Futures For Online Advertising Launched

The ad exchange options became a little more interesting with the launch of the AdBidCentral futures marketplace for online advertising. Moving away from the remnant-heavy model of the RightMedia Exchange, AdbidCentral offers a fully transparent and open premium ad marketplace for advertisers and publishers.

There will be a lot of ad premium inventory available on the marketplace, and AdBidCentral already have relationships with a number of top-tier publishers in the US. The idea is that advertisers can pre-buy inventory based on an agreed price with publishers.

KillerStartups.com takes up the story with a little more technical detail:

AdBidCentral deals with the sale of futures-oriented advertising, bringing together buyers and sellers of CPM advertising. Sellers create singular, branded profiles which are strengthened using comScore audience metrics. They set their own prices for ad space, and list it on AdBid's Marketplace; continuous monitoring capabilities insure best-case trading outcomes, and payments may be received as early as three days from ad delivery.

For buyers it is a great resource to buy directly from publishers in a transparent way, and the comScore feature will encourage more buyers on to the exchange. The buyer can also hedge against price fluctuations by buying ahead of time.

The publisher can sell premium inventory to agencies and advertisers directly and set their own prices. And with the buyers able to buy inventory up to twelve months into the future, publishers can be assured of a guaranteed price.

Won’t using AdBidCentral cause sales channel conflict? Sales people will always want to get the highest price possible for premium space, but a sizeable percentage of ad inventory remains unsold.

Selling on AdBidCentral would complement the direct sales team, and help the publisher generate more revenue from its content. Of course the publisher will need to have a comprehensive exchange strategy to ensure it receives the best price possible for its ad inventory. The publsiher will either need the re-train staff or hire new people with a knowledge of the exchange space to take advantage of this new trading opportunity.