You are assigned to Group 1 People. 16:45 Interactive Session, Building the Bridge to 2020 Fast Future Fix

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1 You are assigned to Group 1 People. 16:45 Interactive Session, Building the Bridge to 2020 Fast Future Fix Are publishers and media owners faced with a skills gap in the future? If so, how do they fix between now and then so that their business still works? Are their spin off consequences of this potential skills gap..will wages soar for the right staff?... Will we need to find people from different places?...what? In a world where the ad operations function is rapidly transitioning from transactional to data - and analyticscentric, surely all of the staff of today will not make the grade moving forward. Simply put, much of the operational work will be done by machines. It s never fun to watch someone replaced by a robot, but such is progress. In the wake of this transition, what might happen? Operations will perhaps shift to focus on the high-leverage functions like: - yield think inventory management, pricing and discounting, sales channel management, bid management, and packaging for automated sales channels - data everything from working with data providers and data buyers to the deep analytics required for audience segment discovery - product planning and packaging again, with the introduction of data, ad product definition is much more dynamic and about more than just context and placement on the page - technical integrations and platform administration with myriad third party providers, there will be all manner of tools, integrations, and relationships to manage and monitor; these include (but are not limited to) core business tools (ad servers, SSPs, DMPs) and market partners (DSPs, advertisings, agency trade desks) - sales enablement something like programmatic direct requires in house, hands-on-keyboard sales support more than it does suit-and-tie buy-you-lunch sales people; some programmatic sales will be a lot more like ad operations than it is like the direct sales function of today - educators and evangelists as linking creative to programmatic moves forward, as mobile and things like geo-location come on board, or as programmatic shifts to cater for consumer and retail behaviour in an omnichannel world a lot of sales will move to helping companies and different areas embrace these new, but different opportunities 2020 is far enough away to be very different, but also close enough to be thinking now as a smart business what to do about the future you see. Smart businesses who want to be here in 2020 will be asking themselves now: - What will be the biggest change to the typical profile of your support staff? - How does programmatic change my sales team composition? Sales management structure? - How can we level up our current team? - How will we fill the skills gap that s coming fire/replace or educate/elevate or recruit from elsewhere?

2 People - Your 3 questions to answer. You have 15 minutes to come up with answers to 3 questions we ve set. Do introduce each other. Do discuss. Do debate. Do have different ideas between you. But then Stop just talking and propose some answers. Agree we don t care how on what your group answer is and your group spokesmen. In 15 minutes they will be telling everyone the answer don t be shy go for it. Be opinionated. What have you got to lose? Your 3 questions to answer. Market changes will impact your people, in particular the skills and knowledge they must possess to grow and thrive. Given that is the case we want to now your answers to these 3 questions 1. What is the single most important role or change in role that you must recruit or train for to meet the future needs of you media sales operation? 2. What would be the three things you must do now or in the near future to not get left behind in people and skills? Why do you say these three things? 3. If time and money were not constrained, what is the first big investment you would make today in people development to prepare for 2020?

3 You are assigned to Group 2 Sales. 16:45 Interactive Session, Building the Bridge to 2020 Fast Future Fix Businesses change and so will ours. Online banking became just banking. Online shopping became simply retail. Programmatic sales will soon just become sales too. But what will sales mean in 2020? There will always be a need for some direct sales function, but rather than legions of glad-handers peddling banners and buttons, surely publishers of tomorrow are going to need a much more focused business development function attacking big brands and the buying entities within the holding companies. That s where the big direct deals will be written. Isn t it also where many of the big programmatic offtake agreements will be written? Won t DSPs and trading desks negotiate large long-term upfront deals for bulk inventory, delivered through programmatic channels? This would be inventory that they then allocate, on their own across and for their own benefit for the many individual campaigns they own. So in 2020 Arbitrage sounds like it will still be around unless you think different. In looking at big deals in a world that is less stable, less predictable than direct sales, what about the associated risk? - Will you be willing to negotiate big upfront programmatic deals, maybe even at a flat fee, to avoid the uncertainty of the bidded marketplace? - Would that position change when the deal is with a GroupM, someone you know is arbitraging that same inventory across their massive operation? So what is the future of sales? What is the good news? What is the bad news? - It sounds like the strategic sellers that you have today the top, big account operators will have a home. - Those more technologically aligned will have a home in the new programmatic direct inside sales discipline. - But what about the rank-and-file? Won t they instead find themselves to be our current version of the old travel agents who disappeared in the age of Expedia, Kayak, and booking.com? If that s who you have surely they ll be leaving. - What about finding the people to fill the empty seats and identifying/developing the programmatic skills that your team will need to scale your business? Unfortunately, there are no University programs yet. Most publishers and media owners have to hire young and grow their own. How will you do that? What everyone should be doing today? Evaluating their teams, training everyone on programmatic, and creating their own pool of talent to choose from as the programmatic wave crashes across their business and dramatically changes their org charts. AND YET.

4 What about sales management? Business operations are going to change too. So more questions to answer on the types of people and skills you ll need - How the hell do you forecast revenue when your inventory is sold impression by impression, cookie by cookie, millisecond by millisecond? Sure, the revenue stream is steady, but maintaining and growing it is the complicated and sometimes mysterious work of robots and really smart analysts. - If more than 50% of your revenue is going to come from general auctions, essentially beyond your control. How will your CFO respond to the ambiguity of your quarterly or annual revenue hanging in the balance dependent on the whims of the programmatic market and not (somewhat in your control) hanging on the performance of your star sales people? - Does that put your ops team closer to finance, since they are the ones with the hand on the revenue engine switches? Should you consider shifting Ops closer to the core Finance team today? Or, should you hold tight as a sales leader?

5 Group 2 Sales. Your 3 Questions. You have 15 minutes to come up with answers to 3 questions we ve set. Do introduce each other. Do discuss. Do debate. Do have different ideas between you. But then Stop just talking and propose some answers. Agree we don t care how on what your group answer is and your group spokesmen. In 15 minutes they will be telling everyone the answer don t be shy go for it. Be opinionated. What have you got to lose? So let s be honest. Programmatic is supposed to be driving efficiency to sales process. Many will tell you that, today, that s not the case. While there are no fax machines involved, processes are still rough and there is a ton of human intervention required. It maybe succeeding now in some places and failing in others perhaps worth thinking where. But by 2020 surely what has to be fixed for the promise of lower cost sales and operations to become real will have moved on. That means change Your 3 questions to answer. New sales techniques change the processes that guide revenue management and general business operations. 1. What is the single biggest change programmatic sales has triggered already in how you plan revenue and manage your sales operation? 2. What are the three biggest business process pain point you are facing because of programmatic sales? 3. What will sales be about in 2020? How will it be different from today?

6 You are assigned to Group 3 Tools. 16:45 Interactive Session, Building the Bridge to 2020 Fast Future Fix We are fundamentally in a technology business and that isn t going to change or stay still. Technology is the thing we all know both gives and also takes away. You have all invested in some kind of programmatic solution already like our hosts here, Improve Digital s Supply-Side Platform (*SSP). That gives you easy access to the market, one-stop connection to all of the potential buyers. And that is a good thing. However Some programmatic platforms, at their core, are ad servers, providing a somewhat redundant function. It is smarter, better connected, and focused on optimisation, but featuring varying degrees of the ad-serving feature set nonetheless. As your reliance on programmatic grows, so grows your reliance on the programmatic technology provider. In terms of technology and tools in the future you might start asking questions like these: - Should they one day replace your primary ad server? Perhaps, In the name of cost-of-sale surely that just makes sense. - When making those platform investments, is it a conflict of interest when your provider also has a stake in the buy-side or runs an exchange? (See: almost everyone) - In that world, and in an environment that is entirely SaaS and cloud-based, what functions must be kept in house? What systems of record need to be yours and yours alone? Of course on the technology front, it isn t just us in advertising or digital. Perhaps, most importantly, are the two 900lb gorillas in the room, Facebook and Google. Anyone on the sell-side who isn t worried about they will do isn t paying very close attention. They are both seller and marketplace. They are both content producer and distribution channel. They are both vendor and ecosystem. They are channel masters, vertically integrated, simultaneously supporting your business while also competing with it. Further, they are the biggest of the Big Data businesses, and your properties are a gold mine for them. Surely that s a big risk. If data is everything, once they have the data, don t they own you? How do you combat that? - Some (as in France and with the transatlantic Pangea initiative) are building consortia of sellers, hoping to provide a market counterweight to those dominant market players. - Others (as with Comcast in the US) are making massive investments in platforms, both acquisition and development, in-housing core platform functions in an age of SaaS. - Some publishers are throwing in with Google completely, signing longer term deals, big inventory offtake agreements, and just accepting their dominant role, hoping contractual protections are enough to protect the core business. But it is a risk -it might work well for some, but others will simply find themselves a content farm feeding Google s vast network. And talking of risk, there are some other strategies - You could agitate for EU anti-trust regulations, to lessen the power of the few channel masters? - You could work only with the few independent partners that remain? - Or, as old fashioned as it might sound, do you build your own?

7 What about the gaps in the stack today? I suspect you all will say data. If you haven t invested in data yet, you re late. You need the platform and you need the people to run it to mine your vast stores of untapped data potential and to put it to work. The other big piece unifying the cross device experience. The word mobile is arguably a distraction. The mobile/not mobile distinction is false. What is holding the industry back is the lack of a unified cross device experience TV, tablet, phone, desktop, watch and more. If you solve for that arguably the revenue WILL follow. What s keeping you from that today? - The right CMS? - The right editorial vision? - The right content assets? - Bandwidth and human capital? - What? Then of course we have Video. It seems to be all anyone is talking about today. For those of you with broadcast assets, there is a primary issue that has to be dealt with. How are you investing to ensure your television business is as easily automated as automated as display is/will be? Finally, surely something has got to give in the ecosystem. The overly complex ecosystem charts will be surely be relics of the past by Through consolidation, acquisition, and Darwinism, we ll surely see fewer, and bigger, platform players offering most everything you need. You see it in Oracle and Adobe today, through their marketing cloud plays. Its coming to sellers too some might say Google has already done it. If this happens - Who proves to be the IBM of that world? Maybe IBM? - Who do you trust enough to manage almost all of your business? - Will Google or Facebook every rise to that level?

8 Group 3 Tools. Your 3 Questions. You have 15 minutes to come up with answers to 3 questions we ve set. Do introduce each other. Do discuss. Do debate. Do have different ideas between you. But then Stop just talking and propose some answers. Agree we don t care how on what your group answer is and your group spokesmen. In 15 minutes they will be telling everyone the answer don t be shy go for it. Be opinionated. What have you got to lose? Your 3 questions to answer. Your business needs are changing, and that impacts the technology solutions you rely on to make the most of the market. 1. What will be the single most important part of your ad technology stack in five years time? 2. We live in a SaaS world. What is your biggest worry about relying on a vendor for that core function? 3. Technology and markets don t always change in a predictable way give us your prediction for an unexpected change to the ad tech landscape in 2020?

9 You are assigned to Group 4 Creative. 16:45 Interactive Session, Building the Bridge to 2020 Fast Future Fix It has been true since day one. All of your best efforts can fall apart if your marketing partners fail to deliver the right creative, to present the message I the right way to the right users. For all the analytics of what to optimise, the creative component remains among the most dramatic ways effectiveness can be changed. Yet, it still also end up in the endless debate (we mean argument) around technology, programmatic and creativity. People from the creative side will tell you the need for the creative craft and inspiration and argue that it doesn t and can t be aligned to a machine. People from a data and technology background will talk about the new opportunities for creativity to be made more relevant, personal, tailored on all sorts on insights to make it not only more unique, but more effective. The truth is that there needs to be a better answer on this creativity, data and programmatic debate. It isn t going to go away. It isn t getting anywhere just shooting from two difference positions at an enemy with the advertiser in the middle. So what could be some better common ground? - Data and creative teams need to work effectively together. A few years ago, hiring Creative Technologists and Chief Innovation Officers was top of mind for many agencies. While some questioned the impact on day-to-day creativity, hiring talent in these positions signaled to the industry that advertising was changing. Will the same happen with Big Data? Are data scientists and data visualisers the new Creative Technologist? Should we be structuring to ensure the data team is 'leaning in' and contributing more than just historical performance data. Challenge them to contribute during creative ideation. - Balance creative and data resources. Your team structure should evolve to adapt to this new landscape. - Translate data into insights. According to Cisco, the average global mobile user in 2012 consumed 201MB of data per month (which was double that of the previous year). In total, this generated 900 Petabytes of traffic and is expected to grow at a compound rate of 66% for the next five years. We now have refrigerators connected to Twitter, personal fitness trackers and apps that allow you to track just about everything. They are all generating data; the open question is how can we best use this information for creative ideas? - Use data to achieve creative risk-taking. Data has always been a part of creativity although usually considered a necessary evil rather than an inspirational tool. The next generation of data and analytics platforms will enable increased accountability, global collaboration and personalisation of ideas like never before. This means not only can multiple creative ideas to be tested and optimised simultaneously but more importantly, it empowers creative teams and brands to take controlled risks. Real-time insights can arise, the ability to place small bets and the ease of testing innovative ideas are incredibly valuable benefits for a brand wanting to push creative boundaries while at the same time managing risk. - Training and development initiatives people in non-data roles. Many people, especially in a creative environment, may not be comfortable with data. Training initiatives help people understand how to better leverage data to deliver on business and creative goals The bar is only getting higher there. Mobile and video demand new formats and messaging strategies. One-toone and one-to-some campaigns (as opposed to broadcast one-to-many) demand more dynamic messaging. Not a car ad for men. A car ad for MARK. Can you envision a world where you take a more active role in creative process, as is beginning with some premium native advertising solutions? Can you imagine a world where you survive without taking a more active role in the creative process?

10 Group 4 - Creative. Your 3 Questions You have 15 minutes to come up with answers to 3 questions we ve set. Do introduce each other. Do discuss. Do debate. Do have different ideas between you. But then Stop just talking and propose some answers. Agree we don t care how on what your group answer is and your group spokesmen. In 15 minutes they will be telling everyone the answer don t be shy go for it. Be opinionated. What have you got to lose? Your 3 questions to answer. The creative discipline is critical to your bottom-line. It impacts every impression you serve, every page view you create, but it is also beyond your control. Yet the creative vs programmatic/real time digital debate is one of the hottest that holds back brand spend. Further, there are three major areas of change in advertising: 1:1 marketing (targeting), video, and mobile, each of which is hugely dependent upon effective creative executions. 1. Which one of these at is the biggest issue in relation to the health of our business and why? 2. If you had digital creative directors from each of the major holding companies in the room today and could give them only one piece of feedback, what would that be? 3. What three things could we do so we aren t still discussing this still in 2020?