Demand-Side Platforms Discussed In Detail By Agency Heads At ContextWeb Event

The recent ContextWeb event on demand-side platforms attracted over four hundred media buyers and exchange traders. The panel included Vivaki’s Greg Green, Mediacom’s Sloan Broderick, IPG’s Bant Breen, Omnicom’s Matt Spiegel and RBC Capital’s Media Analyst Ross Sandler. The forum was moderated by Madison Avenue veteran Wenda Harris Millard.

There was lively discussion among the agency executives about the merits of performance media platforms. Analyst Matt Spiegel was however more measured in his view of the new buying opportunities – and made some interesting observations about real-time bidding and demand-side platforms.

Issues discussed by the stellar panel included:

- The opportunity for agencies to arbitrage on Exchange platforms and re-sell media to clients
- The practicalities of real-time buying on individual impressions for agencies and publishers
- The potential conflict and competition between demand-side platforms and existing exchanges
- How demand-side platforms, like B3 and Vivaki, will use technology and data to provide clients with better consumer insight.
- How privacy issues might affect the growth of performance based advertising.
- The tipping point for the exchange model.

The full video footage of the event can be viewed on ContextWeb’s blog. It's a great overview on what the US agencies are doing in relation to the Exchanges, and provides some insight into what the market might look like here in Europe several months down the line.