It Is All About Trust – Our 5 Highlights From This Year’s DMEXCO

With over 40,000 visitors, exhibitors from 40 countries and hundreds of high-profile speakers, DMEXCO continues to be one of the most important marketing and advertising events in the world.

The main theme of this year’s event was “Trust in You”, and was at the forefront not only at the conference stages, but at the stands and hallways as well.

When it comes to trust, specifically, gaining the trust of readership, publishers need to deliver better online experiences both in terms of content and user-experience. At the same time, advertisers are shifting towards formats and channels that put the user experience first. Overall, all digital players have understood that user trust is the most valuable currency to create a sustainable business.

If you didn’t make it to DMEXCO, here are five of our highlights from this year’s conference:

1. Publishers – how are you doing?

On the DMEXCO Debate Stage, our Vice President of Global Publishers & Platforms, Stephanie Himoff discussed the current and future state of publishing with senior executives from CNN, BBC, Upday and The Wall Street Journal. One of the learnings from the discussion: Trust is not only earned by the content that media companies publish. The environment and the channels where this content, together with advertising appears, is also of high importance. Watch the full panel discussion here!

2. Seminar with GSK & Ellusion

In our seminar with healthcare brand GSK and their agency Ellusion, we presented highlights from our viewability study (UK version // German version). One of the key findings: the advertising experience has a significant impact on the brand experience. GSK and Ellusion then demonstrated that data generated via Native Advertising on Outbrain can be used to target audiences and make advertising more relevant to users.

3. Seminar on Native in a Programmatic World by Zemanta

Zemanta CEO, Todd Sawicki explained how Programmatic Native leaves behind the staid world of remnant banner ads and offers the most innovative, interesting, and diverse range of formats and placements available online. He also presented how marketers can execute campaign strategies beyond viewability and audience reach by focusing on post-click performance and engagement. Watch the seminar!

4. Native Talks

For the first time, we brought advertising and publisher experts on our own stage at DMEXCO. Microsoft, BurdaForward, Unbounce, GeistM, Zemanta where among others who held Native Talks on Trusted News, Goodvertising, landing page optimisations and content-driven funnel funnel advertising.

5. IAB Report “Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising”

At DMEXCO, the IAB launched its new report on programmatic advertising: “Attitudes to Programmatic Advertising”. While total programmatic revenue grew by 33%, there is still a lot more growth to come from Native Programmatic. Our programmatic expert Agathe Rakowicz commented that “while programmatic buying for display is standard practice today, there is still a knowledge gap among marketers on how to adapt their programmatic strategies for native. The shift of display campaigns toward native has started but there is still a lot more that needs to be done around customising bidding, targeting, data and reporting before marketers can truly scale with native.” Read the full report!

We want to thank all panelists, partners and clients making DMEXCO a highly successful event for Outbrain. We will continue to drive trust among publishers, advertisers and consumers.