Telefonica’s Axonix launches ‘white label’ challenge to agency-owned ad exchanges

Axonix, a company backed by Telefonica and Blackstone’s GSO Capital Partners (so big, presumably) is launching what it claims is the first ‘white label’ ad exchange. White label meaning that publishers others can set up their own self-branded programmatic trading environment.

The Axonix White Label Ad Exchange claims that: “by creating a secure, transparent and privacy-friendly marketplace, partner organisations gain total control over how their ad inventory and data are traded, enabling them to extract maximum value.”

Axonix launched in April 2014 as the first mobile advertising exchange to be owned and powered by a mobile network operator. It now serves billions of ads from publishers globally on its mobile trading platform. Now it’s offering its business partners their own exchanges.

This looks like a direct challenge to Facebook and Google and the big agency-owned ad exchanges. Axonix says that publishers will now be able to retain the “large (and often) hidden margins made by ad networks or third party exchanges.”

Axonix CEO Simon Birkenhead (left) says: “The Axonix White Label Ad Exchange really is a ground-breaking new proposition – empowering publishers, ad networks and mobile operators to retain the maximum value from their inventory and data by operating their own programmatic marketplace.

“Our goal is to transfer the trading power back to the supply-side. A White Label Exchange equips publishers and networks with total control over how their inventory and data is represented programmatically through their own brand, eliminating the hidden margins retained by sales partners and maximising data security. Axonix will provide this solution through Platform-as-a-Service agreements, minimising up-front costs and engineering time.”