What a Publisher Development Manager Does

What is it like being a Publisher Development Account Manager?

A digital publisher development manager is a position that is in high demand for prospects new to the industry as well as experienced online advertising professionals. The driving force for the growth and need for this role in many digital media companies is correlated with the trend of programmatic advertising growing and the predicted future growth.

Ad Networks and Media companies recognize the importance of aggregating and optimizing multiple tiers of inventory and recruit professionals with any digital media experience for this position with competitive comp plans.

What a publisher development manager does

Publisher Development Manager overview

A Publisher Development Manager typically is a middlemen between the publisher sales group and the publisher. An IO is put in front of them and their job is to build the account, set up payment rules, placements, campaigns, demand sources, yield management floors and send tags and UI login credentials to the publisher.

Once an account goes live they generally oversee CPM optimization and make sure the ad quality is up to far by the publisher standards. They are required to have great communication schools and understand cultural differences in language as they may deal with clients from all over the world who interpret emails and phone calls differently then what you may think.





 How Does a Publisher Development Manager Optimize their Pubs?

All ad networks have their own “secret sauce” used to generate the highest CPM for a publisher’s inventory. There are many theories and strategies on how to achieve the highest CPM using multiple creative and ad sources. The reality is that most companies have similar technology stacks, such as AppNexus, but their knowledge, experience, relationships with demand partners and attention to detail and margin goals are the ingredients for the eCPM that the publisher will see in the end of the day. A little bit of luck is always thrown into the mix with fingers crossed for conversions on CPA campaigns.

In general, a Publisher Development Manager is most successful when they keep a close line of communication with the publisher and inform the client of where the network is seeing performance on and what placements can be scaled up while simultaneously renegotiating unprofitable buys and educating the publisher on how their inventory is performing in the programmatic marketplace.

The formula for success is consistently generating high CPM’s for your publishers so they are happy, send you more volume and allow you to monetize all tiers of their inventory at scale. Successful publishers refer the manager to their other friends who own websites and a ripple effect can occur bringing in tons of new business.