TrafficStars’ Rémi St-Maur says that it’s important to stay focused and ready for change in the world of online advertising.
“It’s all about having an intuitive sense for the changes and crises that may arise around you,” said St-Maur, the ad network’s chief business development officer, who also is a partner at the two-year-old company.
We offer all the necessary features to reach the most-targeted audience possible, such as geo-targeting, language, niche, device, carrier (including IP-range targeting), site and ad spot.
St-Maur is a veteran of the online ad space who genuinely strives to make sure clients benefit from an optimized experience with TrafficStars’ proprietary technology and its huge network.
And this year should be a special one for TrafficStars. New things are coming around the bend for the self-serve proprietary ad network in 2017.
St-Maur told XBIZ in this Executive Seat interview that the company soon will launch TrafficStars to allow many more publishers start monetizing their traffic with the network.
The ad network also is pushing hard on the development of a powerful retargeting technology and plans on carrying strong aggregating RTB partners to beef up the ad exchange to make it one of the biggest.
XBIZ: What exactly do you do at TrafficStars?
St-Maur: I’ve worked with the biggest publishing and advertising companies in the world prior to joining TrafficStars, where I’ve led business development successfully for the past two years through the creation of TrafficStars. I have more than eight years of experience in the online advertising industry.
XBIZ: What sets TrafficStars apart from the competition?
St-Maur: TrafficStars found an avant-garde way to compete, staying focused on what matters most to our clients and never losing sight of how service can make a difference in the digital marketplace.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities that others may overlook, and we seek to discover new opportunities and always stay one step ahead of our competitors by continually testing different methods to get the right formula.
It’s all about having an intuitive sense for the changes and crises that may arise around you. We just stay focused and don’t get disturbed by the white noise.
XBIZ: Let’s hear about TrafficStars proprietary technology. What are some of TrafficStars’ key targeting features that help clients reach greater conversions?
St-Maur: TrafficStars is actually the first adult ad network to be OpenRTB compliant (the OpenRTB project was developed to spur growth in the real-time bidding advertising marketplace by providing open industry standards for communication between buyers of advertising and sellers of publisher inventory).
We’ve been integrating DSPs and SSPs for banner and popunder inventory for several months already (where DSPs are used by marketers to buy ad impressions from exchanges as cheaply and as efficiently as possible, SSPs are designed by publishers to do the opposite: to maximize the prices their impressions sell at).
We offer all the necessary features to reach the most-targeted audience possible, such as geo-targeting, language, niche, device, carrier (including IP-range targeting), site and ad spot. Good targeting is one thing. But we also provide a robust tracking API, granular stats, day parting and split-testing capabilities.
We actually just launched the dynamic CPM option, which allows advertisers to get the best price possible for each single impression.
XBIZ: What’s coming up for TrafficStars this year?
St-Maur: Our exponential growth made us realize that we need to look at what technology enables us to do. To be clear, the endgame is all about optimizing the advertising experience, rather than making the buying process better.
It’s not about us, but about our advertisers and our publishers who benefit from our technology and our large network.
We’re focusing on the launch of TrafficStars for publishers. We’ve been working with a handful of trusted publishers and the results have been very positive. We feel confident that it’s the right time to allow many more publishers to start monetizing their traffic with us.
We also work hard on the development of a powerful retargeting technology to offer even more powerful solutions to advertisers. Last but not least, we’ll carry aggregating strong RTB partners to make TrafficStars the biggest adult ad exchange.
XBIZ: How important is it to attend and be active at online adult trade shows?
St-Maur: Networking is a major key factor in our industry. You need to grow your network to establish some good business relationships.
The shows are the perfect occasion to meet with your affiliate account managers and ask them for some leads about their platforms and new traffic sources.
You will also meet with people who are media buyers, you can exchange tips and tricks that you can’t read in books or blogs. It’s also a good way to learn some new stuff by going to the conferences and meet with the speakers and other service providers. I’ve been doing panels for the past two years, and I’ve met with awesome people that turned out to be real good friends now.
One sentence that my mentor gave when i started to go to those shows: Build trust with your networks.
XBIZ: For you, what’s a typical work day like?
St-Maur: There’s no such thing as a “typical” day.
My work style is extremely flexible. It all depends on my schedule and the workload of different projects that I manage. I’ve traveled a lot in the past two years to promote TrafficStars, so when I’m back at the office I do the most important task — follow ups!
These days, I’m currently working on opening our new office in Montreal, which will be the third office for TrafficStars.
I’m doing a lot of paperwork and interviews to hire the right account managers, compliance managers and support staff to handle North American and Latin America, which are two massive markets for us.
XBIZ: When not thinking about the biz, what do you like to do?
St-Maur: Enjoying quality family dinners. I take the time to read a good books. And I like jogging on the Mont Royal Mountain in Montreal or along the beach in Barcelona. I like to drink good red Italian or French wine surrounded with friends. And I like to travel to countries that I’ve never been to.