On December 13th PubMatic held our second PubAcademy in Milan, Italy. The event, one of PubMatic’s global educational forums where publishers and advertisers can come together to debate and discuss important industry topics, was particularly interesting on several fronts, not the least of which was the surprisingly technical nature of the conversations that took place throughout the day. Rather than focusing on high level topics or trends, publishers and media buyers alike delved into the technical details on a variety of topics, including how to achieve better results as well as ways to make the marriage between publishers and media buyers work better for everyone involved.
One of the highlights of the event was a presentation from PubMatic Founder and Chairman Amar Goel, who provided the audience with several yield optimization success stories, as well as best practices for building better ad calls (which parameters to add to video ad calls, for example) and how to set up dynamic floor prices to increase yield. Although Amar’s presentation was very technical, it clearly resonated with PubAcademy attendees—in fact, it was the most “snapped” content of the day.
It’s clear from the increasing interest in such technical topics that the Italian market is invested heavily in transparency and not necessarily satisfied with the quickest or easiest solutions.
This PubAcademy marked the first time that we have used a round table format to facilitate discussion, but the conversation that took place—moderated by Amélie Grenier-Bolay, PubMatic’s Director of Advertiser Solutions for Southern Europe—clearly indicated that the digital media industry in Italy has evolved significantly, with publishers committed to making more premium inventory available via programmatic channels, including header bidding. Discussions among media buyers and publishers also touched upon the ways in which header bidding solutions in particular allow for fair competition between traditional and programmatic channels, allowing buyers to compete for better impressions.
When it comes to the maturity of programmatic in the Italian market, it’s worth noting one additional point that also drove conversation at the event. Specifically, programmatic direct solutions—in other words, everything related to PMP, PMP-G and other solutions that allow publishers and buyers to transact while also considering not only data, but also the particular publisher and site where ads will be placed, for example—proved crucial to the growth of programmatic spend in Italy, and inevitably will continue to drive growth—especially when combined with better use of first party data and tools that allow buyers to “size” the amount of “in target” users across specific websites—in the year to come.
The final topic to receive a great deal of attention among PubAcademy attendees was mobile private marketplaces, which publishers and buyers alike view as the best way to inspire confidence among buyers by giving them access to publishers’ premium inventory.
While we were able to provide PubAcademy attendees with some of the answers to the questions posed during the event and specifics regarding how our solutions can help them solve many of the challenges they face today, we’re even happier to report that we were able provide publishers and media buyers in attendance with an opportunity to discuss best practices for implementing programmatic strategy. We look forward to hosting the next PubAcademy in Italy and everything we can share with and learn from attendees in 2017.
About PubAcademy
PubAcademy is a global industry education initiative PubMatic established to help ensure our customers and partners are in the best position to achieve their individual business goals and address the unique set of challenges that they face in this ever-changing world of programmatic.