• by Phil Leggiere , November 5, 2008

For all the excitement mobile advertising has generated, the negative rap against it has been that it can neither scale nor provide targeting, especially behavioral, at scale. Bob Walczak, CEO of Ringleader Digital (formerly Mophap) outlines a roadmap for bringing not only mobile but all of emerging digital media to parity with online targeting.

Behavioral Insider: I know Ringleader Digital is a result of a rebranding of Mophap, which we've spoken about before in the context of mobile. How does the new platform you're introducing this week extend that?

Bob Walczak: The goal we've been pursuing all along was about bringing digital marketing to parity with online.

The platform we're launching is focused at its core with providing complete interoperability between different servers and platforms. Up until now if you look at mobile or other digital device platforms, they've been closed loop, not open platform.

BI: What has been the hurdle as you see it?

Walczak: We see three components that have been missing. We've lacked the equivalent of a third-party ad server to play the role Double Click or Atlas have in the evolution of online. There's also been a lack of the kind of agency dashboard which has enabled agencies to load creative and manage it across all sites and networks with unified reporting. The last piece, but certainly not the least, is a cookie. Without all those components in place it's impossible to have frequency caps and acquisitions tracking. Without those you have no basis on which to make large buys.

So the past two years have been focused on integrating all three areas outlined above. That process has culminated in the introduction of the first-ever cookie-like technology for mobile.

BI: How does deployment work for agencies or mobile advertisers and publishers? What kind of upgrade is needed?

Walczak: In developing the platform our priority has been to introduce something that doesn't require any major technology overhaul. That means something that can be leveraged easily using existing technology. So Media Stamp was designed to be implemented via standard ad tags. That way advertisers or agencies can deploy tags the way they always have and we just attach a unique Media Stamp ID so it can be passed just like a cookie. The Media Stamp technology will be the first to bring these tracking capabilities to mobile which were previously only available to online.

BI: What kinds of targeting will this enable?

Walczak: Where we see this platform being leveraged in the fairly near-term is in retargeting ads and engagement mapping.

Engagement mapping is based on the notion that the site that delivers the click makes the money. In fact marketers have always known that a lot contributes to that final click but we've lacked a working model to attribute what other sites may have contributed. With engagement mapping you can begin to actually measure and quantify that contribution.

The development of a behavioral engine will be a further step forward. As mobile browsing, search and other behavioral components are tracked and a history is built up, we can begin to integrate that data with zip code, context and perhaps publisher level data profiles. The granularity of targeting will be an evolution that comes together over time. The point right now is that once a unified platform is in place it enables advertisers to clear the biggest hurdle that's existed in mobile fragmentation.

BI: How do carriers and carrier decks fit in to the idea of a unified, non-fragmented mobile Web?

Walczak: In the emerging ecology of mobile, carrier decks are just another portal. What that means is that in regard to data there's a level playing field between on-deck and off-deck sites.

BI: Looking ahead, what sorts of new iterations do you see on the horizon?

Walczak: We see the mobile piece is part of a much wider continuum of emerging digital platforms. One area I expect we'll see a lot of excitement in over the next few years is in-car GPS. It'll be quite exciting to begin to create a cross-referencing between location-based data and search, for instance.