James Curran

Articles by James All articles by James

• Viewability Shines A Light On The Publisher Discrepancy Tax in Marketing Daily on 06/30/2015
  

  The discrepancy burden on publishers is so ingrained in the system that in a recent study, the IAB actually put a positive spin on what would normally be seen as a terrible finding.

Comments by James All comments by James

• Programmatic Is Failing Forward by Ari Rosenberg (Publishing Insider on 05/10/2017)
  

  I agree with your points Ari - #3, #2, and #1..... Programmatic won't fail though, it will be the pressure on the market until it hits bottom. What you are saying is that great brand pubs will erode until there is only social media garbage?-James

• Premium Programmatic? Don't Hold Your Breath by Karlene Lukovitz (Audience Buying Insider on 08/26/2016)
  

  Yes. If we haven't reached the point yet it will happen soon. Let's not forget the sweeping elimination of fraud in the exchanges and demand for viewability. It's leaving only good, real inventory in programmatic.At the end of the "race to the bottom" we could even see a bounce up.

• Videology's Scott Ferber: 2017 Is The Year for Programmatic TV Advertising by Tobi Elkin (RTBlog on 12/10/2015)
  

  Also, I think what Scott and what everyone is saying about "Programmatic" in linear isn't bidding.... It's "automation and targeting" The way it's sold is completely different. The networks may not give up upfronts and the old way of packaging their media products, but buying it will be automated and the targeting more finite.And yes, 2017... Everyone is investing / building now, it will be released this year and adopted next.

• Ad-Tech Gridlock: Discrepancies Between Buy And Sell Sides Challenge Publishers by Dave Marquard (Real-Time Daily on 12/08/2015)
  

  Discrepancies are a $12 Billion dollar problem. And think of the amount of people needed just to manage campaign delivery because they have to log into other systems every day... It's so costly. And when campaigns under/over deliver the pub eats the cost to fix it too. If you're interested in automating it and lessening the blow, take a look at STAQ as we are setting technology standards, automating the manual work behind it and are working on industry policies. Discrepancies are not going away on their own.

• The Importance Of Third-Party Measurement by Josh Chasin (Metrics Insider on 06/03/2015)
  

  Publishers also push back on it because it can be too much work for them to include it. Now, there's a third party reporting vendor everything... it started with Impressions, then rich media vendors, then fraud, now viewability. It creates more work that someone needs to pay for. There are companies now, like STAQ that exist only because of the amount of data vendors used in digital media today.

• UI Fatigue: The Need to Centralize Programmatic Access by Brian Nadres (Programmatic Insider on 03/27/2015)
  

  We all will come to terms that the tech stack will be forever evolving and no one marketer or publisher will be able to use one system. The reason is simple - competition. No agency can put their entire client's budget into one DSP and no one publisher can put all their non guaranteed inventory into one SSP. Because you need something to keep your partners vying for your business. We see the clients with the largest tech stacks, as having the most dialed in yield and ROI because they drive big competition from their vendors. Is this hard for planners and ops teams? Yes, but there are new tools (shameless plug for STAQ) that enable pubs and marketers to scale their partner base, unifying their best of breed tech stack. Also, as long as there are new formats and big individual, unique native formats (like Twitter, SnapChat, FB) then there will be more than one piece of the stack.... The tremendous consolidation we're all hoping for simply cannot happen. It's a cycle.

• 'Tech Stacks' Comprised Of An Ad Tech Dozen by Tyler Loechner (RTBlog on 01/21/2015)
  

  Yes, this is huge. TBR - Just integrating the entire tech stack into your first party ad server, we've made an entire business around it. Everyone uses multiple DSPs, because there is different inventory, relationships, bidding strategies, or data needs across all of them. On the Pub Side, SSPs and exchanges are treated like ad networks now and they are loaded with dozens of partners. There is no consolidation, because point solutions are able to focus in areas where full stack solutions cant. Long live the Frankenstack, it's not going anywhere.

• Fully In-house Tech Stack May Be Programmatic Pipe Dream by James Rooney (Programmatic Insider on 12/03/2014)
  

  This is an issue that is not discussed often enough. The Frankenstack is unavoidable actually, as these days your buyer's ad tech and your close partners use different pieces of tech too. Not to mention you may need a different piece for Video, Mobile, Analytics and more, let alone building a separate stack for each vertical! The way everyone is stitching them together today, is with Excel. We've seen every kind of tech stack there is and the article is dead on correct. You should approach it carefully. Trying vendors can be easy, depending on what they do, but trying too many over a short period of time can put you into a hole that is very hard to get out of. Ensure you're aware of the operational process a vendor adds, or removes, whether it is trafficking, delivery management or reporting - as you add each vendor.

• It's Time To Drive Complexity Out of the Digital Media World by Dave Morgan (Online Spin on 05/22/2014)
  

  The people arent all to blame. It will never be simple and it will always need to be aggregated together for the marketer and publisher so they can see what's happening. As long as there are multiple companies vying to be the one entry point to have the most reach, than it will be complicated. Our company was founded on this very concept, unify it. It used to be print, radio and TV. Now that digital is here, any screen you see is another format and multiple formats within it. It's not only the people that perpetuate the complexity, the formats speed it up.

• Ad Tech Consolidation: A Return To The Nest? by Tyler Loechner (RTBlog on 04/07/2014)
  

  Everyone is trying to consolidate their ad tech stack, even within their own operations, let alone M&A in the industry. Sometimes, they even have multiple accounts in the same piece of tech, but can't consolidate them because they are just used for very different reasons. It gets the job done, but it can make for some tedious operations. We see it every day~!

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