Long before Google’s recent acquisition of Invite Media, the Internet advertising community was abuzz with rumors of the impending display advertising revolution being wrought by the advent of the demand-side platform (DSP).  DSPs, it was said, would disrupt the traditional model of buying display media from publishers, ad networks, and exchanges on a one-off basis with a model that allowed users to purchase inventory in real-time across multiple platforms using one interface.

As a former Wall Street credit analyst, I’m well aware that in financial markets, the pace of product innovation often exceeds the user’s ability to model and understand it (see 2008); while in technology markets, products can often be understood far before they can be built.  This is likely due to the fact that the development time for technology products far exceeds the development time for financial products (which are essentially a paper, a pen, and a few good lawyers).  The result is mismanaged expectations as hype builds the moment ideas are hatched, rather than the moment products are delivered.  As an early adopter (and ardent supporter) of DSPs and their mission, this has certainly been my experience.

The general theme here is that although DSPs are fancy pieces of consumer software built mostly by engineers passionate about software development, the DSP business really is an advertising/service business.  Since I’m not a technologist, I’ll leave the product debate surrounding DSPs to the experts.  Instead, I’ll opine on some truths that might help DSPs improve the softer, service sides of their businesses to keep happy their current clients and to make happy their new ones:

-  DSPs are still a service business: while technology can solve lots of problems, it can’t solve them all (until the Singularity at least).  The users of your product are still humans; and we humans will find innumerable ways to misuse or misunderstand your platform.  And when we do, having someone to clarify, comfort, and console us is paramount.  Even Google – arguably the benchmark of self-serve advertising platforms – allows us to gripe regularly and receive timely responses (however canned they may be).  DSPs are still a service business, so staff accordingly.

- If you’re going to be self-serve, then be self-serve: DSPs are meant to be self-serve mechanisms for digital media buyers to manage their display media directly with the same quantitative and qualitative rigor as they do in search.  Given the success of AdWords, achieving this goal will not only make DSPs highly usable, but also highly profitable. However, unlike AdWords, many DSPs I’ve demoed have all the sophistication in the world on the back-end, with front-ends that require either a dictionary-sized user manual or that simply don’t work.  Even worse is when DSPs impose minimums, contracts, or lengthy approvals before campaigns can start running. If you sell yourself as a self-serve platform, be one.  If users need to be regularly handheld through the process of using a DSP, the ‘P’ is sorely missing.

- Not all online marketers are digitally savvy: although many in-house marketers manage media spend directly, some are primarily managers of agencies, consultants, and other freelancers.  Moreover, we come from a diverse set of backgrounds – marketing, finance, mathematics, and sales – and all have varying degrees of awareness about online media trends and how they can benefit our individual businesses.  So, while the alphabet soup of DSP and RTB may seem elementary, be ready, willing, and excited to educate, not just sell.

- What DSPs do is clear; why it matters isn’t: I don’t profess to be an expert, so perhaps I’m slightly uneducated, but most of the discussions I’ve had with DSPs center around what they do.  Undoubtedly, DSPs offer novel and valuable functionality, but when it comes to making tangible the ‘why’ I’ve found myself left wanting.  Marketers care far more about the results they can drive – increased revenue, expanded reach, lower costs, higher-quality traffic – than about how those results are driven.  Show us why DSPs make our lives better (with tangible data), not just how they do it.

- Marketers are only half-done upon conversion: while I certainly enjoy hitting my Easy Button every time I generate a lead, I really shouldn’t be celebrating too much.  After driving high-converting, quality traffic at low cost, I exchange my ‘traffic acquisition’ hat for my ‘reporting and analysis’ cap.  To create sustainable and profitable campaigns with an acceptable degree of risk (standard deviation of click/conversion volume, costs, etc), online marketers need to have clear, accurate, and immediate access to data regarding traffic – and this holds true for DSPs.  After all, the bidding is real-time; shouldn’t the data be as well?  To the marketer, having an easy-to-use, (relatively) real-time analytics interface is equally as valuable as sophisticated back-end technology.

- The idea of using multiple DSPs is a turn-off: at the risk of sounding lazy (I hope my boss doesn’t read this), the need to have a media-buying architecture that accommodates multiple DSPs seems self-defeating.  The whole point of aggregating RTB inventory across a number of exchanges is to eliminate the need to operate across multiple platforms and to simplify display buying.  If I’m merely replacing the need to manage my spend across multiple exchanges with the need to manage my spend across multiple DSPs, a major component of the value proposition is lost on me.  Find a way to make me need your platform, without needing your entire industry.

- Despite the rhetoric, DSPs all seem the same: every time I read about a DSP raising capital, I come across a blurb stating that it has some “key differences from its competitors.”  But in every demo I’ve seen, the DSPs all stress their similarities.  I’m sure there are differences – probably quite meaningful ones from a technical standpoint.  But, as a prospective user, these key differences haven’t manifested themselves to me as key decision points.  With all the buzz surrounding DSPs, many marketers by now have a general sense of what all DSPs have in common.  Focus on clarifying your unique value propositions, not your baseline similarities.

Well, there you have it.  Seven relatively non-technical thoughts from a relatively non-technical digital media buyer on how DSPs could make me – and probably other marketers out there like me – happier with their service and more passionate about their product.  This list is by no means comprehensive and my experience may not be the norm.  Nonetheless, it is my hope that by opening dialogue and debate on the non-technical side of DSPs their businesses can continue to develop at the same pace, if not faster, than their products.