Adam Broitman, Founder and Ringleader, circ.us served as moderator to panelists Bant Breen, President Initiative Worldwide President; Paran Johar, JumpTap CMO; Andy Monfried, Lotame CEO, Rob Gorrie,  Adcentricity President, and Chris Riggs, Imirus CEO.The Challenges seen from the perspective of the Panel:

1.     Terms – what is data; what is context; what is social?  How can we build the next generation ad network that integrates different channels if are minds are not in agreement on the channels available.  The panel suggests there needs to be scale and commodity brings scale. Common terms are crucial to creating commodity.

2.     Understanding what an agency is - what is the difference between Organic, Digitas, Ogilvy, Modem Media, and Razorfish?  Digital and Modem Media are part of Publicis; what does this mean?  Do the agencies within the same family work closely together?  Not necessarily.  They can compete for the same client budgets.  So, who does an ad network pitch?  Who owns the client… or who most owns the client?  Does a traditional advertising shop run the family politically and from a client perspective?  If so, does this traditional agency value social networks and emerging media channels?

3.     Make sense of data points across channels – how do the agencies agree upon what the buckets of data that should be used to profile the audience/user?  How about publishers, are they sharing the same view point for ad networks, and are exchanges in agreement with ad networks?

4.     Brands have data on their customers-how do agencies and networks work together to touch the brand customer to get access to the data without overwhelming the brands?

5.     Saying no to Yahoo! and Google– how will agencies evolve their technology and concept of purpose to be in a position where search engines bend to the agency needs? This is a 180 degree turn from today.  It was suggested that brands will become more sophisticated in technology and CRM solutions, they will supply this data to their agencies who will then work together to tell publishers what will be purchased …and they will be offer to pay more to get what they want.  Perhaps they will by-pass the search engines because they have better data funneled from the brand client.