If you’re blocking the word “coronavirus,” you’re essentially blocking everything.
In this episode of “Social Distancing With Friends,” The Washington Post’s VP of commercial tech, Jarrod Dicker, checks in from his high-energy household (its members include three boys and two dogs) to talk publisher problems, including aggressive advertiser blocklists and the general trend of deflating CPMs.
He also talks about Zeus, the publisher ad tech solution he and his team built and launched in 2016. The Washington Post added a self-serve interface for the buy side called Zeus Prime last year. Publishers need to own their own ad tech, Jarrod says, so they aren’t defenseless against rules established by brand safety vendors and other ad tech companies that don’t have the best interests of publishers at heart.
Of course, publishers also need to have honest conversations with their advertiser clients about brand safety. If both sides had been more open with each other about that months ago, they might have avoided the mass “coronavirus” keyword blocking.
Also in this episode: Jarrod gives his best tips on how to stay sane working from home, and his husky, Cassidy, shares a sporadic tune.
