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10 Ad Networks Kick off UK Ad Exchange

Written on
February 2nd 2007
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by Sarah Novotny  |
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AdECN has partnered up with 10 online, UK-based networks to create a consortium that hopes to revamp the process of buying and selling inventory within the industry.

Set up as a not-for-profit entiry, the UK branch of AdECN will provide its members with opportunities “…to buy and sell ad inventory for their advertiser and publisher clients on an automated and neutral exchange”, which AdECN hopes will result in advertisers having more transparency while spending less time filling out orders.

E-consultancy notes that AdECN’s CEO/founder Bill Urschel has been instrumental in the convergence of the partnership, getting the message across that traditional methods of communication such as faxes and telephones has put the industry at a snail’s pace without the use of automated exchanges.

John Cole, managing director of MediaRun, one of the consortium’s members, states, “The key to the AdECN exchange is its neutrality. Cole goes on to say, “This is the first time that we will have the opportunity to buy and sell display advertising in an efficient way. The present system is nowhere near efficient enough and attracts all sorts of middlemen. The closer an advertiser can get to the source, the better the results; this is the perfect system for eliminating chain-buying.”

According to E-consultancy’s 2007 Online Advertising Networks Buyer’s Guide, UK online ad networks now account for up to 25% of UK display advertising spend.

Additionally, the guide claims that the 40-plus online ad networks operating in the UK made an estimated £120 million (approximately $236 million USD) in revenue during 2006.



Reader Comments.

While advertising networks continue to battle for total reach, the future of advertising networks in the UK will not be determined by the size of their inventory but by the quality of their inventory.

The shift in the value proposition of advertising networks will be driven by: 1) increased demand for “declared” behavioral and contextual ad inventory, 2) the growth of cost per performance based agreements 3) publishers bringing their online sales functions in-house and 4) the launch of “piggy backing” or open container conversion tags. The combination of these four factors will undoubtedly in time, bring the demise of the large majority of ad networks in the UK.

The most recent and significant of these factors is the advent of “piggy backing” or open container conversion tags. The term “piggy backing” refers to the ability of a single conversion tags to hold third party tags, effectively serving as a universal tracking counter providing unduplicated conversion counts from multiple sources of media inventory. In theory, for instance, if a user clicks an ad with Ad Network #1 today and then the next day clicks an ad for Network #2 and converts from the ad with Ad Network #2, the network generating the last click will get credit for that conversion, as opposed to both networks. This is especially valuable when working across cost per performance programs, where payment is based on the total number of conversions.

Posted by Alain Portmann | 12:31 pm on March 28, 2007.

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