Olive Media has added Casale Media‘s Index Platform to the Olive Private Exchange, a licensing deal that brings together two of the Canadian RTB market’s leading ad exchange players.
Kristie Painting, general manager and vice-president, sales and marketing for Olive, said the move will improve clients’ buying experience and allow greater flexibility in making audience-targeted bids. Using the Casale platform’s Deal IDs, Olive can group inventory based on clients’ audience segment preferences, and offer negotiated prices. “You will access that inventory using your Deal ID, which will inform the system that you’ve got the hall pass to connect with the inventory in that way and buy it at that price,” Painting explained.
Casale and Olive are two of Canada’s biggest RTB media players, with Casale claiming the title of largest independent Canadian ad technology company, and Olive owned and operated by Torstar Media (formerly Torstar Digital). Casale and Olive both run premium RTB exchanges in Canada, known respectively as Casale X and Olive Private Exchange. Casale’s network of sites, which includes eBay.ca and TMXMoney.ca, reaches approximately 80% of Canada’s online audience, while Olive’s network, which includes theStar.com, NYTimes.com and People.com, reaches about 65%.
Olive has been among those RTB players pushing advertisers towards higher-priced premium inventory, which generally performs better on metrics like viewability and conversion rate than cheap high-volume inventory. A recent study from Media Experts used a cost-per-conversion analysis to establish that pricier premium buys are ultimately more cost-efficient – buyers that purchase a relatively small quantity of premium ads, rather than spending the same budget on a large quantity of low-priced “remnant” inventory, drive more desired consumer actions, like newsletter subscriptions, purchases or user comments.
One of the reasons that premium performs better is the remarkable proportion of fraudulent impressions in low-priced inventory. A recent audit of major open exchanges by Media6degrees found that eight out of 18 exchanges had more than 20% non-human traffic, with some as high as 50%. Meanwhile Solve Media estimates that as much as 46% of worldwide inventory is suspicious.
Canadian programmatic buyers “understand the importance of inventory segmentation to ensure the brand safety and performance of their campaign,” said Olive’s vice-president, performance media, Ray Philipose in a release. “Many buyers recognize that premium inventory provides them with better conversion and greater visibility into the quality and brand safety of the placements they buy in addition to protection against fraudulent activity.”
Casale’s Index Platform will help Olive screen for brand safety and quality placement, and ultimately improve the performance of impressions on Olive’s exchange, said Painting. As marketplaces for premium inventory, Casale and Olive share concerns about transparency and suspicious traffic. “We’re really committed to making sure that we have a rigorously audited, very clean network, and that when buyers purchase inventory from us, they can be assured that they will not be subject to any kind of fraudulent activity,” she said. “Casale is committed to the same principles, and its very important that the partners you’re working with have those same values.”
Casale and Olive currently do not share inventory, though the new Index Platform would make it easier to share Olive inventory on Casale X in the future. When asked whether Olive would consider an inventory-sharing partnership, Painting said a deal was not in the works, but the close alignment of Casale’s and Olive’s values could permit one. “If it made sense for both businesses, it’s something we would contemplate. We really enjoy working with them.”
Olive will continue to work with AppNexus, which provides the foundational technology for Olive Private Exchange. Casale’s Index Platform and its associated features will be layered in on top of current capabilities offered by Olive.
