Following the fascinating keynote speech on the topic of publisher holistic yield management at the recent ATS Paris event, delivered by Olivier Lavecot, country manager France & Benelux, ONE by AOL, ExchangeWire were keen to understand the strategy behind AOL's ongoing platform developments. Graham Moysey (pictured below), head of international, AOL, explains how the emergence of comprehensive tech platforms simplifies digital for brands; and that open is far better than closed.

ExchangeWire: As head of AOL International, you oversee AOL Platforms, including ONE by AOL, which has streamlined your offering to bring a host of products into one suite. Do you see a convergence of ad tech and martech within this platform?

Graham Moysey: Programmatic has undeniably made marketing more efficient, but it has brought with it a host of other problems. The infamous Lumascape speaks to the fragmentation of advertising and marketing technology, which has created more confusion than the industry would like.

Everyone in the industry can see huge M&A activity in the ad tech and martech markets; you only have to look at the annual reports from advisory firm Results International to see the volume of deals taking place. Consequently, there is an emergence of comprehensive technology platforms, such as AOL, that can simplify digital for brands by giving them access to more in one place.

When you add all these pieces, you have a true, end-to-end stack for both advertisers and publishers alike, helping both demand and supply to leverage all the tools they need to manage their business, whether it’s video, display or mobile. That’s the convergence we’re seeing right now.

With an ad tech stack that is continually developing and evolving, what are the next priorities for ONE by AOL?

To get ahead of industry needs, we have invested heavily into ONE by AOL, which is a best-in-class programmatic platform built upon some of the industry’s most powerful technologies. In fact, research company Forrester specifically called out ONE by AOL’s DSP, a core piece of the ONE by AOL stack, as a “market leader”—definitive proof that ONE by AOL is a solid piece of tech.

As we continue through the year, we’ll never stop looking at how best we can evolve the ONE by AOL platform for our partners; but one core area of focus for us right now is, of course, mobile. We can expect to see a world where over two-thirds (67.1%) of the global population will be mobile users by 2019. Led by developing markets, we can expect smartphone adoption to reach 63% by 2020. Advertisers and publishers can’t afford to overlook mobile’s importance.

With Verizon, Microsoft, and Millennial Media, AOL is well positioned to provide marketers with the expertise and necessary tools for them for them to deliver media programmatically across mobile devices. Not only do we have an unshakable technology stack in the form of ONE by AOL, but the Millennial Media exchange brings a level of programmatic mobile expertise and technology that few in the industry could rival.

This year also saw us roll out our ONE platform for Publishers, with a view to simplifying the ad tech landscape for Publishers.

Programmatic has become an important part of AOL's business – how has that changed over the years?

We have always believed in  both sides of what we call Culture and Code: internally, custom-built brand experiences on one side through our content brands (The Huffington Post, Engadget, AOL), or premium video experiences and providing programmatic tools on the other side of the stack. It’s the provision of both that is our differentiator and makes us the components of a successful campaign.

Since the introduction of the multi-device lifestyle, there’s billions more touchpoints for brands and marketers to sift through and understand in order to make their message better resonate. But when we consider the fact that each device lives in its own silo, and that digital footprints differ greatly for each medium, it’s much harder for marketers to know exactly how their marketing investments are paying off. In fact, nearly half (45%) of the ecosystem understands very little, or nothing, about how programmatic works, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). That lack of understanding remains one of the biggest challenges to programmatic.

However, it’s hard to fathom a world without programmatic advertising. Where there are still some who find themselves confused by the ecosystem and what it offers, our focus for both sides of the ecosystem needs to consider how we communicate the benefits of programmatic in key areas; such as how advances in technology and data analysis have empowered marketers to automate the decision-making process of media buying by targeting specific audiences and demographics.

In regards to video, the undeniable medium of choice for future advertisers, 92% of brands and agencies are buying video programmatically and will continue to make larger investments into the technology year-on-year.

With a global footprint and new product launches across multiple channels, including, most recently, ONE by AOL: TV, how scalable and adaptable are your product offerings?

ONE by AOL is an open, versatile product suite designed to meet the unique needs of every advertiser and publisher. It is highly adaptable, depending on the specific goals of our partners at any one time.

In terms of scale, the business has grown tremendously over the past 12 months, first with the acquisition by Verizon, and then subsequent partnership with Microsoft, and our own acquisition of Millennial Media. The combination of them all now reaches across 22 markets, and the data brings effective value-creation to advertisers.

Finally, our open infrastructure allows us to add inventory and scale, bridging the gap between advertisers and the largest premium networks out there. In media, open means flexibility, control, transparency, free markets, access, scale and fluidity. Closed means restricted, unaccommodating, regulated, expensive and biased. We made a deliberate decision over two years ago to build and operate open platforms for our clients and partners. That has never wavered and will never change.