White Paper
Unifying Digital Advertising
APT from Yahoo!:
Unifying Digital Advertising
Issues Facing the Ad Industry —
and Yahoo!’s Solution
APT from Yahoo! is a
superset of the best of
what’s offered by ad
exchanges, ad servers
and ad networks.
Participants in the business of online advertising are
struggling to buy and sell media in a fragmented market.
The solution is APT from Yahoo!, an innovative new digital
ad platform that is built specifically to bring the market
together, to make buying and selling advertising simpler
and more effective for everyone. APT from Yahoo! will
change the way in which all participants—publishers,
advertisers, agencies, ad networks, developers and
others—connect with one another to deliver more relevant
ads to consumers to drive business results.
State of the Industry:
Buying and Selling Online Advertising
The online media world has fragmented, growing from a
handful of properties to countless online destinations in
a short time—creating an advertising environment that
is tougher for everyone. Publishers have to fight harder
for their share of advertising dollars, while advertisers
and agencies lack a simple, scalable way to reach targeted
audiences. Ad networks struggle to maintain profit margins
with ineffective monetization and challenges with
differentiation.
In order to chase down their audiences, agencies and
advertisers spread their dollars across a wider array of
properties, forcing publishers to manually consolidate
enough high-quality inventory for large advertising demands.
Additionally, publishers face increasing competition from ad
networks who, in addition to grabbing a share of ad spend,
have placed downward pricing pressure on ad inventory.
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White Paper
Unifying Digital Advertising
These market dynamics have forced publishers to waste too
much effort on inefficient, manual operations. They manage
multiple advertisers and multiple ad networks, armed with
manual processes and spreadsheets. Sales forces spend
a disproportionate amount of time trying to close deals on
lower-value inventory, and then spend the balance of their time
taking care of those advertisers. These inefficiencies spread
throughout the organization, requiring resources from other
groups as well.
A fragmented market
has created an
advertising environment
that is tougher for
everyone.
Publishers also face technology limitations, as they use
outdated legacy ad management systems that were not built
to handle the complexity of today’s marketplace. The result is
that publisher inventory is not realizing its full value, and money
is being left on the table in the form of unsold or undersold
advertising inventory.
In this same environment, agencies and advertisers struggle to
reach consumers who—as a consequence of the proliferation
of both media and platforms—are even harder to engage.
Advertisers and agencies are burdened with the time-consuming
task of finding the high-quality inventory they need, and buying
media from multiple publishers to get their required reach
and relevance.
Advertisers have a difficult time finding ad serving technology that
provides them with the ability to deliver targeted communications
to customers demographically, geographically, and behaviorally.
Additionally, they often need to devote resources to play
“watchdog” to their brand, carefully screening advertising
opportunities to ensure their brand is being displayed in the
contexts they desire.
The business of online advertising is evolving
As the media world evolved, the business of online advertising
has followed suit in order to remain an effective means of
communicating with consumers. In just a few short years, the
industry has seen the rise and proliferation of ad networks, as
service providers and aggregated supply sources. On an almost
parallel path emerged the ad exchange, an auction-based
marketplace between buyer and seller.
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White Paper
Unifying Digital Advertising
Ad networks make the business of advertising easier on
advertisers and agencies by aggregating supply and demand,
managing the buying and selling of media. This structure results
in pricing models determined by the network, who make a profit
re-selling inventory. Each network is its own closed ecosystem,
so buyers and sellers are limited in supply by the networks
they join. If they joined multiple networks, they have to manage
multiple infrastructures.
The ad exchange
The ad exchange enables more relationships by creating an
effective auction marketplace, providing agencies, advertisers,
publishers and networks a direct line to buy and sell on
their own. APT from Yahoo! is more like an exchange or
a network—in fact, it is more like a superset of the best of
what’s offered by ad exchanges, ad servers and ad networks.
However, exchanges such as the Right Media Exchange have
the potential for growth by connecting to the larger supplies of
inventory and adding features such as guaranteed inventory
and targeting support.
providing agencies,
enables more
relationships by
creating an effective
auction marketplace,
advertisers, publishers
and networks a direct
line to buy and sell
on their own.
These solutions create connections and efficiencies, but they
fall short of providing the tools needed for the most effective
online advertising business for today’s complex marketplace.
They can benefit from a new solution: a digital ad platform.
APT from Yahoo! Helping us connect,
buy and sell, and evolve
APT from Yahoo! is a digital ad platform built from the ground
up to usher in the next generation of digital advertising. APT
from Yahoo! is more than an exchange or a network—in fact,
APT from Yahoo! is more like a superset of the best of what’s
offered by ad exchanges, ad servers and ad networks. It
leverages the systems of the largest internet publisher, Yahoo!,
and the first and largest exchange marketplace, the Right
Media Exchange. It unifies the market—connecting all players
on a single platform—and is designed to open up access to a
massive amount of quality audiences and demand. It integrates
and lets you manage multiple aspects of your business in
a single system—from guaranteed and non-guaranteed ad
serving to the seamless integration of audience insights. It
makes innovations, such as the ability to cross-sell and create
new value, a core of the platform.
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White Paper
Unifying Digital Advertising
APT from Yahoo! was built to unify all participants while
integrating the fundamentals of an ad business and the
innovations that a more complex market demands. As such,
it was created with specific benefits for each participant
group, based on their greatest needs:
APT from Yahoo!
•F
or publishers, this platform is designed to open up
access to massive demand and improve yield from
all inventory, while simplifying ad management. It’s
also designed to help publishers create new revenue
opportunities by cross-selling to increase supply.
integrating the
• Advertisers and agencies will be able reach a large scale
of quality audiences across multiple properties on a single
platform, and harness insights on those users, driving
better performance as they simplify media buying.
•A
d networks will gain access to more audiences and
demand—including Yahoo! and the largest ad exchange—
in one place, simplify the process of doing business with all
of these partners, and expand revenue opportunities.
was built to unify all
participants while
fundamentals of an
ad business and the
innovations that a
more complex
market demands.
•P
artners and developers will be able to bring their
technologies, solutions and innovations to a vast
marketplace easily, and help all buyers and sellers do
business more effectively.
• Users will benefit as well, with a more relevant online
experience. They’ll see better targeted and more
engaging ads
These benefits are derived through a strategy to integrate
four core components: technology foundation, relationship
building, targeting, and contacts in order to deliver four core
value propositions to all participants:
• Drive business results
•S
implify digital advertising
•F
oster an open, innovative marketplace
•P
rovide a new level of flexibility and control
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White Paper
Unifying Digital Advertising
APT from Yahoo! is designed to
drive business results.
1
While earlier phases of evolution, including the ad network and
exchange, provided ease and efficiency, the primary focus of APT
from Yahoo! is on performance—it’s designed to help participants
grow their businesses. Buyers will have the ability to reach a
number of quality audiences across multiple properties with a
single platform, with insights that can drive more relevant ads
and better performance. Sellers will gain access to a large set of
buyers—both brand and performance advertisers—driving up both
demand and monetization. APT from Yahoo! will access a powerful
repository of customer insights (from Yahoo! and its partners),
which lets participants find more audiences and unlock inventory
value through demographic, geographic, and interest-based
targeting knowledge.
2 APT
from Yahoo! simplifies digital advertising.
Even with ad networks and the exchange, participants were finding
the business of online advertising to be cumbersome and labor
intensive, requiring many manual processes. APT from Yahoo!
is built from the ground up to dramatically simplify the process
of buying and selling digital advertising. It consolidates market
participants and audiences on a common platform, thus requiring
fewer points of contact and fewer disparate systems to reconcile.
APT from Yahoo! brings together many functions of the digital ad
business—technology, relationship-building, targeting and controls
—so these functions no longer need to be managed separately. It
automates what is reasonable to automate—labor-intensive tasks
like managing non-guaranteed inventory—so businesses can
concentrate on the things that demand their expertise.
APT from Yahoo!
accesses the largest
repository of customer
insights in the world
(from Yahoo! and its
partners), which lets
participants to find
more audiences and
unlock inventory value
through demographic,
geographic, and
behavioral targeting
knowledge.
3 APT
from Yahoo! fosters an open,
innovative marketplace.
To deliver the next phase of evolution, “openness” was a must.
The basis of Yahoo!’s solution is transparency: open access to
partners, quality audiences and insights. APT from Yahoo! will
bring participants into a large-scale, open, digital ad environment
that reaches 85 percent of the US online market and sees more
than 300 billion impressions a month*. APT from Yahoo! will let
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* Source: comScore
Media Metrix, Worldwide Data
10/07
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White Paper
Unifying Digital Advertising
buyers and sellers connect to each other directly, and to buy
and sell media more efficiently as a result. An open platform
fosters innovations like cross-selling, allowing businesses to
provide added value to their customers.
With APT from Yahoo!,
4 APT
on a single, open
from Yahoo! provides a higher level of
flexibility and control.
Finally, Yahoo!’s ad management platform is flexible, allowing
participants to decide how much of the platform is right for them.
They can tap into APT from Yahoo! to run many parts of their
ad business, or use it for a single activity, such as reaching a
specific audience, or accessing more demand for non-guaranteed
inventory. APT from Yahoo! participants choose their business
partners and can control how much they interact with others.
APT from Yahoo! will allow sellers to set filters on what ads are
appropriate for certain audiences; and buyers can set filters
on where their ads end up—with standardized ad and site
classifications and filtering systems.
participants will
connect seamlessly
platform and conduct
their online advertising
business effectively
in one place.
Summary
With APT from Yahoo!, we take the next step in the evolutionary
path of the business of online advertising while paving the way
for future changes. APT from Yahoo! will provide businesses
with the technology platform, relationship building tools,
targeting options, and contacts they need for improved business
performance in today’s complex advertising market. With APT
from Yahoo!, participants will connect seamlessly on a single,
open platform and conduct their online advertising business
effectively in one place. Businesses will be able to capitalize
on the experience of Yahoo!—a display advertising leader and
the largest publisher on the web. Consequently, we believe
APT from Yahoo! will help businesses drive the results they’re
looking for—from better yield, to more responsive audiences, to
a simpler way of doing business.
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