Banner ads were only the start of the game. Damien Venuto digs into the digital sandpit and unearths a few new toys at the marketer’s disposal.
Browsing: Acquire Online
This week, Acquire Online blew out five candles on its birthday cake – which is no small feat in the rapidly moving tech space. We caught up with directors Chris Schultz, Simon Healy and Anthony Ord to find out how they got this far and where they plan on going next.
Programmatic advertising might not have the highest cool factor in the industry, but there’s no denying that it’s growing at a blistering rate. As more and more advertising is sold online, smart tech companies are tapping into the opportunity and making a nice profit in the process. One such company is Acquire Online, which in the most recent edition of the Deloitte Fast 50 nabbed the spot as the 15th fastest growing startup in New Zealand. We chat to the programmatic director Zane Furtado about how the company has managed to grow so quickly and what it will take to maintain this momentum in years to come.
When the gods of adland introduced the word ‘programmatic’ to the industry, it was immediately decreed that use of the word in everyday conversation would immediately put all those within earshot to sleep. This obviously makes it quite difficult for those working in the industry to stay awake, while slaving over spreadsheets. Even the most enthusiast programmatic specialist Acquire Online’s programmatic director Zane Furtado admits that it isn’t always easy to keep staff interested. So he came up with a quirky way to keep staff interested.
Programmatic buying is still just a sliver of the total online ad spend, here and around the world (in New Zealand, it accounted for nine percent or $3 million of the total $31.4 million spent on online display in the last quarter). But it’s getting plenty of column inches and that spend is trending upwards. Most of the big media players have invested in or have access to trading desks and demand side platforms, and many ads for local brands now feature on international sites as a result. But Acquire Online’s Anthony Ord is aiming to get those clients and agencies to support local publishers a bit more by creating a list of 156 different Kiwi sites that have offered inventory as part of a network buy.