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本博近日获悉MediaMind全球创新总监Dean Donaldson来沪参加MediaMind发布会，遂与其取得联系，就此次MediaMind发布会及中国互联网广告业现状等进行了探讨。以下为adexchanger.cn与Dean之间的采访内容。由于采访内容稍长，本博将分上下两篇进行发布。

Dean Donaldson是MediaMind的全球创新总监（Global Head of Innovation），拥有20余年广告及数字科技行业从业经验，是业内公认的驾驭新兴媒体专家。Dean也在主流商业及广告交易刊物上发表过许多文章，此外，他还是IAB视频，评估及手持移动媒体委员会成员，并在欧美及亚洲35个国家和地区举办的百余场行业活动中发表过演说。

Dean Donaldson: the Global Head of Innovation and responsible for DG’s and MediaMind’s global evangelism.

With more than 20 years of advertising and digital experience, Dean is a recognized expert at navigating through the maze of emerging media, telling stories about how digital has shifted consumer behaviour. He has published multiple articles and frequently serves as an industry source for leading business and advertising trade publications. He also serves on the video, measurement and mobile councils at the IAB and has delivered presentations at over 100 industry events across more than 35 countries from the Americas throughout Europe to across Asia.

Adx：据我们了解，目前已经有几家本土网络媒体接受IAB标准并与MediaMind合作顺利完成了几个广告伺服项目。另外，从您之前的演讲中，我们也了解到MediaMind已经和PPTV建立合作关系，一起在中国推行VAST（Video Ad Serving Template）标准，这绝对是个突破之举。

Dean：的确如您所言，是个很大的突破。中国具有无限潜力同时也面临着巨大的转变。这也是我们此行的原因。我觉得，中国的网络媒体应该顺应这种变化，抓住这次转折时机，否则他们未来的选择面会变得很有限。

Adx：的确如此。现在中国的互联网广告行业刚起步，存在许多问题，那么你们是否在其他国家互联网广告业发展中也碰到过类似的问题？

Dean：其实标准化的过程是整个互联网广告行业的必经之路。媒体从建立网站开始，然后通过售卖网站内广告位赚钱，也就是从那时开始，他们慢慢地建立自己的运行模式。西方国家也是这么个发展过程。但是，从弹性缩放的角度（Scalability）考虑，大家需要一些特定的规则和标准。基于此，IAB（Interactive Advertising Bureau）就应运而生。IAB的出现改变了原有的互联网广告发展模式，是西方互联网广告行业发展的转折点，因为在没有IAB时，大家都自顾自地蒙头苦干，行业内也没有任何标准和规范。当然，每个公司探索发展自己的路子无可厚非，但是没有哪家公司会限定只有一个合作伙伴。所以，如果每家公司相互合作时都用自己制定的一整套标准，会使得整个互联网广告市场变极其复杂和繁琐，这样既不利于行业发展，也会产生粗劣的广告创意。而广告创意的好坏又会影响实际投放效果，最后媒体不得不在数据报表上做手脚，整个行业就在如此恶性循环中蹒跚前进，中国现在就处在这个阶段。而西方同行们很久之前就发现了这个问题并通过合力协作使自己摆脱了这种恶性循环，结果就是，我们产生了更好的创意，更好的互动，更好的效果。

Adx：我跟您的看法不谋而合，事实上，现在中国的网络媒体，不单是视频网站，都面临着增收瓶颈，大量的长尾流量卖不掉。所以，你们来的正是时候。那您能否简单透露下MediaMind与创意公司之间是怎样合作的，还有MediaMind的优势技术等？

Dean：好的。我们的业务有两个重要组成部分：一是关于工作量的弹性缩放。从这个角度来说，一个人不可能包揽所有的工作，所以我们给创意公司提供工具帮他们减负，简化他们的工作，好让他们只专注于创意这一块。通过我们的技术和工具，他们可以轻而易举地按需添加删减创意内容，只需我们的一串代码，他们就能完成所有的繁琐工作。对于媒体来说，我们会给媒体提供工具简便地缩放广告尺寸，这样他们就无需花时间和精力请专门人员去调整大小，媒体只需专注于怎么把流量变现就好而不用花很大精力去攻创意。我们就是一个中间商介于广告主、代理和媒体之间，简化媒体工作同时又赋予创意公司对自己创意的控制力。另外，我们也一直致力于引导创意公司将创意点子和高新科技融合，这样，他们会变得更加思想开明，产生内容更加精彩的广告，带来更好的效果。

Adx：我看到MediaMind官网上有个“creative zone”，是起什么作用的？

Dean：其实创意是可以分享的，我们都是在相互借鉴和学习中成长的。我们creative zone里面的各种示例（show case）可以让创意公司和广告主看到哪些是可以付诸实现的。里面还有我们MediaMind的block【注：MediaMind Block是一个独立的安装包，里面包含了现成编好的广告样本模型和使用规范，这样创意公司制作创意时不用一切从头开始】供下载。所有我们分享的经验可以让创意公司很快掌握新的技术，提高效率。我们简化了原本复杂工作，好让他们专注于好的创意。此外，我们跟创意公司之间也很开诚布公，他们会跟我们分享一些新鲜的点子，我们也会帮着优化这些点子，大家一起不断进步，达到一个更高的层次。

【未完待续】

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Adx: We are happy to see that you-MediaMind has successfully run a couple of ad serving projects with local publishers which are willing to follow the IAB standards. And also from your presentation, we know that MediaMind have worked with PPTV to push VAST in China. That is a huge breakthrough.

Dean: Yes, absolutely. China shows great potential and faces great changes. That’s why we are here. China’s publishers need to embrace that kind of changes. Unless they take this turning point， they are going to face limited options in the future.

Adx: Yes, that’s true. So do you have any experience in other countries being through periods resembling to China Market and what kind of problems did you encounter at that time?

Dean: Well, actually the entire online advertising industry has been through this stage of standardization. Publishers first built websites and afterwards they thought about doing advertising to make money. They built up their own working model from then. This happened in the western countries too. But obviously for scalability reason and in order to make things easier for agencies and the advertising industry, there needs to be some rules and standards. Therefore, we have the IAB which is the turning point for online advertising because before that everybody did their own thing. The problem was no agency and advertiser would work with one exclusive partner. So if each partner has different rules, it would make the whole industry complicated, leading to bad creativity. And bad creativity led to bad results. Then publishers had to fake results to make them look good and ended up in this crazy spiral. China has got itself in that spiral and has been in that spiral for many years. The western industry realized that thinking long time ago and worked together to help them get out of that spiral. And what happened is that we have much better creativity, much better consumer interaction and much better results.

Adx: Yeah, I agree. Actually nowadays Chinese publishers are facing a lot of problems. Putting aside video sites, many digital publishers out there has come to the bottleneck of selling out inventories. They cannot increase their revenue anymore. So you show up at the right time. Can you talk about a little bit of your cooperation with creative agencies and your technology something like that?

Dean: Sure. Our business consists of two key components: one is about scalability. From the scalability point of view, you know that one person can’t do everything. For creative agencies, we give them better tools to simplify their work, helping them to focus on creativity. With our technology and tools, creative agencies can easily change video, social media, a map or other content within their banners. For publishers, we provide them with tools to scale the advertising, sparing them from manually changing ads sizes. Therefore they can focus on how to make more money by selling their inventory rather than invest heavily in creativity. We work as a middle person that takes away all the complexity from publishers and give creative agencies control of their creativity. The other thing we do is that we show creative agencies how creativity and technology can work together. We help them to really push their ideas and technology forward. And eventually they can be more open-minded and come up with more creative things and bring better results.

Adx: I saw there is a creative zone on your website. What’s that for?

Dean: Well, creativity is good for sharing. We all borrow ideas and learn ideas from each other. The show cases in our creative zone can tell creative agencies what could be done. And also we build MediaMind blocks which are standalone packages of ready-made code with sample ads and documentation so they don’t have to start everything from scratch. All these experiences that we share help creative agencies adapt easily to new technology and speeds up their production process. Again we just want to take away the complexity, making them focus only on creativity. Also, we have very open conversations with creative agencies and work with them to push boundaries and bring our technologies and their ideas to a higher level.

【To be continued】