Vendor announces Mi9, Fairfax, Xaxis and Big Mobile are among Australian customers using its real-time bidding platform
Programmatic advertising platform vendor, AppNexus, has set-up shop in Australia and announced several local customers in a bid to drive growth across the Asia-Pacific region.
The company has appointed David Osborn as its first Asia-Pacific vice-president for sales, who will be based in Sydney and lead regional efforts. Osborn was previously vice-president of global accounts. AppNexus’ local launch comes hot on the heels of RadiumOne’s move into the Australian market early this month, and signals the rising demand for real-time bidding (RTB) services locally.
According to IDC, RTB spending is expected to reach US$74 million (A$81.37m) in 2013, a 105 per cent leap from 2012, while eMarketer expects that figure to nearly double this year to US$131.7 million.
AppNexus’s local customer base includes media agencies, Fairfax Media and Mi9; mobile media consultancy, Big Mobile; and agency trading desk, Xaxis. The company also claims to work with both brands and agencies across 53 countries.
In a statement, Mi9 commercial director, Marc Barnett, said AppNexus is powering its ad serving, exchange and growing publisher trading desk. “This will be the single platform Mi9 uses to lead the market to full programmatic adoption across channels,” he said.
“We are also looking to partner with AppNexus further in the rapidly growing mobile and tablet ad space.”
Director of digital ad development at Fairfax Media, Tereza Alexandatros, said it utilises the AppNexus platform as a part of its advertising tech stack.
“AppNexus integrates seamlessly with our other tech partner platforms allowing us to deliver our highly-creative advertising solutions across our broad network of inventory,” he stated.
US-based AppNexus was established by several entrepreneurs from the ad exchange technology industry including former executives from DoubleClick and Yahoo’s Right Media. Investor backers include Microsoft, Venrock, Technology Crossover Ventures, First Round Capital, Mosaic co-founder Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz and Khosla Ventures.
The company claims to be the first to serve an impression via real-time auction, as well as to offer integrated buying, selling and ad serving capabilities in one platform. The as-a-service, open platform allows users to integrate self-developed tools connected via APIs to the core offering.
Osborn welcomed the opportunity to work with Australian businesses.
"Our clients are some of the world’s largest buyers and sellers of advertising, and we see them pushing more and more of their display ad trading through AppNexus," he claimed. "Aside from the obvious gains these businesses get from operating more efficiently, which programmatic clearly enables, I believe that buyers and sellers are most excited about the ability to have more strategic conversations with one another to level the dialogue, so to speak."
From an advertising perspective, one of the things that makes Australia unique is the concentration of dollars among top tier publishers and major agencies, Osborn told CMO.
"Most of them have deep relationships with one another and they're all thinking about how best to harness the trend towards more automation while each maintaining their competitive advantage," he continued.
"AppNexus is purpose-built for that: We connect buyers and sellers through an open technology platform where they can each bring their own unique value to bear. By bringing sellers and buyers together on a single trading platform, you maximise the value of the advertiser’s dollar and the ROI and equally help the publisher earn the most revenue for their unique content."
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