The new product, named AdLearn Open Platform, is essentially a demand-side platform (DSP), offering plug-ins to various sources of data and display ad inventory, which empower clients to manage, optimize and analyze their online display campaigns over all AOL properties and Advertising.com network inventory.
It will compete primarily with DSP companies such as Turn, MediaMath, DataXu, and Google’s Invite Media. Choosing the new platform, marketers can centrally manage campaigns across what Brody describes as the largest market of real-time bidding inventory available, including all major RTB exchanges, as well as bidded access to AOL, Huffington Post and Ad.com’s inventory. It also includes inventory from the recently announced display ad agreement between AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo.
“Advertising.com has been operating one of the biggest and most sophisticated non-reserved inventory marketplaces for more than a decade,” said Ned Brody, Chief Revenue Officer, AOL.
Additionally, marketers will have the option to choose the AdLearn Open Platform through self-service or managed service solutions. With AOP, we are providing advertisers and agencies access to the power of our platform, including AdLearn, the industry’s leading optimization technology. It shows our continued commitment to product innovation at AOL as the industry evolves to real-time marketplaces, he added.
The platform has emerged from Advertising.com’s AdLearn software, which specializes in optimization and RTB (real-time bidding) functions. AOL announced Accuen, IPG’s Mediabrands Audience Platform and iProspect would be initial beta partners with AOP.
Apart from these, the product will also provide direct, real-time bidded access to inventory from a diversified range of sources, including Advertising.com’s network of 4,500 publishers; AOL-owned sites like Huffington Post, Engadget, and TechCrunch; and third-party media and data exchanges commonly accessed through DSPs.
According to Doug Boccia, Vice President, Platform Solutions at AOL stated, “AOP was built on the core strengths of the Advertising.com network and was designed to arm and empower marketing professionals with technology that drives the highest and most efficient ROI possible.” Boccia added, “With the aid of an automatic interface, AOP delivers all the tools marketers need to effectively manage every dollar spent on their brand, including scaled performance, transparency, quality inventory, advanced campaign control, access to data and audience insights.”
Furthermore, the company is blending other services as well to help marketing professionals reap more benefit, explains Brody–“What we are in fact trying to do is trying to be a single company that goes all the way from publishers to advertisers.” Last month AOL unveiled Pictela Enterprise, a self-serve platform for the creation of scalable premium ads. The AdLearn Open Platform would not leave beta until the end of the second quarter, but advertisers and agencies can request access during the closed period.
“The team at Advertising.com has devised a unique combination of high-performance private inventory and advanced optimization technology,” said Accuen President Josh Jacobs. “We are thrilled that AOL is making their network and technology available to Accuen through AOP, enhancing our industry reach and best-of-breed capabilities offering.”
Some, however, might conceive the move as an attempt by AOL to dust off an aging property in Advertising.com. “Ad.com…. who knows with those guys?” Forrester analyst Joanna O’Connell, said in a statement to Online Media Daily. “I have heard nothing about Ad.com in ages. To me, they are much more about proven optimization toward direct response goals.”
Anyway refuting such notion, Brody says that AOL internally runs about 3 billion RTB auctions per day through Advertising.com. ‘We have always been an internal RTB, and now this is opening up a new demand source that bids in on the same level playing field,’ he said. So it does not change anything for [Advertising.com]; it just adds a large number of new users who bid in exactly the same way, just through a different interface, he added.
Besides, some additional list of third-party display ad marketplaces available through AdLearn includes Right Media Exchange, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, PubMatic, AdMeld, Rubicon, and others. Among the data partners are BlueKai, Experian, Datalogix, Targusinfo, and Bizo. Ad buyers are also able to bring first-party data.
Nevertheless, this may be good news for advertisers and agencies alike exploring new avenues to access the AOL and Advertising.com inventory, but DSPs may withhold from the hoopla.