Podcast: Xaxis, Then And Now

WPP Group’s programmatic platform subsidiary Xaxis has navigated several seasons of change in programmatic.

“When Xaxis was started it was very much around this concept of leveraging programmatic to help advertisers reach audiences,” Global CEO Nicolas Bidon says in this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.

But over time that old definition of programmatic has become almost synonymous with “digital,” with upwards of 70% of digital display transacting via programmatic. With that evolution, Xaxis has shifted its focus toward greater transparency and measuring outcomes. “It’s quite challenging because agreeing with [clients] on what’s the right way to measure and attribute value can be a long journey,” Bidon says of outcome-based payments. “There’s a bit of a confirmation bias.”

The transparency issue is more straightforward: Clients either demand it or they don’t.

“What we’re starting to do for some of our clients is offer them a model where we offer full transparency at a negotiated margin, he says. “That includes cost of media. But we’re still going with a bundle for the rest: data cost, platform cost, verification, machine learning. That’s all a single line item.”

Also in this episode: the China market, the ANA transparency report and the problems of

This post was syndicated from Ad Exchanger.