AppNexus, a Web advertising start-up founded last year by veterans of DoubleClick and Yahoo’s Right Media Exchange, launched an advertising platform March 15. EBay, the company’s beta client since last year, is using it to streamline its approach to ad buying.
EBay is using the AppNexus platform, as well as its in-house tools, to make display ad buys in real time, instead of negotiating for a flat buy for a block of inventory.
“We are hoping to take graphical advertising to the next level,” said Daphne Liska, senior marketing manager at eBay. “We really like the opportunity in that we have more insight in what we are doing with all of our display ads. We get more user data, and more reach and frequency using the tool.”
The AppNexus platform is used by various ad inventory aggregators and exchanges, including DoubleClick and Microsoft’s AdECN. It allows customers to bid for specific positions in the ad buying process. For example, if eBay sees a member surfing the Web for 30 minutes, the ad exchange gives it the option to bid for a position in the buying process.
“Now we have more opportunity to be savvy when and where and at what price we want our impressions served,” said Liska.
The platform helps advertisers “capitalize on the opportunities of real-time bidding and auction based ad buying,” said Michael Rubenstein, president of AppNexus.
