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A Chat with Andy Ellenthal
MediaMind parent company DG recently acquired Peer39. Andy Ellenthal, former CEO of Peer39 and DG’s new executive vice president of sales and operations, spoke with us about the natural synergy between Peer39 and MediaMind and how the ultimate scenario for marketers is to have a single platform login for all ad campaign management.
What does Peer39 offer to the online marketplace?
Peer39 provides data about the structure and content of web pages for buyers and sellers of online advertising. We classify attributes into 3 channels: Quality (the type and structure of a page), Safety (objectionable or misaligned content), and Category (page meaning and context). Taken together, Peer39’s page level data enables clients to maximize performance, increase scale and ensure brand safety in the rapidly evolving online advertising space.
If that sounds elementary, it is. But it’s by no means easy. The system was built for speed and scale, and we’ve succeeded in becoming the market leaders in both areas. As a result, we deliver page level intelligence with unprecedented speed (less than 5 milliseconds) at unprecedented scale (20 billion impressions per day). Taken together, that makes us a critical component in one of the most disruptive trends to date in online advertising: RTB.
Why does the acquisition into MediaMind help Peer39?
When I joined Peer39, the goal was to make the data an essential component of every ad buy. Because the insights are so fundamental, it was my belief that it was only a matter of time that page level intelligence supplied by Peer39 would lift the value of online advertising across the board. We are now inaugurating European data centers so that buyers worldwide on AppNexus, MediaMath, and Turn light up with Peer39 data. By consolidating forces with MediaMind, we are all enjoying an increased footprint globally, but even more than that. The acquisition of Peer39 by DG makes the dream of a standard, universal method of understanding every page in the online exchanges a reality. When Peer39 is plugged into the MediaMind ad sever, the data can become another targeting criteria, a driver for dynamic creative, and feed into Smart Planning, MediaMind’s planning & buying product.
What do you see as future challenges in the industry? What will be the ingredients for success?
Questions like these have dogged industry insiders and pundits alike, so I’m not going to claim to have a crystal ball to divine the future. But what I can reflect on is what I see lacking today, and how we can impact the changes necessary to increase the value of online advertising for all players, from advertisers to publishers and all the players in between. First off, we need an open platform and common language for all ad buys.
We have seen over the past few years the explosive growth of some of the most innovating ad technology – ever. While there’s great pride and validation in growth of so many companies and solutions, the downside is that’s been a good deal of friction in the marketplace that has slowed some buyers and sellers from taking full advantage of innovation in the industry. We need what I call an Interstate system for online advertising – a common roadway for all the players to do business efficiently, profitably, and effectively. Bottom line: buyers want a single platform, not 25 different logins to plan, execute, and analyze a campaign.
Secondly, I see in video more than just another sales channel. Video is the single most important content available on the web, period. Because of the primacy of video, we’re seeing that advertisers need – now more than ever – toolsets to manage their most important assets. Video is absolutely everywhere, on every screen type you can imagine. Its ubiquity is further proof that innovative businesses are wise to place video at the center of both their technology and sales organizations.
From CreativeZone