Charity Twitter Auction for Red Triggit Hoodies

Finally own the Red Triggit Hoodie you've been dreaming of!  Sweatshirts are finally up for grabs via a Charity Auction to the Red Cross and the Japanese Earthquake Victims.    

We are excited to announce that tomorrow, Wednesday March 23^th Triggit will be conducting a charity auction on Twitter for our much lusted after Red Triggit Hoodies. These will be the first ever hoodies ever to be given to non employees, advisors or investors.   Based on our highly unscientific review of market demand we expect the bidding to be hot and heavy. 

 The rules of the auction are simple.  Tweet @triggit with the amount that you are willing to donate to the Red Cross in exchange for us sending you a free hoodie.   Throughout the day we will post the three highest bids as they come in.   The three highest bids standing at 6:00 EST win.   The auction will be a second price auction and the winners will only be required to donate whatever the lowest winning bid is.  Simple.  

Update: 4:38 pst After hot and heavy bidding the current highest bidders are now @mbutterf at $320, @markmannio at $500 and @jaysears at $600. Remember its for charity, you can write it off.   

Update 2: 5:47 PST The bidding stands with @markmannino at $500 @jaysears at $600 and @kiastora at $650. What will the evening bring once drinks start?

Update 3: We are now also adding three red Triggit T-shirts to the bidding.   Same rules apply.  Good luck bidders.  

Update 4: 1:42 PST   The hoodie bidding stands with @DavidHelmreich at $600 @jaysears at $600 and @kiastora at $650.  Standing t-shirt bids are now $100 from @exchangewire and @glassruss and now $55 from @mbutterf

Final Update: The T-shirt winners were @geoffgolberg @saralivingston @vikramsomaya @glassruss and charity case @mbutterf with a clearing price $175 to @redcross.  The final hoodie winners were @kiastora @DavidHelmreich and @JaySears with a clearing price of $600.  Well done folks, you are all heros - and cleary great bidders.   We raised $2675 for the Red Cross today.   Schwag will be in the mail ASAP.   

 

 

If you have any questions email us at info@triggit.com

 

 

ThinkEquity Internet Spotlight

Zach was interviewed by Robert Coolbrith for the ThinkEquity Internet Spotlight that just came out. In the interview he discusses the ad exchange space in general, where Triggit is headed and the future of agency trading desks. 

Triggit welcomes John Whitmore as our new VP of Sales

Triggit is very excited to announce that John Whitmore has adopted Triggit Red and has joined us as our new VP of Sales.  John will be based in New York where he will be opening and leading our new office in that city.

John has had a distinguished career in digital media for the last twelve years with positions at companies like Bizo, Valueclick and X+1.   For those of you who know John, you can surely understand our excitement when someone as experienced and knowledgeable about our space chooses to join our team.   John was working with marketers to help them navigate the digital space since before most people even knew what digital was and he knows his stuff.  To have someone of his caliber on board is going to be a huge value add for our clients. 

Over the past 12 years John has worked with leading advertisers such as American Express, Verizon, JP Morgan Chase, Toyota and Dell and top agencies OMD, Digitas, Zenith Optimedia, Starcom Mediavest and Mindshare among many others.  John will be working closely to integrate Triggit's industry leading tools into these and many other top advertisers worldwide.

 

 

 

 

Zach and Andreas Wiegend at the eMetrics conference

Clearly Andreas looks good in Triggit red.

Triggit's 2011 Predictions

Without a doubt 2010 was a hell of a year for all of us here at Triggit.   Not only has our space grown exponentially, but so have we.   This year we grew over 2000% in revenue, our team tripled and the number of RTB impressions that pass through our system grew by more 15x.   Needless to say, it seems like we are doing something right. 

 But the past is behind us and the really exciting stuff is yet to come.  Here are our 2011 predictions:

 1.     2011 will be the year when RTB and exchange trading crosses the tipping point and becomes the most important channel for buying standardized display media.  By the end of next year we will look back on the antiquated ways we used to buy media and laugh.  

2.    Average CPMs on the exchanges will cross $3.00 and keep growing.  This will have lots of follow on effects, but mostly it will mean more and better inventory will be cleared in the exchanges and it will continue to fuel the network effects we are currently enjoying.

3.    Mainstream ad networks will find it harder and harder to source inventory directly from publishers.  As a result the companies currently in the network business will take a variety of strategic directions such as becoming video networks, rep firms for custom integrations, agencies or simply shutter their businesses.   One strategy some will try is to become a DSP, yet they will find this very tough sledding as technology is a very hard thing to become competitive in when you are two years late to the game. 

4.    Most of the ad agencies will continue to make short-term decisions around technology and will suffer in the long term as their franchises are increasingly threatened by technology companies.   One or two of them might bite the bullet and invest for the long run but no one is holding their breath.

5.    2011 will be the year that people start to realize that RTB is really all about making IP TV the most efficient and effective advertising medium ever built.  Most likely, no one but Google will do anything about it. Maybe, old media will start to recognize the threat, but it is hard to believe they will be able to respond quickly enough.

6.    Yahoo will realize that they can’t wait any longer as the market passes them by and they will roll out real RTB.

7.    Microsoft will realize that in their focus on search over the last couple years they let Google steal a march on them in display.   Microsoft will respond, most likely by buying their way into our space.

8.    Someone (hopefully John Ebbert) will start a conference around ad exchanges.   Please.  Pretty please. 

9.    Congress will get tied in knots and do nothing but continue to scare us.

10.  Companies like Akamai, Adobe, IBM, Accenture, Amazon, Ebay, Axciom, SAP, Oracle, Salesforce and others will realize that the $50 billion media market is up for grabs to smart technology companies.   A number of them will make moves in our space.  

11.  We will all continue to have a great time, there is nothing as fun as a space growing as quickly as ours is.  

 Happy Holidays from all of us here at Triggit

 Here is a recap of our 2010 predictions in case you are keeping score at home.

 

Triggit Holiday Party!

Last evening, December 15, 2010, the Triggit Family gathered for a wonderful shared meal and holiday party at our San Francisco offices.   It was a delightful evening and a reminder of how much we truly all enjoy each other.   Go Triggit! 

 

 

Happy Friday

SEMguy gives you his friday best.

Wall Street Analyst Call With Colin Gillis of BGC Partners

Zach joined Colin Gillis of BGC Partners on an investor call this week to discuss ad exchanges, DSPs and RTB.  You can listen to the call here.   Colin tells us this was the most highly attended call he has had since August- it appears the street is paying attention to all the action in ad technology.

 

 

Recap of 2010 predictions

As 2010 begins to close, the time for recaps and predictions is getting closer.  But before I publish the 2011 predictions lets look back at the 2010 predictions. 

Last year the new Ad Tech landscape was just emerging and lot of us who had been at it from the beginning were getting a handle on all the changes.   We looked around at the hype, the buzz, the FUD and the BS with mixture of bemusement, wonder and trepidation.   Looking into 2010 from 2009 was a very interesting perspective and I really enjoyed rereading my thoughts from that time.  

Retrospective nostalgia aside, lets look back at the 2010 predictions:

1. Once Google makes all of AdSense available to RTB (and it is pretty close now) the media buying world is going to change very quickly.

So true, as Google has unleashed its amazing firehose of inventory into the exchange landscape it has changed everything.  Google’s recent announcement that their display business in on a $2.5 billion run rate is a testament to how powerful Google is and how important to the ecosystem it is that they support RTB across all their inventory.

2. eCPMs will increase for good publishers whose inventory is transparently available through RTB. This will lead to a flood of publishers dumping their second tier ad network partners and selling all their impressions through the exchanges. A lot of ad networks are going to go out of business. A lot of publishers are going to start to get paid what they deserve.

eCPMs for publishers more then doubled in 2010 and a lot of ad networks simply faded away.  We have seen the amount of inventory available on the exchanges grow by more then 10x as publishers have replaced ad network tags with exchange tags.  We have gone from a world with 400+ ad networks to less then 10% of that number in the last year.   Publishers are finally starting to earn real money from their indirectly sold inventory rather then being arbitraged by middlemen.

3. Brand advertisers will start to make the plunge. Now that it is finally possible to transparently buy display at scale we will see some really big budgets start to move into display.

The DSP sector is expected to handle $500-800 million this year and is growing like crazy.  That is real money as far as I can tell and it appears I got this prediction right.

4. The VCs will keep putting a lot of capital into the space. This will mean a lot of well-funded companies aggressively innovating and making the space better for everyone. It is going to get a little crazy.

Yep, the VCs sure did aggressively fund the Ad Tech space in 2010.

5. The agencies will start playing chess. One of them will bite the bullet and buy a demand side platform if for no other reason than that they are afraid someone else will do it first. This will lead to an aggressive fight between the VCs who want to build big companies and the agencies who want to protect their turf.

I was totally wrong on this one.  I continue to be surprised at the level of denial in agencies about the value of owning technology as their core businesses are increasingly becoming automated. 

6. Microsoft will buy someone. Anyone. They are late and slow into this space and can’t afford to let Google own display too.

Not quite, but pretty darn close considering.   Microsoft's $50 million investment in Appnexus is a testament that Microsoft is finally stating to wake up to the fact that Google is once again going to steal a march and completely dominate another incredibly important sector of digital media.

7. The government will continue to scare us with the threat of ignorant regulation.

Very true and it looks like 2011 is shaping up to be the same. 

8. Some people we know will get really, really, rich.

Some of our friends (Dapper, Invite Media, Fetchback) did in fact become quite wealthy.  It will be interesting to see how 2011 turns out.

9. Some won’t.

Some didn’t.

10. We are all going to have a ton of fun.

We did have a lot of fun in 2010

 

Susan featured on Forbes.com for her Kitesurfing!

Susan, our COO, is featured in the Forbes.com article, Kiteboarding: The New Golf!.   Check out a sweet action shot of her kiting!