The Future 3rd Party Ad Server

What does the delivery system of Digital ad placements look like in 5 years?  10 years?  It will definitely look a lot different than today’s Doubleclick, Atlas, MediaMind, Mediaplex, etc.

In today’s world, agencies often need to use a different ad serving system for each different media type.  It’s not unusual for a single campaign to be delivered using 4 or 5 different agency ad servers: 

• Standard server for all basic Flash placements
• Video ad server that can deliver a VAST/VPAID tag as well as track a site served video
• Rich Media server for expandable and multi-functional ads
• Dynamic ad server that can do true Multi-Variate Optimizations, and
• Mobile server for running ads on smartphones and tablets

Not to mention any site-served placements, which can range from integrated content hubs to homepage takeovers.

Needless to say, this creates a lot of extra work, and maximizes the inefficiencies that have become infamous in our industry.  From the Agency Ad Operations perspective, this means creating multiple traffic sheets, generating many sets of tags, and doing many creative uploads.  Often times, agencies rely on their ad serving partners to also traffic out the tags to the various Media Partners, so a Publisher could be receiving 4 different sets of tags from 4 different ad serving vendors….all for a single campaign.

Then, there is always the inevitable problem with billing, as in which numbers to use for invoicing.  According to the IAB Terms & Conditions, the “controlling measurement” has to be compliant with “IAB/AAAA Ad Measurement Guidelines”.  Not all ad servers are considered compliant, which means we are often using multiple sources of impression data to reconcile a single monthly invoice.  Multiply this by thousands of live media campaigns at any given moment, and it becomes clear as to the inefficiencies involved.

Bottom Line:  The fact that I have to use 4 different ad servers to run a single campaign is absolutely ridiculous.  There has to be a better way.

So what will the Ad Server of the future look like?

Tomorrow’s Ad Server will allow an agency to confidently manage all possible media types in one central location.  It will enable us to run Flash, Video, Mobile, Rich, Search, Dynamic, and whatever else the future holds, efficiently and easily.  I will be able to generate one complete set of tags that can be sent directly to a Media Partner, and will include everything they need to run that campaign.  No more need to generate tracking pixels and click trackers, and no more need to argue over which numbers will be used for billing purposes, because in my vision of the future, all Ad Servers will be accredited and certified.

I know there are many people out there who are probably saying, “Hey, my company can do all those things today.  We should talk.”  The fact is, most Ad Serving companies can handle multiple asset types today, but I still haven’t seen one Ad Server that can do all these things expertly.

I also realize that the Single Ad Server dream is completely dependent on industry adoption of guidelines and standards, particularly around Video and Mobile.  But I do think that at some future point in time (let’s go with 5 years from now), we will look back on the days when we used to use one Ad Server for Rich Media, a different one for Video, a different one for Mobile, etc. with a feeling of “we’ve come so far since then”.