• by Tyler Loechner  @mp_tyler, April 24, 2014

Taykey on Thursday announced the launch of the “Real-Time Advertising Academy,” a program meant to help brands and agencies tread the waters of real-time advertising.

The “academy” includes a “Fellowship program.” Fellows are experienced media buyers or agency execs that will help guide the “academy’s” content, though most of the content will be provided by Taykey.

Taykey has created five courses for the program: intro, planning, creative, media and insights.

RTM Daily asked Taykey CEO Amit Avner a few questions about the program, including what constitutes “real-time advertising,” what kind of interest the program has drawn and why the company felt the need to launch it in the first place.

RTM Daily: Can you define “real-time advertising” as it pertains to the program?

Amit Avner: Real-time advertising tracks the trends that an audience is following at any given moment and allows advertisers to better target their advertising against those trends. As a result, advertisers can become more agile in that they can capitalize on the events and conversations that no media plan is able to pre-plan for, on an ongoing basis.

RTMD: Is interest in the program coming mostly from brands or agencies?

Avner: We’ve had fairly equal interest from brands and agencies, actually.

For brands, the value is in understanding how digital campaigns can better support their branding goals, including what can be done during large tent pole events to support ongoing marketing efforts, how their message is received by various interest groups and what creative resonates most with their target audience.

Agencies will see many of the same benefits, as well as gain the opportunity to better serve existing clients and compete more effectively for new business.

RTMD: Who are some of the initial participants?

Avner: Executives from General Electric and Digitas are already participating in the Real-Time Advertising Academy as Fellows.

RTMD: What led you to launch the program in the first place? Any specific catalyst?

Avner: Real-time advertising is a revolutionary new capability that is helping brands and agencies increase campaign performance and generate insight into audiences never before possible.

However, few marketers and advertisers truly understand clearly how real-time advertising processes and technology work. The Academy was launched to share best practices … in order to address this education gap and bring the benefits of real-time to more brands and agencies.