Moving forward, I’ll be segmenting each newsletter as follow:

1. Announcement: My network is my environment of success and bringing the new thang first, allowing our tap in before the rest of the world.
2. Noteworthy news of the week: breaking down what’s going on in this industry that you may need to know
3. Strategy recommendation on how to execute on the noteworthy news shared above. Why? Because Knowledge is power but only when completed.

Announcement of the week:

I’m launching a course called the Reach and Frequency that will be available progressively in the next two months starting Tuesday 22 February 22.

I’m training individuals from zero to job-ready, taking them from fundamentals to how to launch a programmatic campaign AND optimize it successfully.

I’m super proud of this and will roll out the French, Spanish, and American Sign Language versions in Q2 2022. Learn more here, and I’m asking my village, you included, to share it with three people interested in learning more about the programmatic industry and looking to find their next dream job! They can have 0+ experience 😃

Noteworthy News of the week:

✔️ OpenPath

The Trade Desk is one of the leading advertising technology in the industry. They are a demand-side platform (DSP) that empowers their advertisers to place ads on the open Internet (amongst other capabilities, of course).

They’ve been advocates of a safe and open, content-driven Internet, putting consumers in the forefront while giving marketers access to an efficient and effective media buying platform.

OpenPath is a Trade Desk way of putting their money where their mouth is by cutting out the middle man in the marketplace and buying ad inventory directly from the source. This allows them to have true transparency and control over the buying process of said inventory. The Trade Desk will now buy ad inventory directly from publishers instead of going via ad exchanges. After April, they will no longer buy on Google Open bidding, which is the exchange owned by Google.

Four things about this announcement:

1. This is their way of combatting Google’s “monopoly” oversupply inventory and separating from them because of Google’s antitrust issues. (Basically, because Google has been shady with how they price their inventory and what they report back to us, the people.)
2. This is great for advertisers working in TTD, giving them access to more premium inventory from top publishers.
3. Publishers will benefit since they are just paying the Trade Desk fees abut, mostly giving them more control and opportunity to sell 100% of their inventory.
4. The Trade Desk has always claimed to focus on the buy-side and empower advertisers with their tech. However, OpenPath is, in other words, a bridge they created to access high-quality premium inventory for their advertisers. That puts them in the Supply-side platform area now. In my good friend Shiv Gupta‘s words, “they can no longer claim that they are an agnostic DSP.”  Before I explain how this will affect our day today, I’d strongly recommend you check out Shiv’s latest UofD newsletter, where he breaks this news down further. He does it clearly and concisely 👏🏾.

Strategy recommendation:

How and what should we execute with the news above?

All of us reading this will probably not be able to be part of the beta test or even afford to work with TTD yet.

In the meantime, this is how you can execute this information. 

One of the main reasons for TTD doing so it’s to support an open and safe, content-driven Internet.

It comes down to what are we doing to make sure we support this? Hint: Supply Path Optimization and Brand Safety.

Here are some tips you can consider implementing right away:

Complete an inventory assessment: are you confident about the supply inventory you bid on and won? I’d encourage that you do a supply inventory check and answer these:

• Where are you serving? If you see any weird exchange/site name, It’s time to look it up and understand how much we are spending on them. Suppose you cannot confidently answer the question above. I’d say it is safe to exclude bidding on them. You can always reach out to that supply source and have them provide details on their methodology. Yes, give them a call and make sure you are clear about what they tell you. Most supply vendors will show you what’s under their hood.
• Look at spending, impressions, CTR( depending on the exchange, is this metric looking really good 🧐), and finally, conversions. Of course, there are other things to look at, but starting with these can help you streamline your assessment.
• Ok, Hélène, now that I’ve looked at my supply inventory and excluded the underperforming ones, what else can I do?
• Now, continue looking at it consistently and often. It is not a set it and forget 🌟.
• I’d also recommend starting to build up your universal inclusion site list. Dr. Fou told us we didn’t need to bid on all the sites we are currently bidding on because the nonfraudulent activities come from a small %. So start building that list of sites and publishers that are working.
• Partner with brand safety and ad verification warriors. Yes, that means spending a bit more to ensure we have certain pre-bid filters in place and post-bid verification reporting.

This news should fire you up to look closely at where you’re spending that money.

So here’s your recap checklist:

1. Identify where you’re spending the most
2. Assess if the source where we record top spend is legit
3. Take control and cut off the bad apples without hesitation. If you’re not confident about their inventory and especially after trying to reach out to them to understand their methodology, cut them off!
4.  Partner with brand safety and ad verification vendors.
5. Look at your data and execute this exercise regularly and consistently. Because we don’t set and forget here 👏🏾
6. It can take time, but you will have to ensure that the ninja responsible for this is empowered with the flexibility to spend time and resources on this.

🌟 Now go execute and empower your team and advertisers 🌟

🦄 Knowledge is power but only when executed