In our latest Q3 2012 Global AdMetrics Report, we showed how Real-time Bidding (RTB) – the means by which mobile ad inventory is bought and sold on a per-impression basis, via a programmatic instantaneous auction, similar to financial markets – provided significantly stronger results across every channel, for advertisers and publishers alike.
You can see the full report for yourself, but the table is reproduced below.
This result was especially significant when Wes Biggs, Adfonic’s CTO and co-founder, was asked to write a primer about RTB for the Huffington Post. His analogy: mobile advertising can be like waiting in line, like you might do at your local bakery, but when it really starts to scale up, only the crowd dynamics will do.
As he says: “Imagine how the stock markets would look if everyone politely got in line. Each buyer would give their quote, in turn, and eventually the seller would, through some vague criteria, decide they’d heard enough, and sell to the highest bidder. It would be very inefficient, not to mention unfair.
Much better to have crowds for markets. Let everyone pile in, assess all the options, decide if they want to bid and announce their quotes, publicly and quickly. It would certainly make buying bread a lot more entertaining.”
So RTB works for mobile advertising because it’s picking up apace, and by applying market dynamics to mobile advertising, buyers (that is, advertisers) get more access, targeting and transparency, while sellers (ie publishers) get a fair price because it’s driven by the most efficient mechanism there is – the market. This is especially so when accessed via mobile Demand-side Platforms (DSPs) such as Adfonic’s own Madison.
In fact the market, in all its fluidity and dynamism, really is the great leveller, so to survive in that environment, you need to be smarter. Ask any trader. And the good news is that our figures show RTB really does work, no matter which channel you want to advertise on, or sell space for.
Read the full piece at the Huffington Post – Mobile Real-time Bidding: From Slow Waiting to Smart Crowds - and be enlightened and entertained.