Today, PubMatic is excited to announce a revolutionary new solution for publishers, the new PubMatic Premier. This is the industry’s most advanced ad management solution across both guaranteed and non-guaranteed inventory. PubMatic Premier enables publishers to increase revenue from existing ad strategies and find new ad revenue opportunities, while allowing them to maintain total control of their brand and data. We are particularly excited about this because we believe it is brings together, in one platform, the tools and services that publishers need in this increasingly complex landscape of different revenue streams, products and data. Publishers find themselves in a seemingly new world of revenue today, and they keep telling us that in this new world their jobs are getting more complicated, but they are looking to simplify. They need sophisticated solutions that can help them do this, combining the best technologies with great, local service.
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 EngineTM 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:
- 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.
- 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.
