• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, September 17, 2012

Actually, that’s not MediaPost stepping up the hyperbole of its event branding (you know, “OMMA Global…”), but was the way Linus Gregoriadis, Research Director at Econsultancy, got his presentation off this morning at the OMMA Display conference in London.

“I’ve tried to bring an intergalactic feel to it,” Gregoriadis said while priming his Powerpoint presentation.

Interestingly, Gregoriadis, who struck me as a British version of the U.S.’ eMarketer’s Geoff Ramsey, said the same big themes resonating States-side are the hot buttons in the display ad marketplace in Western Europe.

“The main theme around this event is real-time bidding,” Gregoriadis affirmed, citing research indicating that by 2015, 25% of the online display ad marketplace will be via RTB.

“I guess the question is how high can that figure go,” he said, adding. “Will there be a cap?. What percentage of the inventory will the publishers be willing to give up?”

While the current growth of RTB is “fast,” Gregoriadis said “a lot of barriers are going to have to be overcome” for RTB to live up to its potential.

Not surprisingly, the other big news in Western Europe’s display ad marketplace is social.

Gregoriadis noted that last week’s launch of the Facebook Exchange was seen as a “big development” in the market, and he said Europe’s DSPs have been all over it, trying to figure out how to integrate the exchange into their display inventory targeting and management systems.

“The DSPs have so far been reporting very encouraging results,” he said, adding that the impact of Facebook Exchange is “enabling a big step forward for the RTB industry.”

That’s because of Facebook’s shear “dominance” not just as a social media network, but as a display ad publisher, Gregoriadis said, noting, “It dwarfs other publishers out there.”

The focus on the intersection between display, RTB and Facebook may be appropriate when you consider the research Gregoriadis cited from a recent survey of marketers, which consider “integration with social media” to be their “No. 1” priority.