RTB - red herring?

“In some ways RTB may be a red herring that might distract us from the underlying goal of creating a centralized market mechanism that provides quick access to inventory that gets the owner of the inventory the best price for it – RTB could cynically be seen as a way for ad exchanges/hubs outsourcing their decisioning and infrastructure costs to others.”

The Real Costs of Real-Time Bidding (RTB)

Perhaps - but let’s not forget that this is a lot about agencies and the value they try to bring. And agencies have been badly hurt by behavioural ad network thingamajigs that were OK at best and a scam at worst. Having spent 5 years managing an agency’s ad serving farm, I’ve seen my share of networks doing nasty things.

Agencies want their strategic control over their customers, advertisers. But for data to make sense you do need to make decisions on each impression.

Real-time reporting is also not what is used to be. There is a number of technologies that facilitate real-time reporting that weren’t there (or at least not inexpensively) even a year ago.

Another great thought-provoking post by Rob Leathern.