Our Programmatic Sales Manager Christian attended the d3con this year, and took the time to give us a quick recap interview.

Christian, can you give us a little intro about the d3con? What is it all about?

The d3con is a highly valuable conference in terms of connecting and networking in the German programmatic landscape. On a trade fare, your job is it either to present your company at your booth, or to run from one appointment to the other. However, the d3con is a very relaxed environment on a small spot, putting a lot of programmatic players together. If you are not interested in connecting with others, you are at the wrong venue.

The d3con gave me the opportunity to reconnect with a bunch of people, I only knew from telephone conversations or emails, in just one day. Also, a lot of potential partners were there. So, I would be a bad sales person if I had not taken this opportunity. Besides that, the conference advertised very interesting panels and workshops, giving new insights on programmatic developments and how the various players (advertisers, publishers, and agencies) have experienced them over the last years. I was very curious about hearing new opinions, and also learning new things.

So what are your key take-aways?

• More and more avertisers are gaining expertise and starting to execute their programmatic strategy inhouse, without the help of agencies or trading desks; which makes sense if you have the resources to execute it properly. But if you are not able to keep up with the developments, you will always be busy cathing up.
• Header bidding is still a mistery to a lot of people, but everyone considers it to be crucial component to success, when it comes to selling inventory programmatically.
• Automation is key, but humans will always be needed.
• There is no universal application of programmatic marketing. The branding and performance marketing departments are still far from working together, which is very sad, but nonetheless true.
• Programmatic guaranteed is the next step in the evolution of programmatic advertising.

Can you elaborate on programmatic guaranteed a little bit more?

It was one of the biggest buzzwords at this year’s d3con. The idea of guaranteed volumes and prices has always been attractive for advertisers and of course to publishers; especially when big volumes can be secured. To know how much revenue you will make in a specific period is a great advantage for the publishers, and securing exclusive inventory is attractive for agencies and advertisers.

One issue is the technical execution. At the moment it seems, the process of explaining this to advertisers is going to take longer than setting up the technical possibility to do it. Luckily, our programmatic sales team is in direct contact with our advertisers, while our bidder team is taking care of the technical part. Handling more than 650 private market place deals puts us in a very advantageous position for both publishers and advertisers.

Who should attend the d3con?

Every programmatic player who has commercial interests and wants to conntect to the industry.

So it's safe to say you will attend next year as well? 

Definitely.