• by Mendel Senf , Op-Ed Contributor, April 11, 2014

Figures released this week at the Festival of Media Global in Rome by ZenithOptimedia predict that spend on display advertising, which was presumed on the decline not even two years ago, is set to overtake paid search advertising spend by 2015. And why? Thanks to programmatic trading, according to the forecast. By definition, we know that tech is here to shake things up. Where technology collides with traditional media, the mechanics of buying advertising space are moving away from the traditional practice of using long paper trails towards an automated system.

There is a buoyancy and an excitement in the world of online media. Fears of an ad tech bubble are being quashed by success stories of businesses like Rubicon Project, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange only last week, with shares jumping over 30% in the first two days. It’s a far cry from the ambitious ad tech IPO hiccups of 2013. Now that programmatic is finding its stride, everywhere I turn companies want to be recognised as true innovators and owners of the most disruptive technology around, ready to put advertisers in the driving seat on the buy side. But let’s take a step back and ask what makes a true disruptive technology, rather than just an optimisation on current technology.

It’s probably a good starting point to look at three areas in which the status quo has been fully turned on its axis, as opposed to where it’s been optimised by a newer, better technology that happened to learn from the first one. The first company to really start changing the direction of how we used the web was Yahoo, or "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". Back in 1994, when the first iterations of Yahoo’s search engine were starting to make sense of the web, there was no other way to guide yourself in a logical fashion without taking note of site addresses and bookmarking them for later visits. Yahoo changed consumer behaviours, and Google came along and optimised that opportunity. People see Google as the original disruptor within the search market, but it’s important to realise that Google’s engine was an optimisation – an improvement – on Yahoo’s original technology. 

Among the social media disruptors, it’s once again not behemoths like Facebook with 1.23 billion users worldwide, and Twitter with its nearly 650 million users, but those platforms like MSN Messenger and the infinite number of online chat rooms that came before and created a space to bring users together in an online environment, cutting out the need for teenagers to wait by the phone every night for their friends to call. Again MSN created the behavioural change, while Facebook optimised the already existing market. 

Jumping to the future of disruptive transportation, and Tesla has not only gone down the route of offering drivers the chance to be eco-friendly and have a sexy car, but it has also shaken up the dealership model in the process by selling direct to the consumer. The recent product placement for a Tesla car in the new TV drama “Suits” has planted this model firmly on the “I’ve gotta have it” map. And who was doing high-end electric vehicles before? Exactly.

So why explore what is a true industry pivot and what is an optimisation of a process? Because I want to call out those online media businesses who claim to be shaking up the industry and who aren’t offering anything revolutionary to their customers. Take transparency pricing: we work in an industry where you can’t walk without tripping over the word transparent. Whether it’s in relation to the viewability of ads, to brand safety and transparent placement, to transparent pricing by media agencies, it’s fair to say it’s overused. Next to transparency, ad-tech companies are failing to optimise on new KPIs such as customer lifetime value (CLV) and the actual fill rates of the advertiser’s inventory. Sure, many firms boast both transparency and performance as being an integral part of their approach, but few actually practice it. Even fewer are doing it well.