Name: Ross McNab
Works: Kinected
Job Title: Co-Founder
1. Please highlight your industry experience and how, where and when you came to digital media?
In 1999 an old girlfriend had a gig as PA to the founders of BlueSkyFrog in Perth. I shamelessly parlayed that into a role as copywriter for the site. Our pinnacle of achievement wasn’t becoming the third most popular website in Australia, it was getting a radio ad done with The Wog Boy
Our founders were travelling back and forth to Sydney a lot on Impulse Airlines (remember them?). Their marketing manager called one day and asked if they could put banner ads on our site, in return for flights. Honestly, our immediate reaction was “what, you think that actually has value?” From there we introduced innovative (read, annoying) formats such as the bouncing button (copyright Chris Brinkworth, DHTML at its finest), the infamous BlueSkyFrog quiz (our record was 4 advertising questions out of a total of 10), and our cash-cow – the logout button. We really had no idea what we were doing – examples, no ad-server so I used to rely on agencies to tell me when a campaign had delivered in full, and no set rate card. To this day I still have deep emotional and physical scars thanks to Liam, Chris, and the rest of the motley crew at emitch. Good times.
From BlueSkyFrog I moved to ninemsn. This was the hay day … 40% audience share, Messenger dominance, and one home page takeover would cover your monthly budget. Kidding, it would take two. Great motivated sales group led by Jason Scott, Sam Smith, and Charlotte Crundall. I learned process, structure, professional sales management, and importantly where the stash of La Premiere vouchers was.
To get back to my start-up environment roots I joined MediaMind (known as Eyeblaster at the time). I was part of the team that shifted them from a rich media vendor to full ad-server. At MediaMind I forged the crucial skill needed for success in ad technology – working with Israelis. Lucky enough to be sent to Hong Kong where I had just picked up taxi Cantonese in time to be shipped to New York. My role there was two fold – initially responsible for global agency group relationships, then incubating the trading desk technology and operation. Whilst in NY I was exposed to the ad tech explosion across programmatic, social, brand safety, and data management. Many of these companies were interested in APAC expansion but had little clue how to make it happen. And that’s where the idea for Kinected was born …
2. Outline your role with Kinected - what do you actually do?
Officially responsible for all revenue, but as co-founder of a start up business my day to day covers sales, client service, office management, recruitment, and finding out why OfficeWorks never deliver our water on time.
As a team our day revolves around keeping our clients happy. I really feel strongly that technology is only 50% of the equation. People power is still so crucial. We’re not in a position to buy our way into favour (the stories I could share about entertaining levels in NY, you couldn’t make it up), instead we focus on helping our clients master the technology in our portfolio to deliver awesome results for their clients. We know there is choice in the market, so to put it simply, we want to be the team that clients like dealing with the most.
3. Can you offer a brief insight into Kinected - your journey so far, current market position and forward plans?
Kinected identify, partner with, and release leading global technologies, platforms and solutions in the online advertising space into the Asia Pacific region. Kinected is a partnership of senior advertising executives with a proven track record and profile launching technology and media businesses in APAC.
What does that mean exactly? Well we run the local operations of MediaMath, Integral Ad Science (formerly known as AdSafe), Unified (a social buying and monitoring play), and BlueKai. We have teams working in Sydney within those individual businesses. Our primary clients are trading desks and individual agencies whom we provide the ad tech to, train them on best practice, and provide all the ongoing support they need.
We see our value as bringing world-class ad tech to Australia and the wider region quicker than it would otherwise, backed up by dedicated local service teams. Sure, people can work with ad tech based in other markets but the reality is Australian clients usually get the short end of the stick due to time zones and other markets being a priority. We are completely committed to this market.
Some of our competitors might try and position the fact we are a partnership rather than working for the actual tech as a negative but I see it as only positive. Think about it this way – we’re paid 100% on commission so we are the most motivated to make sure our clients are happy and successful. We don’t coast on overblown digital remuneration packages.
For our tech partners, I’ll start by saying we’re very lucky to have the privilege to work with such great tech, all leaders in their own space. Awesome people too. Our value to them is offering a lowered risk and cost of entry into the APAC market. They don't need to invest in recruitment - always a challenge from other side of the world - salaries, business setup expenses such as office rental and the ongoing management of an APAC team. We give them immediate go to market presence and reduced time to scale with significant revenue streams that are profitable from day one. And they get our access to client relationships from the C-Suite down within the large agency groups and local operating companies.
4. Please share your views on the current state of the digital media market?
First off it’s my belief Australia is in a strong position for continued growth. Let me justify that statement in two points:
1. Our talent is on the same level as markets we’d traditionally look ahead to; our main challenge is a quantity one rather than a quality one. One strategy to address this is to become more aggressive at recruitment within Universities, but then there must be a commitment to close training and attention. Too often it seems new talent is thrown in the deep end and it’s less a case of sink or swim, they flail around and suffer a worse fate – a promotion before they are ready!
2. Companies like ours are accelerating the access to the tech required to make the most of the opportunities presented in programmatic buying, social, and data driven work. Again though, it’s not enough to just provide the tech, you have to supply the brain power too through education and service.
5. Is there any one person, digital business or sector you think we should be keeping an eye on?
Facebook is the obvious one right? How they bring together (or keep apart) their direct premium, Facebook Ad Exchange (FBX), and traditional marketplace business. And how will the disparate businesses that service these areas – DSPs, API vendors and so on – evolve to address it. There’s going to have to be consolidation.
I’m keen to see how the dynamic between agency and trading desk develops. As more display budget shifts to programmatic, and as programmatic evolves from open RTB today to include more local, transparent inventory, (side note – ask 5 people to define transparency and you’ll get 10 different answers, when I talk transparency I mean clear view of the domain and page) will a trading desk continue as the only source of capable programmatic talent and commercial model to handle it?
6. How do you see digital and other media evolving in the next 5+ years?
I’m lucky if I can accurately predict what I’m having for lunch, let alone what’s going to happen in the next 5 years. But here’s three quick fire predictions for the rest of 2013. Each completely self-serving, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t valid ..
1. Continued consolidation of point-to-point tech vendors. Here’s a question - remember when dynamic creative existed outside of a DSP or an ad-server? That was an easy one. Another obvious convergence point rapidly approaching would be display, video, and mobile buying platforms – giving clients a single cookie space, workflow, and reporting backbone. Heck, there’s value in something as simple having one less bloody password to contend with. However clients will demand quality, so any comprehensive buying platform will need to provide at least the same level of capability as each point-to-point solution, plus commit to constant innovation.This is a tricky challenge to overcome when you start spreading development resource outside of your original core competency. One solution to this challenge is the acquisition path, one that is becoming more frequently travelled including by MediaMath.
2. We’ll see significant spend shift to Facebook Ad Exchange as a discrete opportunity – less about defining it as programmatic buying, social, or display … and as a broad performance display tactic. The combination of the supply size (2.5 billion impressions last month, uniqueness (60% FBX audience we don’t see on other supply sources), and recency (on average we see a retargeted cookie within 15 minutes on there) have meant of the first 15 clients launched on FBX through MediaMath, 14 beat CPA goals … by an average of 37%.
3. Deployment of third party brand safety tech such as Integral will become table stakes for all programmatic buys. Supply sources have a lot of responsibility to improve the quality of RTB inventory, in the meantime agencies will need to be able to hand on heart say they are following best practice in the protection of the brands under their stewardship.
8. What does the digital/interactive industry need to do better right now?
I think I covered this in the earlier question regards training our talent and giving them a chance to grow before foisting greater responsibility on their shoulders.
I’d add let’s celebrate our successes and not take it all so seriously. We do important work worthy of recognition, but we’re not saving lives here. Cut down on the drama, keep it all in perspective, and take Sir Martin (Sorrell) Lawrence’s advice.
9. Where do you get your industry information from?
My go to is AdExchanger, then my network of past colleagues, clients, and partners in the US and Europe. Of course that’s to say half the time I nod and pretend I know what someone is talking about, then frantically Google it afterward.
10. What industry groups or networks are you a part of?
This is probably an embarrassing answer, but none. My son is in a group called Little Kickers which I’m at every Saturday, does that count? Am taking bids for my participation.
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