“The Internet business is about to get disrupted again,” AOL CEO and Chairman Tim Armstrong started the second day of IAB MIXX yesterday. His forecast, he explained, is based on AOL’s Q2 earnings report recording that 34 percent of its advertising was programmatic in 2014 compared to the four percent in the same period the year prior. “Our industry is the last industry that has not been transformed by technology. You think it has, but in reality only ten percent of advertising is being done with machines today.” Beyond a transformed advertising model, he pointed to another game-changer and industry disruptor that happened this year: when Verizon and NFL made games available to stream on OTT devices. He ended his discussion saying that AOL is looking to stay ahead of this curve with their video offering, talent and the push for programmatic advertising.
Additionally, IAB brought out Facebook’s Head of Ad Tech and Atlas David Jakubowski and Omnicom Digital CEO Jonathan Nelson to discuss the role of storytelling and marketing to individuals in light of the Facebook and Atlas news announced earlier this week. “I want to figure out who my consumers are and what they want to see, while repressing the others that don’t care to see it… Atlas was Omnicom’s solution to this problem,” Nelson said. Addressing the new Google smartphone ad targeting tools announced the same day as FB’s news, Nelson added that Omnicom is a partner with Google, but FB and Atlas was a move to better reach the right people for the agency’s clients.
Kevin Spacey closed the conference, proclaiming, “I know your terms!” to the advertisers and marketers in the audience before he began his keynote on “creative courage.” “In recent years we’ve seen an explosion of creative programming, and I think it represents a third golden age of television because the creators have more control over the story,” Spacey said. He added that the device and the length is irrelevant to the story, and the audience doesn’t care about the platform just the content.
