On May 22nd, 2014, the 2nd China AdTechnology Conference was successfully held in Beijing. It was jointly organized by the leading DSP Yoyi Digital and the leading 3rd party digital research company iResearch Consulting Group.
This year, the conference invited renowned internet companies like Google and JD; marketers like CFOCO and JDB; adtech companies including Criteo, Ensighten, and Inmobi; international 4A agency groups including Dentsu Aegis, Groupm, Omnicom Media Group, and VivaKi; as well as data companies including Acxiom, AdMaster, Dratio, and Miaozhen.
Insightful speeches and in-depth panel discussions were delivered and conducted surrounding 3 major topics: programmatic buying, multi-screen marketing, and big data. Here are the summarized viewpoints of the speakers and panelists:
Roy Zhou, CEO, Yoyi Digital
On September 20th, 2013, Rocketfuel, the first DSP company in the world was listed in NASDAQ and in June this year, the first Japanese DSP company will witness public listing, which sufficiently proves the development trend of programmatic buying in the internet advertising field. I believe that in the next six to twelve months, over five companies related to programmatic buying will be listed.
Ben Barokas, GM of Global Marketplace Development, Google
After fifteen years' revolutionary course of development, programmatic buying has achieved the favor of advertising clients. In this industry, numerous major clients have embraced programmatic buying. In my time with Google, I have cooperated with Fortune 100 enterprises around the world and found that around half of them have already set up their special programmatic buying groups with the figure rising by 75% in 2015.
Henry Yang, CEO, iResearch
In China, total display advertising accounts for around 40% of Internet advertising, among which, the DSP advertising primarily featured by RTB amounts to around 1.5 billion RMB, accounting to 4% of the total. RTB is not currently considered to be mainstream display advertising in China. We predict that in the next three years, this market will grow rapidly and in three years, programmatic buying will account for more than 20% of all display ads in 2017.
Grace Liau, Regional General Manager, VivaKi
From the programmatic buying market in the Asia Pacific region, Australia has played the leading role and its technology and model are quite simple.from the perspective of scale potential, China has great opportunity whereas that of South and Southeast Asian countries are still fairly limited. However, they still have great opportunities; India has embraced programmatic buying and I believe it lags behind China by one and a half years.
Yuegui Wang, VP of Branding Department, JDB
As an advertiser, in particular a client of fast-moving consumer goods, we pay great attention to programmatic buying. However, we still have some worries. First, the advertisement is not so direct so my channel customers are unable to see it. Second, it's lacking of some lateral comparison. Third, it's short of news effect and is difficult to arouse social resonance.
Paul Yan, Vice President, JD
In the data exchange or the cooperation with some platforms, we are still cautious on how to guarantee data safety and not be used by our competitors. If there's a relatively effective technical solution, we are quite willing to communicate with other platforms.
Greg Coleman, President, Criteo
There are two major points to measure the effects of e-business clients: firstly whether it could measure the pure online sales increment, which refers to the increment only achieved online; secondly it is required to understand how great influence the online advertisement has exercised on the sales of the physical stores. One year ago, I could say that we are not able to do so, however, the current technologies could help us manage it. For instance, Acxiom US could track the entire process of people who are using mobile facilities from clicking the online advertisements to the purchase of goods in stores.
Derek Kwok, COO, Yoyi Digital
Now that programmatic buying has already covered the PC, pad, and mobile screens, it's only a matter of time before programmatic buying will cover the TV screen and other screens as well. Multi-screen programmatic buying is an obvious trend. But if marketers want to optimize their ad budgets across all those screens, there is still a lacking element: cross-screen data. Big internet companies like Google and BAT (Baidu/ Alibaba/ Tencent) will provide their solutions on cross-screen data, while protecting the privacy of the audience.
Zhu Wei, CEO, Miaozhen
Different advertisers have different communication purposes with the consumers. The purpose of major brand advertiser focuses on "it's worthwhile for the payment". They don't care about the amount of the payment, but it must be worthwhile. As for smaller advertisers, for instance, the cafe down the street, its purpose is to win one or two consumers.
Diane Lee, Account Management Director of Accuen, OMG China
From the perspective of consumers, from the very beginning, I need to tell them which brand I am, then I could use some TVC; when the consumers are familiar with me, I could prepare some activities or interactive websites so that they could understand more deeply of our products, or I could give them more diversified advertisements and bring them to our website; then we could take into consideration of how to utilize the GPS function, bringing them to the physical stores, like a test drive. It may be a relatively complete process and I think it's a prospect in the future.
Jessie Yang, President, China, Inmobi
When we are engaged in mobile activities, we often talk about double screen behavior, in particular after eight o'clock at night, many people will watch their TV and at the same time, play with their mobile phones or their tablet computers. Therefore, when advertisers are delivering the information, they are able to deliver more information on brands or content through TV. However, on mobile and tablet devices, they are able to deliver more interactive information and at that time, we are able to combine the interaction of the double screens to reach a better effect.
Ann, Managing Director, China, Criteo
A global renowned chain hotel manager once mentioned to me that he found that most of the hotel rooms booked on iPad were vacation ones whereas booked on mobile phone were business ones. This means that for the users, every screen represents different scenes and different requirements. How to understand that behind each screen, which screen will be chosen by the user in specific situation, is possibly a problem to be solved by programmatic buying in the future.
Stanley Ng, Client Service Director, China, Xaxis
The multi-screen we are talking about now shall not only include PC and mobile phones. We come across many advertisements every day, for instance, during outdoor activities, waiting for the elevator and taking the taxi, etc. In the United States, all these occasions mentioned above belong to multi screens and at least a portion of them have started programmatic buying. For instance, when you are waiting for a taxi, the data, including your geographical location, the residents of your district, will all be processed through programmatic buying. In the next five to ten years, the advertising market in the US (including the traditional market, TV, radio and outdoor, etc), will all be realized through data and programmatic buying.
Luke Xiang, GM of Branding Department, COFCO
If we want to understand "real people" and draw a portrait for the consumer, we tend to rely more on the trace online to draw a true image. Therefore, thanks to these multi screen probes, or abundant radars, we will have a clearer image of the consumer. We not only know who they are, but understand their impulsive requirements at a specific time, and during specific occasions. Therefore, the communication efficiency between the advertiser and its consumers will be greatly enhanced.
Frederic Jouve, President, Asia, Acxiom
People tend to say that compared with the US market, the market in China lags behind by several years, or they would say that in China, there is large amount of isolated data because people are reluctant to share them. These may possibly be true. However, we found that some clients in China have made leaping progress as they are very active in data openness and cooperation, which has resulted in excellent promotional effects. What I find in China is a power promoting the changes in China is taking place.
Wolf Allisat, SVP International, Ensighten
Distinguish the cookies between mine and my daughter's? Therefore, we could use cookie data for marketing, however, the data will not be one-to-one and may not be completely accurate.
Tony Jiang, VP of Product, Yoyi Digital
This time last year, of the DSP companies, except those engaged in performance advertising, few of them use first party data from the advertiser. The reason is simple: brand advertisers don't have a good method to measure the effects. When you talk with them and ask to use first party data, the first thing they think of would be the risks instead of the interest. With the emergence of more third party data companies this year, we have created some successful cases through Yoyi. When we show these cases to the advertiser, we have found that great changes have taken place this year as they have also begun to think of how to using the first party data.
Mei Tao, President, Dratio
Personally I don't think that the data openness and exchange can be solved by some simple orders made by a certain department in charge. It must depend on the market itself. Rules will take shape when people can't stand the current environment. Of course, people will have some advanced foresight or intuitive knowledge, or the department in charge will have some foresight, and the limited interference will possibly exercise some positive effects on the achievement of the forming of rules. Therefore both myself and my company hope that the industry we belong to can march towards this direction.
Vincent Yan, CEO, Admaster
The biggest problem faced by the industry is how to control and manage the user privacy and risk. We should have a confident standard and scheme for the market, advertisers, practitioners and consumers. I always believe that when the data are flowing, they are valuable. When everyone holds the data still, no value will be displayed. However, when all these data are in flow, every client will have worries and the brands under service will have worries as well. How do we reduce their worries? I think the prerequisite for data explosion is a sense of trust. For a long time, we have been dedicated to continuously improving our clients' trust.
Bryan Xu, COO, TalkingData
Mobile internet is different from the internet as the former has very clear personal data and it's easy to recognize the mobile phones and track the phones. It's different from cookies as they will be removed. Mobile data are generally from three sources: first, the embedded SDK in the APP and the data directly collected through SDK; second, the structural data after the processing on the collected data from SDK and third, the data from the cooperative third party.
