How Publishers Can Stay Ahead of the Ad Tech Curve

How Publishers Can Stay Ahead of the Ad Tech Curve

How Publishers Stay Ahead of the Ad Tech Curve?

Today’s Guest Post is by Automatad

Are you a publisher that is staying ahead of the ad tech curve? Ad tech is one of the complex and ever-evolving industries. With myriads of intermediaries, fraudsters, and technically overloaded ecosystem, we can say it’s a dream for publishers to lead the race.

As a publisher, it isn’t your fault. You are here to uncover inspiring stories, groundbreaking facts, and inform the people. However, it doesn’t mean you can just ignore everything else, especially, programmatic advertising which has become the major source of revenue for publishers. For instance, The New York Times raked in $49 million in Q3 last year, only with the aid of digital advertising.

You may find it difficult to succeed in the era of duopoly, but there’s always a way out. Here’s how you can stay ahead of the curve and crush your programmatic revenue goals.

It’s all about user relationship

Don’t wait for the IAB consortiums to standardize a metric. Look how can you improve your credibility and value by assessing and coming up with advertiser-attractive metrics.

Take Engaged View Rate (EVR) for example. Hearst UK, a London-based media company came up with a new metric called ‘EVR’ to woo advertisers. It helps buyers to know how long a user has been engaging with the branded content and how much they’ve scrolled through.

It isn’t enough to diversify the revenue models; it is necessary to attract buyers with the new promising metrics. Last year, Bloomberg reportedly partnered with a third-party to offer more metrics for its branded contents. Vice followed the same.

Agreed, not everyone can use the same metric. So, it ultimately depends on your relationship with users. Analyze what they like, how long they stay, how they engage, etc. Then, try to come up with a suitable metric which has market value.





Partnering with the right demand

There’s a huge misconception around the digital advertising space. When you partner with a major exchange, your job is done.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it doesn’t end there.

Not all the big shots are right for you. In our blog, we always advise there’s no one-size-fits-all solution in the ad tech industry.

After all, look what happened to defy media publishers. A 350-headcount company dropped its ad network without paying the publishers in the network. So, ruthlessly assess before handing over your inventories to anyone.  

If you partner with the right exchanges and networks, they’ll take you further by allowing you to adopt industry standards and technologies. Besides, it has an added advantage – Cutting down the bad players out of your chain means you’re improving the trust of the advertisers.


Going beyond the ‘necessary’

It is not enough to provide what everyone else does. Then, you’ll look moreover the same to the buyers. Go beyond the basics and offer the best.

For instance, you can refresh ads using the DFP, but DFP’s refreshing metrics are not flexible and advertisers aren’t impressed by it. In case you didn’t know, ad refresh rate affects viewability and CPMs too.

What can you do?

Try to implement a solution to refresh ads based on engagement and user activity rather than the standard time interval.

This has proved to be effective for both advertisers and publishers. As ads are only refreshed when certain conditions are satisfied, advertisers are willing to pay higher prices for the same impressions.

Experiment

As we said before, your users and your methodology are far more important than the other publishers’ billion-dollar programmatic strategy.

For instance, Havas Media turned towards the traditional style for the last two years and increased its revenue by 30%.

What did they do?

They stopped flocking towards data over and over. Instead, they focused on other aspects of the business.   

Similarly, you might be continuously running towards a solution/strategy like most of the others in the market. It’s time to retrospect. Identify where you’re strong and start focusing on that area. Bring in demands with the right promises and transparent partnerships.  

Be Independent

The duopoly (Google and Facebook) accounts for 84 percent of the total digital ad spending, excluding China. The worst part is, they aren’t responsible for the any of the content. You are. They run ads on you.

Granted. As a publisher, you might need to partner with firms like Google to access more demand, but it is advised to limit them as much as possible.

We need a different approach to tackle the duopoly. Header Bidding, an advanced programmatic hack is one of the ways to minimize your reliance on Google. Furthermore, there are accountable, and obviously, more transparent ad servers available in the market. Theis tactic will help you stay ahead of the ad tech curve

Of course, we aren’t asking you to cut off the duopoly completely from your digital monetization strategy. Use them wisely and embrace technologies like header bidding.

At Automatad, we’ve worked with 100+ publishers across the globe and have seen an uplift of up to 60% on some occasions. We firmly believe publishers can improve their yield, even with all the issues and data scandals. Keep learning, keep experimenting, and keep growing.

Company bio:

Automatad Inc.

Automatad, Inc. is a digital media products Co, that provides a suite of programmatic monetization solutions that drives efficiency and superior monetization at scale. Using our platform digital publishers can create, monetize and optimize for the best ad experience. For more info, reach us at automatad.com.