The ‘Yield Management Tools’ Category
Today, PubMatic announced that it is offering a next rev in its publisher-side yield optimization platform which notably includes "guaranteed inventory yield management" and possibly puts it into competition with Yieldex, which has been working the direct sales optimization side for publishers for a while now. See the release.
AdExchanger.com spoke to PubMatic's CEO Rajeev Goel about the implications of this iteration of the PubMatic platform.
AdExchanger.com: Is this the PubMatic answer for the Supply-Side or Sell-Side Platform (SSP)?
PubMatic pioneered the ad network optimization space with its founding in 2006. However, it's clear that publishers need much more than just ad network optimization. As the market has evolved, media buying has evolved, and new opportunities such as audience data and real-time bidding (RTB) have emerged, publishers need a much more advanced platform for managing their ad revenue and brands. It's fair to refer to this as a sell-side platform (SSP).
The SSP of the future will manage both guaranteed inventory (what a publisher's sales force sells directly) and non-guaranteed inventory (monetized via ad networks and exchanges). But it will do far more than just sell this inventory - it will integrate audience data from third parties, it will actively manage the publisher's brand and protect from malware and poor quality ads, it will provide an integrated yield curve across both the direct and indirect sales channel, it will provide a controlled RTB environment for the publisher, and more. We think that the new PubMatic Premier is the first offering in the market to provide publishers with all of this and we're looking forward to expanding it as well.
Can you expand on how PubMatic's platform manages "Guaranteed
Inventory Yield Management" and provides insights? Any examples?
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In a release today, AdMeld announced "the introduction of Real Time Bidding (RTB) capabilities in the United Kingdom" through its partners AdJug, AppNexus, Infectious Digital, Invite Media and MediaMath. Read more.
AdExchanger.com corresponded with AdMeld CEO Michael Barrett about the news ...
AdExchanger.com: Are you aggregating UK publishers and selling their inventory? Or, are you selling UK audience from non-UK publishers - primarily U.S. publishers I would assume? Please explain.
MB: Both. We’re giving any premium publisher with an audience in the UK the ability to monetize that inventory via RTB.
AdExchanger.com: What special challenge(s) does the UK present AdMeld? (i.e. There are many ad networks on a percentage basis of inventory in comparison to the U.S.; skepticism about yield optimizers; they're used to networks, etc.)
MB: We’ve been extremely encouraged by the interest in our service in the UK. In an environment where, as you said, there are so many sources of demand, premium publishers are looking for ways to connect efficiently and safely with the best of them, and AdMeld saves them a great deal of time and effort doing that. One of the keys to what we do is giving publishers more options and more control of their ad inventory—and RTB is a natural extension of that.
By John Ebbert
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Janneke Niessen is CEO of Improve Digital, a publisher yield optimization firm based in the United Kingdom.
AdExchanger.com: How did Improve Digital begin?
Publishers are facing a shift in the online advertising ecosystem where performance campaigns, ad networks and exchanges are playing a more and more dominant role. In 2007, over 40 percent of the UK online advertising budget was spent through ad networks and exchanges - few people would argue with us if we stated that this number is higher today. Having worked for many large publishers in yield management and with extensive experience in ad operations, we were looking for an efficient way for publishers to manage these multiple revenue sources and create their optimal monetization mix. PubMatic’s ad revenue optimization technology combined with Improve Digital’s premium yield optimization technology (in beta) provides the answer, lifting revenues between 60 percent and 300 percent.
Today, 90 percent of our customers are in the premium segment, and include the largest newspaper and magazine publishers of the world. Our goals are closely aligned with those of publishers: increasing revenues from premium sales, ad networks, exchanges and performance campaigns while protecting the publisher’s brand and reducing efforts. Our typical client is looking to balance increasing revenues from discretionary inventory in harmony with growing revenues from their direct premium sales strategy.
What were the challenges in starting the business?
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Paul Edmondson is CEO of YieldBuild, a yield optimization company.
AdExchanger.com: Please describe the momentum you're seeing at YieldBuild. For example, how many participating publishers are a part of your optimization offering these days?
We're really happy with our growing publisher base. While we want to respect our publishers' privacy, we can say that we have thousands of publishers, from very large social network and content sites to small blogs.
What is your target publisher market? Can any publisher participate?
Any site that meets our supported ad networks' guidelines can begin optimizing their ads the first day with YieldBuild. Since we have special strength in optimizing contextual ads, our sweet spot is with content-rich sites that get a good portion of their traffic from search. However, a lot of direct-traffic sites have also seen impressive revenue gains using YieldBuild.
Do you consider your company's model full-service or self-service?
We operate completely under a self-service model. A publisher can provision an account and begin optimization in less than a half hour.
How does Microsoft AdCenter's Publisher text ad network compare to Google's AdSense? Data points would be payout, contextual match, customization capabilities, etc.
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Kum Bay Yah, Muh Lord. Kum Bay Yah.
Congrats to the IAB on their lunch and learn event, "An Out of the Box Lunch with AdMeld, PubMatic, The Rubicon Project and YieldBuild," in NYC last Thursday. It was a study in how players in the advertising space – in this case, yield optimizers – can work together in order to enhance each other's value.
Optimizing Lunch
Attendees were from a broad cross-section of ad networks and publishers – large and small. And, everyone in the room wanted one question answered, "How do I make more money?"
The yield optimizers answered.
In part, the optimizers in-person presentation included a basic how-to on yield optimization. We won't cover that segment of the presentation at the IAB's request. Needless to say, optimizing yield at scale is an imposing barrier requiring serious tech and smarts - something each of these companies have aggregated in driving publisher adoption and demand-side interest.
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It’s that time again - let’s predict the future!
One of the key areas in which technology is affecting online media is in publisher yield optimization.
In little over a year, companies like The Rubicon Project, AdMeld, PubMatic, YieldBuild and others have solidified the position of the yield optimizer in the online display advertising ecosystem as it pans for gold across multiple demand-side sources - mostly ad networks, currently - to find the highest paying advertiser possible for a single publisher impression given a variety of factors including frequency capping of ad campaigns.
Yield, though, isn’t necessarily a sell-side concept. The buy side (advertisers) look at purchased inventory and the yield (ROI) it provides to the campaign per click, per impression, per action and more.
Lately, the optimizers have taken up the buyer's cause with initiatives such as Rubicon Project's and PubMatic’s demand-side offerings which inch the yield optimization model closer to that of an ad exchange as both buying and selling opportunities are optimized. Evolution to a true ad exchange model will likely take optimizers a few years when liquidity through the ad exchange finally provides a superior yield to other publisher monetization efforts. Tools that manage brand and creative concerns (channel conflict and brand management) will be a critical step for publishers, too.
But, the ad exchange is not the end game for yield optimizers – only part of a next step.
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Tom Shields is Chief Executive Officer of yield optimization company, Yieldex.
AdExchanger.com: How many participating publishers?
TS: We have announced Martha Stewart Omnimedia as our first publisher partner. We are currently engaged with a number of other large publishers that we are not publicizing yet.
What is your target publisher market? Can any publisher participate?
Our target market is publishers who have a direct sales force and who want to maximize their revenue on premium inventory. While any publisher could participate, we are ideally suited for larger publishers who have their own sales team.
Do you consider your company's model full-service or self-service?
We provide tools and technology solutions for publishers to gain a deeper understanding of their premium inventory, and provide recommendations to help them optimize their yield. These tools are used by each publisher’s in-house sales and operations teams. We manage the integration of the Yieldex solution, and provide services to our publishers to ensure they are taking full advantage of our tools to maximize their revenue.
What are the advantages of a yield optimization company?
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Those crazy yield optimizers are at it again!
Or, are they really ad exchanges waiting in the tall grass?
First up, Yield Build. The company led by CEO Paul Edmondson has launched a new premium text ad network for publishers that optimizes Google AdSense ads in combination with somewhat exclusive Microsoft PubCenter ads and produces a yield improvement of 100% to AdSense alone according to a TechCrunch article. The Yield Build blog confirms the performance improvement and adds, "In addition to performing well, the ads are attractive and demonstrate excellent contextual breadth." The ads evidently optimize according to ad layout, style, and network and take about 100,000 impressions to get the hamster peddling properly.
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Ben Barokas is co-founder and chief revenue officer at New York City-based AdMeld.
AdExchanger.com: How many participating publishers does AdMeld have?
Ben: AdMeld has about 50 publisher customers, including The Huffington Post and WorldNow. The rest are comprised of a variety of big names which we can’t talk about publicly just yet, but hope to announce soon. You can read more about Huffington Post here: http://www.admeld.com/news.html.
What is your target publisher market? Can any publisher participate?
AdMeld exclusively serves large, premium publishers. Our system produces optimal results for publishers with at least 50 million remnant impressions a month—though most of our customers have many more than that.
Do you consider your company's model full-service or self-service?
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Rajeev Goel is CEO and Co-Founder of yield optimizer, Pubmatic based in Palo Alto, California.
AdExchanger.com: How many participating publishers does Pubmatic have?
Rajeev: We have over 5,500 large and medium publishers using PubMatic including eBay, Kiplinger , Inc./Fast Company, Sugar Network, United Press International, and many more.
What is your target publisher market? Can any publisher participate?
We work with mostly large publishers in high value verticals. We recently launched PubMatic Premier, which brings a new level of technology and service to large media companies with over $5 million in online revenue.
We also do let smaller publishers use our self-service platform to help them manage their pre-established networks because it provides value to them and it gives us a huge amount of rich data that we use to enhance our technology and publisher revenue lift.
Do you consider your company's model full-service or self-service?
Weʼre a full-service company, and full-service is where we provide the biggest benefit to pubs. Our PubMatic Premier offering gives large pubs a dedicated team of six people that learns the specific needs of that publisher and provides a range of support. There is a Strategic Partnership Manager, who is the main day-to-day point of contact that leads an experienced team to focus on performance, ad network relationships, yield, analytics and 24/7 technical solutions support.
What are the advantages of a yield optimization company?
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In an LA Times article last week by Dan Neil, a yield optimization company finally admitted it.
"We want to be the Visa, the Nasdaq of online advertising," said Frank Addante, Rubicon Project CEO.
Yeah baby! Just come out and say it, yield optimizers - you're ad exchanges! We won't disown you... not here on AdExchanger.com.
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