I’ve spent the last 10 years, on and off, representing the buy side of the display marketing equation.  For many years I held the post of Media Supervisor at digital marketing leader Razorfish, managing the display efforts for a Fortune 500 financial services brand.  I co-founded, and successfully ramped, the “agency trading desk”, ATOM Systems, for my agency.  And I worked within Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center as an educator and advocate for the in-house audience buying solution, Audience on Demand, as AOD’s head of Brand Relations. 

Never did I really get a chance to take a step back and contemplate the big picture – What are publishers struggling with in this rapidly changing ecosystem?  How do the different point solutions (many of them technology based, these days) fit together… or not? What are the challenges that digital marketers are facing in their (often uphill) battle to grow digital’s share of spend, and what are some solutions?  Taking off my buy-side hat and taking a step back, as the newest member of Forrester’s Interactive Marketing group, offers a welcome change in viewpoint! 

 My experience over the last few years, however, does give me a unique point of view – I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about how the modes of acquiring, optimizing, reporting on and deriving insight from display media are going through a dramatic shift.  This shift is a direct result of the rise of ad exchanges like Yahoo!’s RMX and Google's ADX, Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) like Invite Media and MediaMath, data marketplaces like BlueKai, and more.  I strongly believe that we’re at an inflection point in how a significant portion of Display media will be managed – and by whom – going forward, and I personally look forward to sharing my perspective on it with this community. 

That said, look for docs from me in the coming weeks and months which address topics including the increasingly common “ad networks or DSPs… or both?” question, “what is campaign verification and how/when does it make sense for me?”, and “how can I think about Search and Display more holistically?” among other things!