SAN FRANCISCO – Just when many in the industry are excitedly committing to buying targeted ad slots using automated, real-time bidding systems, some publishers want to slow down the real-time clock – and one agency group is backing them.
“Today, (real-time bidding) is known as being motivated by trying to drive prices down as low as they can possibly go,” IPG Mediabrands’ Magna Global north America president Kristi Argyilan tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“While we like the idea of the real-time piece, the idea of an auction or a place where people feel like they lose control over pricing is the piece that keeps that from moving forward in a healthy≤ productive way for everybody.”
Argyilan is speaking about the consortium Magna Global recently formed with A+E Networks, AOL, Cablevision, Clear Channel Media and Entertainment and Tribune. Whilst the consortium’s aim is to move toward an “automated future” in which half of media buying is automated by 2016, it seems the partners also want an option in which inventory buying is carried out more slowly.
“So what we hope to figure out is, how do you take the driving pricing down off of the table by showing a new way of valuing things so that the right inventory demands the right kind of price?
“We do believe that near-time bidding is probably where we’re headed. in the near-time… For display, there’s a lot of inventory, inventory is not valued as highly as television inventory is. Us starting to separate those and understand we can do real-time bidding or near-time bidding across more channels is where we really want to go.”
Following up with Beet.TV, Argyilan adds: “We find we can legitimately optimize all media if we do it over longer optimization cycles. So, two- to four-week cycles for traditional is a responsible reaction to market response and gets a good result, hence the term ‘near-time’.”
