking, data, and inventory quality/transparency.
• Cross-Screen. In short, what does it actually mean and how is it being deployed? Where programmatic allows advertisers to run always-on, real-time campaigns efficiently, a joined-up cross-screen advertising strategy should shift the focus beyond clicks and impressions to a better understanding of consumers across multiple screens.
• Mobile Private Marketplaces (PMPs). What is the benefit in mobile? Is Deal ID being adopted, and how can we ensure that bidders are upgrading to Open RTB 2.2 and 2.3 quickly enough to offer deals and native to their licensed partners?

EW: Which sector of the industry (i.e. publishers, agencies, or advertisers themselves) is best-positioned to place mobile-based campaigns?

PG: To answer this question, we need to first look at each individual component. Publishers are now generating more traffic from mobile devices than ever before – in some cases, well over 50%.

Previously, desktop SSPs [supply-side platforms] and exchanges struggled to help these publishers due to the fundamental differences of a mobile impression versus a desktop impression. As a result, mobile-first vendors launched to help premium publishers better understand their mobile traffic, enabling them to expose inventory to programmatic buyers, DSPs [demand-side platforms] and unlock incremental (to their direct efforts) demand and yield.

Agencies, through the creation of ATDs [agency trading desks], are now leveraging a multitude of mobile-first DSPs on a SaaS [software-as-a-service]-basis, and informing bidding logic via their proprietary or licensed DMPs [data management platforms]. Some are now even taking their desktop audiences, built-in cookies, and modelling via their DMP’s Device Graph capability to find these audiences in the app ecosystem, where consumers are increasingly spending their time. This is of real interest to agencies as it can lead to incremental reach within an environment with less bid density and lower clearing prices within the RTB auction.

Then we come to advertisers. Smart advertisers are now leveraging their mobile first-party data to inform the buys their agency or ATD is making on their behalf. An example of this would be to compile all of the PII [personally identifiable information]-compliant Device IDs, such as Apple’s Advertising Identifier (IDFA), of their customers who have already installed their app.

The advertiser can then pass this list to their execution partner, who will not serve any ads to existing customers. Alternatively, you could weight buys to this audience segment as you want to drive interaction within an app, for example.

EW: Would you say that the ad tech infrastructure (built several years ago) has been mapped to be too desktop (and cookie-reliant) to effectively build cross-screen campaigns?

PG: It may be controversial to say, but yes, I do believe this to be the case.

That said, this is through no fault of any vendor, but is instead as a result of the speed in which the consumer has migrated from a fixed to mobile connection. Many leading vendors that were pioneers in the programmatic space are built around the cookie. However, now the majority are either trying to recalibrate bidders and UIs or are making smart acquisitions of scaled point solutions.

EW: In this respect, does it mean that the 'new breed of publishers' (think app developers such as Rovio, et al) are better placed to monetise on mobile, compared to say 'legacy publishers' (i.e. traditional newspapers and magazine) which have to try to monetise mobile web, as well as apps, etc?

PG: There is no escaping the numbers. The majority of time spent on mobile is in-app. The demand for in-app inventory has increased over the last several years as the buy side started to model and build audience segments around the PII-compliant and persistent Device ID.

However, buyers require different environments to meet different KPIs, and with recent initiatives from both the AOP (Association of Online Publishers) and Pangaea, there will always be a demand for premium mobile web inventory. Even more so, this demand will increase if data can be made accessible and targeted via Deal ID, commonly used today in mobile by vendors who are working to Open RTB spec of at least 2.2.

EW: Ergo, are we looking at a mobile (and app-based) infrastructure versus a desktop (and cookie-based) one? If the answer is that simple, then what's the best way to 'connect the dots' between the two when it comes to effectively targeting users across screens?

PG: I think it is widely recognised that connected devices of today and tomorrow will be built around the app infrastructure.

As a result, the Device ID will be at the core of targeted execution. With that said, people are using cookies today to target in mobile. DSPs can cookie-sync with mobile exchanges and SSPs to target mobile web browsers that do not restrict third-party cookies by default. However, scale is limited.

To overcome this fragmentation, a new wave of cross-screen vendors have launched that leverage 'Device Graphs' to ingest cookies and pass back to the buyer a statistical ID that provides a 'probability' of multiple devices belonging to the same consumer.

The methodology deployed for the mathematical deduction of data points to land at the conclusion 'ID' is yet to be governed, but organisations such as Nielsen are starting to audit and some platforms are recognised as providing 90%+ accuracy using this method.

However, until the IAB creates standards, both buyers and sellers will continue to test the pros and cons of 'Deterministic' versus 'Probabilistic' approaches to connect the dots between disparate data and audiences.

The challenges of applying programmatic media-buying techniques to mobile will be debated by Le Roux, Gubbins, Jana Sievers, MoPub, head of demand partnerships, EMEA, as well as Mathieu Gbetro, LiveRail, head of France and Belgium. Tickets for ATS Paris are still available but selling out fast, click here to avoid disappointment.