• by Gina Lovett , September 18, 2012

The Quality/Scale Debate:

Rob Grimshaw, managing director of FT: Fixing the problems around ad servers and targeting – full-page creative ads with smart targeting – that’s the holy grail for FT.com to deliver for advertisers. We’re taking out that proposition to market. We can give targeting, tracking. There’s a need for full-page creative ads on mobile.

Mike Goldsmith, Editor-in-chief, Digital Editions, Future: People are prepared to pay for products and there’s a need to develop own platforms, need to be able to prove to advertisers and agencies that your advertising is a great experience. With common ground, comes the volume that advertisers want.

Ben Tatton-Brown, SVP & Managing Director, EMEA, Amobee: My focus is on clients like Ebay, Nokia, Expedia and looking for the right channels to market for them. As a buyer, you look to buy as near to the source, but sometimes that’s not possible and you have to buy through an ad network. For the buyer, there’s always the debate about achieving the best value through a platform, publisher or network. Networks like Adfonic or YOC assist with reporting, integration and volume.

Gary Danks, Managing Director, YOC Mobile Advertising: As a premium ad network, we look after every newspaper and magazine in the UK, understand the brand values and hold a high yield in the market. When media owners come to take it inhouse, they still have something left in the marketplace. What makes the debate more difficult is that the lines are grey about who is a media owner: social networks, ad networks, or News International.

Paul Childs, Chief Marketing Officer & Co-founder, Adfonic: Rich media has moved from being the domain of premium networks or publishers. Adfonic is now serving between 30-40bn rich media impressions per quarter – there’s a shift from being blind to being more transparent, with mobile advertising becoming smarter with mobile real-time bidding.