For those working in the digital space, DMEXCO doesn’t need much of an introduction. Last week, the city of Cologne saw leaders from the most exciting ad tech companies, agencies and brands come together to evaluate today’s industry challenges, discuss tomorrow’s trends, negotiate deals – and drink the occasional Kölsch.

Now approaching a decade-long history, it remains an unmissable conference for anyone in the tech or digital marketing business, and team Glispa was there once again to soak up all the action.

A lot happened around the bustling halls of Koelnmesse from September 12-13, and we’ve put together a list of our experts’ favorite observations and insights from the show.

 

How can the industry regain trust?

Trust in ad tech was always going to be part of the agenda this year and our CEO, Itamar Benedy, was eager to share his thoughts on how players are reacting to this issue:

“How the industry can regain trust was a big talking point at DMEXCO. Discussions are becoming more specific as companies start to define where they are in the value chain, and how they can provide value to their players. When it’s clear where the main opportunities lie for each company, then it’s clear where they can provide trust. Taking Facebook as an example, this would be around how they work with personal first-party data. Regarding agencies, trust is related to hidden margins and for platforms, it’s about the data they are passing on to agencies.”

CEO Itamar Benedy speaking at the DMEXCO VIP networking panel alongside Mathieu ROCHE (ID5.io), Sébastien Robin (SpotX) and Hossein Houssaini(Havas Group). Special thanks to Ariel Shapira of Social-Wisdom Israel for the invitation.

 

GDPR kickstarts positive changes

This was the first DMEXCO event since May’s GDPR legislation came into force, so it’s unsurprising that this topic featured prominently in conversations. Putting the right processes in place seemed to be a demanding task for many companies, but as Itamar Benedy reflected on his two days in Cologne, he noted that the results are bringing about positive changes. He believes the industry has made considerable progress as brands and agencies have been made to leverage their first-party data, which has more potential, accuracy and relevance than third-party data. In mobile advertising, this is allowing companies to re-engage and target valuable users, while remaining compliant and in line with privacy laws.

 

Mobile is still the future

Now is the time to invest in mobile, particularly for those in the retail sector. Sourcing data from a recent App Annie study, Criteo, Appsflyer and MYBESTBRANDS spoke at length about how consumer spend in apps will grow by 92% by 2020 – and what this means for the industry. Companies with a business model that is ready for apps can’t afford to wait around and must have a smart UA strategy to succeed.

Liran Talmor, our Senior Director of Glispa Create, talked about how this is leaving the door wide open for brands to experiment with creative: “Playable and interactive ads are no longer exclusive to gaming. Other areas, namely shopping but also dating and travel, can take advantage of this format to attract and continuously engage app users. This is going to be really big in the very near future.”

 

Fraud at the forefront

Our Head of Strategic Growth, Roy Engel, was also part of the Glispa team attending the event and pointed out some of the alarming trends concerning mobile ad fraud:   

“Issues around mobile ad fraud aren’t new, but they were still extremely high on the list of priorities for many of the big players and clients I talked to at DMEXCO 2018. I noticed spoofing and bot traffic has increased over the past few months across the industry and MMPs are acknowledging that this type of fraud is having a higher impact than click spamming and install hijacking. At Glispa, we’re working with our tracking partners to eliminate these types of fraudulent activities through looking at different metrics such as postbacks with deprecated versions of SDKs, traffic from known simulators, behavioral anomalies and much more.”

 

“We’re all mad here”

And of course, it wouldn’t be DMEXCO without a proper party! Team Glispa proudly sponsored this year’s OMClub event and we loved every minute of the Alice in Wonderland theme.

 

Thank you!

A big thanks to all of our partners and clients we met at the event this year! We had an awesome time at DMEXCO – and if you want to see what we got up to, check out our Insta Strories.

Do you want to learn more about the mobile app space or get in touch with us at a future event? Check out where we’ll be and visit our blog for more insights.