Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment have partnered to create a premium ad exchange designed to bring a “broad and premium” mobile programmatic offering to the Australian market.
News of the new venture arrives hot on the heels of recent announcements on Yahoo7's Ad Exchange and the launch of the the world’s first private programmatic trading market, combining television and online video, from Foxtel’s MCN and AOL-owned Adap.TV.
It is designed to give advertisers what it calls “unprecedented” access to premium Australian audiences on the go, at scale.
Fairfax and Nine Entertainment's digital media company; Mi9's joint undertaking, known as the Australian Premium Advertising Exchange (APEX), will launch early 2015 and offers buyers real-time bidding (RTB) across an “unprecedented quality of inventory” from more than 50 well-known locally created mobile sites and apps.
Headed up by CEO Pippa Leary, who was most recently Fairfax Media’s director of strategy and market insights, APEX is powered by AppNexus, the world’s largest independent advertising technology company which serves publishers and advertisers in 23 countries.
Leary, who is responsible for setting the strategic direction for the division across print, online, mobile and other new platforms, claims APEX is Australia’s first brand-safe, content-driven source of mobile advertising inventory.
The premium mobile inventory sold through APEX at launch is expected to comprise mobile properties owned and operated by Fairfax and Mi9, in addition to third party publishers such as Daily Mail Australia.
The partnership offers an opportunity for advertisers to target mobile audiences through local content, produced by local publishers for a local audience, is expected to see significant growth. Leary said APEX is transformative for the Australian programmatic market, which is forecast to grow to $1.4 billion by 2018, according to eMarketer.
“This is a milestone in the Australian digital media industry,” Leary said. “To have three of Australia’s leading online content publishers come together to offer the local advertising industry a marketplace where only high quality, locally managed digital advertising inventory is assured, is very powerful.”
Chief operating officer at Mi9 and chairman of the APEX joint venture, Marc Barnett, said he was excited to be working in partnership with Australia’s top publishers to launch this exchange to market.
“Advertisers have told us they want the efficiencies of real-time bidding, but they want certainty that their ads will appear in brand safe environments next to quality Australian content,” he said.
“This new mobile exchange gives advertisers a single platform to execute campaigns to a valuable premium and engaged audience, on a scale offered nowhere else in the local market. APEX is the new benchmark, combining brand safety, volume and value.”
Fairfax Media commercial director, Tom Armstrong, said there has long been a need for an environment that offers premium mobile inventory at scale and this exchange directly responds to what our advertisers have been calling for.
All participating publishers in APEX will maintain their direct sales operations with a portion of their inventory flowing into the exchange for bidding by agencies.
For more news:
Australia is leading the world in mobile programmatic growth
Starcom and Zenith to benefit from Publicis' first programmatic venture
Foxtel takes programmatic video advertising in-house
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop me a line at pippachambers@yaffa.com.au
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