Category: Company

Meet AAX: Tim Cronin, VP of Sales

Posted on by AAX Team

Tim Cronin is undaunted. An industry veteran, he’s still charged by both the thrill of existing in an ever- evolving and growing arena and by a personal sense of enthusiasm.

Tim began as the VP of Sales at AAX in March 2019, becoming the first AAX presence on US soil. Since then, he says, the AAX position has just gotten stronger…and his excitement level and enthusiasm are just the same as when he started. The fact that there’s “lots of work left to do” only adds fuel to the fire.

We talked about his time at AAX, looked back on a career that began in 1997 when Tim was at his first start-up, and touched on what the future will bring.

And of course we talked about what’s keeping Tim, who’s based near Boston, occupied during the era of COVID-19. Short answer? Creating a family-wide “jog club” that keeps everyone fit and reduces stress, and becoming a (sometimes reluctant) star of his daughters’ trending videos on TikTok.

 

AAX: The path that led you to AAX has been a fascinating one—you’re been in tech since the very beginning of tech! Can you tell us a bit about that?

Tim Cronin: Yeah, I was at my first start-up back in 1997. If there was an “aha” moment, it was getting equity—to be young and get stock options is a formative thing!

What that meant to me, in that moment, was the reason we all work so hard: because you have a little piece. And that piece has worth. It has worth monetarily, of course, but it’s also valuable because it points to something bigger. When you’re in a career with so much risk/reward it’s amazing to see that the reward is real.

Plus, when you take the time to look back on it, the reward is seeing how far you’ve come and accomplished and knowing there’s more to do.

I think the success in that first start-up launched me in a very real way: when you experience success you chase that. And I love that about the ad tech industry: it’s always evolving, always presenting new ways to serve ads to the consumer. There’s so much innovation and growth, and I love the excitement of that.

 

AAX: Was it that excitement that led you to AAX, then? Or was it something else?

Tim Cronin: It was another early stage ad tech challenge, and there’s always excitement there! I really saw the need for AAX and a unique value proposition for publishers and brands. We talk a lot about restoring balance between monetizing quality content while providing use controls, and that’s exactly it: AAX brings some badly-needed balance.

When I first came to AAX— I was hired to reach out to American publishers—there was a lot of groundwork to be done to be a presence. I felt comfortable that we had a great value proposition and great product.t. Most importantly, I knew that success was attainable after meeting the team, our most valuable asset.

I was drawn to AAX’s global culture. Work environments need to provide you with a place where you’re primed to succeed: you need a healthy, positive culture. The energy needs to be focused on moving forwards. And that’s what AAX has.

 

AAX: You’ve been at AAX since March of 2019. What’s changed since then, if anything?

Tim Cronin: Our position has just gotten stronger! We’re able to work with some really high quality publishers and reach these unique users.

The pandemic hit everyone, but aside from some changes to me personally (like working from home and eating a lot of the bread my wife has been baking) things are going full steam ahead at AAX.

 

AAX: You didn’t get into bread-baking, then?

Tim Cronin's family Jog Club in action

No, I went the fitness route! My family started something called Jog Club: just jogging around the track at the high school down the street. Everyone in the family—my college-aged daughters were home during lockdown— was running at different paces, but we started and ended together. That was great for me as a dad.

Then I made a few TikToks with my daughters. I indulged them at first but now it’s a little annoying. Sometimes I’m still in their TikToks, but it’s more in the role of an unwilling star.

 

AAX: From your vantage point, what are some challenges ahead? How is COVID-19 going to change things up for the industry?

Tim Cronin: I’d like to see continued consolidation in the marketplace and fewer middlemen. There have been a lot of middlemen in the ad tech space. What I’m hoping to see in the era of COVID-19 are more acquisitions and consolidation—that’s a good thing.

 

AAX: And what does the future for AAX hold?

We’ll continue to be the marketplace for the web’s most tech savvy, well educated, and discriminating consumers.

And when it comes to these consumers, our focus will continue to be on the choices they make, and their right to enjoy an excellent online browsing experience. AAX will keep prioritizing the serving ads to exclusive consumers and continuing to respect their feedback, letting them decide what the right amount of ads is.

There’s a lot of work left to do—but my excitement level and enthusiasm is just the same as when I started.

Meet Scott Schwanbeck, CEO of AAX

Posted on by AAX Team
On June 8th, AAX ushered in a new phase of growth by welcoming Scott Schwanbeck as CEO.

Scott, an industry veteran with over two decades of experience, has a history of building high-performance teams and overseeing significant business growth.

Scott Schwanbeck

Before joining AAX, Scott spent eight years as the EVP of Business Development at Yieldmo, closing commercial agreements with top 500 global publishers and facilitating significant expansion and growth. The previous years saw Schwanbeck in highly successful leadership roles at an array of companies including; Vizu (acquired by Nielsen), drop.io (acquired by Facebook), News Corp, and IGN Entertainment (acquired by News Corp).

And now, from his home base in New York, Scott will be leading the global AAX team, which spans three continents and multiple cities. To mark his sixth week as AAX chief executive officer we chatted with Scott about the past that shaped him, the experience of being a leader in this tumultuous time, and his plans and predictions for the future of AAX.

***

AAX: Welcome! Let’s start out with the basics: what drew you to AAX? 

Scott Schwanbeck: The digital advertising ecosystem has always required a balance between content owners, marketers and users in order to thrive. But currently the ecosystem is in need of some recalibration.

I joined AAX because I see an amazing opportunity to restore fair value between users who dislike intrusive and annoying browsing experiences, publishers that need to generate revenue for the content they create, and advertisers that want to reach a high-value audience.

Because that’s what AAX does: AAX works with ad blockers to gain access to consumers who have chosen to utilize an ad blocker but who have also opted-in to view ads that are not intrusive. Then, AAX offers these users to buyers looking to capitalize on an exclusive, high-value audience. We also provide a substantial revenue share to our publisher partners by monetizing an audience they were previously unable to reach.

 

AAX: You’ve been in the industry for 2+ decades, so it’s pretty hard to isolate one learning experience or lesson. But maybe you can share a few of them?

Scott Schwanbeck: Looking back, I can chart the beginning of my early career into digital media. In the mid-1990’s I moved to San Francisco to work with a major financial services client and I noticed that a few of my fellow employees had left to join these new “internet” companies.

It became an inescapable trend and I quickly decided I wanted to be part of it. I saw an interesting future in digital so I took a risk, leaving the path of more traditional media and becoming a pioneer in the internet space.

As far as lessons I’ve learned along the way? While it’s not possible to highlight one single lesson as the answer, there are a couple of important ones that come to mind.

One of these is growth. You have to always be looking for ways to grow; whether that’s growing revenue, developing your team, or working more closely with customers. Growth should always be top of mind.

And, in a similar vein to growth, you want to embrace evolution. You never want to become stagnant. It’s vital to always look for ways to evolve, solve new problems, make your product or solution easier to use, find new customers who didn’t know your company existed. And–a cool side benefit—evolution leads to growth.

And then, of course, there’s trust—which is invaluable. Employees want to work for companies and leadership teams they trust. Customers are more willing to buy products and services from people and companies they trust. Too often people forget how important trust is in business.

 

AAX: The phrase is now infamous: we’re living in unprecedented times. What is the most significant way that COVID-19 has impacted the industry, and how do you see it shaping its future?

Scott Schwanbeck: It goes without saying that these are challenging times for our entire industry. In Q2 we’ve watched publishers experience record breaking web traffic but at the same time have steep declines in total revenue. We’ve also watched the buy-side reduce and in some cases stop all marketing activities due to C19. And we still haven’t addressed the data challenges that regulation like GDPR and CCPA pose much less the loss of the cookie.

Having said that. I do think our industry will emerge stronger and once again thrive and survive starting in Q4.

The good news for AAX is that C19 didn’t have that big of an impact to our CPMs or revenue. We’re seeing explosive growth in the number of publishers that want to further monetize their audience. And we’re seeing more and more buyers spend to reach our unique audience.

 

AAX: And what about the future of AAX? What can you tell us about your short (and longer!) term plans?

Scott Schwanbeck: A few of my main goals as CEO include positioning AAX for the future, establishing market leadership, and accelerating growth.

Our growth has accelerated in 2020. Despite C19, we’re seeing significant interest from publishers, agencies, brand and programmatic platforms.

We also want to continue to change the discussion of ad blocking towards a meaningful dialogue around providing a better ad experience for users—which will help our entire industry thrive in the future. The users we reach don’t use ad blockers to remove all ads; these are users who are seeking a better and cleaner browsing experience.

We’ve now partnered with leading DSPs and SSPs to expose buyers to the savvy, highly educated digital spenders that are our audience.

And, of course, accelerating growth is part of the process. We’re expecting a good return to normal levels of spend, and a decent recovery in Q4 and 2021. It’s impossible to talk about the future of AAX without considering the industry as a whole—we think in terms of interconnectedness and sustainability—and we’re optimistic.

 

Acceptable Ads Exchange names Scott Schwanbeck CEO

Posted on by AAX Team

Industry Vet to Helm Leading Ad Blocking Recovery Exchange

Scott SchwanbeckNew York, NY, – June 30, 2020— Acceptable Ads Exchange (AAX), a leading ad exchange dedicated to recovering revenue lost to ad blockers, has named industry veteran, Scott Schwanbeck, chief executive officer. A proven leader with over two decades of media, tech and digital experience, Schwanbeck has an expansive history of building high-performance teams, driving forward-thinking strategies and growing revenue for publishers. 

“Media companies continue to be faced with the dual challenge of seeking fair value for their content, while ensuring a positive, less intrusive ad experience for their readers,” Schwanbeck said. “AAX has quickly established itself as a leader in this complex challenge and I’m honored to steer the company through the next phases of its evolution.”

Working directly with publishers of all sizes, AAX generates significant ad revenue from content, while still providing users – who choose to run an ad blocker – a cleaner ad experience.

Schwanbeck joins AAX from Yieldmo where, as executive vice president of business development, he played an integral role in transforming the company from a fledgling start up to a recognized industry leader. During his tenure, the company went from pre-revenue to a large, very profitable organization and counted many of the world’s largest and most prominent media companies as partners. Schwanbeck’s additional experience spans a diverse set of companies from early-stage start-ups to large corporations including Vizu (acquired by Nielsen), drop.io (acquired by Facebook) and IGN Entertainment (acquired by News Corp).

For more information please visit aaxmedia.staging.wpengine.com or email hello@www.aax.media.

About AAX

The Acceptable Ads Exchange (AAX) allows publishers, advertisers and users to benefit from a healthy, respectful and human ad ecosystem. We’re a programmatic ad exchange dedicated to serving a highly coveted audience of more than 200 million consumers that have consented to see the light, respectful ads designated as “acceptable” by the Acceptable Ads Committee’s criteria. The AAX  mission is to foster a new type of marketplace—an exchange capable of reaching ad-blocking users seeking an alternative ad experience— for consumers, while offering direct-to-publisher deals and working with premium demand-side sources.


Webinar recap: revenue struggles (and monetization solutions) in the time of coronavirus

Posted on by AAX Team

On April 30th, we partnered with the folks over at AdMonsters to present a webinar. Our goal? To talk a little bit about the temptation for publishers to fall into old bad habits during the unprecedented time of COVID-19…and, more importantly, to provide a few answers, some optimism for the future, and one sustainable monetization solution.

AAX VP of Sales Tim Cronin helmed the discussion, with AdMonsters dynamo Gavin Dunaway acting as MC. We were lucky enough to be joined by two guest stars, Jayson Dubin, CEO and Founder of Playwire and Jason Tollestrup, VP Programmatic Strategy & Yield at the Washington Post.

The result of this conversation, which interspersed with thought-provoking questions from an audience drawn from all across of the adtech world, was a thorough investigation of what AdMonsters summarized as “re-engaging with the highly active, tech savvy and educated audience using ad blockers, while also examining what we can learn from ad blocking user behavior in building more user-friendly ad products and sustainable monetization strategies for a new digital media age.”

We’re going to recap some key takeaways for those of you who missed it, including some of the questions that came in from our audience.  And, if you’re looking for more than the highlight reel, you can view a video of the entire webinar “The Revenue Boost You Could Use Right Now—Ad Blocker Traffic.” Check it out:

Q: Why do you say that publishers are tempted to fall into bad habits during the era of COVID-19?

A: The real issue here isn’t the temptation—brought about because Q2 revenue is down 30-50% and there’s real need for new streams—but why we classify these habits as “bad.”

Inserting more ad slots into webpages in order to compensate for falling CPMs directly affects your user’s experience. In turn, more intrusive ad formats on webpages have a known effect of lowering fill rates and eCPMs even further. This results in a few dire outcomes, with the end result being publishers losing their audiences. When users feel their experience is being cannibalized, they tend to turn their attention elsewhere.

And, if you needed another reason, the resulting supply/demand imbalance is the driver of ad blocking. Which brings us to…

 

Q: Why are ad blocking users such an interesting demographic for marketers?

A: The ad blocking demographic makes up the most valuable 20% of users. These affluent, well-educated ad blocking users purchase more digital content than their non-ad blocking counterpart.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. AAX compiled a study examining ad blocking users’ behavior—including their habits of brand discovery, workplace roles, ambition, and loyalties— available for free here.

What’s more, research shows they don’t hate all ads, only the intrusive ones. That’s why ad blocking users are the cornerstone of the monetization strategy: the Acceptable Ads solution.

 

Q: What is the Acceptable Ads solution, exactly?

To quote a groundbreaking study from the New Jersey Institute of Technology called “To Be Tough or Soft, Measuring the Impact of Counter- Ad Blocking Strategies on User Engagement,” the Acceptable Ads strategy is one that:

[…] shows users acceptable ads, agreed upon with the ad blocking companies, which appear in the page even when an ad blocker is active. Acceptable ads are generally less annoying ads, such as text ads instead of video ads, and also fewer in number.

The criteria about what makes an ad “less annoying” are set forth by the Acceptable Ads Committee (AAC for short).

 

Q: What is the AAC, and how does it work?

The independent, third party Acceptable Ads Committee is divided into three “coalitions,” which represent diverse voices ranging from digital rights organizations to researchers, pubs and content creators to users. You can learn more about the details of the AAC here.

 

Q: How many Acceptable Ads users are there, and what percentage of ad blocking users are opted into the Acceptable Ads program?

AAX accesses about 200 million global ad blocking users through the Acceptable Ads program. This is partially because of a massive sea change: ad blocking has become ad filtering, keeping Acceptable Ads on.

With 90% of ad blocking users agreeing with the statement “I don’t hate all ads,” it’s important to realize that ad blocking users have the controls. When they’re using an ad blocker they have the capability of blocking all ads, but the vast majority (95% of consumers using Adblock Plus, for example) opt not to.

We believe that AAX represents a way for publishers to be the vanguard of positive user experience while monetizing a vast audience of premium users in a sustainable manner. Because AAX supports a balanced value exchange—prioritizing equally the interests of users, marketers, and content providers—we believe that ours is the most sustainable approach to ad blocking user monetization.

That’s one of the reasons we partnered with AdMonsters to present this webinar, and it’s why we’re offering the following:

Publishers who sign with us by May 31st, 2020, retain full revenue share for the first three months. We’ll waive our share, meaning publishers have 100% revenue share.

Interested? Contact us at sales@www.aax.media

AAX early spring forecast: Palm Desert –> Berlin –> Dubrovnik –> Santa Monica –> Vail

Posted on by 10404pwpadmin

The days are dark, the streets are icy, and our feet are cold. Winter still is very much a reality.

But it’s hard not to feel the promise of early spring when you’re planning for events in places as diverse and exciting as Palm Desert, California and Dubrovnik, Croatia.

The next few months see the AAX team crossing oceans and continents to talk about restoring the value exchange between publishers and ad blockers…as well as educating ourselves on trends and innovations and sharing insights.

  • Lastly, we’ll be in Vail, Colorado from March 25-27 to attend another Digiday event: the Publishing Summit.

If you’re planning on attending any of these events, we’d love to chat! Reach out: contact us to set up a meeting. We’re available and happy to discuss sustainable publisher monetization options.

And we’re already busy planning our schedule for April and beyond. Stay tuned for what we have planned—follow us on Twitter @AAXMedia.

New vendor registration to IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent Framework

Posted on by 10404pwpadmin

Today, AAX announced their approved status as the latest vendor to join IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent framework (or: the framework).

TCF, which was launched in April 2018, is designed to help all parties in the digital advertising chain ensure that they comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and ePrivacy Directive when processing personal data or accessing and/or storing information on a user’s device, such as cookies, advertising identifiers, device identifiers and other tracking technologies.

The Framework was developed by IAB Europe in collaboration with organisations and professionals in the digital advertising industry. It provides transparency to consumers about how—and by whom— their personal data is processed and enables users to express choices.

TCF enables vendors engaged in programmatic advertising to know ahead of time whether their and/or their partners’ transparency and consent status allows them to lawfully process personal data for online advertising and related purposes. Through the framework, publishers can continue funding themselves through relevant online advertising, and brands can continue to reach their audiences. And, most importantly, consumer privacy is protected the entire time.

The added registration of AAX to the framework further bolsters IAB Europe’s mission to raise the standard and trust in digital advertising across Europe. “AAX is excited to join IAB Europe’s Transparency and Consent framework and help shape the future of the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem in Europe and equally protect consumer’s privacy,” said AAX CEO Frederick Leuschner.

Parties interested in joining the Framework to give audiences full visibility and control over who can process their data in connection with advertising, should visit https://advertisingconsent.eu/register/

What are Acceptable Ads? A crash course

Posted on by 10404pwpadmin

The AAX team attended the Digiday Publishing Summit in Key Biscayne Florida with a particular mission: instead of talking about AAX, we wanted to take a step back and discuss the Acceptable Ads initiative.

But in order to get the full picture, and understand how ad blockers have, over the years, evolved into ad filterers, we need to start at the beginning.

How Did We Get Here?

What are the causes of ad blocking? If you ask an ad blocker, you’ll usually hear something along the lines of “There are too many ads.”

But when you dig deep, exploring the causes of these “too many ads,” you’ll find the culprit is a supply and demand imbalance that has long posed a challenge to premium publishers.

What happens in a marketplace when there’s a supply and demand imbalance is that the seller—in this case, the publisher—finds themselves in a weakened position. That means that the buyer, the advertiser, moves into a position of strength. This has lead to a squeeze on the publisher: the publisher has to serve more ads, bigger ads, and more intrusive ads.

It was exactly this dynamic that lead to a dramatic increase in ad blockers.

Ad blocking is the Biggest Boycott In Human History– Doc Searls

At a conference like Digiday Publishing, ad blocking is always the elephant in the room. And in this case it’s not just a question of standing out. It’s also a question of sheer size: the scope of ad blocking is massive.

  • One billion people worldwide use ad blockers.
  • In the USA, a publisher can expect 15-20% of their visitors to have an ad blocker.
  • In places like Germany and France, the percentage ad blocking visitors reaches 45%.

These numbers are astounding.

But there’s another number to consider: 90% of ad blockers users can receive ads.

Solutions To Ad Blocking and Benefits To Publishers

When an ad blocker is installed, the ad block user is given an option: to opt in and consent to be served acceptable ads. The fact that 90% choose this option speaks to the fact that ad block users don’t hate all ads—just the kind of invasive, flashy ads that prompted the mass boycott of ad blocking.

It also speaks to the particulars of the ad blocking demographic. These users are young, highly educated, tech savvy, and index high for consuming media online. In other words, they understand the balance of the ecosystem relies on advertising, and that a browsing experience can actually be augmented by the presence of respectful, non-intrusive ads—by the presence, in other words, of Acceptable Ads.

The criteria for what determines an Acceptable Ad is defined by the Acceptable Ads Committee, a fully independent third party committee made up of industry insiders, privacy organizations, users, consumers, publishers. The criteria is straightforward: an ad can be deemed Acceptable if it

  • is a static banner instead of an animated banner
  • there is no video present
  • the ads don’t represent more than 15% above the fold…
  • …or 25% below the fold

Ultimately, what the Acceptable Ads initiative—along with AAX, an ad exchange that serves only Acceptable Ads—is committed to is achieving is a balance between consumer experience, browsing experience, and content monetization.

Obama, snowboards, and beer: the impact of Bits and Pretzels

Posted on by 10404pwpadmin

This marked the first year AAX headed to Bits and Pretzels, the three-day Munich-based founders festival that famously culminates in a massive networking events on the Oktoberfest grounds.

But, as our team found out, the jolly atmosphere of this “liquid networking”—like-minded people mingling and beer drinking under the decorated dome of the Schottenhamel tent—wasn’t the only memorable thing about Bits and Pretzels.

In fact, for AAX Head of Operations Otilia Otlacan, time spent in the Schottenhamel tent wasn’t even the aspect of Bits and Pretzels most conducive to networking. For her, that was the speakers.

Want To Make An Impact? Help Your Neighbors.

The theme of this year’s Bits and Pretzels was impact. This created an unofficial dialogue between the speakers: everyone pondered what it meant to be impactful.

“The talks ranged from companies trying to tackle food waste at the local level to multinational corporations thinking about supporting entrepreneurship and how to support women. People were really considering their impact onto communities,” says Otlacan.

What does the word impact mean for AAX? For CEO Frederick Leuschner, impact refers to directly to value exchange. “The ad ecosystem is a community in need of balance,” he says. “The ideal is a three-way equilibrium between publishers, advertisers, and users.”

How To Thrive On A New Continent

Obama, Snowboards, and Beer: The Impact of Bits and Pretzels

One of the most inspiring speakers, says Otlacan, was Donna Carpenter, CEO of Burton Snowboards. Carpenter spoke about her journey, dwelling specifically on the lessons she learned when she brought the company came across the Atlantic. Carpenter, an American outdoors, was new to Europe and a much of the knowledge she brought from home just wasn’t applicable.

“If I had to distill her message,” says Otlacan, “it would be that, in order to be impactful, you ask for input, ask for help, and listen to feedback.” That message is especially vital, thinks Otlacan, in the fast-moving and ever-evolving start up environment.

The message of impact was also strengthened by Bits and Pretzels designation as a festival for founders. “What you saw was diversity in mission,” says Leuschner. “By building events around founders, the focus becomes centered around a particular stage in business instead of a particular industry. It becomes about helping people who are all at the same step.”

Barack Obama’s Secret To Success

Of course, no discussion of Bits and Pretzels 2019 is complete without mention of the star speaker: Barack Obama.

“His focus on leadership wasn’t just applicable at an entrepreneurship event,” says Otlacan. “It managed to link these large concepts of responsibility and global thinking back to start-ups.”

Obama stressed the importance of diversity, both in a larger context and within a team. “All of us have blind spots,” he said. “We have strengths, but we also have weaknesses. We have different perspectives. The greater mix of people I had around me […] with common values but different perspectives, experiences, and strengths, the more likely it was that we’d have fresh eyes and fresh approaches to problems.”

The environment of Obama’s talk, a hall packed with a mix of 5,000 attendees, helped bring these words into reality. It’s all too possible to lose sight of where we exist as part of a larger ecosystem and participating in acts of community—like coming together for a festival—can help you reconnect with a sense of being part of something.

Autumn forecast: NYC –> BUD –> LA –> AZ

Posted on by 10404pwpadmin

The AAX team isn’t getting lulled into the sweater-lined, pumpkin-spice-scented cocoon of autumnal laziness.

Instead, we’re attending events. Over the next month, our team is crossing continents and oceans with the aim of facilitating discussions about restoring the value exchange between publishers and ad blockers…as well as educating ourselves on trends and innovation, sharing insights, and connecting with peers.

  • First, we’re attending Ad Exchanger Programmatic I/O, from October 15-16, in New York City. Come find our booth in the Live Exchange Zone.
  • Then, from October 21-23, we’ll be at Digiday Budapest, where our VP of Sales Tim Cronin will be giving a Dialog Presentation.
  • October 30th finds us at another World Forum Disrupt event: this time, it’s Digipublish Los Angeles.
  • Next we’ll be in Arizona for AdMonsters Scottsdale from November 3-6. Not only will we deliver a keynote lecture, but the AAX team will also participate in the Question the Tech Q & A on the main stage.
  • Reach out; contact us to set up a meeting. We’re available and happy to discuss sustainable publisher monetization options.

We’re already busy planning events in December and beyond. Follow us on Twitter @aaxmedia and stay tuned for what we have planned.

5 subjects of discussion at World Forum Disrupt: Programmatic New York

Posted on by 10404pwpadmin

On September 18th, the AAX team joined with leading minds at the vanguard of programmatic for a day of sharing insight, strategy, and passion-fueled ideas.

In other words: we attended World Forum Disrupt Programmatic New York.

The talents behind World Forum Disrupt created a platform designed with the mission of challenging. Because of this, we made sure that we arrived ready to be challenged, ready to challenge, and ready to develop and participate in open dialogue.

The conversations we participated in were helped, in large part, by the fact that World Disrupt Programmatic marked the first time Tim Cronin gave a keynote speech in his role as AAX’s VP of Sales. This presentation became what Cronin referred to as “the coming out party for the Acceptable Ads program and for AAX .”

There was also another, more vital, reason why Cronin’s keynote was so important. As the new faces in town, AAX wanted to make sure that we had a chance to facilitate discussions on the state of ad blocking.

Hart Gliedman, AAX Director of US Sales, explains: “It was incredibly useful that Tim Cronin was given the stage to present AAX to the Forum, because was able to properly explain our unique value proposition to prospective publishers of the highest quality.”

We had a number of fascinating dialogues at World Forum Disrupt Programmatic, and we wanted to share five key subjects that we discussed at length.

#1 Ad Blocking: How Did We Get Here?

When asked about his keynote speech, Tim Cronin spoke enthusiastically about the event, praising the publishers and the atmosphere of change.

“It was interesting to see what people’s priorities and questions were. People were curious about the evolution of ad blocking. Basically, the surplus in online inventory created a supply and demand imbalance—premium publishers’ revenue gets squeezed in such an environment. As a result, many were forced to make up revenue by serving more, or larger format and flashier ads. And this drove up the use of ad blockers by the most sensitive and technical consumers.”

# 2 Privacy Is The Key

But other factors prompted the advent of ad blocking—what Doc Searls called “the greatest boycott in human history.” As Gliedman explains, this is partially the result of a misunderstanding. “Concerns over privacy are a big reason why people install ad blockers in the first place,” he says.

World Disrupt Programmatic was abuzz with discussions surrounding GDPR and third party vs. first party cookies. According to Gliedman, that’s a discussion that needs to occur.

“Having less data on the user? That’s the world that AAX lives in,” he says, adding, “Programmatic without user data is the future.”

#3 Mobile Is The Future

Another, adjacent topic that dominated dialogues concerned mobile. (For more on the mobile-related conversations occurring at World Disrupt Programmatic, check out Kristina Hahn and Gabrielle Heyman’s insights on the subject.)

“A lot of traffic is going mobile. Mobile relies on cookies,” says Cronin. “Safari just stopped allowing third party cookies, and other browsers are thinking of doing the same. This is a big deal for publishers—the industry is faced with more challenges than ever.”

# 4 What’s Broken Was Already Broken…

Gliedman stressed how important it was to let everyone know about the evolution of Acceptable Ads.

“The system is broken,” he says. “The trust between users and websites is broken. But it’s already been broken. That’s why ad blocking emerged in the first place.”

# 5 …But It Can Be Fixed

This broken system, asserts Cronin, is the reason that he was so enthusiastic about delivering “Ad Blocking Is Dead,” his keynote speech.

“It’s time to restore the value exchange,” he says. “Acceptables Ads allow users to support their favorite sites in a way that benefits all parties. It’s possible to meet in the middle.”


We’ll be posting video of Tim Cronin’s keynote lecture shortly. In the meantime, check out our upcoming engagements here or follow us on Twitter at @aaxmedia.