Eyal Betzalel, Co. CEO at Primis and Co-Founder at Sellers.guide weighs in on the evolving publisher-ad provider relationship in today’s B2B marketplace:

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Welcome to this martech chat Eyal, tell us more about Primis and your latest transparency tool for publishers?

I’m the Co. CEO and co-founder of Primis and Sellers.guide. I have been in ad tech for more than 14 years now and have seen the industry rapidly grow and mature over the years.

Primis, a part of Universal McCann and IPG, is a Video Discovery solution for publishers, which allows them to monetize video inventory by offering their readers highly relevant and engaging video content. We have a solid connection with our publishing partners and are always looking for ways to provide them a better, more profitable experience. That’s how we came up with the idea for Sellers.guide, our new transparency tool.

We saw how publishers are lost in the dark when it comes to ads.txt. They implement the file, but don’t use it well, don’t maintain it, and end up exposing themselves to fraud and malpractice, which causes loss of potential revenue. Sellers.guide aims to shed light on the ad tech supply chain. By crossing ads.txt with sellers.json, flag errors, and easily display the sellers behind those lines, publishers will regain control of who is really selling their inventory.

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How are you seeing the publisher-ad provider relationship change due to innovations in adtech? 

In the past few years, the publisher-ad provider relationships changed in many ways. Sophisticated connections have significantly shortened the path from the publisher to the demand and increased competition between all parties. Take prebid, for example, that enabled direct and straightforward integration between publishers and SSPs. This kind of integration has become a commodity nowadays, and the new holy grail is Supply Path Optimization. Having a direct connection is excellent, but what about the shortest, safer, cleaner connection? That is where the change is happening and will continue to make an impact.

What are some of the most impactful adtech trends and innovations you’ve been following from around the globe that you’d like to highlight?

The privacy wave washing over our industry is what I’m most interested in right now. The sunset of third-party cookies is causing seismic shifts. Google’s privacy sandbox and TTD Universal ID2.0 are outstanding efforts that we constantly follow while working heavily to adapt our technology stack to this shift. Contextual targeting is one of the most impactful trends we will experience, and we will see contextual tech becomes much more advanced and sophisticated than before.

What are some technologies that you feel will redefine the digital publishing space and how?

Despite the tremendous growth of the digital advertising market, trust and transparency keep on declining. The decline is happening despite major transparency initiatives such as ads.txt and sellers.json. Advertisers and media agencies are fighting for their brand’s safety and their budgets’ spent on real people. On the other side, publishers are still not making enough money and fighting to increase their income. A technological solution for these problems will redefine the digital publishing space. Whether it is SPO, that is cutting out the fraudsters, or ads.txt and sellers.json validations tools (such as sellers.guide) helping the publisher understand who is really selling its inventory, or even a real-time fraud detection and prevention.

A few predictions that you have for the future of adtech as a whole?

Effective yield management of a supply path is becoming increasingly complex. An ad-tech seller/buyer needs to manage RTB, PreBid, Data, AdOps, BI, privacy, etc.

Enormous resources are required to maintain all these technologies and regulations, which creates economies of scale. The strong players are getting stronger and more substantial by purchasing or merging in smaller companies, creating market consolidation. I predict that this trend will only get stronger, but care should be taken that it does not destroy innovation by preventing the entry of small and new players.

Some top takeaways for marketing leaders and CMOs/CEOs in 2021? 

Our industry is in perpetual anxiety of survival and constant struggles. The changes we’ve discussed are huge and complex, but this is the adolescence of the industry – the changes will push us forward, trust will grow, effectiveness will improve, and we will be mature at the end.

I choose to look at these trends, and changes with my eyes open wide and embracing them because, in 3 years, we will be looking for a much better and cleaner industry.

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