Thought Leaders in Big Data: Damon Ragusa, CEO of ThinkVine (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Pushing that thread forward, let me then ask you an industry level question. Where are the technology gaps? It seems like the analytics infrastructure is lacking in a lot of the inventory that is sitting there. For example, online videos is very big right now. At the same time, for a lot of the online video platforms, while it’s engaging content and video advertising, what exactly is the analytics infrastructure lacking in terms of effectiveness of the advertising.

Damon Ragusa: Obviously, I’m biased. If you pull the right data out of those platforms, which you should be able to, there are plenty of good technologies. Part of the problem is some of the emerging media platforms can be protective of that information so there’s a lack of transparency in terms of data coming out of that. It all comes down to how you fill a bigger gap between analytics platform and data to support smarter decisions. One of the biggest buzzwords right now is programmatic buying—the ability to automate the acquisition of digital media. The real advantage of programmatic buying is the ability to take super-targeted information to play and make those buying decisions.

Some of the new platforms that come out that are not involved in enabled programmatic capabilities are going to lag behind. It’s the common friction between a publisher who wants to get a premium for that inventory versus opening up the data platform so people can assess it. That will inevitably break down as it has in every media platform that has gone through maturation. I still think you’ll see it but it’s a lack between good quality data to support that analytics platform that are already in place to analyze much of what we’re seeing. I agree with you. I think that’s one of the things that will change that we’ll see on the horizon. That friction between publishers giving up information versus what the advertisers want to do with their analytics. That becomes more democratized.

You picked the right one. Digital videos is one where you don’t have a single customer who’s pushing as hard to understand better how to invest smarter in that area. It’s a great place to push. In terms of trends, the push is to digitize more, even the traditional media. Customers want the advantages of what we consider as traditional media, especially the engagement factor. It’s going to perform better than a banner ad on a unit by unit basis. They’re receptive to it and they are in a position to be influenced by that advertising, but they need scalability, targetability, and efficiency of digital media. It’s happening. We’re just going to see this play out between the publisher side and the advertisers who obviously want more data and more information.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Big Data: Damon Ragusa, CEO of ThinkVine
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