This post is partially written in response to VivaKi’s Grace Liu’s comments in the recent mUmBRELLA article Switching from agency trading desk to DSP could mean losing data, warns Vivaki boss
The question for advertisers is not if they should switch working with their ATD to working with a DSP. This positioning is problematic in more than one way.
Firstly, by now the ATD stack should be far from “just DSP”, and I know for at least Xaxis and Accuen this is true. Both are running very impressive media trading stacks where bidder is just one piece.
Secondly, I think the smart brands will take RTBkit or something similar, and run their stack with completely custom bidder instead of off-the-shelf commodity bidders we can find in DSPs. In an auction type game you’d definitely want to make sure nobody is using the same bidding strategy as you are.
Thirdly, the natural evolution of the industry is about some advertisers taking control of the entire stack (and not just bidder i.e. DSP). Very importantly, most (if not all) will take ownership of the data. For that change to happen, the advertiser just needs a deal with one of the 100 or so DMPs and new contracts with its ATD. Done.
What’s great about that proposition, is that while it’s fairly easy to get there, at that point the advertiser’s agency could not come and say something like “if you’re not going work with us, you could lose your data”.
In Summary: One Thing That Has To Be Clear
All the data, performance, audience and otherwise, which either directly or in-directly is created as a by-product of the advertiser’s media investment, should be, and eventually will be owned by the advertiser. If the advertiser decides to share some of that with the ATD, then that has to be contractually agreed. Just like it would be the case with any other asset of value.
If there is a brand that thinks otherwise, I’d love to have a chat with their CFO. If no such brands/CFO exist, then this debate should be concluded and we as an industry need to figure out a way how to make this work for the longer term.