Google launches online ad trading in Australia
Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange – which allows the automated trading between publishers and advertisers of online ads – is launching in Australia, the company announced today.
However, the launch of the offering – which targets larger publishers looking to maximise the value of unsold inventory – is unlikely to have much of an immediate impact in Australia because Google policy is to exclude pages that deliver autorefreshed ads. Unlike many international markets, several of Australia’s largest online publishers still autorefresh pages.
Google claims that AdExchange delivers publishers an average revenue that is on average 130% higher than selling their inventory into an online ad network.
The service aims to create a marketplace where advertisers – or more often, their agencies, can bid in real time against specific criteria so that their ad stands a better chance of reaching a relevant audience.
Matthias Kunze, director of publisher monetisation for Google in Japan and Asia Pacific, told Mumbrella: “We are pretty excited about launching this in Australia. It’s one of the most advanced markets in the world along with the US and the UK, but online display advertising is still a very complicated process. It’s very difficult to buy an online campaign.
“So some advertisers either do not bother at all or do not publish as many ads as they might.”
The Google offering allows both for the practical side of placing ads, and also bookings and also the negotiation of price.
However, the launch will also ad an urgency to the debate over user privacy, as trading takes place around the behaviour of the users.
Last week, Australia’s industry bodies announced a working group to set down standards around online behavioural targeting. Kunze told Mumbrella: “We can only do better as an industry at sayign that relevant ads are good for the consumers.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large. He returned to Mumbrella as Publisher in January 2025
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What are the privacy issues? I don’t understand what’s meant by “trading takes place around the behaviour of the users”. Is there a way for advertisers to see what other sites users are visiting? That would be worrying.
Of course Google’s already quite capable of that.
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Hi Tim,
What online behaviour targeting allows for (and I’m sure someobody will be able to jump in and tighten this up for me) is a publisher to place cookies on those visiting its site who (for instance) looked at the short haul holiday section.
Those cookies can then be auctioned off, for instance, to advertisers looking to reach people currently considering a holiday to enable them to serve them ads when they surf elsewhere.
And if there’s a more sophisitcated or clearer explanation than that, I’m very open to hearing it!
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
you going to try it, tim?
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ooh, you moderating comments now? (i guess its a yes!)
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Tim, my understanding is that that basically summarises BT/OBA from a media owner/publisher perspective. That is, they can track usage across their own sites and properties by dropping cookies (albeit with all the issues that surround cookies and how accurate targeting is once cookies are deleted … unless self-spawning cookies are used) and serve relevant ads accordingly.
However, ISPs can also track usage (e.g. Phorm in the UK for BT). ISP tracking means that it is no longer just the sites from one publisher but from any and every site a user visits – extremely powerful information, especially as the ISP (generally0 doesn’t have an opt-out mechanism.
Also, browsers can track usage as well – all usage from that browser, but not all usage if someone uses multiple browsers. OBA/BT standards needs to take these different scenarios into account and not just look at it from a client/publisher perspective.
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I am getting a sandwich board and try and sell sunglasses to peole that look cool
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I’m very interested to see what impact this has on the digital landscape.
BT is still growing in popularity, as long as users don’t clear cookies regularly….
There’s still a lot of mixe feelings on BT out there though isn’t there?
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2nd time lucky? We all know Doubleclick already attempted this in Oz right? And it flopped spectacularly. In fact I gave it a whirl with my remnant inventory. And it delivered average revenue much less than the ad network we were trialling. But there you go. What do I know?
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The cookie is pool is increasing rapidly with increase of mobile use and private browsing and the use of multiple browsers. Lots of cookies.
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Seriously Tim (Burrows) you could tie the Korean conflict to auto-refresh.
Auto refresh is irrelevant to this discussion about exchanges. Not a bit, entirely.
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Hi Stuart,
If Google doesn’t accept autorefreshed pages onto the platform, and Australia’s largest publishers therefore aren’t eligible to sign up, that is, I would argue, relevant.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
If the “Google policy is to exclude pages that deliver autorefreshed ads”, all the publishers need to do is target the google exchange ads on to pages that don’t autorefresh. Such as article pages, many of which already have google ads on them.
If the google exchange delivers higher ecpm, due to increased ad relevance which is quite possible with google’s huge BT network, then it could prove to be quite threatening for competiors and media sales peeps too.
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Google usually do innovation quite well (obvious comment is obvious), so im sure that if they can lead the change, it will catch on.
Behavioural targeting at the moment is fairly a joke. There are no standards, no precision and havign worked for a company that is heavily investing in it, although it sounds exciting and revolutionary, the actual research mechanics which produce the user footprint/picture, are a guess at the very beginning which have cookie tracking built on that.
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Google didn’t get rich by writing people cheques … and that includes publishers. I doubt publishers will get the extraction and transparency they are after but I guess time will tell.
It is a threat to the remnant networks and probably means the days of them buying inventory at 50c and selling it back to agencies at $10 is over. Still, many of these remnant networks have good sales teams, relationships and nice rebates for big spenders so unless Google can match these the product alone may not be enough.
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