• Automation Shy
    One of the most common pieces of advice a real-time marketer hears is that they must always be ready. In other words, they need to be constantly aware of what the fresh content is and how people are reacting to it. As it turns out, they spend a big chunk of their time (28%) doing just that, but that's actually much less than they would like.
  • A Picture Worth A Thousand Quants
    The University of Waterloo has unveiled a new technology laboratory that will be located at its Institute for Quantum Computing. It will open this Thursday. The purpose of the lab is to create quantum materials for the next generation of computer processing. There is a $5 million "tool" in the lab that will "grow new materials that could form the building blocks of quantum technologies." I put tool in quotations because once you see the picture below you'll realize it's much more impressive than your typical hammer.
  • Programmatic's Place In Place-Based Media
    Programmatic needs to keep working on the me's before people are ready for the we's. General consumer: "I'm being targeted on my computer. This is my cell phone. These are my Hulu and YouTube accounts. This is my Pandora station. I've become more and more okay with being targeted here. But if I'm targeted on our radio? Or by that billboard we all share? Slow down there, partner." My take is that programmatic needs to spend a bit more time finding its footing in online display, mobile and video before it can truly take hold in the more futuristic spaces, …
  • What Click Rates, Price Might Be Telling Us
    How much better are above the fold impressions than below the fold, you ask? Judging by price paid, advertisers think they are 11% better, but viewable impressions have to yet truly separate themselves in a real-time bidding (RTB) environment as the cream of the crop compared to those dreaded below the fold impressions. In Europe, click-through rates for above the fold inventory grew 15% from Q2 to Q3 of this year. That's actually less than the click-through rate growth for below the fold inventory (16%).
  • The 'Private Trading Desk' Model
    Will more and more brands do what Lenovo just did -- make agencies use a certain tech vendor, or else? (Okay, so I added the "or else" part, but it's kind of implied, isn't it?) And if brands are going to team up with their agencies in selecting ad tech vendors to create "private trading desks," where do the regular trading desks fit in?
  • Ad Execs: Programmatic Fueling Demand For Video
    One of the perception problems in the programmatic media-buying marketplace is that the inventory made available via exchanges isn't precious enough to boost demand from advertisers and agencies, which in turn, will drive prices down as "non-premium" inventory floods the marketplace. It's hard to argue with that based on version 1.0 of programmatic trading, especially RTB, but my own belief is that the market simply hasn't matured to the point where there is enough premium inventory working, and enough bidders working for it, to reach the kind of supply-and-demand equilibrium that functions in the open exchanges of other industries, especially …
  • Real-Time With Brian Gleason On WPP News, Consolidation
    Tuesday's news that WPP has merged Xaxis and 24/7 Media is just the latest in a long list of consolidation news to come out of the advertising technology industry in the past six months. But even though consolidation has begun, I still wonder if the general ideal is challenging because it's fundamentally backwards to how consumers are behaving. Think about it -- consumers are spreading across all sorts of devices and screens, so how does a marketer keep up while keeping it easy to manage?
  • Homing Drones
    Amazon's vision of an automated delivery system -- "Amazon Prime Air" -- went viral last night, and for good reason. Considering the announcement weekend was the one wedged in between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the whole country was ready to hear about something that makes shopping even easier and faster. The proposed 30-minute purchase-to-doorstep delivery method is about as real-time as it gets for an actual purchase. Once you consider the round trip travel to a store, finding what you want, and standing in line, 30 minutes might even be faster than "the regular way."
  • Niche Hunting In A Macro Indsutry
    Earlier this month, RTM Daily reported that Kantar Media had added digital ad networks, exchanges, and other ad tech vendors to its SRDS.com database, giving marketers and agencies the ability to compare before choosing partners. In the time since, Kantar Media gave me a trial look at their database. I'm going to walk you through what I do in real-time. Everything typed below is more or less my stream of consciousness and what I'm learning as I poke around the database.
  • Breaking: All The RTB Projections
    The end of another quarter is on the horizon, and with it comes updated projections for all kinds of markets and submarkets. Today, eMarketer updated their projections for real-time bidding (RTB) not just for the end of 2013, but through 2017 as well. It just surprises me -- in a good way, mind -- that a space that already has so much hype is now almost routinely undersold.
« Previous EntriesNext Entries »