Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Do We Really Need Another Ad Exchange?

I read the first sentence of this Mediaweek article -- "AOL is the latest Web media giant to get into the ad exchange business." -- and thought," Oh lord, not another ad exchange."

But as I dug in I realized that this is less about introducing another 3rd party exchange to aggregate inventory from disparate sources and more about opening up Platform A to self-serve advertisers.

Certainly seems like a win-win. AOL/Platform A can now tap the long tail and advertisers and agencies can now have more control over their buys.

Hopefully they'll allow API access to campaign management tools for real-time optimization. Didn't see anything about that in the story but have an inquiry in to my Platform A peeps. Will let you know what I learn.

Update 9/25: My man on the inside at Platform A tells me open API is planned for second release towards the back half of '09. Better late than never, I say!

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