1.Who is Maggie Mesa, what do you do at OpenX, and how do you make us great?
I’m the VP of Mobile Business Development, and I’ve been at OpenX for a year and half. I manage a team of business development executives that are responsible for driving our product in market with publishers. We also collaborate with traditional desktop publishers and help them adopt our mobile products and strategies.
It’s important for mobile to be top of mind at OpenX as users are moving to new platforms, and I serve as a representative for mobile internally as well as externally.
What’s something about you that people don’t know?
I live in the Bay Area, so it’s only natural that I make my own wine – cab and syrah! I buy grapes at a wine and brewing store in Berkeley (each purchase is a minimum of 200 pounds of grapes!). After de-stemming and crushing the grapes, we store them in eight 5-gallon jugs and follow the winemaking process for months. Making your own wine takes a lot of patience and skill that I have yet to master! Third time’s the charm….
2. Can you share your thoughts on Mobile and how it’ll change the Programmatic Direct landscape?
Mobile is driving the growth of programmatic, and there are two main drivers. The first is new pubs being added to the ecosystem that are testing programmatic channels. The second, bigger driver is that publishers that have been in the mobile ecosystem for years are scaling their share of voice with programmatic platforms. Six years ago it was largely CPI-based ad networks. In the last three years we’ve seen a huge growth of programmatic channels, bringing more diversity in supply to the buy-side.
There is tremendous growth around new ad formats, especially mobile-first ad formats like interstitials and mobile video. As mobile publishers continue to test new formats, they are also discovering ways to expose their robust 1st party data into the ecosystem. In a world with no cookies, mobile publishers rely on device IDs and user engagement to identify audience profiles. Programmatic Direct channels provide an opportunity for publishers to partner with platforms to make this data available in a controlled environment. This helps drive mobile campaign performance and engagement for mobile users.
As programmatic is still growing for mobile, Programmatic Direct will be an important channel for both publishers and marketers.
3. What’s next for the Mobile team?
We’re looking to grow where users and publishers are going: new engaging ad formats. We see video in various forms as the future of mobile advertising, whether that’s vertical video, short-form video, or rewarded video. We’re exploring all emerging opportunities.
We look forward to the future as the landscape evolves, and continuing to drive partnerships with new premium publishers.
It’s important for mobile to be top of mind at OpenX as users are moving to new platforms, and I serve as a representative for mobile internally as well as externally.