Commentary

Trading Desk Trades Places: Varick To Service Sell-Side Too

by Joe Mandese , May 7, 2013

Paul-Rostkowsi-B

Is it just me, or are the lines between buyer and seller blurring in the programmatic marketplace? First Rubicon Project goes fully neutral, launching a spate of products aimed at the demand-side. Now a major agency trading desk is planning to diversify its services to the sell-side. That’s what Varick Media Management President Paul Rostkowski told me when I ran into him at Martini Media’s “Hangover 3” themed NewFront event this morning. “We’re talking to publishers to see if we can help them too,” Rostkowski told me when I asked him what was new. Specifically, he said VMM is considering marketing its new, homegrown data management platform to the sell-side.

Why would they be interested in licensing that? “Because we’ve built the first data management platform designed by and for media planners,” Rostkowski said, implying that should create a lot of value for publishers who want to understand how to target advertising budgets based on how they actually target consumers.

3 comments about "Trading Desk Trades Places: Varick To Service Sell-Side Too".

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Francine Hardaway from Undertone, May 7, 2013 at 5:48 p.m.
It's not just you. ZEDO just launched ZINC, a platform for media buyers to buy high impact formats from its publishers. That's because we realized there is too much distance between advertiser and publisher today. It didn't used to be that way before ad tech, and it shouldn't be that way now. To really solve problems, we have to server both sides of the ecosystem.
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Mark Mclaughlin from McLaughlin Strategy, May 7, 2013 at 8:32 p.m.

Does Paul even take himself seriously? “Because we’ve built the first data management platform designed by and for media planners” - really, this is the FIRST one???

So, Paul used the profits from his clients who buy media through his machines to build a machine that will help the sellers gain insights into targeting information. This would be targeting information that his clients probably consider to be very proprietary information. Sounds like a plan to me.

Joe - this is a fun article but was Paul playing out a role in his own version of Hangover 3?

Paul Rostkowski from Varick Media Managment, May 8, 2013 at 8:50 p.m.

Hi Mark…love your input. Likely some good points. But just to be clear here.. I am very serious in that our platform from what I am aware of was or is the first to be built by media traders.. Not planners as Joe suggests. Not sure where he got that from. Some of this is out is out of context as I was not expecting any of it to appear in the press. And little to none of this has anything to do with our data platform rather our experience in buying media using easily available data points such as geo and time of day. Nothing from our clients data I can assure you and little to none of which is proprietary. The sell side needs some help for the entire eco system to pan out well which will play out well for both sides. Thanks for your perspective.