Helping Agencies With Programmatic Advertising: The Agency Trading Desk

I am reading through a very interesting Reddit post from entrepreneur Matt Bertulli. The post is shown in its entirety below, and it relates back to BrillMedia.co, our agency trading desk, and the business of serving clients.

This sentence strikes me: “Most customers we’ve had just want help with things they don’t understand. The very best customers know what they don’t know and are experienced enough to trust others to fill in the gaps.”

This is the essence of our business, and why BrillMedia.co was created. Our business is registered as an LLC called Brill Media Consulting, and it was started with the idea that programmatic advertising is complex, and people facing complexity need expert knowledge to help them understand their opportunities and make smarter decisions, to remain competitive in the marketplace. The idea of a consulting firm was inspired by work I was doing at the time with a number of smart people including Steven Kaufman, Mike Oddi, Victor Faria, Kenneth Yanez, Ken Nicholas, Maria Gonzalez and notably Matt Prohaska, who has gone on to build a successful programmatic consulting firm, Prohaska Consulting. They help both supply side and demand side companies in the programmatic ecosystem, and some of the largest brands in the world, leverage a distributed and highly skilled force of programmatic experts to make some very important decisions in a very complex marketplace.

When BrillMedia.co was formed in 2013 we understood that programmatic advertising will be the future of advertising. That future has arrived, whereby 78% of digital display ads are run through programmatic channels. To talk about programmatic is to talk about display advertising. Large agencies have had programmatic buying groups since 2009, and by 2010 these businesses – Cadreon, Accuen and Varick to name a few – were making news in the marketplace. Still small and mid-size agencies and advertisers are formulating opportunities today, and revamping them every 3-6 months as the marketplace evolves.

I knew programmatic advertising was important because I saw the immense investment that agency trading desks were making. I also saw the level of conversation this ecosystem was created at all levels and across the ecosystem. I saw the evolution across publishers who adopted programmatic solutions, and those that didn’t. Everyone had an opinion, and when everyone has an opinion we knew then that this is important.

In 2017 we see more people in the industry are educated about the programmatic marketplace. Still, there’s a lot of conversation and need for help sorting through the complexities.

Programmatic Education Is Still Needed

Agencies are still working to evolve their digital display ad buying capabilities and some see programmatic as an opportunity to create new opportunities for their business. In all cases challenges still remain for executives trying to make sense of the programmatic ecosystem who don’t have in-house expertise. In some cases simply getting the programmatic jargon right is a hurdle, and understanding the importance or lack of importance among all the jargon: DSPs, SSPs, QPS, PMP, RTB, private marketplaces, preferred deals and open exchanges. Agencies work with programmatic buyers, but when they outsource as managed services they leave on the table opportunity that is forged in the understanding of the marketplace.

Choosing A DSP

In other cases there are challenges understanding which demand side platform is the right one to use for an agency. Among the minimum monthly spending, the unique capabilities and the type of media that the agency runs it’s important that if one DSP is being chosen it should be the right DSP.

Staffing Is A Challenge

Further, staffing and human resources become challenging. Hiring expensive staff to man a trading desk can be daunting especially if revenue isn’t enough to support it. In fact, it turns into a Catch 22. Which comes first, the revenue or the staff? Even if an agency or advertiser hires the right person to launch the programmatic buying practice, keeping that person motivated is a whole other task, considering that it takes a community, dialogue, and smart peers to keep people tuned in to the marketplace. The community of other experts is important even if knowledge can be attained in the trades.

Evolving To Marketplace Needs

Finally, with the marketplace evolving it’s important to have people who serve two very important roles: serving day to day clients (sales, daily ad buying work, insights and analytics) and those looking at the future. With the marketplace evolving every 3-6 months having that leader who has the bandwidth to see the trends, meet with partners and make enterprise decisions to maintain the programmatic ad buying edge is critical.

How BrillMedia.co Helps

We provide expert knowledge about this complex ecosystem, bring our clients multiple DSP relationships without the minimum fees normally associated with agency direct relationships, and in many cases offer solutions that are used for business and product extensions.

We are grateful to our clients who accept our help, who are grateful for our help and who let us take on the challenges that we love to take on.

BrillMedia.co – Hyperlocal Advertising And Enterprise Programmatic Solutions

Founded in 2013 BrillMedia.co runs hyperlocal ad campaigns for marketers across the US, and powers white label programmatic ad buying practices for agencies. For more information please contact Robert Brill – [email protected], 818-720-1632.