Secret Techniques To Improve Ad Serving Technologies

In the of the series, we examined the age-old process of buying and selling inventory directly from publishers: direct orders. We learned that direct deals are a procedure wherein the locus of control sits mainly with the publisher, allowing them to reserve large chunks of their inventory to ad serving technologies with deep wallets. Large brands and agencies tend to match that description, which explains why they are often the ones who're buying in this manner.

Now, while direct orders still comprise a large proportion of display ad dollars, the underlying drawback may be the terrible level of recurring operational inefficiency inherent in selling and executing such campaigns.

First, transactional costs, or the human effort needed for execution, are very high. Also, due to the inherent slowness in human execution, speed-to-market is affected. (It usually takes upwards of monthly to get campaigns rolling.) Furthermore, because human effort doesn't easily scale, it's tough to scale direct orders. However, that does not mean that direct orders are doomed to remain manual forever.

What if you might automate the drudgery of direct buys while retaining the benefits of running entirely on the publisher's ad server? Well, within the last few years, great strides have now been made to create the automation and efficiency of programmatic advertising to direct orders.

Programmatic direct is created possible by way of a small number of specialized ad tech vendors — companies like iSocket, ad serving technology, and Adslot — that focus exclusively on delivering programmatic direct solutions. Their technology utilizes tight API integrations with publisher ad servers, providing advertisers and agencies with a mechanism to own their campaigns served entirely on the publisher's ad server, all in a automated, software-driven manner.

These companies allow marketers and agencies to get “packages” of inventory directly from the publisher. You can think of these packages as pre-configured insertion orders. Another means of considering these packages is by comparing them to the “Buy Now” buttons on eBay.