Ad network turn offers blend of pricing models

Ad networks are workings hard to introduce more pick into the digital ad market, as evidenced by the growth number that now offer a range of targeting options and pricing/bid models. Yet none has so far succeeded in going wholly agnostic.

Until now. Or at least that's what Redwood City, CA-based Turn claims.

Turn, whose one-year-old blind ad web has built up an impressive roster of federal agency and publishing house partners, promises ad buyers can purchase media on whatever terms they choose. It says they can mark ads according to behaviour, demographics, linguistic context or whatever other data a site owner offering up. Possibly more compelling, they can name their preferred pricing model: cost per click (CPC), cost per one thousand (CPM) or cost per acquisition (CPA).

Turn executive director say the company's platform uses machine learning to identify the best chance for a given ad arrangement. It does this, they say, by comparison CPC, CPM, and CPM bids against one another to determine which will offer a publishing house the highest effective CPM for its unsold inventory. (Publishers calculate effective CPM by dividing total net income by the figure of feeling in one thousand covered by a sale.)

"It enables you to combine a jolly wide range of pricing methods for different goals," said Prince Philip Smolin, Turn's VP of merchandise marketing.

Turn says it's taken a year to build up the stock list and the trafficking experience to know when to serve an ad and at what price point. That's a specific challenge when it comes to CPA command, which is more complicated than click- or impression-based ad purchasing. The company says its web now peddles inventory from 3,000 sites and 500 federal agency and advertizer buyers.

Advertisers can manage their buys with Turn Networks on a self-serve or managed account basis. Smolin believes most federal agency clients will prefer the latter as it will allow better forecasting and predictability of inventory and billing.

"The reality for a lot of agencies is they get paid based on how much they spend," he said. "They need to have an assurance of how much they will spend for the month. We have to honor their business process, but we still want to automate the targeting process."

Keith Pieper, director of performance media for UniversalMcCann in San Francisco, has experimented with Turn from the buy side during the platform's trial phase. Pieper said the performance of the network has improved considerably over the past year.