“Networking” is written by members of the online advertising network community.
Today’s column is written by Andy Atherton, COO and co-Founder, Brand.net.
My former boss, Wenda Harris Millard, had one of the most quotable, and quoted, lines in the online media industry in 2008 when she said, “We must not trade our advertising inventory like pork bellies”, referring to frenzied interest in online media exchanges – interest which for good reason shows no signs of abating. Her remark was intended as a warning to publishers to maintain differentiation and manage indirect sales channels carefully. But consciously or unconsciously, Wenda also surfaced a fundamental distinction that, oddly enough, doesn’t get talked about in the context of online media: the difference between a Spot market and a Futures market (media contracts are not yet exchange traded, so technically this would be a “Forward” market, but I will ignore this subtlety in the interest of simplicity).
Since Futures market buying (e.g., the TV “upfronts”) is the standard practice offline for Brand advertisers, and Brand advertising is (rightly) seen as a huge growth opportunity for online, it behooves those of us interested in catalyzing that growth to identify where current market capabilities and technology infrastructure are lacking. To do that, let’s take a deep dive into a specific example, moving beyond the fashionable, but vague, notion of “Madison Avenue meets Wall Street” to the technical and operational details required to make this actually happen. So let’s (1) walk through an example of a Spot media transaction, (2) replay the same example in the context of a Futures transaction, and (3) evaluate the key capabilities required to enable Futures transactions for online media.
“Networking” is a column focused on the evolving roles of networks in online advertising.
“Networking” is a column focused on the evolving roles of networks in online advertising.
A senior agency executive who manages the digital account for an Ad Age 50 CPG manufacturer recently delivered the best line I have heard in a long time. We were talking about Behavioral Targeting (BT) and he said, “In my experience BT is a much better 
It’s become a sport to bash ad networks over the past couple years, with panels and articles calling for publishers to “fire your network.” My personal favorite was an article calling networks “a tax on lazy publishers” and publishers “idiots”. It’s interesting commentary and does bring to light some legitimate issues. The problem is that these network haters are trying too hard to make a complex solution into a black and white issue.