PubMatic

Rob Beeler, VP Content & Media, from AdMonsters presented “Turning Your Ad Operations Into A Revenue Center,” at PubMatic’s Ad Revenue 2009 last week.

Not many organizations understand ad ops better than AdMonsters does. And not many people can so skillfully connect Star Trek and ad revenue. Rob Beeler made a great presentation about the evolution of ad operations for the premium publisher. Rob’s point is that the role that ad operations play today is a “grown up” version that now sits at the intersection of sales, editorial, finance, and technology.

New opportunities exist for ad operations to take advantage of a new tier of premium publisher inventory that sits between premium and remnant, but in order for ad ops to really earn more revenue for their company, the ad ops teams needs to be built out differently than it has been in the past.

Check out Rob’s presentation and a short video from his presentation to learn more:

Ad_Revenue_2009_Ad_Operations_Into_Revenue_Center

Last week PubMatic hosted the standing-room only premium publisher conference, Ad Revenue 2009, in New York City. From the opening keynote to the end-of-the-day cocktail hour, the event was packed with hundreds of the brightest people in online advertising, who used the day to discuss monetization strategies for premium online publishers.

This week on our blog we’ll be doing summaries and analysis of the event, including presentations and panels for those who couldn’t make it on October 8th. The content of the event was very focused on how to help premium publishers develop and improve strategies to help them better monetize the 2nd ad sales channel – or inventory that is sold through intermediaries.

Also stay tuned this week as PubMatic releases the Ad Revenue Report, a guide that maps out the online advertising ecosystem for premium online publishers that was handed out to the conference attendees.

Follow us on Twitter to get the latest updates about our Ad Revenue 2009 posts and the release of the Ad Revenue Report this week.

This conference was a collaborative effort and PubMatic would like to thank all the participants again for making this event possible:

Ad Revenue 2009 sponsors:

interCLICK
Audience Science
CPX Interactive
eXelate
Pulse360
MediaMath

Ad Revenue 2009 participants:

Greg Stuart, Digital Media Advisor and the Event Host
Jack Flanagan, SVP, comScore and the Closing Keynote

Alan Chapell, President, Chapell & Associates
Amar Goel, Founder & Chairman, PubMatic
Andrew Kraft, VP Technology Solutions, Collective Media
Bill Wise, VP and General Manager, Ad Platforms, Yahoo!
Darren Herman, Founder & President, Varick Media Management
Eric Hippeau, CEO, Huffington Post
Greg Stuart, Digital Media Advisor
Ian Wallin, VP National Digital Ad Sales, TV Guide
Jay Sears, EVP, Strategic Products & Business Development, ContextWeb
Jeanne Houweling, VP Ad Network Solutions Group, PubMatic
Jeff Green, COO, AdECN/Microsoft
Jeff Hirsch, President & CEO, Audience Science
Jeremy Fain, VP Industry Services, IAB
Joe Mandese, Editor In Chief, MediaPost
Joe Zawadzki, CEO, MediaMath
John Ebbert, Managing Editor, AdExchanger.com
Mark Zagorski, CRO, eXelate
Matthew Greitzer, VP Search Marketing and Head of ATOM Systems, Razorfish
Michael Learmonth, Reporter, Digital Media & Advertising, Ad Age
Michele Madansky, Michele Madansky Consulting
Philip Smolin, GM, Platform Solutions, Turn
Rob Beeler, VP Content & Media, AdMonsters
Rob Rasko, President and COO, CPX Interactive
Ryan Whittington, VP, General Manager, bizjournals
Sean Kegelman, SVP, Partnerships at VivaKi Nerve Center
Tom Bowman, VP Strategy and Operations, BBC Advertising Sales
Tom Sipple, VP, IAC

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.

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.

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

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.

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