Invited by SupChina, DeepZero | iPinYou’s EU GM David Nottingham spoke with China Marketing Podcast. Here we present a brief review of David’s insights into programmatic China.
The China programmatic ecosystem is different from the West in three aspects.
1. Media
The Chinese digital ecosystem itself includes major well-known tech companies like Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and rising stars like Bytedance. There are over 30 different Ad exchanges, with unique Chinese media across all verticals that are only built solely for the China market. As a result, they have a huge amount of inventory, DeepZero | iPinYou has access to over 32 billion bid requests every day and when you think it is just from one geo the scale is impressive. Each ad exchange has its specific type of inventory available from the basics of desktop and in-app to the latest channels such as Connected TV and digital “out of home” There is a huge amount of media available and regardless of the channel we need to be sure our technology helps to deliver mass personalization to each target user which is the same challenge brands face in the west.
The main difference is how the programmatic ecosystem in China is set up and how the aforementioned technologies have created their infrastructure to support access and delivery of their media. The IAB’s Open RTB protocol which defines the basic tools and digital standardization required to link demand and supply, is not always the same in China. For example, we normally use javascript tags, VAST, and VPAID, which are used to deliver personalized messaging, serve rich media creatives, or record brand safety. However, in China, nearly 90% of all media platforms do not accept Java script tags or VAST, which makes it very difficult to execute the same activation, attribution, and measurement metrics that would be adopted for global programmatic campaigns.
For Chinese media, if you want to access their audience and inventory, you have to play to their rules. Some platforms only are accessible by programmatic guaranteed, the buying metrics are not often consistent with some still operating on a cost-per-day basis and each one has its approval process. It's great for the walled gardens but it creates a few headaches for clients who want to access their target audience across multiple channels. When you think of creatives the IAB has something like 16 preferred formats. But in China, there are now over 1000 different formats of different media (it was 480 when I first started working with DeepZero | iPinYou two years ago).
Recently one of our clients provided us with four creative sizes that they normally use in their European activation, not one of them is recognized by any of their selected media in China. It is in these situations that we have to advise brands or companies using our technology that they need to be prepared to adapt to the Chinese programmatic ecosystem when planning, activating, and reporting their campaigns.
DeepZero | iPinYou has done a very impressive job of developing an automated tech stack solely for China that integrates with all major media and creates synergies that complement global RTB practices with domestic delivery and reporting.
2. Data
China is has the world's biggest population with 1.4 billion people and over 854 million mobile users in China. Within iPinYou’s system, we have access to 1.4 billion different mobile devices in which we can use for targeting, verification and reporting. The scale is pretty impressive and with iPinYou you can use 3rd party data from over 14 different sources to use for your business and marketing applications. We can use data from Union Pay to verify target audience income, Gozen to target users based on the TV consumption, China Mobile for App usage targeting or our own DAAT system which has 6000 audience labels for targeting across desktop and mobile. The way in which brands buy programmatic ads is different too.
For global campaigns we normally buy programmatic ads by CPM, which is the cost per thousand ads and the same goes with using 3rd party data. However, in China, what they do is really interesting. It's mainly bought on a package basis. For example, when you negotiate with a 3rd party provider for JD. Com, you may say “ I have a luxury brand and we need to target people who are buying handbags online”, or whatever other specific attributes are. And JD.com may come back and say, “we've got 20 million device IDs. It's will cost you $50000 to target these users for six months”, which means you've got unlimited amount ads you could serve them. But in the west, you would normally just pay a CPM on the amount of people that you've actually served an ad to. It’s a different way of selling and a different way of buying. As with media it's very much the power is with the data provider.
3. Brand safety
It often said that Ad fraud in China is a major issue, as with any programmatic campaign if you don’t use the correct brand safety vendor then you will face potential problems where ever in the world you running the campaign. Brand safety vendors are 3rd party technology companies that make sure the ads brands, are serving are being served in a brand safe environment, are being served on real devices and viewed by real people.
Many of our domestic clients use iPinYou’s Sky-Eye technology that is able to locate and identify any Device ID or IP address that is deemed irregular. The engine is AI powered and is able to process over daily 32 billion bid requests from 980 million Device I.Ds to ensure DSP traffic or data passing into our clients DMP is ‘human’ and not from a fraudulent source. This is a very powerful tool when combined with our programmatic direct buying integrations with China’s most premium inventory.
Many of global brand safety vendors like IAS, Sizmek and Grapeshot are active and integrated into our stack. We mentioned earlier you can't use Java script on the majority of Chinese media therefore much of the functionality that is available to brand safety vendors and clients is not available. This means you need to alter the brand safety measurement KPI’s and look to work with some of Chinese providers who technology has been built solely for the local market, it is not as homogenous as we are used to in the west but you can still achieve some of the same brand safety outcomes.
