Brand expert recommends publishers should adapt

I thought today I would bring to you some thoughts from a former colleague of mine Emmanuelle Mitchell. Given her position as media auditor and digital consultant for some of the UK’s top brands, I feel she is uniquely placed to give insight into how publishers can improve their advertising offering and hopefully revenue;

What do you perceive as the biggest challenge/s today for publishers who want to optimise their digital revenue?

Opening up their inventory via a programmatic marketplace: Programmatic is an automated way to trading digital inventory. However there are a number of pitfalls to be avoided:

• Poor viewability of your inventory, this can be avoided by making simple changes to your page layouts. Aim for fewer larger formats (MPU or leaderboard) and place these above the fold.
• Not knowing enough about your user base to make each ad impression count. As programmatic inventory is automated, there is a requirement of knowing more about your users before the ad banner appears on your website. This will give you the best chance of selling inventory in return for a higher yield.
• The growth of ad blockers; in my opinion users need to recognise that good content comes at the price of advertising. Publishers are entitled to change their business model to ensure their business survives, for example Bild (Germany’s largest tabloid newspaper) have recently implemented a paywall for any user using an adblocker and reading their content. Exploring other revenue streams like Native or sponsored posts can help with this.
• Not using a mobile optimised site. Adapt your content to where your users are most likely to see it. This could help you towards increasing your ad impressions and monthly traffic.

How do you think they can adapt to rise to this challenge/s?

Know the technology landscape, which supply side platform (SSPs) and tech platforms you can add to your site to improve yield. Yield managers are the specialists in knowing how to build a yield architecture to improve sell through rates and ensure every ad impression stands a chance of earning you top revenue.

Recruiting for this type of skill set is difficult, perhaps you can utilise consultants to get the relevant people up to speed in your team and get the right introductions to companies work partnering with.

Become independent operators in the programmatic space. The old ad network model as we knew it 5-10 years ago is dead, smart publishers monetise their inventory themselves. There are great tech platforms to help you increase yield no matter how small you are. Do your homework and test multiple platforms to ensure you have the right yield architecture.

Content is king. Know your audience, what they want to read and where they want to consume it so you know the potential value of each impression. With that information you can therefore sell it to the highest bidder or most relevant Brand programmatically.

Improve the viewability of your ads. More and more vCPM (visible cost per thousand) is becoming a buying metric for brands spending digitally, so ensure your ads are being seen.

With your brand ambassador hat on, what do you see as the biggest opportunity for publishers in the next 12 months?

There are a lot of concerns from brands with fraudulent ads so ensuring you are delivering valuable impressions will help combat this issue as it builds trust between brands and them accessing your inventory.

More and more traffic to sites comes from Facebook, ensure that your site is enable for social sharing wherever possible. Facebook and to some extent Google are changing their modus operandi so creating suitable content to enable the sharing of it on these social platforms will increase traffic. Develop a content distribution strategy.

Revenue driving for publishers will be increasingly difficult to forecast, as a publisher focus on developing the right framework to accommodate these changes.

I will drill down into some of Emmanuelle’s recommendations in the coming weeks, so please subscribe to my blog if you'd like to hear more.

And if reading the above has you thinking you are missing out, why don't you book a FREE 15 minute (pitch free) consultation and I will help with your specific needs.