Agency TradingDesks A WHITE PAPER

Featuring first hand accounts from Agency Trading Desk, Coegi.

BY MOLLY MURPHYKATIE ANDERSONELENA CHRISTIANSEN

What is an agency trading desk?

Where do AGency Trading Desks Fit?

Demand Side Platforms (DSPs)

Data management Platforms (DmPs) & Exchanges

Supply Side Platforms (SSPs)

But Agency Trading desks also work Closely with...

An Agency Trading Desk simplifies the real time bidding (RTB) process by matching advertisers with publish-ers in the RTB bubble. Similar to the role of financial advisors in the stock market, Agency Trading Desk manag-es the advertiser’s money and plugs it into the Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) across multiple advertising platforms. They can be viewed as the middleman between advertisers and publishers.

“The Wall Street of Advertising.”

Agency Trading Desks like Coe-gi work in conjunction with multiple bubbles of the Display Lumascape for effective adver-tising optimization. Most often, Coegi interacts with Demand Side Platforms (DSPs), who pro-vide ad buyers integration of multiple ad exchange accounts into one interface. According to AdAge, DSPs own data and opti-mization from the buy side, and then use that information to in-telligently and strategically bid on and procure media.

Collaboration with Data Management Platforms (DMPs) play an important role also, as they sift through existing data, predominantly third-party cookies, to create accurate target audience segments. Ad Exchang-es clearly play an important role in the RTB process for Agency Trading Desks like Coegi, since they serve as the platform for trading advertising inventory through bidding from the Ad Networks.

Finally, Supply Side Platforms (SSPs) serve an important role for Coegi by optimizing the sell-side.

So what exactly is this programmatic Buying?

Coegi Personal Success Stories

Like gluten or paleo, “programmatic” has become a buzzword that many people use but few really understand. The term covers a wide range of technologies that have begun automating the buying, place-ment and optimization of advertising, replacing human-based methods like phone calls, faxes and, yes, three-martini lunches. Through programmatic technologies, advertisers can buy ads the way they pick up something on Amazon or bid on eBay. It is important to remember that programmatic does not always mean real time bidding.

Contextual Relevance• The Digital Project Manager contacts sales representatives at each of the

top dozen construction websites• Prices are negotiated individually with each site and an Insertion Order is

sent to each publisher• Impressions are reserved for the advertiser’s campaign

Audience Index• The Digital Project Manager uses comScore or Nielsen data to research which

sites are most often visited by the target audience • Sites that index highest for the target audience are selected• Prices are negotiated and an Insertion Order is sent to the publisher

Targeting Capabilities• The client wants to only target pages that have content regarding their target-

ing audience, while avoiding content geared towards those outside the target.• Certain sites the ability to segment the content of their site for advertisers,

and will only serve impressions next to specific content.• The publisher also is able to geo-target the campaign only cities their desire.

Pricing• Two most common cost models – flat rate and fixed CPM• Flat rate is usually used for site sponsorships or custom creative executions• CPM (cost per thousand) is used for most standard banners• CPMs vary from a low of ~$3 to as high as $250, depending on the quality

of the site and the competition for impressions

What capabilities to Advertisers have when using a Trading Desk?

NAtures Variety

3M

Nature’s Variety, an organic pet food had an wide enough target audience (10-15% of the popu-lation) to scale a strong national campaign that utilized online vid-eo in an effort to increase brand-ing/awareness. Coegi was able to leverage private marketplaces to place Natures Variety’s ads. If a more traditional method like ra-dio were used, there would have been a significant amount of waste in advertising. In addition, if this were a more niche, audience more money would have been spent on contextual targeting.

Coegi’s campaign for 3M was a more targeted Business to Busi-ness (B2B) campaign, that looked to reach IT decision makers at companies. Real Time Bidding allowed Coegi to identify audienc-es, eliminate waste and execute unique strategies across a variety of channels, all the while evau-lating metrics in all channels i.e. search, display, mobile, etc. They were also able to match up various creative executions with the speci-fied audiences to help increase the likeliness of interaction or resona-tion. They were also able to opti-mize the budget across a variety of advertising channels.

Impact of Agency Trading Desks in current advertising landscape

Works Cited

As explained, Agency Trading Desks like Coegi’s role in RTB is very similar to a financial advisor trading on Wall Street. The computerized, algorithm-based nature of RTB has created quick, efficient buying that’s beginning to impact the entire media buying process. According to Business Insider, display programmatic buying is most dominant, but mobile buying is also becoming hugely popular. RTB and programmatic have created hyper-ef-ficient ad markets with low prices and high results, and as Agency Trading Desks make this online buying more secure, Ryan Green expects ⅔ of digital inventory to be purchased this way in the next year. As the popularity of RTB grows, traditional media, especially television, are moving into the digital buying space. According to AdAge, Hulu, most notably, has auctioned off video ads through private exchange since last year, and ABC has announced that it would allow some advertisers to buy ads programmatically against ABC’s digital content. Comcast uses automated ad targeting for on-demand video, and satellite carriers like DirecTV and Dish Net-work sell part of their TV inventory programmatically.

http://adage.com.proxy.mul.missouri.edu/article/spe-cial-report-ad-network-exchange-guide-2009/agencies-store-demand-side-projects/135992/

http://adage.com/article/datadriven-marketing/mar-keters-dmps/243746/

http://adage.com/article/digital/cmo-s-guide-pro-grammatic-buying/293257/

http://adage.com/article/digital/cmo-s-guide-pro-grammatic-buying/293257/

Thank you for the first hand insights!