adobeAdobe Advertising Cloud, the first end-to-end platform for managing advertising across traditional TV and digital formats, just announced that it has a solution to the industry’s biggest hassle – a lack of transparency. Despite impressive technological innovation, marketers indeed still struggle to answer basic questions like where their ad dollars are going and how their ads are performing, aside from issues like poor media quality, hidden fees and misaligned incentives.

Full transparency

To address these challenges, Adobe has become the first media buying platform to partner with supply-side platform (SSP) and exchange partners to make all fees fully transparent, including some that were previously undisclosed.

Supply-side platforms (SSPs) gain most of their revenue by taking a fee for helping online publishers monetize unsold advertising inventory. But after it was discovered that several SSPs had included additional fees in media costs that were passed along to buy-side partners, Adobe Advertising Cloud has reached agreements with the industry’s leading inventory suppliers to either eliminate these fees entirely, or mandate full disclosure. All disclosed supplier fees will be displayed within Adobe Advertising Cloud’s platform moving forward, and the movement is already including several supporting partners, such as Google AdX, OATH by Verizon, or The Rubicon Project, to name a few.

“We believe deeply that transparency can benefit everyone in the digital advertising industry, not just marketers,” said Brett Wilson, vice president, Adobe Advertising Cloud. “Openness and innovation are hallmarks of Adobe Advertising Cloud and we are pleased that our supply partners have joined us as we collectively work to bring accountability that most will agree is long overdue.”

Adobe’s initiative builds on Adobe Advertising Cloud’s rich history of driving increased control and transparency for marketers. In 2010, the company became one of the first media buying platforms to reveal site-level performance and economics directly within its software. Subsequently, the company rolled out its BrandSafe brand safety suite, spearheaded the creation of OpenVV and open-sourced what is now the industry’s video viewability standard, released details on three botnets, and integrated with major third-parties for viewability, verification and more. Most recently the company launched its Non-Human Traffic Credit Program, which automatically refunds advertisers for any advertising identified as fraudulent by a trusted third party.

More flexibility and convenience

In addition, Adobe announced the release of the Adobe Advertising Cloud Mobile App, the industry’s first mobile app for cross-channel advertising campaign management to provide marketers the tools they need to ensure performance and delivery wherever they are.

It is available for free to Adobe’s current customers on both Android and iOS, enabling marketers to stay connected and manage their cross-channel advertising campaigns on-the-go from anywhere in the world.

The app’s features include:

  • The ability to monitor campaign-level performance and delivery metrics in real time directly from a mobile phone or tablet device;
  • The ability to swipe-to-activate and automatically pause campaigns based on pre-set parameters, such as budget caps or impression totals;
  • At-a-glance placement-level reporting for all metrics available within the platform on desktop computers, including total spend, impressions, viewability rates, click-through rates, completion rates and more.


Cross-channel capabilities

In addition to the mobile app, Adobe Advertising Cloud clients can also enjoy expanded cross-channel advertising capabilities, with the addition of automated, data-driven buying of digital audio advertising formats on desktop and mobile devices.

By adding digital audio formats to its media planning and buying Adobe Advertising Cloud enables marketers to centralize targeting and reporting across devices including desktops, smartphones and tablets, not to mention messaging sequentially across formats, such as an audio ad followed by a video ad to move consumers down the funnel along the path to purchase. Advertisers can also leverage Adobe Advertising Cloud’s native integration with Adobe Analytics Cloud to layer first- and third-party data to target behavioral, demographic and geographic audience segments, and receive Nielsen-verified audience reporting on consumers’ age and gender.

“Digital audio has exploded as a uniquely differentiated channel that gives advertisers the opportunity to target users not just based on their demographic or psychographic profile – but how they feel at a specific moment in time,” said Brett Wilson, vice president, Adobe Advertising Cloud.

By MediaBUZZ