Interview with Jacob Nizri, President @ Ybrant Digital, as posted on exchangewire.com on August 10, 2011
Jacob Nizri is President of Ybrant Digital, a global digital marketing solutions provider. Here Nizri discusses the Ybrant Digital offering, its multi-channel approach, and the growth of its business across Europe.
Can you give some insight into the Ybrant offering in Europe?
Ybrant Digital’s offering, in Europe as well as any other market it has a presence in, is the ability to engage the right users for advertisers, at the right time, across all main forms of digital media, by leveraging the knowledge and experience from our local teams. We invested heavily in proprietary technology and data processing to be able to custom fit any market.
We hold local offices in the biggest European markets: UK, Germany and France, and serve all other countries directly or through official representatives, namely in Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Belgium, Turkey and Greece.
We also have an East European subsidiary in Ukraine which serves the interesting and fast-growing Russian-speaking market.
We are capable of designing and providing solutions worldwide. For example, these days we are running several Pan European campaigns for known brands who do parallel work offline on TV, print media, sponsorship etc, and at the same time we’re helping a smallish client form the financial sector reach customers in Estonia, a very specific and rare market.
How would you define the business? An evolved ad net – with expertise in different channels?
Overall, we can be defined in one very short sentence: “We deliver audiences through digital media.” On the technical side, yes, it requires expertise in each form of media such as display, social and mobile, constant investment in technology and effective accumulation of our global experience. On the practical side, it’s fueled by the passion to innovate.
The end goal is the audience, the people that our advertisers need to reach in order to pass the message or drive buying action. Ideally, we like to advise on the budget and the optimal digital mix, which can be improved and perfected during a campaign. Using technology like pixel tracking, we can identify and target types of users (travel, investment, shopping, etc). So instead of channels that are lists of sites, our channels are large groups of very relevant people for the advertiser.
You own and operate your own prop Facebook buying platform. Is this the fastest growing part of your business?
We have been active on the Facebook API since a very early stage. Social network advertising is the fastest growing vertical in the online industry in general. This is what’s largely responsible for reports and announcements all through this year which declared how Display is growing faster than search. So we naturally enjoy this growth, and we try to apply the same foresight to the next growing digital marketing verticals around the corner.
In terms of display, is your business focused on the agency media plan? Or do you get much of the spend from client direct?
Very briefly put, this varies greatly from market to market. This is affected by 3 main factors: The nature of the acquisitions or mergers we made in each market in terms of the customer profile that made their business, the penetration of digital capabilities into the main agencies in each market, and the patterns that characterize success for specific type of content per each media. For example, there are differences in the way the same media, even the same online destination, behave and perform for advertisers, even across a few miles like between French and Flemish Belgium, or between northern and southern Italy. This is the type of experience that we try to accumulate into each new click or impression that we serve.
Are you accessing inventory through the automated display channel – or do you have managed supply form publishers?
We have both of those and other forms of contact with publishers as well. We have exclusive representation for top global brands in some markets, for example Microsoft Advertising and Viacom in Latin America, and Yahoo! in Ukraine. Some campaigns require a very complex combination of media sources in order to deliver both the specific kind of audience and the volume or reach required by the advertiser. We can be extremely transparent about the sources and the budget pie chart, according to the advertiser’s needs.
Many third party buyers have developed in-house tech for exchange trading or have built on-top of platform APIs to differentiate their offering? Is Ybrant doing anything similar in the data-driven display space?
Data was and is a central aspect of our success to date. As said above, we were one of the first companies worldwide to connect with Facebook’s API. The crowded industry and constantly changing competitive layout is not new. The idea is to innovate and lead the data accumulation and leverage. As part of this prioritization, we recruited our CTO from Microsoft last year.
You bought the Lycos search engine last year. Was that a strategy to build out a PPC business? Or was it a move to secure data for other parts of the business – such as display? Has the acquisition been a success?
The short answer to all these questions is yes. The longer answer is that it was a success from day 1, since Lycos is a well-respected and recognized online brand, and a profitable business. We operate an XML PPC business since before the acquisition, and as said before, data has been and will be a default ingredient in every existing and new venture.
Ybrant has also got a mobile display division. Can you give some overview on how you are delivering for advertisers in the mobile channel? How are you addressing key problems like tracking?
It’s not just Mobile Display. it’s a complete mobile solution. We work with advertisers and publishers alike. The tracking technology existed from day one and is one of our strongest selling points. Within the first year we already have campaigns in all continents and repeating business from direct and agency advertisers
You are operating in over four different channels? Where does Ybrant see the biggest opportunity over the coming 12 months? Social? Mobile? Online Display? Mobile?
For many practical purposes, these are several companies inside the company, each with full teams dedicated to the success of their product or products, and their technology or media partners. That also includes our extensive activity with online publishers and media owners. Each of these teams will answer you that they are the next big thing, and they are all right. They compete internally for resources, priorities and R&D power, and the absolute winners of this competition are our customers and partners.
