The Australia and New Zealand ad tech market may be one of the more matured globally, but the region faces similar challenges to the rest of APAC from having to deal with an increasingly complex and expansive technology space.

In this Q&A with ExchageWire, Rubicon Project's Australia and New Zealand country manager Adele Hanzlicek says brands here also experience the same struggles as their peers in other Asia-Pacific markets, who lack a holistic view of their campaigns and more seamless management of their agency relationships. She points to advertisers such as Qantas and Commonwealth Bank that are taking back their ad management.

Adele Hanzlicek

Hanzlicek also discusses Rubicon's role in the recently launched Kiwi Premium Ad Exchange (KPEX) and the importance of a robust governance structure in facilitating the programmatic platform.

ExchangeWire: Where are you seeing increasing opportunities in Australia in terms of ad tech?

Adele Hanzlicek: Mobile. This is the biggest opportunity in market at the moment for advertisers. You only need to look at how quickly users of all ages are moving to consume content on mobile to understand how much of an opportunity this is. Speaking with many of our seller partners in market, approximately 60% of their traffic now comes from a mobile device. If advertisers are not making quick moves to define their mobile marketing strategy, they are missing out on 60% of the opportunities to engage and continue to communicate with their target market.

The other opportunity is the shift of traditional media channels into the automated trading space, including the likes of OOH, IPTV, and radio. There's been a lot of press recently about the pioneers in these fields including UK OOH startup Bitposter, and the US OOH players Adspace Networks and Captivate, Sky with its AdSmart and AdVance products, and DAX with its programmatic radio solution.

What key challenges do marketers in the country still face with regards to ad tech and programmatic?

The main challenge for marketers not only across Australia, but across the globe, is how to keep pace with the changing technology landscape. It's becoming harder to be able to clearly navigate through the noise to identify who and what will really add value to their business. At the end of the day, it should all come back to the campaign's objectives and from that, the ideal marketing technology mix should be devised. The advertiser martech stack might be different for each campaign — for some you may use Video and Social, and for others you might not.

How are you helping marketers resolve these?

Our core focus is to simplify the process of transacting media by automating the buying and selling of advertising. By doing so, we're removing a lot of the time consumption and manual processes, and freeing up people on both the buy- and the sell-side to be more creative and build stronger, deeper, and more valuable relationships.

What are some misconceptions brands have about digital marketing that you would like to address?

First, that technology is killing creativity. Contrary to this, the data gleaned through technology adds an invaluable element to an advertiser's arsenal. The creative and technology sides of advertising were once quite siloed, but the industry is slowly coming around to the idea that they present a much stronger offering as a unified entity.

Second, that programmatic serves to benefit the publisher only. This is a misconception that has, hopefully, all but disappeared and the concept of 'SSPs' and 'DSPs' is almost prehistoric jargon. When boiled down to its most fundamental, the automation of advertising is purely about reducing the friction between buyers and sellers to make their lives easier.

Some brands in Asia-Pacific have highlighted challenges with having to manage multiple silo agencies and lacking a holistic view of their campaigns. Are marketers in Australia and New Zealand facing similar issues?

From what I can see here, I think brands are experiencing the same struggles in Australia. You only need to look at the moves made by some key advertisers, such as Foxtel, Qantas, Coles, and Commonwealth Bank, to bring their advertising in-house. I'm not sure how much of the drive for these efforts was due to the inability to view their campaigns holistically; however, there are also much bigger strategies at play here for these advertisers around data that previously may not have been able to be shared with their agencies. For someone like Coles, for instance, to be able to connect the buying behaviours in store all the way across the marketing mix is incredibly powerful.

What are some growth opportunities, as well as key challenges, that publishers in Australia currently face?

The opportunities and challenges for publishers here are actually very similar to that of the advertisers and agencies. The technology space is growing in complexity and depth, which opens up more opportunities to grow and evolve, but also creates a lot more noise.

Rubicon will be powering the recently announced KPEX, which pulls together Fairfax Media, MediaWorks, NZME, and TVNZ to create a local ad exchange. How is this anticipated to impact New Zealand's programmatic market?

It's a very exciting initiative for the market, and we're thrilled to be powering this cooperative, our ninth globally. KPEX helps simplify the programmatic media trading process in New Zealand, offering the buyers one point of contact for ease of transaction. As with everything, there will be time needed to adjust to this new means of buying for all advertisers and agencies. However, the feedback we've heard from the local buyer community so far has been really encouraging.

What steps have KPEX stakeholders taken to help ensure the exchange won't go the way of APEX, which has faced multiple delays, and to resolve any potential challenges that may surface, especially in a project that involves multiple key players?

Without truly knowing why, APEX experienced issues in the early stages. I can only comment on our experience with KPEX. From the very early stages of inception, there has been a strong governance structure in place with KPEX between the founding partners. This has been critical to facilitate the speed and ease in the formation of KPEX, which has happened in record breaking time.

The four publishers in KPEX will maintain their own direct sales operations. How will this work alongside the shared exchange?

KPEX is designed to complement and enhance the direct sales initiatives of all the current and future partners. The goal of KPEX is to offer buyers a simple and easy means to access quality, brand safe content at scale in the New Zealand market.

As one of the more matured ad tech markets globally, what does Australia need to do to maintain its growth and development?

I personally think that, by nature, Australians like to be seen to be challenging the status quo, so keeping up with the rate of development and growth should come somewhat naturally to our market. From my experience in Rubicon Project, we tend to be more willing to roll up our sleeves and try something new than many markets we deal with across Asia and the globe.

The flip side to that is that our challenger mentality makes our staff incredibly desirable hires in overseas markets, like the UK and US. I think further investment in training and education is going to be critical to the continual success and rapid evolution of the Australian marketplace. As we continue to learn, we'll continue to grow and evolve.

IAB Australia's recent State of the Market report revealed a call for better brand safety, ad fraud detection, and viewability. Why are these still proving a challenge to address?

The rate of evolution that the programmatic industry is experiencing, I think, is one of the bigger factors. With expansion comes opportunity, and while almost all of these opportunities benefit the majority of the market, there are some that take advantage of these opportunities to benefit the few. It's really encouraging to see steps taken by a large number of players globally over the last 12 to 18 months to address these issues. There is no silver bullet and we need to continue to work together to develop the space further to address these concerns.