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There’s been a lot of action in the world of Programmatic Direct lately and it’s time we all talk about it. Sometimes the best way to do this is by getting the most important stakeholders in a room for a couple hours and creating dialogue about where we’ve been, where we’re at and more importantly where we’re going. This is exactly what we’re doing with our latest invitation-only Tech For Direct event in New York on June 5th.
Tech For Direct: The Renaissance of Premium
isocket, along with our friends from Nextmark and Maxifier are hosting this in-depth event that will focus on better understanding Programmatic Direct and how it’s taking the traditional direct sales process to the next level.
Thanks to the availability of new industry APIs and a market that’s becoming more comfortable with programmatic buying/selling the traditional direct sales process is ripe for change. I guess you could say that direct sales is the final frontier when it comes to taking advantage of technology (other than spreadsheets and email) and Programmatic Direct is what will get it to where it needs to be.
Who’s Going?
This Tech For Direct event will cover the entire breadth of Programmatic Direct and how APIs are bringing programmatic efficiencies to both buyers and sellers of direct, guaranteed display inventory. Speakers will include leaders from Condé Nast, Cadreon, Thomson Reuters and more. Attendees will be a mix of some of the industries top publishers, agencies and ad tech companies.
More Details + Request An Invitation
As with our previous Tech For Direct events, this is invite-only and we’re limited when it comes to the number of people who can attend. But, if you’re interested in learning more about the world of Programmatic Direct and feel like you have something interesting to add to the conversation you can check out more details and request an invitation over at TechForDirect.com.
Questions?
If you have any questions about the event, please email me at ryan at isocket dot com and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
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If you’re in New York and have never met our East Coast crew it looks like you’re going to have a chance thanks to OpenCo. OpenCo is an event that’s described as a mix between a business conference and artist’s open studio with the vibe of a music festival. It’s goal is to showcase some of the most innovative companies by opening their doors to the general public for a day and letting them tell their own story.
Last year OpenCo made it’s way through San Francisco and everyone loved it. So this year they’re stepping it up a notch and taking it to New York, London, Detroit and back to it’s home in San Francisco.
We’re excited to be part of OpenCo New York not only because it’s going to be an awesome event, but also because as a company we’re always pushing for more openness and transparency in at tech. If you’re interested in hanging out with the isocket team during OpenCo New York here are the details you need to know.
When: May 23rd at 2pm
Where: isocket NY @ 180 Varick St #1212
Why: to meet our team and to learn more about how we’re bringing APIs to direct, guaranteed advertising
We hope to see you there!
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Ad tech is still trying to find how to describe things in words humans understand. – Brian Morrissey, Digiday.
In that tweet, I think Brian was actually making fun of a byline I just wrote in AdExchanger about the naming conventions used in the space isocket created, Programmatic Direct. While it’s unclear if his intent was to make fun of us or not, Brian is certainly right 
Ad tech is hard – and for most people, even the ones inside the industry for years, it’s a complicated mess of meaningless marketing words and acronyms.
Today AdExchanger posted a story about the leaders from various (even competitive) companies in this space called “Let’s Call It What It Is: Programmatic Direct“. This group of people came together to agree on some common lingo, and today we published our open letter to the world.
Although isocket originally coined the term Programmatic Direct, we were happy to advocate it even among a group of competitors. Because at the end of the day we’re super passionate about seeing the world apply more technology to direct ad sales, and the confusion about naming was hurting everyone.
In 2011 isocket was the first company to develop programmatic buying (which is basically a set of robust APIs) purpose built for direct, guaranteed ad sales. In many ways it was too early, because there was a lot of education needed in the market. Folks were still learning about programmatic buying for remnant inventory (Real Time Bidding, Private Exchanges, DSP/SSPs, DMPs, etc.)
In 2012-2013 the space really got some legs and started heating up. So people started coming up with names for this new thing, and the most commonly used one was “Programmatic Premium”. We never liked the word “premium” at isocket, and would even get a sick joy out of challenging vendors with booths at ad tech conferences about why they used the word premium when they clearly weren’t.
(But I should admit, sometimes we were guilty of informally saying Programmatic Premium in our blog or on stage. Hey, the alliteration came naturally sometimes!)
Then, as other companies entered or pivoted into this space, each started calling it something new so that they came across as differentiated and innovative.
To make matters worse, some of the legacy remnant ad tech companies started using “programmatic premium” to mean something entirely different. For example, OpenX and Google would talk about it, but more in the sense of “programmatic AND premium can coexist together.” They were using the label to say that programmatic and direct sales are mutually exclusive concepts that will coexist inside the publishers ad stack. Whereas this new space is actually about using programmatic and more technology in and for direct sales.
The end result was confusion in the community. We’re happy this has been settled and we can get back to building killer products.
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