All things programmatic, ad tech & digital with Kevin Delie, Head of Sales, APAC, TripleLift
As Head of Sales, APAC at the largest native advertising platform on the planet, Kevin is a natural leader, project manager, public speaker and sales professional. We are honoured to welcome Kevin as a keynote speaker at the Melbourne & Sydney’s Programmatic Summits. We caught up with Kevin to get his take on the state of native, new tech developments, and all things programmatic.
AM: Welcome Kevin, great to speak to you.
DR: Thank you. Happy to be here.
Q: Back in 2017, you brought your experience leading TripleLift’s Publisher Development team in New York City to the Australian shores to head up sales for the APAC region. What was once a solo operation is now an integral part of the company’s global growth. What, in your opinion, has contributed to the company’s current status as the world’s largest native advertising platform?
A: TripleLift has found a rare sweet spot of ad formats that, a) work well for advertisers, b) are easy to activate for buyers, and c) are consumer-friendly, which is good for publishers and internet users.
After finding that sweet spot, we leaned into the industry movement to programmatic. With everything we built, we asked, ‘How can we make this easy and scalable for buyers and sellers in a programmatic ecosystem?’
The net result is that we have the most supply, the most premium publishers, high-performing ads, and it’s all transacted in the way buyers want–programmatically, through DSPs, the same way they buy traditional display or video.
Q: Your ability to launch and grow programmatic offerings to large publishers is very impressive and has earnt TripleLift the largest Com Score-verified reach of any native platform in 2019. What are the biggest opportunities for programmatic native advertising in 2020, and how will you exploit them to deliver better overall solutions for your advertising partners.?
A: The global media market has heavily adopted the in-feed native display because of how well the format works. Simultaneously, advertisers want to work with platforms that can support the full marketing funnel, not just point solutions. So to that end, we see major opportunity in taking our core proposition—effective, consumer-friendly ad formats—and applying them to new video inventory on the web, to CTV and OTT, even to traditional display ad placements. So we’ve built new ad formats to support all of those channels, and we’re seeing much heavier investment from the largest brands as a result.
Q: What challenges do you face when creating native programmatic content for newer platforms such as CTV and connected speakers to ensure differentiation from traditional advertising?
A: This is the hot topic at TripleLift. We believe CTV is the medium most ready for native ads because cord-cutting consumers are less tolerant of ads that interrupt content. The challenge is, how do you get non-interruptive ads into TV viewing experiences? Netflix can do it with product placement. But what about everyone else? To answer this, TripleLift has hired industry-leading engineers and TV executives to develop non-interruptive ad formats such as product placement and logo insertion that can be delivered programmatically into CTV environments. We’re releasing that product later this year.
Q: Having devoted so much of your time and energy to building out TripleLift’s native platform, what is your reaction to Google’s blocking of third-party cookies, and how do you see your business model changing as a result of it?
A: We all know the digital media industry changes fast. TripleLift’s stance has always been to lean into progress, and it has served us well. We were programmatic from day one, and we supported header bidding technology as soon as publishers wanted it. Last week TripleLift announced a partnership with LiveRamp to be their first and only native exchange using IdentityLink, and we’ll continue to invest in technology, including from our largest partners such as Goolge, that we believe moves the industry forward.
On the other side of this coin, there is a potential future where ad targeting becomes less granular and more contextual, particularly in markets focused on privacy. In that world, publishers who deliver high-quality content and respectful ad experiences will be positioned well. So those are the publishers and experiences we’ll continue to support.
Q: As the closing keynote speaker at the Sydney Programmatic Summit on 5 March, 2020, you’ll be speaking about the changing habits of video consumption and the psychology behind our behaviour. Can you give us a taste of what that will entail?
A: Yes, happy to. Video has long been the golden child of advertising, but consumers simply aren’t watching TV in the same way they used to. Linear TV is on a highway to its grave, so brands are being forced to rethink how they can keep using the strongest storytelling medium in the world, video, to tell their stories.
What’s exciting about this session is that we’ll discuss real, new, cutting-edge research that goes way beyond traditional metrics that we talk a lot about like viewability and completion rates, looking deeper at how humans respond emotionally to different types of video ads. And without giving too much away, the results may shock some members of the audience. But it’s really interesting nonetheless.
Q: Thanks very much, Kevin. Did you want to add anything else about the summit in general?
A: Yes, we’re big fans of Ashton Media. They’re so good at curating the brightest minds in programmatic in Australia and attracting relevant audiences to promote cutting edge discussions. This year we’ve increased our level of sponsorship, and we’re looking forward to connecting with audiences and playing a big part in the discussion.
Q: Brilliant. Thanks again, Kevin.
A: Thank you, It’s been a pleasure. And thank you to the Ashton Media team, we’re excited for it.
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More hot topics in programmatic will be discussed at the Programmatic Summit on Tuesday March 3rd in Melbourne and Thursday March 5th in Sydney.
Check out the agenda here and buy your tickets here.