Q&A - Index Exchange Regional MD for Northern, Central & Eastern Europe Stéphane Printz on its new partnership with Netric, What it Means for Nordic Publishers, Brands & Agencies

As recently announced, Netric has entered into an exclusive strategic partnership with Index Exchange across a total of eight markets in the Nordics and Baltics.

To help our clients understand better the reasons for this move, and to get to know this leading player in programmatic trading, we spoke to both to Index’s Regional MD for Northern, Central & Eastern Europe Stéphane Printz & Netric CEO Daniel Ahlbert - read on for the full interview:

For those in the region who don’t know Index Exchange already, could you give us some background on the company and its presence across the globe?

Stéphane Printz, Index Exchange: Index Exchange is one of the world’s largest independent global ad exchanges, and is continuing to grow. Our focus is on ensuring we can be the most efficient ad marketplace for media owners to monetize their content and marketers to deliver relevant ad experiences on any screen, through any ad format. 

As a company, we’re not strangers to change and adaptation. In the two decades since our inception, we’ve helped pioneer header bidding, introduced entirely new data standards, and created new opportunities for addressability in programmatic campaigns. Today, we’re bringing the same efficiency and scale that we’ve long been known for to new formats and channels like connected TV, mobile, native, and more. 

Our priority has always been and will continue to be building a safe and transparent marketplace that provides a trusted experience for consumers. With employees in 17 locations around the globe, we also believe in a local approach that has global reach for our partners.

Daniel Ahlbert, Netric: From a Netric perspective, we are very excited about this partnership and bringing the Netric offering to the next level. One core aspect of the collaboration is that it will allow us to develop improved and more direct partnerships with agencies and brands locally.

For years, we have seen that buy and sell side work best when they work hand in hand. And our aim is to spur that process with closer, more local presence across both technology and support – all to mutual benefit.

Second, we want to continue offering high quality tech to publishers in the Nordics: Index offers a great core product for mature and standardised formats like display and online video. But it is also paving the way forward when it comes to emerging formats like CTV and DOOH.

What would you say are the main opportunities across the Nordic markets over the next year or two?

SP: Beyond the introduction to new formats that we are seeing across all global markets at the moment (video, for example), I think the largest opportunity for the Nordics at the moment is to highlight how sophisticated the region is - and how the ecosystem is embracing innovations in order to scale the power of programmatic.

DA: We see a huge potential for growth in the coming years. Some programmatic formats are already well established and I believe growth will come especially from close collaboration between tech and commercial teams – and the evolution of first party data, leaning into data-based decisioning and exploring new metrics. With both the Index and LiveWrapped offerings, we will be able to set publishers up to easily access data and insights they can act  upon.

Ad tech is obviously a highly competitive market, with many players. How does Index’s technology stack up, and what unique products or features does it have to offer publishers?

SP: As a company, we are dedicated to building a safe and transparent omnichannel marketplace that provides a trusted experience for consumers. 

Innovation is at the core of who we are as a company, and we are dedicated to it. 

As an engineering-first company, we build to advance the industry  - all of that to ensure transparency within the industry stays the number one priority for all partners. 

Transparency is also a core differentiator for us. We believe transparency into fees should be table-stakes in our industry. We provide our partners and customers with industry-leading reporting practices, giving buyers visibility into where their advertising spend is going, ultimately driving more spend to publishers.

DA: Index is one of the world’s largest ad tech platforms. Scale of course carries weight in terms of building a very functional product roadmap, building that in a very efficient and well lit marketplace. It will be beneficial for both buyers and sellers to have access to alternatives to all big tech solutions.

Prebid has seen wide adoption by Nordic publishers - with the philosophy of open source transparency an important factor in this. What is Index’s relationship with Prebid, and what is its specific approach to header bidding?

SP: Index is a leading member of Prebid.org and we are active participants in many of their working groups. We also actively support our publisher partners who chose to use Prebid. 

Index also helped evangelise header bidding in ad tech's earliest days.

DA: Prebid has for a long time - and will continue to be - at the core of what’s happening in the programmatic space. As a completely open source solution, it meets the needs for transparency. And the fact that it is community driven by the industry itself ensures it matches market needs. 

For the last couple of years, we have seen a larger responsibility put on Prebid with more and more features being integrated, like Schain, ID modules, Prebid floors etc. This means that engagement with it becomes even more important, and it's great to see Index’ strong contribution to it. In short, what Index is doing here chimes perfectly with our own philosophy.