Online media group Hi-media last week announced its partnership with real-time bidding platform AppNexus. Today it revealed that it is partnering Weborama to bolster its exchange proposition. new media age spoke to Cyril Zimmermann, Hi-media CEO and founder, to find out what the transition for a network to an ad exchange really entails.

Why have you integrated with Appnexus in particular? And how will it change the way you do business?

First, this way of trading will be automated, and not done by signing an insertion order and then taking to it to ad operations. Our relationship will be directly with DSPs, though our sales people will educate the market that buyers can buy directly and/or make real-time bids on the platform.

We talked to a lot of companies in the US to find the technology to help us leverage inventory to have better price and to be able to target in more efficient way beyond the website. In some markets – like the UK, where we have 25% reach – it will increase reach and leverage.

Working with Appnexus will help us target and retarget the user in a different way, while the Weborama partnership will help us to qualify audience, so that the exchange can be as performance driven as possible.

Appnexus is also a platform that allows the transition [from manual to programmatic trading] gradually. This transition is about providing security to publisher, and avoiding creating downward pressure on price if not there’s not enough liquidity or bidders. It’s really important to provide that security before you have a pure and perfect exchange market. We have more than a €100m business that we can’t jeopardise because new technology is coming.

Yes, we are creating “private exchanges” but I don’t like that term – there’s nothing private about it. It’s open to anyone that wants to bid, sell and trade.

How will you “transfer” publishers over to the exchange? What’s the process of “getting a seat” on the exchange?

For 85% of publishers, they won’t have anything to do. Most of them already have the Hi-media tag, so whether this tag is calling ad server A or B, it doesn’t change. We’ll switch the Hi-media tag from calling up inventory on one ad server to inventory on Appnexus.

What sort of inventory will be available on the exchange? Will it be tier one, tier two or remnant?

It will be a mix of everything we have. We currently have around 20bn ad impressions per month, with 150m uniques on the network. All this inventory is made up from pages that are part of the ComScore Top 300 websites in any country. In some countries we have the Top 20 sites, such as in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain, but in others we have mainly tier two. But it’s Top 100 – it makes a difference with remnant inventory, which was the first attempt at exchanges. Even if media buyers are keen on targeting they still want to know where they are being placed rather than “crappy” remnant.

What’s the vision for Hi-media? How do you see the ad network model evolving?

The business has been growing aggressively in the past five years. Our business is to monetise content for online publishers, whether it’s from ads or from micropayments. We’re seeing content moving progressively towards a mix of free and paid content – our aim is ... Lire la suite de l'article