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DSPs to cement prominent position in mobile advertising this year: DataXu exec

After a long period of testing with WPP?s Group M, DataXu has announced the general availability of its DX mobile demand-side platform.

According to market researcher eMarketer, spending on mobile advertising will grow by 50 percent to top $1 billion in 2011. With more than 30 percent of digital display advertising predicted to flow through advanced DSPs in 2011, DataXu believes its DX Mobile platform is going to help make mobile advertising as efficient as online advertising. 

Mobile Marketer?s Giselle Tsirulnik interviewed Mike Baker, president/CEO of DataXu, Boston. Here is what he had to say.

DataXu made an announcement regarding its mobile DSP in September. How is this news different than what you released in September?
Back in the fall, DataXu was beta testing with WPP?s Group M and we worked successfully with them to test the product and it is becoming available for others today.

We ran campaigns from multiple brands.

We did want to tell you about a case study for a large software company whose goal was to drive a low cost-per-engagement and to drive traffic to its mobile Web site post ad exposure. The company was aiming to drive consumers deep into the site to engage with some of the brand assets there.

That resulted in driving the cost-per-engagement down by 400 percent over any ad networks they were previously using and 800 percent better than other direct publisher buys.

So, basically the company was able to get a dramatic and substantial improvement.

Are DSPs the beginning of the sunset for mobile ad networks?
We have seen the online ad network model being under pressure. Since the launch of ad exchanges and DSPs online, ad networks are moving their models to be more like DSPs or ad exchanges or looking for a new business model and we are expecting the same trend in mobile.

As part of the announcement we made today, companies such as Google, Nexage, AdMeld and Mobclix are partnering with us as inventory suppliers.

We are seeing the online ad companies moving into mobile. With are seeing blurring of the categories.

For example, is the iPad a PC or both? We are seeing more online companies viewing mobile as a natural extension of their platform.

How do DSPs make ad buys more effective?
DSPs allow a brand or its agency skip past the broker and to buy advertising directly from the seller through an exchange. Basically, you are cutting through the middleman.

DataXu is sort of different because it creates a brand geno-custom algorithm for the buyer to inform the bidder. The DSP is a bidding tool and ours comes up with a secret formula to provide a bidding strategy for each client individually.

How is a DSP different from an ad network?
So an ad network is a broker that works with buyers and sells ad inventory.

A DSP is a technology that lets the buyer skip the broker and buy direct.

It is sort of like going to Costco rather than going to an expensive corner store, with better targeting.

We will see a lot of this in 2011.

Final take
Mike Baker at the Mobile Marketer offices talking about the DataXu DSP
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