The PubMatic Blog

The Roles of Ad Networks and Ad Exchanges are No Longer Clear

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

An introduction to “The Blurring Lines of Ad Exchanges, Ad Marketplaces, and Ad Networks” panel at Ad Revenue 2009, October 8th, NYC. http://www.AdRevenueConference.com

Moderated by Michael Learmonth, Reporter, Digital Media & Advertising, Ad Age

Panelists:

Jay Sears, EVP, Strategic Products & Business Development, ContextWeb
Jeff Green, COO, AdECN
Philip Smolin, GM, Platform Solutions, Turn
Rob Rasco, President & COO, CPX Interactive
Tom Sipple, VP, IAC/ Dictionary.com

We spoke to a lot of premium publishers when putting together the Ad Revenue 2009 conference to make sure the content would address the issues they wanted to hear about the most. One issue that consistently came up is how fast the roles of ad networks, ad exchanges, and even yield optimizers are evolving. This is decidedly different from just technology evolving and it has created some confusion for premium publishers.

In what is almost the opposite of the media fragmentation that has been taking place in the past several years, some companies are morphing to become a “one-stop shop.” For example, services that certain ad networks offer may have close similarities with the buy side optimization platforms and yield optimizers. Is that better for premium publishers?

Other networks have a different approach — less about offering more types of solutions, but rather expanding on what they do best. Both sides can make the case that their approach is better.

Then enter the ad exchanges. While premium publishers vendors tend to have a better understanding of the roles of ad exchanges vs. ad networks and other competing companies in the space, it is not always as clear to the premium publishers. Why should a publisher choose a certain ad exchange over another, or over an ad network, or over a yield optimizer for that matter?

Those are the questions that are on the minds of many premium publisher executives, and Advertising Age reporter Michael Learnmonth will address the pros and cons of the evolution of roles while getting insight from Tom Sipple of IAC/ Dictionary.com on stage.

Please join us at Ad Revenue 2009 on October 8th in NYC. For more details on the conference, please visit the event website listed at the top of this post.

Premium Publishers Can Better Utilize Data Immediately

Monday, September 21st, 2009

An introduction to “The New Economics and Revenue Opportunities of Data” panel at Ad Revenue 2009, October 8th, NYC. http://www.AdRevenueConference.com

Nearly all premium publishers are talking about data these days — not because it is new, but because there is now so much data available it is making heads spin and many premium publishers don’t know where to start in order to make it a true revenue generator. There are a lot of players in the data space, ranging from data exchanges and providers, ad networks, analytics companies, advertisers, agencies, the publishers themselves, and yield optimizers like PubMatic. As the industry moves more towards buying audiences rather than context, it is critical that premium publishers have a better understanding of how to consolidate data from multiple sources in order to realize the revenue potential.

While there is no near term panacea for premium publishers to completely solve the complexity around harnessing data for maximum value, the progress made towards that goal is significant, and there are near term solutions that can help premium publishers start profiting more from the data resources available today. But what is needed is a clear and actionable plan.

The data panel at Ad Revenue 2009 is one of the most anticipated topics of the entire conference. Attendees will hear from several players in the space, including:

The Premium Publisher:
Eric Hippeau, CEO, Huffington Post
The Audience Network: Jeff Hirsch, President & CEO, Audience Science
The Data Exchange: Mark Zagorski, CRO, eXelate
The Yield Optimizer: Jeanne Houweling, VP Ad Network Solutions Group, PubMatic
The Ad Exchange: Bill Wise GM, Global Exchange, Yahoo!

Moderated by an expert on data and online advertising: Greg Stuart, Former CEO of the IAB, and digital media advisor to many companies in the online advertising space.

Every segment represented on this panel plays an important role in the online data and advertising revenue ecosystem. What is unique about this panel, and the Ad Revenue conference in general, is that we’re focused on discussing the issues for the benefit of the premium publisher, as opposed to an advertiser, which is the case for most conferences.

Premium publisher attendees will walk away from this panel with actual next steps for creating a data strategy that is comprehensive and actionable in the near term.

Premium publishers that have questions that you would like addressed, and are specific to this panel, are encouraged to email AdRevenue@PubMatic.com . The questions will be given to the moderator in advance.

We hope to see you at Ad Revenue 2009 for this panel and several others listed on the conference website listed at the top of this post.

OPA Ad Effectiveness Study: It’s Not That Black and White

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

Original Post Appeared in Advertising Age, August 14th.

The Online Publishers Association released a study that showed that advertising placed by ad networks — some of which runs on premium publisher websites, some of which does not — is not as effective for branding as ads that are sold through those same publishers’ direct sales forces. While the conclusion of the study makes sense with respect to marketers with branding objectives, most campaigns purchased through ad networks have fundamentally different objectives.

First, my company, PubMatic, and many others operating in digital media support the OPA, and I do not dispute the findings of its report. It makes perfect sense for brand advertisers to place their advertisements in the surroundings of premium content when it is economically feasible. Moreover, branding campaigns purchased directly on premium websites often have the added advantage of customized ad products such as roadblocks, different ad units or immersive environments.

However, for performance-driven campaigns in which the marketer is seeking specific ROI metrics based on clicks or conversions, purchasing inventory from a premium publisher’s sales force may not provide the best bang for the marketer’s buck. Branding campaigns and performance-driven campaigns have different success metrics, and therefore require different solutions with respect to being placed directly on a premium website or via an ad network.

While publishers prefer that all of their ad space is filled with higher-CPM branding campaigns, the reality is that very few publishers can fill all their ad space with those. Similarly, advertisers don’t always want to pay the higher CPMs for certain campaigns.

Generally speaking, premium publishers — the type of publishers that are OPA members and are referenced in the study — have two ad-sales channels. The first channel consists of guaranteed-delivery ad inventory sold directly by the publisher’s sales force. The second channel, which is sold through intermediaries such as ad networks, consists of non-guaranteed-delivery ad inventory often sold at lower price points.

The campaigns the OPA refers to in its report are branding campaigns sold from the first channel, with guaranteed delivery around premium content. The ads that performed poorly were not in the same environment and may not have been purchased for the purpose of providing brand lift. If direct-response ROI metrics had been part of the study, the results likely would have been better for ad networks. More importantly, premium publishers cannot ignore the fact that more and more of their revenue is coming from the second channel, as inventory continues to grow and audience targeting improves.

Regardless, it is not as black and white as it may seem. Branding campaigns should not just be for directly sold premium publishers alone. For instance, the recent campaign promoting Microsoft’s Bing search engine used direct-sold campaigns for brand lift and recall reinforced by a massive campaign with reach and performance metrics that only ad networks can provide.

The silver lining: Publishers can earn money from both Microsoft objectives. Had Microsoft purchased all of the impressions through direct sales forces instead of a combination of both premium campaigns and ad-network campaigns, it likely would have spent less money advertising Bing online and would have achieved far fewer benefits.

There is no argument that in a perfect world premium publishers would have a 100% sell-through rate from their sales forces. However, in a world where sell-through rates are lower, ad networks can provide incremental revenue to publishers by selling a different objective to marketers. Premium publishers should always keep in mind what is best for the advertiser as well as themselves so that both sides can meet their objectives. In this rapidly changing economic environment, publishers need to focus on improving revenue from their first and second ad-sales channels.

Are The Worst Days For Online Ad Pricing Behind Us?

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

I’m happy to say that we’ve got some very encouraging news to share:  The online advertising prices that PubMatic regularly tracks have been going up every month consecutively since January of this year.   Does this mean that the worst days for online ad pricing are behind us?   It is impossible to say that for sure, but the indicators lead us to believe it is a strong possibility.

We’ve published a brief today on the current trends in online ad pricing in which the data is discussed.  It can be downloaded here.

Announcing the 2nd Generation of PubMatic’s Real-Time Ad Revenue Optimization: Ad Price Prediction

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Announcing the 2nd Generation of PubMatic’s Real-Time Ad Revenue Optimization: Ad Price Prediction

Today we launched our third technology white paper in 2009, this time it’s on the cornerstone of our technology: Ad Price Prediction. Ad Price Prediction is the 2nd Generation of our optimization platform. It decides in real-time which ad network or ad exchange is best able to monetize each ad impression on behalf of the publisher.

PubMatic pioneered the ad optimization category in 2006, and since then we’ve consistently released real-time technologies that provide a long-term solution for publishers as the amount of non-guaranteed impressions continues to grow in volume and revenue opportunity.

Real-Time Release Timeline

If you’re interested in learning more about how publishers benefit from real-time Ad Price Prediction, download the white paper here.

Behind The Scenes: Expanding Into Europe

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Earlier today we announced that PubMatic is expanding into Europe.  This is a very significant step for us and for the category of Ad Revenue Optimization.  While we currently work with a large number of European based pubs, this marks the first time that local sales, service, and support for our technology will be available in the UK, Holland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

We issued a press release about this earlier today, which goes over the many benefits of our expansion, but here on our blog I’d like to point out why PubMatic decided to expand with our partner, Improve Digital.

When we founded the category of Ad Revenue Optimization in 2006, we recognized it as a much-needed global solution to help publishers work efficiently with the growing number of specialized ad networks, and we knew we’d have worldwide presence. At that time, however, we didn’t know exactly how it would unfold.  It became transparent well over a year ago that publisher demand for ad revenue optimization via PubMatic was greater than even we originally expected and a large part of that demand was from international pubs.  It also became very clear that the only way to meet this large demand was to scale through a well-established partnership rather than slowly building out European offices piece-by-piece.

And so at that time we began working with our partner, Improve Digital, an Amsterdam based company that has a long-standing track record for successfully providing revenue management solutions to large European publishers.  Over the past year, Improve Digital has been connecting large European publishers with PubMatic’s technology while providing their already best-in-class service.  Now European publishers can get ramped up faster with European ad networks, response times are even faster than before, and perhaps most importantly, there is an understanding of the publisher’s needs that only someone close in physical proximity can appreciate.  This is key for maintaining a publisher’s positive experience while working with PubMatic.

So while we officially announced the European expansion today, at PubMatic, we’re really celebrating many months of successful coordination, training, development, and a solid partnership with Improve Digital that helps us meet the international demand for PubMatic, and for the category of ad revenue optimization we established.

AdRevenue 09: October 8th, NYC

Friday, March 27th, 2009

It seems like our AdRevenue 08 conference wasn’t too long ago, but we’re already gearing up for AdRevenue 09, happening 10/08/09.  This time we’re moving the conference from San Francisco to NYC.  AdRevenue 08 was oversubscribed by 50%, and despite the tough economic conditions we expect to have a full house this year as well.

The focus will be slightly different from last year’s. We’re still focused on strategies to increase revenue publishers make from their unsold inventory, but we’re also zooming out slightly to put the entire online display advertising ecosystem into perspective for clients and agencies, media buying platforms, ad networks and exchanges, publisher optimizers, data exchanges, and of course large publishers themselves.

Many things have changed in this space during the past year. The fundamentals for how online display advertising is bought and sold are rapidly evolving.  There has been a steady rise of new segments and players within this ecosystem, advertisers are increasingly demanding more transparency, and many companies are finding that the very core of the businesses they’ve built over decades are changing in a matter of a couple of years.

AdRevenue 09 is going to take an eye opening approach to demonstrating how this digital ecosystem isn’t unlike ecosystems in nature,” the segments in this ecosystem are all intertwined on some level and when one segment has radical changes, it will have an effect that will be felt by all of us in this space, for good or for bad.  And those are the scenarios we aim to explore at this event.  I’ve never seen anything done like this, so I’m personally as excited to learn as I hope the attendees are.

The specific topics need to be extremely timely, and as such we haven’t finalized them yet.  Thought leaders are welcome to submit content ideas via the AdRevenue 09 site, which we’ve soft launched specifically for that purpose.  We’re also creating an advisory board of some the brightest minds in the industry to help select the content, but it will be in line with the aforementioned theme.

We’ll be adding a lot more content to the site and announcing participants, as we get closer to the event.  In the meantime, save the date.  This conference has no intention of trying to be everything to everybody; instead it will be acutely relevant to those that are a part of this particular ecosystem.

PubMatic Enters Into the Next Stage of Growth With Funding & Launch of Premier

Monday, March 16th, 2009

PubMatic Premier, our ad solution designed specifically for large media companies, was officially launched today.  We’re very excited about the launch, and while today marks the “official” launch, we’ve actually deployed Premier to dozens of our largest publishers over the last several months. What makes PubMatic Premier different is that it is a full service solution with dedicated team members that take the time to understand the needs of publishers they work with.

The launch also marks the beginning of the next stage of growth for PubMatic.  Since our inception we’ve worked with over 5,500 large and medium publishers, and by working with so many publishers over the past three years, we’ve been able to develop and improve exclusive technologies that simply can’t be matched elsewhere.  Now with PubMatic Premier, we’ve added dedicated publisher account teams on top the most advanced revenue generating technology in the industry.

Additionally, Advanced Ad Quality Control, a major component of PubMatic Premier, will help to ensure that a publisher’s brand is protected by not allowing ads on their website that don’t meet their approval.

More details on PubMatic Premier features can be found here.

We also announced today our Series B funding, which has already allowed us to:

* Build a robust team of industry veterans that will be dedicated to working with large publishers to meet their needs

*Expand our offices to New York and Europe

*Continue heavy development of technology that increases revenue with pinpoint precision

As mentioned in previous posts, 2009 is truly a breakout year for PubMatic and for our publishers as they build out and improve their second channel for monetizing online ads by implementing a strong ad network strategy. We’ve got more detailed news to deliver soon on the three bullet points above, in addition to plenty of other exciting announcements and releases in the next few months, so stay tuned.

Announcing the PubMatic Real-Time Monetization API for Increased Efficiency and Effectiveness

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

Efficiency is more than a feel-good buzzword.  Lack of efficiency has been the cause of problems ranging from slowing the shift of dollars from traditional media into online media to fragmentation of advertising demand across hundreds or thousands of players in the industry.  At the same time, advertising effectiveness has been hampered by a lack of visibility into targetable, actionable data about every ad impression.  After all, every ad impression is unique and represents a unique value to advertisers.

Today, we’ve crossed a major milestone towards helping ad networks and publishers improve efficiency and effectiveness with the official launch of our real-time monetization API (application programming interface).  The API will enable ad networks to connect instantly to transparent publisher inventory and perhaps more importantly, it gives them greater control over the pricing and timing of their campaigns.  Ad networks can target based on standard and advanced parameters.  Publishers enjoy seamless access to a new set of buyers for their ad inventory.  The end result is better monetization for publishers (higher ad rates) and improved control for ad networks and their clients.

The official launch of our API comes after a successful closed beta period involving multiple ad network partners and millions of ad impressions per day.  The benefits for ad networks and publishers are clear -

Benefits for Ad Networks:

  • Increased Reach: Access to over 125 million unique users and thousands of websites
  • Improved Targeting: Ad networks can leverage expanded targeting options including geography, frequency, user re-targeting, ad tag type, and much more
  • Campaign Control: Ad networks have total control over pricing and timing for campaigns

Benefits for Publishers:

  • Increased Monetization: Allowing more ad networks to instantly access publisher inventory increases publisher ad rates and sell through rates
  • Increased Visibility: Dozens of new ad networks can get instant and transparent access to publisher inventory
  • Better User Experience: More premium campaigns and better targeting result in users seeing higher quality and more relevant advertising
  • Zero Integration: PubMatic publishers have instant access to premium campaigns and ad networks via the API, with zero integration effort

We’re very excited to bring our real-time API to you.  This is just the start of many new innovation announcements we’ll have in 2009, so stay tuned.  If you’re a publisher or ad network, and want to learn more, you know where to find us.

We’re Taking Our AdFlex Campaign Fulfillment Service International

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

In September of last year, we launched AdFlex, the first entirely transparent campaign fulfillment service designed to provide ad networks with on-demand publisher inventory.  Since that time, we’ve connected dozens of ad networks to hundreds of publishers in order to fulfill high CPM campaigns, and we’ve increased revenue for both along the way.  Now we’re expanding AdFlex to offer AdFlex International.

We’ve seen that as much as 30-40% of a typical U.S. publisher’s traffic is international, so introducing AdFlex International is a natural extension of our service that will help both our ad network partners and publisher partners alike.

With AdFlex International, ad networks can target qualified international inventory based on specific targeting requirements including geography, frequency, or user re-targeting.  There are no long-term contracts required to give ad networks the flexibility to access highly transparent inventory, and ad networks can use AdFlex International for repeated and single campaigns.

Since ad networks are leveraging certified inventory provided by online publishers using PubMatic’s ad optimization platform, our publishers are also able to see significant lifts in their revenue by participating in premium-priced AdFlex campaigns.

We’ve worked with some great partners on AdFlex International before rolling it out, and they’ve seen the same level of success as ad networks that have been using AdFlex for months.  So we look forward to the opportunity to continue helping our partners better monetize international traffic.