AppNexus Killed Off Twixt Because Agencies Weren’t Into It
Summary
“The level of investment that would have been required to drive penetration, particularly on the buy side, would have been extravagantly expensive,” said Andy Atherton, the exec who lead the team of 25 devoted to Twixt. Originally, AppNexus tried to deploy the product via a freemium approach, Atherton said, betting that media planners would start using the free enterprise software. Widespread adoption would eventually force agencies to upgrade to the paid enterprise version. AppNexus isn’t the first to face difficulties selling tech to agencies, or to try to switch business models in an attempt to pick up sales. To name one public example, albeit on a much larger scale: Turn tried and failed to switch to a SaaS model for its DSP earlier this year.