AdExchanger.com: Generally speaking, what is your view on the impact of the acquisition on the ad ecosystem, and publishers specifically?

RAJEEV GOEL: An acquisition of this magnitude reaffirms the strength of the online advertising industry and, more specifically, the need for publisher-focused innovation. This deal speaks to the importance and value of publisher-focused solutions. This is clear if we look at the magnitude of exits on the demand side of the ecosystem, for example, which have been much smaller.

Over the past several years, PubMatic has evolved from a technology centric ad network optimizer into a full Sell Side Platform (SSP), where the service and expert guidance we offer has become as important as our technical solutions. Our success over the past few has been built upon gaining the publisher’s trust. Publishers need a technology and service layer that works on their behalf to help them maximize their revenue and manage their brands online.

From what I’m hearing in the market and my first hand discussions with publishers, there is much more fear than excitement. Many publishers chose to work with Admeld or us not only because of superior technology and service, but also because we were not Google, we were independent. That has changed.

Google owns not only a DSP but also an ad server, an ad exchange, an ad network, and now an SSP. In addition, they are one of the largest media companies in the world with YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and a myriad of publishing properties.

Their vision, as I understand it, is to create an end-to-end monetization pipe for display advertising. They are doing this under the mantra of simplifying display for publishers and advertisers. However, if there’s one thing we know about Google from their success in search, it’s that the benefits of that approach are going to disproportionately flow to Google. There’s no vibrant ecosystem around search. Few publishers make money from search. There’s a reason why the LUMAscape for Display has 10 times as many logos as the LUMAscape for Search.

That’s why I have had a half-dozen major Admeld customers give me a call since the news broke on Thursday.  There is palpable fear out there and smart publishers know that Google’s idea of simplification may just simplify the publisher out of business.

Like hundreds of other intelligent, innovative companies out there, PubMatic is working hard to preserve the success and viability of the ecosystem.

Is this good or bad news for PubMatic?

I see this development as very positive for PubMatic for a variety of reasons.

We are the only major Sell Side Platform that is 100% customer focused and is not distracted by an integration or regulatory process. Google/Admeld is going to face an extremely lengthy regulatory review and integration timeline. DoubleClick took nearly a year of antitrust review; AdMob took 6 months of antitrust review; ITA took over a year. Admeld will easily take several quarters. After that, the real work of integration begins.

In contrast, we have nearly doubled our development team since the beginning of this year to almost 100 people focused on developing publisher solutions, while our services team continues to grow at a very rapid pace. We are 100% focused on the customer day-in and day-out. Ultimately customers will decide who takes their interests to heart. We ship new features several times per week. And let’s not forgot who is generally pushing the industry forward – innovative startups.

Second, the transaction price sends a clear signal to the market for the value of display technology, particularly publisher-focused display technology. There is a real premium being paid here for access to premium publisher inventory at scale.

Third, any major player in the display advertising ecosystem that has a content-focused strategy is going to require a strategy and platform that allows for programmatic management and selling of that inventory. That’s a reality of the supply and demand dynamics of the industry. This deal points to the importance of the SSP capability set in really driving monetization and control for that inventory. Historically the focus for SSPs has been on the lowest value inventory – unsold or remnant. In the last year, however, the focus has shifted to premium inventory via new solutions such as private marketplaces , giving complete control back to the publisher. As a result, the value that we can bring as an SSP to these players will only increase by several multiples. And all of this improvement drops straight to the publisher’s bottom line.

Most importantly, we are the only independent SSP being considered by big publishers that has no inherent conflict of interest, and that stands clearly for all publishes to see.

In sum, it’s a great time for PubMatic, and we’re more motivated than ever to show publishers why we’re their best partner.

Private exchanges/Private Marketplaces for large publishers have been an important part of AdMeld’s strategy.  How does PubMatic approach it?

PubMatic’s Private Marketplaces provide the transparency and control layers that publishers have been lacking for several years. What makes Private Marketplaces unique is the ability for publishers to sell RTB campaigns through their direct sales force. This is all about publishers retaking control of their ad space and selling on their terms. And in that respect, how can Google/Admeld possibly pretend that there are no conflicts of interest between Google’s direct sales force (which is massive) and that of the publisher’s? Google will be sitting in the lobby of the exact same brand or agency, trying to out-muscle the publisher’s sales force, so that Google can capture the same campaign dollar. This flies in the face of the control that Private Marketplaces are intended to deliver to the publisher.

PubMatic’s approach to Private Marketplaces will remain the same as it has been for the better part of a year – consult with our publisher clients to see if Private Marketplaces are right for them. After careful consideration they can decide if they want to sell RTB campaigns completely on their own, partially on their own, or if they want PubMatic to continue to manage all aspects of their RTB campaigns. And if they are ready to sell RTB campaigns on their own, we will give them expert guidance – without conflict.

Today we’re very excited to announce the acquisition of ReviNet and welcome them to the PubMatic team.  They’re a company that we have great respect for with their very impressive reputation for impeccable service – which is why they can boast a 95% retention rate from their customers.  With the ReviNet team as part of PubMatic, their publishers will continue to get the white glove service they’ve always had and now they will be able to take advantage of PubMatic’s full suite of technology, including a robust RTB platform, brand control products to make sure they have full control over the ads that run on their site, and audience solutions.

ReviNet brings 57 premium publishers, focused heavily on the News vertical, to join the hundreds of premium publishers already using our Sell Side Platform to increase their revenue now and for the long term.

Today, with 200 employees, PubMatic reaches 218 million unique U.S. users, or 95% of U.S. Internet population.

Last week we announced that PubMatic will be opening up offices throughout Europe, giving our publishers direct access to our technology and 60+ service team.

With our VP of International Gianluca Carrera, an online publishing veteran, leading the international expansion efforts, we intend on having a much greater presence in Europe to offer European publishers the technology and service our U.S. based publishers have had since our start.

Our platform is already widely adopted in Europe and our global reach is 400 million unique users.

Last year at our annual premium publisher conference, Ad Revenue 2010, we stated with confidence that online advertising is on the brink of a seller’s market.  We’re going to continue to grow to ensure that publishers across the globe can benefit from our publisher focused innovation and service, giving them the advantage to sell advertising on their terms.

So what’s the difference if our technology is already widely being used in Europe and we’re integrated with the all the major international DSPs and have relationships with all the major international ad networks?

#1:  Many European publishers currently using our technology haven’t yet accessed our full suite of revenue increasing technology, ad quality control, and audience data protection products that our U.S. based publishers are using.  That includes our recently launched Audience Direct product, which allows publishers to access 3^rd party audience targeting data from multiple data providers through our platform so publishers’ direct sales teams can sell audience campaigns directly.  It also includes RTB insights that give publishers robust campaign details and transparency.

#2:  The service is now offered directly from PubMatic’s publishing industry veterans, and we take our service seriously. We’ve got a service team of over 60 that give our publishers white glove service around the clock, and we’re expanding that number rapidly.  In fact, we just appointed online publishing veteran, Gianluca Carrera, to lead our international publisher sales and business operations from our European headquarters in London.

Gianluca brings a unique skill set as a result of having founded the first pan-European sponsored search engine, and having held senior positions at Overture Europe and Yahoo Europe, where he was VP Operational Strategy.  Check out the official release here.

#3:  We’re innovation trailblazers and have a product development roadmap that will always enable European publishers to take advantage of the latest advertiser demands. We’ve developed a lot of cutting-edge and first-to-market technology over the years, but we’ve only just begun.  U.K. and Europe advertisers have been leveraging RTB more rapidly than ever and their needs will continue to evolve, as a result publishers that are ready for change early on will be best suited to capture the greatest amount of online advertising spend, including setting up private marketplaces for Europe.  With over 75 engineers and product developers, we are experts in helping publishers sell advertising better.

We’re excited to offer our technology and service directly in Europe, so if you want more information about our European expansion or how we can help you, please feel free to contact our Managing Director of Europe, Gianlcua.Carrera@PubMatic.com

See Ad Revenue 2010 photos here.

Randall Rothenberg started off the event with a provocative session focused on brand advertising for online publishers. Q & A followed his session, and the crowd was engaged. It could have gone on much longer if we didn’t have such a packed schedule.

Rajeev Goel, our CEO, focused on the importance of publishers having a balance between selling audience targeted campaigns through both direct and indirect sales channels. Additionally, he pointed out the 5 most important ad revenue opportunities for publishers for 2011, which can be found in the Ad Revenue 2010 Report.  The Ad Revenue 2010 Report was handed out to conference attendees and will also be available for download starting next Monday, October 18th.

David Moore never disappoints, as anyone who has seen him speak knows. His panel at Ad Revenue 2010 was no exception. He opened up the panel by asking what the definition of a premium publisher is, and followed by asking the panelists about whether or not programmatic ad buying is good or bad for premium publishers. The panel was evenly split between two publishers – Ian Wallin of TV Guide, and Chris Stevens of Orbitz – and two programmatic ad buyers – Nathan Woodman of Adnetik, and Matt Greitzer of Accordant Media.

Bruce Journey of DataXu, Ari Buchalter of MediaMath, Maureen Little of Turn, and Eric Simon of [x+1], pulled together to make the most compelling case yet for RTB. The first study of its kind, four DSPs tracked how RTB works for advertisers across multiple advertising channels vs. other types of targeting; meanwhile PubMatic tracked how the revenue lift for publishers that participated in those campaigns that the DSPs tracked.  Jeanne Houweling of PubMatic moderated the panel.

Doug Weaver was a true professional with an unusually quick wit that kept the audience engaged for his panel. He took on the issue of publisher audience tracking by 3rd parties head on and made it entertaining. Weaver gave the conference attendees a comprehensive, real-world, example of how rampant audience tracking is. At the end of the panel, Denise Colella of Audience Science, Bennett Zucker of Ziff Davis, Peter Naylor of NBC Universal, and Scott Meyer of Better Advertising were shown a slide with the U.S. Homeland Security threat level rankings and were then asked what threat level they believed the data leakage and data tracking problem is.

Jeff Jarvis jumped right into questioning his panelists – Andy Jacobson of Gannett Digital, Jeremy Helfand of United Online Media Group, Kyoo Kim of MSNBC and Mark Josephson of outside.in – about how publishers should evolve their business models in order to stay profitable. Before long, Jarvis took the microphone and headed into the audience to get questions and comments from attendees on the subject, keeping the panel fast paced and dynamic.

Terence Kawaja rounded out the event in true Kawaja style, pushing PowerPoint to its limits by embedding numerous clips of audio, video, and just about everything else a deck can handle without it breaking. It is a good thing his presentation was right before happy hour, because his honest, and well-developed, explanation of the over-crowded ecosystem was all too sobering for certain sectors in the online advertising space. He closed the presentation with a humorous “commercial” for his new company, LUMA Partners, and teed up Happy Hour, which was sponsored by AudienceScience.

The PubMatic team is very grateful to everyone that helped make this day both informative and entertaining. For those that couldn’t attend, you can email us directly [events @ pubmatic] for a hard copy of the Ad Revenue 2010 Report, or you can download a copy from our website next Monday, October 18th.

Last week one of the world’s biggest publishing companies for both online and print, Conde Nast, announced a major shift in focus — one that is squarely directed at reducing the company’s dependency on advertising dollars, which currently account for 70% of its margins. According to the New York Times, Conde Nast’s CEO, Charles Townsend, stated, “We have been so overly dependent on advertising as the turbine that runs this place, and that is a very, very, risky model as we emerge from the recession.”

Conde Nast’s point of view isn’t at all unique among the world’s largest publishers, nor is it unreasonable for them to want a more balanced revenue strategy. However, moving away from a heavy reliance on advertising dollars to greater dependence on selling content to consumers is an even riskier model. Publishers looking to charge consumers for (or more for) their content are making two bold and unproven assumptions:

Assumption No. 1: Consumers are loyal enough to your brand to overcome their desire to consume free, or highly subsidized, content.

Among Mr. Townsend’s quotes was that “people pay $180 per month for a cable bill,” which gives him some confidence that people would pay for Conde Nast content. It is impossible to ignore the glaring differences between Conde Nast and a cable company, including that cable companies have geographic monopolies, own the connection to the home, and although people generally disdain them, cable delivers hundreds of channels of content and often the home’s broadband connection. Even if Conde Nast could somehow bundle all of its offline and online content into a single offering (there is a rumor that they will try to organize all of their online audiences into an ad network), it would pale by comparison to even the smallest cable company.

Assumption No. 2: Advertising prices are going to continue to free-fall.
In contrast to consumers not wanting to pay for content, advertisers are keenly aware that they have to pay for advertising. But advertisers don’t often have the loyalty to publishers that the publishers wish they did. The days of “Mad Men” are over; we are in the age of Math Men. At the end of the day, advertisers need to see significant return on investment for their ad dollars. And advertisers will pay more, and are right doing so today, for placement with proven return on investment. This trend of higher-priced ads from publishers with a track record of ROI for marketers will continue with the advancement of advertising targeting technology.

There is a lot of innovation in targeting, particularly in the online ad space, that is providing advertisers with better performing campaigns. Advertisers can target highly valuable audiences that large publishers — like Conde Nast — might have spent years attracting. Combined with the advent of more efficient ways of buying media, like Real Time Bidding, some publishers are seeing pricing for segments of their traffic increase by more than 90%.

Publishers that understand and master how to sell this growing demand of audience-based advertising will see their ad revenue go up significantly while retaining advertiser loyalty. No one is suggesting that advertising alone will cover Conde Nast’s online and offline content costs (which are high compared to many other media companies) but it argues that online can make a more significant revenue contribution than it has in the past and almost certainly higher than the risky move of asking their readers to pick up the slack.

There is no doubt that publishers should be thinking about new strategies to make sure that they can continue to grow and be profitable — but improved advertising needs to be their major focus. Major publishers which invest in the infrastructure that will allow them to sell audience-based advertising will be best positioned to capture the growing dollars associated with audience-based advertising. Large publishing companies in particular have an advantage to better monetize their advertising by leveraging the unique audience they spent years building in conjunction with their ubiquitous brands. If they lose that audience because of charging for content, they might do more damage to their revenue than good.

How we began

When we started PubMatic in 2006, we had a vision to focus on publishers.   That’s why “Pub” is in our name.  From day 1, publishers have been our primary customer.  There are a few reasons we focused on publishers.  First, we had considerable background in being publishers ourselves, at both small and big sites, and saw some of the frustrations in managing the business day to day.  In particular, at our start in 2006, ad networks were growing aggressively and we saw publishers struggling with the real-time nature of non-guaranteed inventory.  Traditional ad serving platforms were not built to address the issue of hundreds of ad networks and exchanges all bidding different amounts in real-time for each user and impression.

Second, we noticed that while online advertising was growing by leaps and bounds, and was getting more sophisticated, very few solutions and technologies had been developed in the last 10 years that were focused on publishers.  When we looked at most of the innovation happening in the online advertising industry it was focused on advertisers and capturing more ad dollars directly from the advertiser — new kinds of ad-support content platforms, new kind of networks, new kinds of targeting technologies, etc.  But every dollar that is spent by an advertiser ends up on a publisher.  We saw so much opportunity to help publishers be more productive, efficient, and increase their visibility into their own businesses.

Third, we believed that technology was a necessary enabler for helping publishers to be more successful.    Massive amounts of R&D were going into helping advertisers.  And we wanted to invest massive amounts of R&D into publishers.  We believed that massive amounts of R&D were necessary!  All of our founders have advanced degrees in science — at our core, we believe R&D will drive superior results for customers.

Thus, PubMatic was born.

Working with the comScore Top 10

We started by focusing where we heard publishers saying they needed the most help, the non-guaranteed real-time world of networks.  We innovated.  We developed PubMatic’s impression-level Ad Auction Engine^TM to optimize a publisher’s inventory in real-time across hundreds of networks. We developed a real-time bidding (RTB) platform that allows a network to bid in real-time for inventory that a publisher wants to expose.  We were the first to provide a global platform handling multiple currencies.  We were the first to expand to Europe.   We provide local service to publishers today in seven countries around the world.  This has resulted in the majority of the comScore Top 10 now using PubMatic.  We are, frankly, humbled by that, and use that to drive ourselves harder every day.

While working with the most premium publishers in the world, and as media buying continued to evolve, we saw other opportunities to improve ad monetization and management for our customers.  Publishers started asking us about helping them manage data, keeping their brands safe, using our technologies (today we process  1 terabyte – 1,000 gigabytes – per day to create our real-time predictions) to give them insight into what is happening in their business,  and helping them get better yields in their guaranteed (also referred to as “premium” or “direct”) business.   What we were doing helping publishers with networks and exchanges, really, just scratched the surface.   This has led us to the new PubMatic Premier, a revolutionary new solution to enable publishers to holistically manage their guaranteed and non-guaranteed businesses, utilize data more efficiently, and keep their brands safe.

Growing with the new rules of revenue

Online advertising is getting more complicated.  We hear this every day.  We see it every day.  Publishers’ businesses are growing aggressively.  Five years ago, there were only a few publishers that did in excess of $20M a year in the US.  Today, there are more than 100.  Sales teams are growing.  The types of solutions publishers sell are expanding quickly (e.g., display, video, mobile).  At the same time, marketers are getting more demanding and more savvy.  They are asking for better targeting, better results, better service, better everything…  Marketers have more options across all media channels than ever before.

As most industries mature, they come to use industry-specific tools that are purpose-built for them to help them manage their business. The best publishers in the world are looking for sophisticated solutions to navigate the new rules of revenue.  Excel and intuition alone may not be the best tools to understand the value of data, price inventory, predict inventory availability, see trends, etc. To just give you a brief example, publishers are looking for answers to questions like:

• Data: How can I get more data on my audiences and sell those audiences?
• Data Control: When I sell to an ad network, what data are they getting from me?
• Yield Analytics: What products/placements are driving the best yields, pricing, and overall monetization?
• Pricing: What does demand look like based on various product attributes (site, section, channel, ad size, audience segment, etc.)?
• Inventory: How can I forecast and sell specific audiences, not just placements?
• Inventory: Can I reduce the amount of time we spent in reworking orders due to under delivery?

Why PubMatic Is leading this effort

We believe that we have two outstanding competitive advantages in helping publishers:

1. Single-minded focus on publishers.  Publishers are our business; without them we have no business.  We work with ad networks, exchanges, data partners as well, and they are very important partners, but it all starts with the publisher.  Our business is focused on making publishers successful.  Every day we come to work thinking about how to make publishers more successful!  There is no doubt in our mind.
2. Largest technical team, with a history and dedication to innovation and problem-solving.  PubMatic created the ad revenue optimization category when we started the company in 2006 and launched before anyone at the TechCrunch50 conference in September 2007.  We believe that algorithms are important to the new world of revenue for publishers, and have invested and continue to invest in that.  Our product team of 40 with 30+ PhDs and Masters degrees, with a deep understanding of publishers, works hard to deliver innovative solutions. Our record of industry firsts and dedication to results bears out in that the majority of the comScore Top 10 uses PubMatic.

We believe focus, dedication, understanding, and innovation is the key to moving this industry forward for publishers. It’s easy to come out with press releases and trumpet new things, but delivering value to customers takes more than just talking about it.  It takes real work, and unrelenting commitment.  We have been doing this for almost four years, never losing sight of the fact that we work for publishers.

We will continue to innovate for the benefit of you, the publishers, and we are looking forward to playing our part in making you and the entire ecosystem more successful, each and every day.

By Rajeev Goel

In digital media, a new solution that promises a better mousetrap will typically draw two reactions from the industry. The ones who stand to benefit try to hype the trend, hoping to ride the wave. The old guards spread fear, uncertainty and doubt because the solution may eat at their market share.

Such is the case with real-time bidding, which became a very hot topic among online display advertising buyers and sellers in 2009, and is likely to dominate industry discussions in 2010.

Just 1 percent of all online display ads were bought on an RTB basis in 2009. That number will rise dramatically to 3 to 5 percent this year. Most of the conversation on the topic has centered on the benefits for advertisers and demand-side platforms. These entities are able to place a value on each unique ad impression, individually and in real time, using a judgment that takes into account proprietary data and technology. The result is better performing campaigns and greater advertiser ROI on those campaigns.

However, what are the benefits to impression sellers—the publishers? If buyers want real-time bidding, publishers should be thinking about real-time selling. There are some key areas to consider in real-time selling and their effect on the online publishing business model.

Revenue: There has been little, if any, publicly available data showing that publishers participating in RTB campaigns are seeing revenue lift. RTB is new and only a few companies have the infrastructure to facilitate those bids. In our early tests with select publishers and a dozen RTB buyers—roughly thousands of campaigns and billions of ad impressions—the impressions bought via RTB are monetized at CPM rates 60 percent (in some cases more) higher than impressions not monetized via RTB. This translates to better single impression value on inventory that is not sold by the direct sales force. The industry needs more volume to realize the overall sustained effectiveness for publishers with scale.

Brand control: The instantaneousness of RTB requires improvement on the granularity, timeliness and fidelity of publisher brand controls. Work flow must be set up to automatically update blocklists with new advertisers that can then be instantly communicated to RTB buyers in seconds or minutes rather than in months. Furthermore, the system allows for more premium buyers to get into the bidding game, willing to spend more for the right targeted customers.

User experience: Because RTB uses a range of contextual and audience targeting parameters in real time, the ad served is more precisely targeted, and therefore provides a better experience for the user. Additionally, because the number of times a user has seen an ad is taken into account, a wider variety of targeted ads are shown to avoid overexposure of a single brand. This can also mean more exposure to new advertisers for the publisher.

Reduced discrepancies, simplified ad operations: One of the biggest frustrations for publisher ad operations teams is dealing with discrepancies—ads priced differently from an agreed upon amount, ads not served where they are supposed to be, ads coming in through an ad network when it was originally blocked on another network. An RTB system allows publishers to know exactly where the ads come from and at what price. That cuts the amount of time spent on rectification hassles.

No ad network defaults equals speed: Frequently, when an ad network is called to show an ad, it either has none to show or chooses not to show one. This sets off a daisy-chain reaction where publishers rely on the next ad network among their partners to show an ad.

What amplifies this is that sometimes multiple ad networks default, which stresses the ad-serving system and slows the page load. The flexibility of RTB allows only the demand side to make a bid if they have an ad to show, thereby avoiding the page load issue.

Participating in RTB campaigns requires publishers to be connected to a platform that can facilitate real-time bidding. While this sounds like yet another complicated technology to learn, master and deploy, the good news here is that a growing number of ad networks, demand-side platforms and ad optimizers are doing the learning for the industry.

However, even if everyone else is already investing in this technology, it doesn’t mean publishers can stay on the sidelines. Real-time bidding is still in its infancy, but it is gaining momentum every day. Publishers can’t afford to stay on the sidelines and let somebody else figure it out.

Rajeev Goel is CEO, co-founder of PubMatic, which manages non-guaranteed ad avails for Web publishers.

We’re pleased to be releasing our Ad Revenue Report for download to the public today. Hard copies of the Ad Revenue Report were originally handed out to attendees of the Ad Revenue 2009 premium publisher conference on October 8th in NYC.

The report, created to help premium publishers better navigate the ecosystem that powers their 2nd ad sales channel, is separated into three parts:

1. About the Ad Revenue 2009 conference panels and participants
2. Premium publisher trends and data
3. A detailed look at the 2nd Channel Ecosystem

The Ad Revenue Report is collaborative effort that couldn’t have been created without the help of the people thanked in the report. We hope you find it useful.

AdRevenueReport_PubMatic

Here are some of the highlights:

Ad Revenue 2009 host and moderator of this panel, Greg Stuart, asked the question that polarizes the participants right off the bat – “who owns the data?” Check out the response from Mark Zargoski, CRO, eXelate:

Owning the Data from PubMatic on Vimeo.

In the following video Greg Stuart gets straight to the point and asks, “Is there a revenue value of data (for premium publishers)?” The answer from Huffington Post CEO, Eric Hippeau, offers caution to other publishers that might be considering selling their data to third parties:

Revenue value of data from PubMatic on Vimeo.

Eric Hippeau’s response leads into another discussion on when data is the most valuable by Jeff Hirsh, President and CEO of Audience Science. This prompts Zargoski to talk about how audiences now define themselves based on their own performance rather than companies defining an audience:

Where is data most valuable? from PubMatic on Vimeo.

PubMatic’s own Jeanne Houweling, VP of Ad Network Solutions, jumps in with her take on why premium publishers should be using data from third parties:

Leveraging data for a long term revenue strategy from PubMatic on Vimeo.

And finally, we have Bill Wise, VP and General Manager, Ad Platforms, Yahoo, explaining why data needs to applied correctly from start to finish, or it’s all-for-not:

Value of data compared to inventory from PubMatic on Vimeo.

Michele Madansky runs a media and market research consultancy specializing in online media and measurement. Her clients have included Microsoft, PubMatic, MMA, ESPN, The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, GSN, VideoEgg and Technorati. She holds a Sc.B. from Brown University, and an MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business and is a lecturer at the Haas School of Business.

During her presentation at Ad Revenue 2009, she showed how Ad Networks can be effective for branding oriented marketing campaigns. Using the fact Ad Networks today rival single publisher sites in reach (70%+ reach for each of the top 10 Ad Networks vs. only 2 publisher sites above 58% reach), Michelle leveraged three separate studies by comScore, Insight Express and Dynamic Logic to make a case that ad networks have a positive brand impact.

The studies she referenced used quantitative results with control groups to determine the brand impact of ad network buys vs. direct publisher site buys. Insight Express showed ad networks had positive brand impact, and for some areas they actually outperformed direct publisher sites. Dynamic Logic’s study showed that the top 20% of ad networks delivered better results than publisher sites while the bottom 20% of ad networks were detrimental.

Michele’s presentation, which can be viewed below, suggests that with the right key drivers in place, ad networks can be an effective channel for brand-based campaigns.

Ad_Revenue_2009_Branding_on_Ad_Networks