ZEDO’s Cloud-Based Next Generation Ad Server
We haven’t been marketing our ad server lately,because it has been in transition. But it is still our flagship product, and recently we’ve done a lot of work to distinguish it from those of our competitors. ZEDO now has a completely cloud-based next-generation ad server, able to do things our legacy competitors can’t. For example, we can make ad changes on the fly that appear in seconds. And we can scale infinitely.
That’s because we recently rebuilt our ad server on Amazon Web Services, probably the most effective cloud service in the world, the one that runs Netflix. That’s important because Netflix has scaled to be the most important user of the internet worldwide. Currently, it delivers 30% of the downstream traffic on the internet globally, and as much as 75% of the US traffic during evening prime time. This means it has already proven itself both scalable and reliable.
Amazon asked us to help them write a case study on our partnership, and this is what appears on their website:
ZEDO began working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as part of its research efforts. After experimenting with prototypes, the ZEDO team determined that AWS provided the reliability and scalability that they needed to support ZEDO’s globally distributed, high-traffic ad server platform.
By taking advantage of AWS, ZEDO was able to build, test and deploy an ad server platform capable of serving billions of impressions per day in just a few months. ZEDO uses Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling to form scalable clusters of servers. “Auto Scaling groups make it easy to deploy new code on a daily basis,” says de Souza. “Developers can innovate, test and deploy without the red tape and logistics around procuring new hardware. The icing on the cake is that they just terminate the servers when they are finished.”
With AWS, we don’t have to spend time thinking about technology infrastructure. Using AWS saves us time and effort so we can focus on our clients and their businesses: integrating our services on a single platform running on AWS makes it easier for our customers to choose one or several products. Both we and they have more flexibility.
Since ZEDO moved to AWS, the we are capable of more detailed ad targeting and can make changes to ads worldwide within minutes. Our quality of service has improved. Ad calls that would typically consist of three to five object requests prior to AWS have been reduced to just one request, because we don’t need to cache everything and can make real time decisions. Fewer calls mean an almost 50 percent improvement in ad delivery time.
It’s also easier for the development team to access different parts of the service, and as a result, developers are able to roll out new features faster than before. Products and features are also being built around Amazon CloudFront.
We credit AWS with removing barriers that we faced with our legacy system. We have far fewer limitations. Without a service like AWS, it would have been hard to build a real-time decision-making ad server at a reasonable cost, without buying data centers around the world and negotiating with multiple parties. Our new system, running on AWS, gives us more flexibility for innovation, room for growth, and reduces our data center costs.
Now we are making that available to you. You might want to consider a change in ad servers. There is a difference.
The Economist’s Recipe for Success
The Economist is one of the success stories in the shift of news media from print to digital. Its web site receives 7.8 million unique visitors each month, most introduced to it through social media, where it has over a million Facebook followers, and Twitter, where it has two million followers. It also has a prestigious reputation for delivering well-thought out financial news analysis that came with the magazine from its print heritage.
Its digital edition (free and paid-for) is read on 500,000 devices. The Chairman’s Interim Report at the send of September of last year pointed out that people increasingly read The Economist on tablets and smartphones.
Of the total circulation of 1.6m in September, 140,000 customers bought digital-only copies. Of the others, about 25% read both print and digital editions.
The Economist Group, which owns the magazine, is investing to make sure it develops The Economist on the devices its readers use, and is also adapting marketing so that prospective readers know the paper is available on these platforms.
In its Annual Report, the company calls attention to a welcome new trend: the revival of long form journalism because of the fast uptake of tablets.
What is revolutionary for magazines like The Economist, however, is the reinvention of long-form reading triggered by Amazon when it launched Kindle in 2007 and fueled dramatically by Apple’s iPad.x We are fortunate because tablets, e-readers and smartphones allow our readers to enjoy the ritual, lean-back, immersive experience of reading The Economist that they love in print. Many of our readers tell us that this experience is, in fact, even better than print ,because as well as being lean-back, digital editions are delivered immediately and reliably…; the backlit screens display images, maps and charts beautifully; and the devices offer opportunities to innovate and deliver more functionality—so, for example, our tablet and smartphone apps also deliver the full newspaper in audio each week.
Very recently, the editor-in-chief of the Economist, John Micklethwait, told a conference audience that “it’s possible that the economics are being turned upside down — not just advertising, but also circulation. You can now reach hundreds of thousands of people at very little extra marginal cost through digital devices.”
There are few publications that have managed the transition to digital with more aplomb and more financial stability. ZEDO is honored to welcome The Economist as a publisher client and we look forward to their thought leadership in publishing.
Use Our Viewability information to Buy Advertising
This morning I read a post from MediaPost’s RTB Insider talking about how to use viewability to buy media. The thrust of the post is to tell people we need a technology to show whether an ad is viewable BEFORE it is served. The author, Alex White from DG-Peer39 , insists this technology isn’t available yet.
True viewability technology and measurement should live in the ad server, a technology that acts as the source of truth for both advertisers and publishers. In an ideal world, servers will make an ad call only when the space for the ad comes into view on the browser and while this technology isn’t widely available yet, I mention it here as a goal the industry should reach. Many ad servers are now rolling out the ability to report on viewability.
With all due respect to Alex White, he is behind the times. We have been partnering with comScore and Nielsen for a couple of years now, and have been able to report on viewability.However, we also have the ability to act proactively, as he suggests.
Eighteen months ago, we developed an ad format, the ZEDO Inview Slider, that only appears when a viewer is on the place on the page where the ad slot is.In the past, we have used it to help our publishers generate new revenue from below the fold ad slots that couldn’t be monetized before. Our premium publishers sell these ad formats with their direct sales forces,they are also sold programmatically.
And recently, we’ve also launched ZINC a network where agencies and advertisers can buy these formats from our publishers.
We have exactly the technology White is speaking about.
Viewability will ultimately come down to two technologies: one based inside the ad server for premium publishers, the other relying on the statistical likelihood that an ad is “in view” for the large marketplaces and exchanges.
ZEDO Advertising Technology Updates – April 2013
Country Forecast Report
We have now added forecasting by country to the Inventory Forecast Report. This includes a country-by-country breakdown of total, sold, reserved and available inventory. This is useful for allocating impressions and allows your sales team to monetize inventory based on countries.
3rd Party Research Vendor support for VAST
You can now insert single-line 3rd-party research vendor tracking tags to track VAST ads externally.
Activity Targeting Enhancements
Activity Targeting now includes support for “NOT” logical operator and an improved
user interface to easily select and create logical expressions, This feature can help you understand the sequence in which the expression will be evaluated.
Integrated Security Screening with The Media Trust
Running an unknown 3rd-party tag through your network without proper verification could risk your reputation in the market. Get this scanned with The Media Trust’s scanning solution in your ZEDO account.
ZEDO, in partnership with Mediatrust, has added an ability to scan 3rd-party ad tags uploaded in ZEDO system. This is a premium feature and will be available at the Advertiser and Campaign level.
Upon activating this for an advertiser/campaign, all the 3rd-party tags will be put for scan in Mediatrust. ZEDO support team will send you detailed report for any suspicious activity found for these tags and help you curb these issues before they spoils your relationship with your publishers or site users.
Please contact your Account Manager to learn more.
InView Ad Tags
Our popular InView and StayOn ad formats have been a hit with advertisers and publishers. Advertisers love the innovative, viewable unit, and Publishers love the integration with their site and supplemental inventory.
You can now generate ad tags for this High Impact Format directly in the ZEDO Ad Tag Generator.
Scheduled Reports
You can now edit the Subject Line and Message body for all Scheduled Reports.
