Posts Tagged ‘company news’

Happy Belated 4th Birthday, Rubicon!

May 5th, 2011

Devan Fearman

Things have been moving so quickly around here lately, that we forgot to stop and celebrate an important
milestone – the Rubicon Project’s 4th birthday!

On May 1, 2007 the Rubicon Project launched with one lofty goal in mind – to automate the buying and selling across the $65 billion global online advertising industry. Beginning with a 2,000 square foot office, one bathroom and about 10 employees…I think it’s safe to say that our team has come a long way!

Here we are celebrating our fourth birthday in a time when the industry continues to push the limits on innovation and display advertising is expected to reach $30 billion in 2012 (eMarketer). Along with our partners and customers, we’re on our way to accomplishing the mission we set out to conquer. We couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity that lies ahead for the advertising ecosystem.

Of course, we’d like to take a moment to thank our 450+ premium publisher customers for their continued support. The product developments we’ve made over the years would not have been possible without your insight, feedback and trust in our team. It’s because of you that the REVV platform has reached 80+ billion ad transactions per month and 500+ billion real-time bids per quarter.

And last but certainly not least, thank you to all 250 Rubicon team members, across 8 offices in 5 countries. It’s your hard work, devotion and significant contributions that make Rubicon the leading advertising technology company.

Happy Birthday to our team and thank you to our customers for believing in us! Here’s to many more….

Beautiful Minds

March 25th, 2011

Devan Fearman

As you may have already read, we’ve hired three seasoned business leaders to join the Rubicon Project family: Nick Hulse, Bill Harries and Bill McHargue. As our focus and energy is being spent on growing our business from a great publisher product (yield optimization) to a great publisher platform, we’re certain these guys have the background and experience to help do just that.

We also made a few internal executive promotions. Company founder, Craig Roah, has been promoted to the role of President; Josh Wexler to Senior Vice President, Market Development; and Seizo Welch to Senior Vice President of Finance. These gentlemen have been instrumental in our growth and success to date. And now with a full team in place, our management team is completely supported – enabling them to focus on taking our company to great heights.

Needless to say, it’s an exciting time to be at the Rubicon Project. And before we throw Nick, Bill Harries and Bill McHargue into the thick of things, we wanted to hear why they decided to join the Rubicon Project family. Here is what they had to say:

Bill Harries: “The Rubicon Project is a great example of how the advances in internet technology over the last 15 years is making possible revolutionary changes in the way technology can be applied to today’s business problems.  Matching online advertising inventory with the buyers that want to buy that inventory is screaming for automation.  Applying technology to this problem lets us maximize the revenue for the publishers while protecting their brand, increase the effectiveness of the advertising dollars spent, all the while saving time and effort for all concerned in the process.  These types of innovations represent the future of information technology and it makes Rubicon an exciting place to be.”

Bill McHargue: “I decided to join the Rubicon Project because the company scored off the charts relative to three main decision criteria. 1) People. Its not often you find companies after the initial start up years and such hyper growth, including 3 acquisitions, a company that can maintain a great culture. The people at the Rubicon Project are the best in the advertising technology space. People with passion build great companies. 2) Product. Personally, Sales is no where without a rock-solid product. The Rubicon Project pioneered the space of yield optimization and REVV continues to be the world’s largest market place for buying and selling advertising across the Internet. The company’s milestones of achievement speak volumes to both our customers and our dedicated work force.  3). Opportunity. The company’s road map and vision for the future are truly exciting. The path ahead of us is remarkable and I am fortunate to be a part of the team to help realize those goals.”

And as Nick shared with us in the press release: “I am delighted to be joining the Rubicon Project team. I come to this role with a deep appreciation of the work that the team has done to evolve the company into a market leader and I’m truly excited to be part of an organization that has a very promising future. I will be focused on enhancing an already customer-centric organization with a strategy for increased support, service and innovation for our premium publishers, enabling them to grow their businesses as a result of using the REVV platform.”

Welcome aboard, guys!

Introducing the 2011 Women in Ad Technology Dossier

January 12th, 2011

Rachel Richards

Why don’t we see more women on stage? This is the common question that hits twitter feeds and inspires discussion in tradeshow halls after every large ad technology event. And I think it’s a fair question. However, instead of adding to the noise we decided to do something about it. The ad technology ecosystem is full of smart, funny, powerful, thought-provoking women. It’s time to shed some light on these individuals.

With that, we are excited to present the 2011 Women in Ad Tech Dossier. Available for free download here: http://www.slideshare.net/RubiconProject/women-in-ad-technology

Event planners, speaking proposal judges, panel committee members: no more excuses! This dossier is full of women in the ad technology world who are a force to be reckoned with and are fully capable holding their own at events and on stage. We hope you’ll find this dossier to be a useful go-to resource, and as a result will start to introduce new faces and voices to tradeshow agendas.

Of course, there are plenty of woman that have not been included in this first iteration. We consider this dossier a living document and welcome recommendations on equally brilliant woman to be added to the list. If you’d like to see someone added, feel free to send an email to Rachel@rubiconproject.com .  Last but not least, if you have a speaking opportunity for a woman in this dossier and would like an introduction – feel free to reach out.

Looking forward to a year full of innovation, debate and maybe even a few showdowns.

Are You Armed for the Holidays?

November 19th, 2010

Duc Chau

Just as a homeowner needs insurance to protect her against unforeseen disasters, a publisher needs to be sure their business and users are protected from malvertising. These attacks peak on weekends and holidays, when technical experts aren’t around to identify the source. In almost all cases, identification and resolution of the malware attack doesn’t happen until considerable
damage has already been done. And regardless of the technique used by the perpetrators, or the channel through which the exploit occurred (we’ve seen them through ad networks and direct-sold campaigns in equal measure), the problem for a publisher’s ad operations group is the same.

A publisher that doesn’t have protection in place is at the greatest risk of malvertising and infecting their most valuable commodity – their users.  We know firsthand from these publishers that it’s not worth playing the odds. Every minute that a threat goes undetected, more and more of a publisher’s user base is affected, resulting in angry users, decreased brand trust and significant churn in both users and revenue.

Since we rolled out SiteScout AdStream Protection™ 5.2 this summer, we’ve seen some surprising – and scary – things:

  • 89 billion ad impressions monitored
  • More than 63 million monthly unique users at risk from exploits prevented by SiteScout technology
  • The majority of exploits have occurred on weekends

With publisher revenue at its peak in Q4, ad streams are at even greater risk. Threats and attacks find their way in through ad exchanges, ad networks and direct ad campaigns where bad guys use many techniques including hacking servers, submitting malicious ads directly, or impersonating legitimate people or companies, and publishers eager to capture increased ad spend that accompanies the holidays might be more busy than usual, and less likely to double-check the validity of a buyer. Fewer resources, more vacation days, and more hectic schedules create a perfect storm for risk of malware.

No one likes these kinds of surprises. To learn more about malvertising and what you can do to keep your site safe, download our free whitepaper, “Best Practices: Malware & Online Security.”

Making it Rain

November 12th, 2010

Devan Fearman

Things are buzzing here at the Rubicon Project. It’s been about two weeks since completing our FAN acquisition and the two teams are integrating seamlessly (well, except for the extra long line at the espresso machine).   In our last blog post, we mentioned that the Rubicon Project achieved profitability in October.  This is a milestone that the team is very proud of.  Not only did we achieve profitability, but we achieved it almost a full quarter ahead of plan.  Further, profitability was achieved outside any revenues from FAN.

Reaching this turning point deserves a nod to the publishers leveraging our REVV platform. Our business model is simple – we only make money if the publisher is making money. As such, reaching profitability is a direct result of the success publishers have achieved on the platform. And we would be remise to not thank all 350+ publishers who continue to trust our technology and team – so, THANK YOU!

It’s been a wild ride. the Rubicon Project has attained great scale in its short life.  We work with over 600 ad networks, 350+ premium publishers, 25 DSPs and 5 exchanges.  Our ad optimization technology reaches 550 million unique users which enables us to process 60 billion transactions each month.  All of this volume generates over $100 million in revenue annually.  We project that this will grow to $200 million in 2011.

Looking to the future, we have embraced Real Time Bidding.  While we have only had the technology in place for 3 months, the Rubicon Project will process 500 billion real time bids this quarter.  A recent enhancement to our RTB engine made during our last company hack day has resulted in a 25% increase in RTB revenue.  Our investment in RTB will continue to pay dividends as more publishers take advantage of the opportunities that this technology presents.  We are building on our past successes while continuing to invest in the future.  It’s truly an exciting time to be at the Rubicon Project.

The RTB Primer

October 13th, 2010

Mark McEachran

Real-Time Bidding (RTB) might seem like old hat already, but there are still many misconceptions out there about how it actually works. It seems that there’s not a ton of material out there that explains RTB in a straightforward manner; until now.

The market explains RTB as sales channel where advertisers bid on their desired ad impressions, with the targeted impression going to the highest bidder. RTB ad serving is made possible through APIs shared among networks, exchanges and optimization platforms that dictate detailed transaction conditions.

While RTB’s value to publishers seems enticing as access to more demand sources equates to increased publisher revenue, the risks, however less apparent, are significant. Because RTB gives advertisers their desired audience at the lowest possible price, publishers are at risk of downward pricing pressure – and net negative revenue impact – resulting from the buy-side’s increased efficiency .

It’s for this very reason that the Rubicon Project recently launched the REVV Protected RTB 1.0 beta. I’ll explain how the REVV for publishers ™ 3.2 Yield Optimization platform handles Protected RTB at a high level to paint a clearer, basic picture.

How Bidding Works
A quick note – as you read through the following, bear in mind that the entire process described in the paragraphs below takes place in less than 80 milliseconds. For perspective, it takes about 300-400 milliseconds to blink an eye.

Let’s start with the ad request. This is the same ad request (a request from a publisher to fill a given ad impression) that would come in without Protected RTB engaged.  The REVV ad engine checks the rules for that impression to see if it is eligible to receive real-time bids (the system calls that “Protected RTB enabled”) and which Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) should get exposure to it, per the publisher’s permission control settings (we currently work with a number of DSPs including AppNexus, Turn, Triggit, MediaMath, DataXu, Quantcast and Media6Degrees).  If the impression is Protected RTB enabled, then the REVV ad engine packages the pertinent information about the impression and anonymized user information (no personally identifiable information) and sends to REVV’s real-time bid system.

The bid system receives the request from the ad engine, unpacks it and creates distinct request packages for each DSP.  Each bid request package includes information the DSP needs to make a decision whether to bid, including basic information about the site, the anonymized user information and ad itself parameters like dimensions and acceptable creative types. These request packages are all in a standard format defined for the REVV Protected RTB platform; each DSP has implemented the communication protocol according to REVV’s API specification.

How DSPs Respond to Bids
As mentioned, each DSP receives an individual bid request for the impression.  Each DSP has it’s own response to these requests. Most DSPs have some form of business rule working for them to choose an appropriate response.  Some of them are running auctions within their system, others are running rotation based ad serving solutions.  Some are armed with third-party data or their own audience data and algorithms that work in real-time to decide which campaign to bid with and at what price.

Once their proprietary technology has evaluated the bid request, DSPs generally respond to a given bid request in one of two ways.  They return a valid bid with an ad creative and the advertiser name, or they return a bid of 0 or send a non-bid signal, which indicates that they chose not to bid on the impression.  If the response from the bid partner takes too long, REVV will ignore it.  REVV will not let Protected RTB compromise expedient ad serving. Needless to say, in a process called real-time bidding, time is of the essence.

Ad Quality Protection & Real-Time Bids
With bids in hand, the REVV bid system checks each against the publisher’s advertiser block list with Real-Time Advertiser Blocking.  The system not only blocks disallowed advertisers, it also tracks unknown advertisers and reports them to the Rubicon Project’s Ad Operations team for categorization.  Sites can be configured to allow or disallow unknown advertisers.  The bid system packs all the bids for the impression back into a single package and sends it back to the ad engine.

And At Last, the Real-Time Bidding Auction
After all these steps are complete and all viable bids are received, an auction takes place inside the REVV ad engine. All real-time bids are considered against one other; they are also considered alongside all other ad tags and direct campaigns that are eligible to serve on that publisher’s site. This is a critical feature of REVV Protected RTB – by competing against all other potential ad tags (from ad networks, exchanges, and other demand sources), real-time bidders face upward pricing pressure from the most sources of competition for that impression. Only real-time bids that beat out all of these other sources of demand, real-time or otherwise, will win auctions.

Bids also must beat any relevant price floors that are configured for the site.  The auction is “second price” style, which means the winning bidder pays just more than the next highest bidder’s offered prices, or ad tag CPM. Further, CPMs from the REVV yield optimization engine act as bids within the decision process, helping to preserve the fair market value of publisher inventory.  The winning RTB ad, ad tag or direct campaign is delivered to the site, and more specifically to the user, in around 80ms from request to delivery. The ad shows up just like any other ad from REVV with one difference.  Protected RTB ads have the price encoded on the ad request.  This mechanism sends the signal back to the DSP communicating that their ad won the auction and lets them know what the clearing price is.

As a result, REVV Protected RTB 1.0 is allowing publishers to leverage all the benefits of real-time bidding while ensuring their direct sales channels, pricing and site visitors remain safe.

To learn more about the Protect RTB™ 1.0 beta product and our overall REVV platform, click here.