i3 - January/February 2016 - 90

CM s
BRIAN O'KELLEY
CEO of AppNexus

f you've ever struggled
to keep up with the latest

OF THE FUTURE

says. "Everything we do is about trying different creatives on
different audiences on different media to see what connects."
In O'Kelley's view, such experimentation gives marketers "so
much more flexibility to see what stories work, and evolve and
change and amplify the stuff that actually is working."

C O N T E N T T H AT M AT T E R S

tech trends, don't feel

O'Kelley sees advertising as one part of a virtuous digital cycle:
marketers buy attention, publishers sell attention, and consumO'Kelley has 15 years of experiers trade attention for content. He worries that ad blocking
technologies threaten that cycle, but points out that it's not just
ence in marketing technology.
an algorithmic arms race. The real solution might be better
Forbes called him the "New
content.
King of Ad Tech." But recently,
"The stats are pretty clear; people don't block ads on Hulu
when a 28-year-old showed
because they want to watch The Simpsons," O'Kelley says.
"They do block ads on random sites because the content is not
him Snapchat, even he was
really worth it. They'll just bounce."
confused.
"The only way to make this work is to have compelling content
that consumers want to see and will pay for with their attention, and then a marketing ecosystem that will monetize that at
"He was using all these apps and things that I just don't
a rate that allows the publishers to afford the content," O'Kelley
understand, and I felt really, really old. I'm 10 years older than
explains. "I think we'll see CPM's increase dramatically in prohim and his technology experience is so different from mine.
grammatic over the next few years, I wouldn't be surprised if
As a consumer his experience with ads is that they're almost
they triple or quadruple, and that dramatically changes
optional or secondary and he can just flip to a differthe economics of content. And then that makes the
ent app or experience. Were I a CMO, how would
ad blocking issue go away, largely, because conI connect to him? And then from a publisher
sumers are now getting higher quality content."
perspective, how do I keep him engaged if he's
O'Kelley is not afraid to frame his goal in
just going to flip to a different app that serves
An alternate title
concrete terms: "My mission is to get the
more or less the same purpose if he doesn't
for 'CMO' in the future:
New York Times to start hiring journalists
like my experience?"
for the newsroom because they're making so
Chief
Relationship
much money."
F I N D I N G I N S P I R AT I O N
Officer
O'Kelley sees a bright future for marketers
as well. Even sophisticated algorithms, he
To look even further into the future,
says, need humans in the equation.
O'Kelley observes how his own six-year-old
"One myth that needs to be dispelled is this
daughter is untethered from traditional televiidea that computers can just take infinite iterations
sion schedules or commercials.
of something and find the perfect one," he says. Using
"If you're a consumer package goods marketer, you're
a computer to test every possible ad just takes too much time
saying 'How do I influence these kids to use my products?'
and money, since each ad would need to be tested on enough
My daughter's not anywhere you can get her-she's on Netflix
people to yield meaningful data.
or downloading from iTunes. We're really on our back foot
"So what that means is that you have to have human intuboth as marketers and publishers with this new generation of
ition to save the computers all the hard learning costs," O'Kelley
consumers," O'Kelley explains.
says. "The only way to do this is to layer on human intuition for
That's not to say marketers can't also be empowered by
that first connection and then to let, effectively, the algorithms
new technologies. In 2007, O'Kelley co-founded AppNexus,
make them better."
a firm that helps people buy and sell digital advertising. This
If it's daunting to hear one of the world's foremost ad tech
algorithmic approach-often called programmatic advertisexperts openly question how to reach people under 30, it's at
ing-is, to quote the company, "the advertising that powers
least comforting to know that human storytellers won't have
the Internet." And it offers marketers new opportunities to
to solve the problem alone. They'll have a little help from their
tell stories.
algorithms.
"Experimentation is the heart of programmatic," O'Kelley
90

bad. AppNexus CEO Brian

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016

I T I S I N N O VAT I O N

https://www.appnexus.com/en

i3 - January/February 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of i3 - January/February 2016