Interested in joining the Centro team? Check out our hottest openings of the week and apply today!

Midwest

Financial Analyst – Chicago
This position reports to the VP of Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) and provides key support to the VP of FP&A and the company’s CFO, COO and extended executive team. Primary responsibilities include playing a lead role with the annual budget and monthly forecasts, formulating analysis of financial and operational data to support effective decision-making and large company strategic and operational initiatives, as well as developing monthly executive and quarterly Board of Director materials.

Technical Ad Operations Manager – Chicago
This role will be responsible for subject matter expertise on all of Centro’s third-party ad serving, while working with the media strategy and operations and RTB teams to execute digital media campaigns.

DevOps Manager – Chicago
This role will manage a production operations/DevOps team, which creates, operates, maintains and evolves Centro’s SaaS platform infrastructure. The team makes sure that we can move fast, while not breaking things, as our enterprise customers rely on the platform’s stability to make money. You will be working closely with development, QA, product and technical support teams to achieve company’s goals.

Programmatic Supply Specialist – Chicago
Reporting into the director of programmatic supply, this position will also work closely with internal key stakeholders and external publishers to support day-to-day ad operations and relationship management within Centro Brand Exchange. This role will also serve as a technical expert for partner support and troubleshooting.

East Coast

Programmatic Buyer – New York
This role will work directly with Centro’s account management team and help develop tactical executions that align with client goals and objectives. The programmatic buyer will translate these tactics into physical implementation across multiple Demand Side Platforms (DSPs). This role will be responsible for day-to-day management of campaigns, as well as identifying opportunities within each campaign to improve performance and take action to improve results.

Campaign Manager – DC
The campaign manager will be responsible for the quality and timely execution and trafficking of client campaigns while working with the media strategy and operations team. Campaign managers will excel in day-to-day ad operations with proficiency working in third party ad serving systems, creating and implementing pixels and tracking tags.

West Coast

Media Strategy Supervisor – San Francisco
The media strategy supervisor will work alongside the account media strategy and operations team and will play an active role in delivering innovative and strategic media solutions with a focus on Client Direct and/or full-service clients. Additionally, this person will manage the professional and personal development of an assigned team, providing hands-on mentoring and training support, as needed.

Account Lead, Sales – San Francisco
This role will be responsible for developing new digital media relationships with in-house marketing teams and agencies within the San Francisco market and throughout Northern California.

Canada 

Software Engineer, Backend API – Toronto
Responsibilities include building out new products, while updating and expanding our existing offerings. Core functions include developing on and improving Centro's Restful API for the real-time bidding platform, which processes more than 30 billion auctions, each within milliseconds every day. You will actively participate on our team and help drive innovation for new products and services.

 

 

Header bidding is the talk “du jour” in the world of ad tech, but many still don’t have a good sense for why it exists or what it is intended to accomplish.

So, let’s clear it up: What is header bidding?

Header bidding enables advertisers to compete for publishers’ reserved and unreserved inventory via an auction that takes place outside of the ad server.

Traditionally, publishers have managed their ad prioritization via their ad server, most often Google’s DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). Through this method – often known as a waterfall – when a web page is loading and the ad slot is up for sale, the ad server plugs into advertising partners to sell the impression.

In this waterfall, advertisers requiring guarantees on placement and timing are booked as reserved impressions in the ad server and receive priority delivery over unreserved impressions. One thing to note: Driving publisher yield is not a consideration for reserved impressions; meeting IO impression goals is the primary focus of the ad server.

For unreserved impressions, other factors such as yield, CPMs and fill rates are considered for delivery prioritization. If the preferred partners’ campaigns are on schedule to deliver, then the unreserved impressions have a chance to compete.

With the growth in programmatic over the past several years, the number of sell-side platforms (SSPs) and exchanges exploded, but they were still relegated to compete for unreserved impressions only. Publishers wanted to change this, and wanted to give all demand partners the ability to compete for reserved impressions as long as two conditions were met:

1. Publishers’ reserved inventory was on or ahead of schedule to deliver.
2. The demand partner could win the impression if yield from that demand partner was higher than what they would receive by serving another reserved impression.

The solution: Header bidding.

By definition, header bidding is when publishers place a piece of code into their page headers to allow preferred demand sources to submit bids at the same time an ad server is considering the ads that were bought directly.

But with a lot of code running in the background, page load times can be greatly affected. To accomplish the same function – and limit the issue of slow page loads – many are beginning to consider server-to-server options.

The Centro Brand Exchange, our invite-only ad marketplace, is entering this space and is now available as a header bidding demand partner. Publishers can integrate our demand sources via their preferred wrapper solutions (a wrapper is the software used to manage the header bidder partners). Our goal as a header bidding partner is to be agnostic to whatever the preferred publisher solution is.

Adding Centro Brand Exchange as a header bidding partner means access to brand-safe advertisers who may be willing to pay higher CPMs. This is another way Centro drives high-quality advertisers to publishers.

To learn even more about Centro Brand Exchange or get started, click here.

"If you’re wondering how deeply mobile technology has permeated American culture, look no further than the 2016 presidential race."

Read more from Centro's Grace Briscoe and Noor Naseer in MediaShift.

Now is the time for marketers to incorporate Snapchat into their digital strategies.

Read more from Centro's Aubry Parks-Fried in Adweek's Social Times.

Running a successful campaign starts well before launch. Demand-side platforms, such as Centro DSP, offer a wealth of targeting options, data providers, and inventory sources, which makes it vital to set a clear objective when putting together a plan.

Whether you are trying to increase awareness, traffic, or sales, it is important to match the goal to a measureable KPI. The two most common ways to do this are click-based and conversion-based KPIs. For both metrics, make sure you factor in costs and use a CPC or CPA to compare performance. A certain site might deliver 5 times the average click-through-rate, but if the CPM is 10 times higher, then you are not getting the perceived value.

Don’t forget: Regardless of KPI, have conversion pixels placed.

What are some of the known factors for achieving a CPC or CPA goal? Centro’s experienced services team has found retargeting and mobile to be especially effective at driving clicks. With a best-in-class mobile DSP experience, Centro allows you to take advantage of this proven strategy. For conversion-based campaigns, a healthy prospecting effort and a separate retargeting tactic transforms leads into customers.

Once a campaign is live, follow these three simple steps:

1. Accrue data. Waiting to accumulate sufficient data in reporting ensures your optimization decisions will be sound.
2. Make minor adjustments. Minor adjustments to bid and frequency can make a big difference to delivery and performance.
3. Implement major optimizations. Pausing or excluding creative and inventory sources will further hone your campaign.

Did you know? Centro DSP has in-line editing at the placement level to make optimizations a breeze.

Finally, don’t be afraid to make changes to your campaigns. A good DSP should allow you to observe the effects and use real-time insights to dictate optimizations. Remember: You can always change something back. The real risk is not doing anything at all.

Want to learn more? Check out the full presentation here.

Throughout this year, we’re seeing more and more excitement around Virtual Reality (VR). You couldn’t walk the floor at CES without seeing dozens of people wearing the headsets. It was all the buzz at SXSW this year (even having its own dedicated content track). Nearly every Digital Newfronts presentation included some mention of content being produced for it. It overtook ‘programmatic’ as the most talked-about (and showcased) technology at Cannes. It’s time for a Virtual Reality check!

With an expected 6.5 million VR users worldwide this year, and what’s expected to be nearly 25 million by 2020 (according to Deutsche Bank), Virtual Reality is hitting its stride and moving beyond a novelty to something more brands and marketers need to take note of.

From a demographic perspective, eMarketer, Greenlight VR and Touchstone Research found that Gen Z (those kids between 10 and 17 years of age) have the biggest appetite for VR at 79%. But what is even more fascinating is that nearly 64% of Baby Boomers are interested in VR as well.

While 360° is not true VR, it is still an incredibly immersive experience and it is what most consumers, and more brands, will identify as Virtual Reality content. You’ve likely scrolled through Facebook and have seen extremely compelling 360° video content filling your feed from the likes of GoPro, Vice, Discovery or Royal Caribbean.

Of course, great content is not enough by itself -- the price point on VR devices has dramatically come down and driven increased adoption. The Samsung Gear VR is only $99, a Google Cardboard is less than $10, and even the Facebook or YouTube 360 videos can be viewed in their full spherical glory on just about any smartphone. If you haven’t yet to strapped on an Oculus headset, or even held a Google Cardboard up to your face, find someone to show you how the innovations in this technology are opening the door to a completely new three-dimensional canvas to communicate.

As consumers continue to show their disdain for traditional digital banner ads, and more native ads become in-favor, the larger theme that marketers are gravitating towards is better storytelling. What is fascinating is that it is not just consumer-focused brands that are taking advantage of virtual reality and 360° video, but also some forward-thinking B2B brands. Our partner, Bluetext, is at the forefront of developing VR experiences for B2B clients. One of its recent campaigns launched a VR experience for security tech firm Varonis at a massive IT conference to help it stand out from other booths on the conference floor. Bluetext is now helping the company drive online prospects to view a variety of VR experiences on their own via the tech firm’s site.

Seeing is believing, so check out this 360° video experience – where you can drag the  video around for different perspectives on desktop or literally turn yourself around on mobile. Bluetext co-founder Jason Siegel and I talk about the realities of virtual reality.

Keep an eye on this space. Marketing best practices with VR continue to emerge and perhaps it will inspire you to dip your toes in the VR pool.

As the flow of advertising dollars shift more and more to automation – programmatic digital display ad spending in the U.S. is expected to reach $22.1 billion in 2016, according to eMarketer – it’s become a challenge for publishers and advertisers to keep pace. At first glance, ad exchanges seem like a logical and safe place to do your digital business, but buyers and sellers beware: Not all exchanges are alike. In fact, many are littered with fraudulent activity and poor quality inventory.

With ad spend being funneled to dozens of ad exchanges in the online marketplace, it can often seem impossible for marketers to keep track of where their ads are placed -- not to mention making sure units are seen by a human and not a bot. On the sell-side, publishers who monetize inventory in open marketplaces are often left with low-quality and low-paying advertisers who only want cheap inventory.

That’s where Centro Brand Exchange comes in. Centro Brand Exchange is the largest invitation-only exchange for high-quality advertisers and publishers. In addition to being integrated with all major DSPs and ad buying platforms, as well as sourcing ad budgets directly from local and national agencies, Centro Brand Exchange is recognized for publisher quality, brand-safe local inventory, and transparency.

Publisher Quality
Centro Brand Exchange consists of 2,000 carefully vetted journalistic news and information sites. Our publisher vetting process is paired with direct and long-standing relationships with local and national publishers. This gives the Centro Brand Exchange local market reach in 98 of the top 100 metropolitan areas – and includes the No. 1 or No. 2 newspaper site in 20 of the top 25 markets.

Related Post: What is Header Bidding?

Ads served on high-quality sites are the ads more likely to be noticed because they are placed alongside highly engaging content. According to Trust Metrics, which provides third party brand-safety measurement data, 94% of publishers in Centro Brand Exchange are considered “excellent” for advertisers. Compare this to Trust Metric’s aggregate measurement showing that only 7% of all the publishers it measured received an “excellent” rating. Furthermore, Pixalate, an independent advertising security firm, recently ranked Centro Brand Exchange as the No. 11 marketplace on the Global Seller Trust Index – out of 500 ad sellers in the ecosystem – and No. 1 for viewability.

Keep your eyes on Centro Brand Exchange in 2016 as we expand our offerings. Whether you’re an advertiser or publisher, there are enormous benefits to being connected with high-quality peers. To learn even more about Centro Brand Exchange or get started, click here.

 

 

"One of the hottest jobs in NYC right now is a digital media, or ad, buyer. According to Kelly Wenzel, chief marketing officer at Centro, the city is the heart of the U.S. media economy."

Read more in AM New York.

"Ad fraud is a big problem with a big price tag. In an ever-adaptive landscape, marketers should always embrace defensive buying tactics. Everyone in the ad tech industry shares a duty to raise awareness, identify scammers, and protect client investments. Advertisers have a role to play in this effort."

Read more from Centro's Ian Trider on iMedia.