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On April 4th, our UK IAS team hosted the UK Innovation Summit. The event brought together people from all corners of the digital advertising ecosystem – brands, publishers, agencies, and tech partners were all present to discuss the future of media measurement.
The day also marked the 100th day in office for Lisa Utzschneider, leading IAS as our new CEO. Lisa kicked off the day unveiling to the audience lessons learnt, common themes heard from customers, and the progress made on her 100 day plan – plus, what’s in store for IAS in the next 100 days and beyond.
Throughout the morning, industry experts and leaders in digital advertising took to the stage to discuss different areas of digital media. Throughout the four sessions, we explored the priorities and challenges our panelists encounter, and gained insight into setting up for success in this new era of digital transformation. Check out our highlights video, here.
Key takeaways from the day were:
- On a panel with Sky, we talked about how brands must evolve and transform alongside technological and digital demands. The Group Head of Media at Sky said, “At Sky, we’re agitated for change … our test and learn strategy is a continual evolution that’s at the forefront of our partner conversations. Do not be afraid to fail – otherwise you won’t push your boundaries enough to learn.”
- The findings from our latest UK Industry Pulse Survey set the foundation for a debate with Gumtree, GSK and Publicis about their biggest priorities for 2019. An important quote from this panel came from the Head of Digital Standards & Partnerships at Publicis: “Brands need to share their strategic priorities with their partners and continually realign on this – as the IAS Industry Pulse survey shows, there’s currently significant misalignment. We must resolve this.”
- With Google and Publicis we addressed video, in particular how we measure our impact in this increasingly important, yet complex, channel for advertisers. Interestingly, when asked if they were ready for the adoption of VAST 4.1, a mechanism for measuring video ad inventory, only one person from the audience put their hand up – even stating they were only ‘half ready’. This enlightening discussion highlighted the essential work still needed to educate our industry on developments in video measurement.
- Finally, we turned to the growth of programmatic with Omnicom, Shpock and AppNexus. The panel delved into results from the latest UK Media Quality Report. The group discussed why the UK has, for the first time, seen impressions sourced via programmatic channels outperform impressions sourced direct, in terms of viewability. VP Northern Europe for AppNexus believes collaboration is key, commenting that, “To deliver on the promise of programmatic, we have to innovate and collaborate. We often believe our own challenges are most important – we don’t see we’re often all trying to solve the same challenges.”
One consistent theme from each conversation was a desire for greater collaboration amongst the UK industry. At IAS, we believe that in bringing agencies, brands, platforms and publishers together, we can create a better digital ecosystem, where different perspectives are voiced, challenges are heard and solutions benefit the ecosystem as a whole.
The UK Innovation Summit was our chance to foster this kind of collaboration and talk together as one industry. For more information about the topics discussed above, please visit our website to explore the capabilities and solutions IAS can provide, and for the photography highlights from the event, please head to our Facebook page. We look forward to welcoming you at next year’s UK Summit!
