INMA: What exactly is real time bidding?

Jensen: Real-time bidding (RTB) is a relatively new method of selling and buying online display advertising in real time, one ad impression at a time. To understand it well, I recommend watching this short video about the evolution of online display advertising:

INMA: What is the idea behind the Danish Publishers Network? What publishers are involved?

Jensen: Danish Publisher Network (DPN) in its first phase represented the alliance of Politiken, Jyllands Posten, and Ekstra Bladet, coming together to offer their online inventory and audience data to agency trading desks through RTB – representing a combined reach of 45% of the population.

The ambition is to bring together all major publishers in the market to be able to offer advertisers advanced and unique first-party audience data as well as great reach within a premium and brand safe environment.

At the moment we have eight partners and a reach of 62% in Denmark

INMA: How do Danish publishers benefit after joining DPN?

Jensen: The publishers in our region have seen increasing demand for inventory via RTB. We hope it will enable partners to improve efficiencies for buyers and maximise yields.

In the RTB world, the buy side is making deals on a very large scale on countless sites across the Web and tend to focus very narrowly on clicks and conversions.

There are some dangers though. For example, it is difficult for big publisher brands, like the ones represented through DPN, to make their USP’s visible in regard to premium context and brand safety. Only by grouping together will it be possible to get a strong voice and actually create a demand in the market for this kind of context to make sure that the new RTB paradigm doesn’t lead to an undifferentiated valuation of junk and premium advertising environments.

Scale is also a very important factor. The scale we are now offering to buyers in the region, combined with the data we will be able to leverage safely through private marketplaces, will enable us to reach the size and scale of competitors like Facebook and Google as well as big ad networks to ensure we see our proper proportion of agency media plans.

INMA: What is your offer for buyers?

Jensen: We offer buyers premium Danish inventory, so we offer scale and premium Danish content. Furthermore, we are bringing first-party data to the table, so buyers are now able to by impression with our first-party data. We are then able to offer audience and reach across the network.

INMA: What was the incentive for creation of DPN? Is it the need to compete with global players such as Google?

Jensen: Facebook’s and Google’s dominance of the market was definitely an important factor to consider for us. The growing influence of FBX and AdX across Europe is forcing publishers to address the shift of agency budget to programmatic buying. That’s where we came in.

INMA: It’s been almost a year since DPN was created. What is its influence on the market?

Jensen: Revenue is growing 10-15% each month, but RTB revenue is still only 5-8% of the total revenue that our partners generates from display advertising. Next year we expect that number to be 15-20% programmatic buying, not only RTB but private marketplace is growing fast.

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