Programmatic Pros: Desiree Tunstall, Verto Media

"People sometimes get frustrated with advertising, but the goal of (programmatic) is to make sure that (consumers) are getting messages that are really getting geared towards who (they) are and (their) preferences."

Desiree Tunstall graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a major in history and a minor in religious studies—neither subject seems like it would lead to a career in digital advertising. After leaving Penn, she worked in the non-profit world, in government, in the White House, and then went into the private sector, working for a technology research company. However, she decided she wanted to "do something else, also in technology, but in a field that was growing faster,” so she looked to digital advertising. She worked at AppNexus, the largest independent advertising exchange, for a little over two years, learning about different facets of the industry.

Now, Desiree has co-founded her own digital audio advertising agency, Verto Media, in Northern New Jersey, and utilizes programmatic technology. Eager to help students and industry members learn more about programmatic, she discussed a few key issues with me.

Olivia: Tell me about your company, Verto Media.

  

Desiree: Verto Media is a digital audio advertising agency. So, what does that really mean? It means that we work with advertisers who are interested in communicating their messages using audio messages. We use programmatic buying strategies to help deliver those messages to the right consumer at the right time in the right medium. We also work with publishers to help them monetize their audio content. So if you’re a podcaster, a streaming radio station, or a pure play digital station like Pandora or Spotify, we will serve advertisements into those types of environments.

Olivia: It’s interesting that you work with both ends of the supply and demand spectrum!

Desiree: In this business, you have an option of working with just the advertiser, just the publisher, or working with both. … When I was working at AppNexus, I saw the companies that access to both supply, meaning the publisher, and demand, meaning the buyer, were the ones who tended to do better mostly because they understood best where their advertisements could serve and how they would perform.

Olivia: Could you speak about mobile and programmatic?

Desiree: Mobile advertising is kind of the new frontier of digital. You hear a lot of discussion about what mobile advertising is, how does it work, how are ads delivered, how is it going to be measured, and there are more and more companies getting into the mobile space, mostly because consumer behavior is mostly on mobile these days. ... So AppNexus made some significant technology and strategy investments in working on their mobile offering, and I was fortunate enough to spearhead that from a sales standpoint.

The way we look at mobile at Verto Media is that audio is naturally mobile. I mean, if you really think about where you listen to most of your audio content, it’s usually when you’re on the go. If you’re in your car, if you’re walking around listening to music or a podcast or some sort of audio publisher, you’re doing so while you’re walking around, so we look at mobile as a natural issue for us.

Mobile presents a couple of unique challenges. One of the things that programmatic advertising relies very heavily on are cookies. … Cookies are what advertisers rely upon heavily to find their users. However, there’s no concept of cookies in a mobile app environment. So, what often happens is advertisers have to find a new way to track the user. Now, you can use things like the device ID. In Apple that’s known as IDFA, Identification for Advertisers. On an Android, it’s just known as the Android ID. … However, it’s not the same as using cookies for targeting…Tracking your activity from one app to the next is not the same as tracking your activity from one browser to the next on your computer. So, what happens is advertisers have a new challenge in being able to find their users in a mobile environment. And there are technologies that are coming about that are helping people do that more effectively. It’s actually one of the reasons why Facebook is really winning, because Facebook relies on user login in order to access Facebook content. Which means that even if you are on your desktop, your tablet, your iPhone, Facebook knows who you are in all of those environments. Most websites don’t obligate you to log in, and they don’t because most people wouldn’t. They log in because they see so much value in Facebook, but there aren’t a lot of other websites that can do that. So that’s why advertisers who advertise in mobile like to do so on platforms like Facebook, because they can track across all those different devices.

Olivia: Could you speak about the out-of-home space and programmatic?

Desiree: The easiest way to think about programmatic is this— programmatic is the use of technology to deliver a particular advertisement at a particular time. So, you’re leveraging data and technology to deliver more relevant ads. So if I have a billboard, and let’s say it starts raining out, I could actually deliver an ad for Totes on that billboard, and that would be an example of programmatic advertising. Whereas back in the day, people would have to post up paper billboards and whatever is there is just there, but with these electronic billboards you can actually use different data points in the environment to determine what should be delivered.

Olivia: What are some issues or concepts that you feel make it difficult for people to understand programmatic?

Desiree: When I started working at AppNexus, of course I had to learn a lot about the space. …As I started to learn more and more, I started to realize that the very people who I was working with, my customer base, were often not knowledgeable about many parts of the ecosystem. Part of it is that there are so many technologies that it can be tough to wrap your head around everything that’s happening. The second thing is, because it’s so new, there isn’t a comprehensive educational source for most people. There are consulting companies that will come to a marketer’s office and will say “we’ll teach you everyhting about programmatic,” but those engagements can be thousands and thousands of dollars. If I am an individual and I work at an advertising technology company or I’m interested in getting into the space, where do I really go to learn about programmatic? There are some blogs out there, some of them outdated…maybe you can ask around on forums, but there’s no real go-to place for people to get that knowledge. The third thing is that many companies that are in the space invest in educating their customers, but there are many who don’t, because if their customer is confused, they can continue to make money. The more confused you are, the more I can charge you for the services that I provide, because if I lay it out for you, then we’d have to have a different kind of discussion about my value…. You know that old saying, “knowledge is power?” Knowledge is also money.

Olivia: What does the future of programmatic look like?

Desiree: I believe that the technology is going to evolve. There are a lot of pain points for publishers and advertisers. Sometimes advertisers are frustrated about where their ads are being placed, because they might serve on fraudulent inventory or mislabeled inventory. Publishers are sometimes frustrated with advertisers because they’re not getting the best pricing. A lot of those issues are just the growing pains of any new ecosystem that is putting new technology out there. And you have to keep in mind that this industry really came into being within the last ten years. That’s infancy in the life of an industry. So I believe the technology will continue to evolve, education will continue to grow, and I do believe that programmatic is going to continue to grow, and it’s not going to just be a solution for what publishers are unable to sell. I believe publishers are going to start—and many of them have—putting their premium, prime property into exchange environments. You’re going to have advertisers putting more brand dollars into programmatic. The numbers really indicate that this is what is going to happen, and based on what I’ve seen in the industry, we are going to continue moving into that trend.

Keep an eye out! Verto Media will also be putting out a formal video training series this month for people who want to learn more about programmatic.