Tech Start-Up Viztrade To Tackle Transparency And Dodgy Middlemen In Digital Advertising

After spending a year sourcing investors, signing up publishers and running the bespoke proprietary platform in beta phase, Viztrade managing director and founder Simon Larcey has officially launched the innovative programmatic marketplace.

He has launched Viztrade with the support of a number of backers including Unlockd co-founders Chris Kerrisk and Craig Watt and his business partner Andrew Wilson.

The bespoke programmatic platform, which is modelled on a stock exchange, will launch with a focus on connecting direct advertisers and SMEs with regional and local digital publishers.

However, the implications of this trailblazing platform extend across the entire digital industry.

“The digital advertising industry has been plagued by opaque practices for too long,” Larcey said. “For years, a lack of transparency in the digital advertising space and issues around ad fraud have meant that advertisers can never be sure what exactly they are paying for when they buy digital advertising space.

“The current digital advertising ecosystem is cumbersome, disproportionately weighted towards digital agencies for volume and so complex that small to medium advertisers are at a significant disadvantage. What’s more, it is flooded with intermediaries and middlemen.

“Every agency and tech platform takes a slice. This means that an advertiser might spend $10 and maybe only $4 of that amount actually goes towards the ad space and actually buying impressions.

“We have launched Viztrade to tackle these issues and provide complete transparency, so advertisers can see exactly what they are getting for their spend.”

Larcey continued: “Effective digital advertising is no longer the exclusive realm of top tier advertisers or large-scale publishers that can afford big budget digital agencies and expensive technology fees.

“We have created an easy-to-use platform that makes programmatic accessible to any and all advertisers, whether they are a blue-chip brand or an SME. It’s a game-changer.”

The primary features and benefits of the innovative Viztrade platform include:

• While the standard programmatic ecosystem includes a Demand Side Platform (DSP), a Supply Side Platform (SSP), an ad exchange, and an ad server, Viztrade incorporates all of these into a single platform. This means a lot less money is spent on technology partners and more is spent on media – increasing the revenue for publishers and giving greater return to advertisers.

• Viztrade operates with complete transparency, exposing the real-time price, position and performance of all advertising impressions available through its platform. Advertisers know exactly what they are paying for and where every dollar is going.
• Viztrade substantially reduces transaction costs for digital advertisers by removing the middlemen, meaning advertisers can buy more ad space with the same budget, or buy the same for less.
• Unlike other programmatic platforms, Viztrade does not integrate into multiple ad exchanges, and has instead created its own end-to-end marketplace. As such, Viztrade can focus on premium publishers and brand safe environments, minimising the potential for ad fraud.
• Viztrade categorises all advertisers and uses machine learning to make recommendations for each advertiser, based on their category and advertising goal.
• Viztrade’s intuitive UI makes programmatic advertising accessible to SMEs that want to advertise and smaller publishers that want to sell.
• While programmatic platforms are often “biddable” environments akin to an auction, Viztrade launches with an automated guaranteed offering. This provides advertisers with fixed prices and guaranteed delivery.

Viztrade has already developed an extensive regional media network and has partnered with hundreds of regional sites, whose advertising inventory is now available for purchase on the Viztrade platform. According to Larcey, regional markets represent “untapped potential”.

“Regional areas receive minimal advertising spend but are home to a third of Australia’s population – that looks like an opportunity to me,” he said.

According to Larcey: “Our mission is simple. We want to offer a fully transparent, digital advertising marketplace where advertisers and publishers trade directly, where publishers don’t have to give up control to too many middlemen, and where advertisers know exactly what they are paying for.

“The industry hasn’t seen anything like this before, because it is not in the interests of the biggest players. The tech giants and the established digital agencies benefit from a lack of transparency.

“A lack of transparency maintains their margins at the expense of the advertisers and publishers. Transparency exposes the mark-ups and the middlemen, and many operators don’t want this.

“Here at Viztrade, we have developed a genuine game changer and pioneered a new form of digital trading. Visible trading is the next generation of programmatic advertising.”