• by May 11, 2011

I remember as a spry young sales rep at CNET in the mid-1990s feeling quite proud about putting a solid dent in my pipeline during one particular week by delivering 10 great meetings to clients, closing four deals, and opening up 15 more doors. And all of those deals were over $10,000 -- big-time bucks back then for digital.

I thought I was really focused and perfecting the rhythm of running a territory like the Eastern U.S. The problem was: I had not done anything against my top 10 accounts, which could have ended up being 80% of my annual goal. In other words, those clients I had just spent all that time closing couldn't scale well in the long-term.

I was reminded about that often while attending ad:tech and the surrounding events in San Francisco a few weeks ago.

Much of the digital display media world is now comprised of companies focused on the relatively new but rapidly growing opportunity called RTB, while perfecting models that handle the best direct-response campaigns through retargeting efforts.

Many independent researchers predict that total U.S. display spending through RTB will grow in 2011 from 10% to 20%, and it is impressive and exciting that the slice of that display pie is getting bigger so quickly.

But as someone who joined a digital marketing platform company [x+1] after 15 years on the publisher/network selling side, I can verify what many are starting to say (or at least whisper): RTB does not fully scale for marketers just yet. If it did, it would be because publishers moved their premium inventory into this environment, having already solved their internal issues, like sales channel and yield management.

If it did, we probably wouldn't need to see inventory from the same recently sold publisher offered in RTB on five different exchanges, like in Q1. Or spend our time weeding out examples of impression fraud on more than three different major RTB exchanges. And if it did, budgets in RTB would actually be growing to 30% to 50% of total spend this year.

So should we completely bail or at least punt on the promise of RTB? (What an old boss of mine at BBDO called the Internet back in 1995: "a fad like ham radio"?) I propose we focus on solving the much bigger problems for marketers and agencies, such as:

•Provide visibility across the entire funnel and online touchpoints

•Optimize for global reach and frequency

•Create better solutions to overachieve on brand objectives

These three areas cover at least 80% of real attention, pain and budget issues that we hear about regularly from marketers and agencies. Eliminating the need to keep bringing up that famous Wanamaker quote, respecting the consumer's valuable attention, and creating real metrics tying brand lift to sales all sound like pretty good things for us to focus on together.

Imagine what our industry would be like if we didn't have to worry about clients asking for last-click attribution, or hear vendors promising it as the end-all, be-all in search and display. Clients are pleading for this kind of help to give them more clarity, empowering them to have better command of their marketing and media plans than ever before.

Yes, so-called private exchanges are starting to help move more supply into RTB from top publishers. It's actually a little funny seeing all this noise around such a futuristic way of buying, when it's really just the way media has been bought and sold for 100 years ("You mean I can lock in premium inventory upfront if only I commit to a certain spend and price?"), albeit with much better automation and modeling.

Publishers' CROs and yield management leads are becoming more comfortable setting up rules of engagement around their inventory in RTB, with some starting to wonder if they can set up similar rules for their in-house sales teams. They are also beginning to understand how to drive better value from coupling their data with their inventory.

But in the world of digital display (video, mobile, and social are just starting to help), there just isn't enough quality supply in RTB to have it be the gold standard buying mechanism -- at least not yet. Pulling domain-level delivery reports from our top RTB partners tells us that every day. Marketers and agencies are smart, and I know they will begin to choose their next partners (DSP, DMP, retargeting, attribution, analytics, trading desk) based on how they are solving the above three problems, and how quickly and easily they can integrate into their existing platforms and business rhythms.

Better yet, why not find a single partner that can actually do all of that? The primary long-term decision criteria should probably not be what CTR or even what weakly attributed CPA target a partner can hit over a random five-day test flight in RTB inventory. Otherwise, 12 months from now at ad:tech, we will all be patting ourselves on the back for solving 20% of the problem, while most won't even realize the golden opportunity missed to drive significant, lasting improvements for their agency and marketer clients.

But if we can start solving those big three problems, we'll all have good reason to keep throwing and/or attending all those fun parties!