In a move that will surely help to further propel mobile display advertising, OMD, Omnicom’s media buying agency, has officially become the first [influential] agency to mandate that mobile publishers accept 3rd party ad serving tags and bill off of the 3rd party numbers.
Can I get an “amen!”
Mobile 3rd party ad serving is still in its infancy. But it’s moves like this, albeit potentially a bit premature for mandates from what I am hearing about discrepancies between 3rd party and publisher ad servers, that will help force the market to move forward.
Controlling the serving and tracking of campaigns has been part of agencies’ DNA for years now. 3rd party ad serving becoming the standard for mobile is inevitable. Doubleclick and others have been experimenting with mobile ad serving for several years now, but the mobile display ecosystem never seemed quite ripe enough for major roll outs (I guess).
Let’s recap why agencies (and advertisers) use 3rd party ad servers:
- To have immediate access to and glean insight from robust metrics not provided by, nor prioritized by publishers
- To measure all placements on an apples to apples basis and to provide an audit
- To gain more control over creative changes
Since next year has been the year for mobile marketing for at least the last three years, we are at the cusp of finally seeing this prophecy come to fruition. Of course SMS and app marketing are revelling in all their post tipping point glory. If OMD’s move is indicative of where the other major agencies are heading, display, and video are right behind them.
