PubMatic

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.

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.

We’d like to thank everyone that came out to the AdRevenue 08 conference last Friday. We followed a simple strategy: keep AdRevenue 08 interesting by fostering conversation around important issues that most other conferences are simply not addressing in detail, and bring in the brightest and most outspoken panelists to keep it entertaining. It worked. Check out the first panel of the day, The Real Difference Between Ad Networks, Ad Exchanges, and Ad Optimizers.

• Moderated by Chris Moore, Partner at Redpoint Ventures and featuring:

• Anand Subramanian, CEO, ContextWeb
• Dave Zinman, Vice President, Display Network, Yahoo! Inc.
• Jeff Green, COO, AdECN
• Matthew Boyd, SVP, Western Sales, ValueClick Media
• Michael Rubenstein, Director, Ad Exchange, Google, Inc.
• Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder and President, PubMatic

Although PubMatic developed the conference and topics, it was everyone that participated in it that made it such a success. Special thanks go out to: The Attendees: We were humbled by the large turnout and the level of engagement from the audience. Many attendees traveled a long way to attend the event, some from as far away as Europe and New Zealand!

Our Keynote speaker, Barry Parr from Forrester Research: Barry gave an opening keynote on the state of digital advertising that was both incredibly timely and informative; it was also unique since it came from an analyst’s perspective. We had a sizeable number of people asking to get a copy of that keynote.

Our Moderators: Chirs Moore of RedPoint Ventures, Ravi Belani at DFJ, Adam Gerber of Quantcast, and Brian Morrissey of AdWeek who came all the way from NYC . Each an expert in their own right, they kept the flow of the conference going and the audience engaged by asking provocative questions to the panelists.

Our Panelists: We managed to get Microsoft and Yahoo! to sit next to each other!

Our Sponsors: Eric McAlpine and the BlackStone Group, Kevin Lin and Justin.tv, Allen Stern, the mastermind behind Center Networks, Justin Smith at Inside Facebook, Myles Weissleder of SF NewTech, Joey, Surge, and the entire GigaOm crew, Karen Hartline at Mashable, and our good friend Mike Nolet who always writes in-depth and informative posts on his blog, Mike on Ads.

Eventbrite: Jack Mardack over at Eventrbrite made managing this event a breeze and helped promote it. I think Jack answered all of my emails within 10 minutes – we were impressed.

And last, but not least, the entire PubMatic team who has been working on this event since last summer… they did a fantastic job and I appreciate their dedication to improving our company, helping our clients, and maintaining our position as thought leaders in the industry.