Dive Brief:
- Allstate is working with ad tech firm Dstillery to purchase programmatic ads on open exchanges.
- This goes against the current trend of advertisers moving to direct sales and private exchanges to avoid potential ad fraud, a point of concern for digital marketers.
- In bypassing direct sales, Dstillery is able to purchase ads for Allstate at a much lower rate while using data tech to help the brand avoid ad fraud on open exchanges.
Dive Insight:
Programmatic advertising on open exchanges has taken a reputation beating this year. Still, despite studies, research and anecdotal stories about rampant ad fraud, ads sold on open exchanges are much cheaper than ads sold through private exchanges or direct deals with publishers. So what’s a marketer to do? For Allstate the answer is to continue buying less expensive ads through open exchanges, but make use of an ad tech firm, Dstillery in Allstate’s case, to mitigate the ad fraud issue.
Amy Stankiewicz, strategic digital marketing leader at Allstate, explained to The Wall Street Journal why the insurance company is willing to brave the open programmatic change world, saying, “With direct deals, or sponsorships, you pay double or triple the prices than you pay programmatically.”
Kevin Reilly, senior vice president of platform for Dstillery, has said the average price for banner ads on open exchanges is around $1.65 per thousand impressions compared to $10 for direct sales from publishers. Publishers selling ads programmatically via private exchanges charge less – as low as $3 for comparable ads – but marketers are still paying for fraud protection.
In Allstate’s case, Dstillery uses ad tech to help the brand purchase targeted ads on open exchanges while monitoring those exchanges for websites that are potentially engaged in ad fraud and avoiding those risks. Dstillery described the process as “very manual.”