In the programmatic advertising market, asymmetrical information is a large impediment to long-term ecosystem sustainability.
Part 1 of a 2 part series
To set the table, Adomik believes that for RTB and the entire programmatic offering to more work effectively for buyers and sellers for years to come, the following conditions must exist:
- Data needs to equally feed buying and selling. Buyers and sellers alike must be able to access and leverage the right data to guide good decision making and accurate valuation of each user — especially as the user (not devices or sites) has secured its position as the key driver to all online advertising.
- The use of technology must be balanced. Until recently, the buy side has had an overwhelming advantage in technology (and as a result, it’s use of data). The resulting imbalance in insights and pricing has left sellers lacking confidence and unwilling to commit the brand-quality inventory buyers crave to programmatic.
- The extraneous margin-eating tolls that stand between buyer and seller must be removed from programmatic transactions. These tolls prevent sellers from capturing the true value of their inventory, maintaining sustainable businesses, and they reduce performance of buyer investments.
Two-way transparency accelerates the existence of all three of these conditions. We argue that when publishers have access to the same or similar information as the buy side, and the technical capabilities to leverage this two-way transparency, the value and predictability of the commerce between them will improve.
In part 2 of this series we will examine how each of the above conditions improves when both buy and sell side are using information and technology equally well.