As the US vs Google ad tech trial unfolds, Chalice’s Adam Heimlich explores how Google used data to dominate display advertising, manipulate auctions, and crush competition. Discover the hidden tactics behind its market power and what it means for the future of digital advertising.

Since a broker is an intermediary, and the basis of audience targeting is data, there should be no doubt Google is an enormous data broker — maybe the biggest of all time. That’s the big takeaway from Week 1 of US vs Google, the ad tech case currently in session in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Google’s Doubleclick & Admeld Takeover

Instead of selling consumer data to ad tech companies, Google opted to dedicate its brokerage to the service of Google advertisers. By 2007, these were demanding more cheap clicks than Google search could drive.

In glaring contrast with what an honest broker would do, Google decided to acquire Doubleclick and Admeld, assume the role of a trusted sell-side broker helping publishers monetize, and then use buy-side data against those publishers.

Cream Skimming and Auction Manipulation

Google monopolized the market for intermediary auction software by replacing fair and open auctions with auctions manipulated through Google’s secret use case for consumer data: cream skimming.

It’s relatively easy to predict conversions if you know what nearly everybody has been searching for online lately. But Google wasn’t satisfied with simply bidding to place, say, Proactiv ads in front of people they knew were worried about pimples. Google felt it necessary to place relevant ads without ever paying above market rate on behalf of Proactiv or any other advertiser. Overbidding is a natural consequence of winning a lot of auctions, which is why sellers like them. There’s no way to know what bid price you have to beat to win. Usually!

Secret Projects: Bernanke, Jedi, and Poirot

Acting as a dishonest broker with unique auction privileges, Google implemented a series of secret tactics to place ads in front of future purchasers for prices lower — sometimes much lower — than those placements were worth.

These include First Look, Last Look, Project Bernanke, Project Jedi, and Project Poirot. (It says a lot that only the DOJ was able to uncover these conducts, despite intense publisher scrutiny and dozens if not hundreds of ex-Google employees knowing about them. The amount of power required to keep a secret so big for so many years is immense.) Though auction manipulation is rightly the focus of the federal case, advertising professionals should note it’s data that drove the outsize profits Google reaped from digital display.

Data Power vs. Market Power

There’s nothing illegal about having the most data or using it to win continuously in search. There’s also nothing illegal about selling data, though reputable data brokerages somehow came to be regarded as less ethical than Google (I wonder how that happened). Where Google crossed a line was in exporting its data advantage from search to display.

Cream skimming radically altered what had been thriving competitions for buy- and sell-side ad tech. US law looks askance at market winners crossing into adjacent markets for an excellent reason: success in this sort of “monopoly maintenance” closes off markets from what they need to grow properly. Without a route to success through competition, markets see less investment, a slower pace of innovation, and lower value at every price. This is what happened to display.

The Downfall of Display Advertising

The trial includes a great deal of evidence on CPMs: which way they changed, at which times, and by how much. We who worked in digital display over the last decade can recall what we saw: deteriorating quality, persistent fraud, opacity on fees even when transparency was promised, constant reputational and corporate risk, and routine non-disclosure of even the basic facts about what we purchased or sold. There has been a great deal of finger-pointing at allegedly bad actors, though not enough at the biggest one. Finally, we can be grateful to have reached a moment of accountability, and an opportunity to reset.

A Market in Need of a Reset

Google thrived while the market suffered because it used its data advantage to cherry-pick display opportunities of high value to search advertisers. Besides lowering the overall value of display and rewarding corrupt players, Google’s bias tilted the display market toward direct response advertising, which values last actions over persuasion and sentiment lift. This has been extremely costly to brands, whose use cases for advertising were simply not served by the dominant technology. Also victimized were quality publishers, as monetization was (and still is) determined almost entirely by decision algorithms that ignore quality signals such as ad-to-content ratio, refresh rate, and share of returning readers. No one knows as well as we do what drove the devolution of news toward clickbait.

If Google’s data had been left within its search walled garden or brought to an open market for display advertising, that market would not nearly be so ruined. Google’s case unravels if you doubt that winning an arms race in data should grant a company the right to dominate in AI. If the data world champions hoard what they know about us, and only use it to fuel their own predictions, they will kill competition in many markets. It will be better for America if the world’s biggest data collectors, with their detailed digital dossiers on us all, are forced to be honest brokers.

The post Google Is a Data Broker appeared first on AdMonsters.

In response to challenges posed by privacy regulations and AI-driven changes in search traffic, 71% of publishers plan to invest in new technologies. To sustain revenue growth, publishers are investing in AI-driven analytics, customer data management, and identity resolution. As one publisher noted, personalizing content and engaging audiences will be key in the coming year.

But, it’s not all smooth sailing. Publishers are grappling with significant challenges, including privacy regulations and changes in consumer behavior. These factors underscore the importance of diversifying revenue streams. With audience data, subscriptions, and licensing emerging as planned new streams, publishers are laying the groundwork for sustainable growth in an evolving digital ecosystem.

While the digital ad landscape faces headwinds, the coming year looks promising for publishers who are agile enough to navigate these challenges. Publishers who invest in direct deals, audience development tools, and diversified revenue streams are well-positioned to thrive in 2024 and beyond.

For more insights and a look at the full study results, visit the Publisher Pulse report page, and enter your information at the bottom to download your copy.

The post Publisher Pulse: Key Revenue Drivers and Strategic Shifts for 2024-2025 appeared first on AdMonsters.

In an exclusive Q&A, Michael Scott, Vice President, Head of Ad Sales, Revenue and Operations – North America at Samsung Ads, and Takashi Nakano, Senior Director of Business Development and Content Acquisitions at Samsung TV Plus, share insights into the groundbreaking AI advancements shaping the future of advertising at Samsung. From the expansion of their Smart Outcomes suite to the introduction of Smart Acquisition solutions, Samsung is setting new standards in ad performance and audience engagement.

These new AI-powered tools not only bridge campaigns across CTV and mobile but also optimize efficiency and deliver superior outcomes for advertisers. As Samsung continues to push the boundaries of innovation, discover how they leverage AI and machine learning to drive conversion, enhance targeting, and offer unparalleled advertising solutions.

Yakira Young: Both Michael Scott and Cathy Oh highlighted the role of AI in enhancing advertising solutions at Samsung. Can you share more about the recent innovations in AI technology and its integration into Samsung Ads advertising platforms? Can you explain how these AI tools work and the specific advantages they offer advertisers?

Michael Scott: At Samsung, we envision a future where intelligent, interconnected experiences enrich our lives, which is why we’re prioritizing AI as it is the cornerstone of our innovation.

Samsung Ads is expanding its suite of AI-powered performance solutions, Smart Outcomes, with new solutions. These new offerings come on the heels of the successful launch of Samsung Smart Audiences, combining the scale of Samsung’s ecosystem with the power of AI and machine learning to drive conversion. SMART Outcomes starts with your desired objective, be it app downloads, engagement, retention or purchase attribution and dynamically optimizes inventory to deliver your desired outcome.

Our new Smart Acquisition solution is designed to drive new user acquisition to the destination of your choice, be it mobile, web or on the TV.  Launched initially for our streaming app advertisers, Samsung Smart Acquisition has delivered exceptional results in driving new app subscriptions on Samsung TVs. This solution is now scaled for your brand whether you are a pizza company, a DTC brand, or streaming media company. For example, if you are an advertiser with a mobile app looking to acquire new users or increase engagement, Smart Acquisitions leverages Samsung’s unique Smart TV real estate paired with our unique AI capabilities to acquire new users specifically for your mobile app. Through our partnerships with top MMPS, advertisers can also prove more ROI by measuring return on ad spend through our partnerships.

For advertisers, Samsung Ads’ AI-powered solutions help you improve efficiency, achieve outcomes across the entire sales funnel and ultimately make your media strategy smarter over time.

YY: Can you provide more details on the newly introduced Smart Acquisition and CTV to Mobile solutions? How do these innovations help advertisers bridge their campaigns across CTV and mobile and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of advertising campaigns?

MS: We know that as audiences fragment across platforms and devices, advertisers are facing the challenge of both missed reach and duplicated reach. Smart Acquisition helps solve for that by addressing fragmentation for advertisers aiming to reach their best audiences with greater efficiency – especially where they are most receptive and responsive. Not only does this optimize engagement and ROI, but it also streamlines performance monitoring and campaign refinement.

YY: Travis Scott Howe mentioned “Optimal Reach” for sharper audience targeting. How does this tool utilize Samsung’s proprietary data to improve advertising reach and effectiveness?

MS: Optimal Reach provides insights across linear and streaming to identify gaps in reach, unexposed audiences, and target “missed audiences’ at scale using machine learning through a single source solution that leverages a myriad of proprietary Samsung Adsdata signals, such as data from our proprietary viewer panel, TV & You, linear and in-app ACR data and more. Leveraging billions of data points across screens in-home, in hand, and on-the-go, our extensive proprietary dataset integrated into our machine learning engine stands unrivaled.

Lynne d Johnson: A swath of Samsung’s audiences are being categorized as Super Influencers. Who are those Super Influencers and why is that such a coveted audience for advertisers?

MS: According to a recent Advertising Research Foundation survey of over 50,000 people, Samsung’s audience has more spending power with a higher income than other OEM users – and they care about checking their financial standing on a regular basis. They are what the study calls “super influencers” when it comes to tech, electronics and video games.

These super influencers are loyal, well-educated, family-oriented (more likely to have children in the home), and are likely to use flight and hotel reward programs for travel. They are also actively engaged and, though they are busy, they make up for it by being more likely to shop and order food delivery online.

LdJ: Can you talk about how purchase attribution and engagement attribution help to dynamically optimize inventory to deliver advertisers desired outcomes? I think you guys call it Smart Outcomes, right?

MS: As marketers are increasingly tasked with accountability and efficiency, Samsung Ads’ outcome-driven solutions are based on advertisers’ most requested business outcomes.

Built on the undeniable scale and proprietary data sets, Smart Outcomes allows Samsung Ads to deliver result-driven campaigns capable of driving a variety of in-demand outcomes tied to key performance indicators (KPIs). These performance-focused solutions pull together planning and optimization tools across Samsung Adsproduct portfolio including pre-campaign insights tool Audience Advisor, AI-driven Smart Audiences, and the Samsung Pixel product amongst others.

YY: Samsung TV Plus is getting major league sports channels thanks to partnerships with MLB, AHL, Formula 1, and others. How do these collaborations align with your broader advertising and content strategy?  How do you plan to attract sports fans and bring them deeper into the funnel?

Takashi Nakano: We remain focused on delivering a premium, seamless viewing experience where users can simply switch on and start watching.

FAST continues to take a hold as viewers’ preferred viewing vehicle, and sports leagues are responding to that demand. In fact, we’ve seen over 60% growth in time spent viewing year over year, showing that Samsung TV Plus, our FAST and AVOD service, is a tremendous engagement vehicle that keeps viewers coming back for more. As the premiere FAST service on Samsung TVs, Samsung TV Plus provides sports leagues with the flexibility they need to deliver their local and national live games, pre-and-post-game coverage, documentaries, and everything in between to engaged sports fans with the tech that is required at scale.

With our all-new, premium sports partnerships, we’re launching exclusive and first-to-FAST offerings that will deliver more of the content fans want, across the most in-demand Sports category. Our new partnerships will bring the MLB, the AHL the Ontario Reign, ONE Championship TV, the PGA TOUR, and Formula 1 to all Samsung device owners with access to extensive free content offerings, and will make some key sporting event, free of cost to all Samsung device owners.

With Samsung TV Plus, we’re continuing to build a vast, unrivaled library of brand safe, quality content that viewers want to watch, with over 2,600 ad-supported channels globally, and nearly 500 national and local channels in the US.

YY: Starting next month, advertisers can sponsor the Samsung News app on Galaxy devices. What does this mean in terms of ad placement and visibility for advertisers? And how will the Olympics feature within news services benefit both users and advertisers?

MS: With roadblocks that include both display and video ads in its top five editorial news sections, advertisers can benefit from prime ad placement for their campaigns, reaching a wider audience base across diverse platforms. Think of the opportunity here – advertisers can reach their specific target audience watching their favorite show on Samsung TV Plus on the big screen, and then re-engage them with a tailored message later in the day when they’re on-the-go on their mobile phones.

Additionally, the Samsung News Galaxy mobile app is set to feature curated, up-to-the-minute Olympic content this summer in partnership with the International Olympic Committee. This new offering comes at a pivotal time where live sports continue to dominate as a major opportunity for reaching new audiences, gaining deeper insights and delivering innovative ad experiences.

The post Samsung Ads Unveils AI Innovations: Elevating Ad Performance and Audience Engagement appeared first on AdMonsters.

Kroger Precision Marketing made waves in the ad tech industry as a pioneer in retail media. And, they are determined to expand their  impact further. 

Last week, Kroger’s retail media operation announced the  launch of an in-house self-service ad platform. The platform was designed to ease advertisers’ ability to activate, measure and optimize their campaigns and improve their customers’ overall experience. 

But that’s just the beginning. Plans are in motion to expand the platform’s capabilities to service their entire retail media service portfolio which means a more unified marketing strategy for brands. We spoke with Michael Schuh, VP of Media Strategy at KPM, to understand the origins of the new platform, how they put consumers’ needs first and plans for future-proofing their ad platform. 

Andrew Byrd: What motivated Kroger to develop its proprietary self-service ad platform?

Michael Schuh: We created the in-house ad platform because we’re obsessed with optimizing the customer experience. We designed our diverse portfolio of ad products to help brands engage with our customers no matter how they consume media. We’ve been on a journey for five and a half years since launching KPM. 

Our parent organization at 84.51°, the data science company of Kroger, gave us an incredible foundation of data science that we’re excited to deploy on our platform. It will improve the content that our customers see when they visit Kroger.com or the Kroger app. The scale and speed with which we can deploy that data science to improve customer experiences will only increase as we build in-house capabilities versus leveraging third-party partners.  

AB: Regarding creating a great consumer experience, the ad tech industry is in a privacy reckoning. How are you thinking about that when creating the ad platform? I know that with your retail media network, you have plenty of customer first-party data. Still, I’m curious how you deal with transparency and privacy protection concerning your customer data. 

MS: We built our ad platform to be consumer-first. We empower and encourage our customers to make informed choices about whether they wish to receive tailored ads and personalized offers. We provide clear information about how customers can opt out of such advertising. Most customers feel that personalized offers and fuel points make their shopping easier. That’s why our loyalty program has a high participation rate: 96% of Kroger sales are connected to loyalty accounts.  

AB: Can you explain how advertisers create and launch campaigns on Kroger’s ad platform?

MS: As a self-service advertising platform, advertisers will have lots of flexibility to control the process. Initial capabilities will allow clients to: 

• Reach relevant audiences using search-based insights and custom ad groups.
• Design, iterate, and activate creative messages within the platform.
• Customize and save multiple creative templates by brand and product.
• Optimize all campaign elements, including budgets, messaging, and flighting.
• Build reports and boost performance against deterministic retail data – including sales lift, household penetration, and unit lift.  

The new platform will also pave the way for greater interoperability with other media activation and management software. Advertisers using third-party management tools like Pacvue and Skai will still manage inventory through those platforms.

We’ll own the platform and deploy capabilities like data science, onsite inventory, and new inventory types. We will then surface new capabilities to help brands activate across our entire suite of ad products.

We’ll start to onboard existing clients over the next couple of months. We’ll have beta clients on the platform within the next 60 days or so. Then we’ll move to our full launch. We’re already working on features and functionality to enhance the platform. We will connect with third-party bid management platforms – like Pacvue and Skai – to help brands buy across onsite display and search.

AB: What are the future plans for Kroger’s self-service ad platform? Are there any upcoming features or expansions on the horizon?

MS: As part of this first release, we will maintain our relationship with bid management platforms like Skai and Pacvue. We’ll continue to innovate with partners to enhance our suite of metrics. Part of the reason advertisers are investing in retail media is because of the ability to close the loop and improve performance. It is not limited to performance metrics. We can also show how a campaign drove new buyers or category share. The new platform will increase how we optimize these metrics. 

Retail media is not just about setting the campaign and forgetting it. This platform will enable brands to see real-time data and optimize between different ad placements, creative types, or products. The result is a better customer experience with the brand content. 

The post Kroger Precision Marketing’s In-House Ad Platform Finesses Customer Experience appeared first on AdMonsters.

Imagine it if you will, you’re sitting on your porch eating Catalina Crunch Cereal, and you look up and your neighbor is chirping away to a pair of seagulls who then respond to her. Next, a voiceover says, “The world is full of surprises—like getting cinnamon toast cereal without all the bad stuff.”

Pretty funny stuff, huh?

That’s what happens in the first nationwide brand awareness TV Campaign from Catalina Crunch.  With the help of SuperHeroes NY and System1, the keto-friendly cereal and snack brand created 30, 15, and 6-second spots featured across TV, social media, and CTV platforms, with a focus on amusing their audience.

To test and land on the right creative, SuperHero NY leveraged System1’s Test Your Ad platform to scale the campaign’s performance and determine how viewers felt about the creative throughout development. The goal was to connect data with creativity. Test Your Ad enables marketers and their agency partners to A/B test people’s emotional responses to creative, second-by-second, with custom reports delivered within 24 hours.

AdMonsters spoke with Krishna Kaliannan, Founder/CEO, Catalina Snacks, Jon Evans, Chief Customer Officer, System1, and Susan Vugts, Managing Director, SuperHeroes NY, about the campaign. We discussed System 1’s Test Your Ad platform, how to market a campaign across different platforms, and the importance of collaboration. 

Catalina Crunch’s Creative Campaign Collaboration

AB: Catalina Crunch partnered with SuperHeroes NY and System1 for a creative cereal campaign. Why was this partnership worthwhile for your company? 

Krishna Kaliannan: We’re big fans of leveraging data to drive improvements. In Catalina Crunch’s early years, we learned that less than half (45%) of buyers were eating our cereal out of a bowl. Some were eating it from the bag as a snack, baking, or adding it to yogurt or smoothies. This insight led to the launch of additional snack product lines.  

So when we launched a broader awareness campaign, we also wanted to ensure we were partnering with agencies that understood data and creativity.

When we learned about the Test Your Ad platform, we recognized it as another way to capture valuable feedback from consumers so that we could create an ad they would enjoy. As a challenger brand, we aim to stand out among established competitors. Partnering with Superheroes as our creative agency that seeks to save the world from boring advertising and System1 has enabled us to be more creative and get real audience insights that shape the final campaign.

Testing Your Ad’s Effectiveness

AB: SuperHeroes NY used System1’s Test Your Ad platform to gauge how viewers felt about the creative throughout development. How does this product work, and why did you think creating it was necessary? 

Jon Evans: Nearly half of all advertising (48%) does not deliver long-term market share growth. Furthermore, many brands need clarity on which campaigns fail to engage consumers. We developed Test Your Ad, a platform that measures viewers’ emotional response to advertising because research demonstrates that the more people feel, the more they buy.

With Test Your Ad, advertisers and agencies can quickly and accurately predict the short-and long-term potential of creative, understand which specific elements are or are not adding value, improve their ad’s effectiveness through expert guidance and compare their ad to competitors’ commercials among our database of more than 80,000 ads.

Tell Me a Story: Scaling Ad Creative Across Channels

AB: While this is Catalina Crunch’s first TV campaign, the ads will be displayed across social media and streaming platforms. Do you find that marketing across different platforms changes your ad process? Do you have to market to audiences differently depending on the platform? If so, how? 

Susan Vugts: When developing our campaigns, we will always start with a solid creative strategy and build our story upon a vital human insight and a creative nugget that connects with people and can stand out.

For Catalina Crunch, this was the insight that something that seems impossible can be true. Like healthy cereal that tastes delicious or a neighbor that talks with seagulls in the Catalina campaign.

Based on this premise, we usually develop multiple executions per platform and audience because you must market to audiences and platforms differently. But we also ensure we have one overarching recognizable storyline and build distinctive brand assets such as packaging, color usage, and logo across all executions and platforms to build brand affinity. This is especially true for a challenger brand such as Catalina Crunch, which is building its brand and business. 

Optimizing Marketing Budgets Amidst Economic Uncertainty

AB: There is a reported slowdown in ad spend and a possible ad recession. What role should creative advertising play in combating this rough spot? 

JE: Many brands are looking for ways to stretch their marketing budgets further in the face of an economic downturn. Creative effectiveness is key to maximizing a brand’s advertising investment.

Creative effectiveness is key to maximizing a brand's advertising investment.

First, marketers must understand which of their current campaigns support brand building and which do not impact the bottom line. Ad testing can help reveal the effectiveness metrics so that marketers can allocate spend to the ads most likely to drive market share growth.

While some brands will inevitably roll out new ads during a recession, others may prefer to create savings by reinvesting in campaigns with high effectiveness metrics.

System1 has conducted extensive research on ad wear-out and has found no evidence. Audiences take more time with creative than marketers do. Advertisers can revive or repurpose older creative that tests well with audiences to reduce the need for an entirely new brief and production process.

Brand-building Ads Spark Emotion

AB: What advice would you give to advertisers to implement creative ads in their campaigns to help them drive revenue? 

JE: One of the main differentiators between ads that drive long-term growth and those that don’t is the former’s emphasis on right-brained features.

Advertising expert and author Orlando Wood outlines in his books — Lemon. How the advertising brain turned sour. and Look out — the importance of appealing to the brain’s right hemisphere to drive mental availability. Right-brained features include:

• Melodic music
• Characters with agency
• A clear sense of place
• A scene unfolding
• Humor and dialogue

Brand-building ads spark an emotion in viewers, ideally happiness.

In comparison, Wood’s research finds that ads that lean heavily on left-brained elements, like rhythmic music, voiceovers, words on the screen, and freeze-frame effects, are less likely to drive long-term market share growth. Unfortunately, over the last nearly 20 years, there has been an increase in left-brained features and a decrease in right-brained features in ads. 

Advertisers must build briefs with the right and left brain in mind. Agencies are equally responsible for developing concepts focusing on storytelling and bringing rich characters and interactions into the mix. This creative will have a better chance of taking viewers on an emotional journey and driving long-term profit and market share growth. 

The post Catalina Crunch Campaign Shows How to Save the World From Boring Advertising appeared first on AdMonsters.

Specifically, do they have the tools they need to ensure the ads that appear on their sites meet their brand’s standards, and whether they spend too much time managing the process?

Take our 5-minute State of Publisher Rev Ops Efficiency Survey

This survey and report — to be published in conjunction with GeoEdge on AdMonsters.com as a Playbook — will explore the publisher’s ability to fully monetize their sites while maintaining strong brand standards while driving efficiency in their Rev Ops and AdOps teams. In the final report, we will also provide tips and best practices that you can put into practice in your business right away.

Take the Survey Now!

The post What’s Your Rev Ops Efficiency? appeared first on AdMonsters.

The challenges are great, and in a recent Think Tank hosted by Celtra, publishers came together and discussed their individual challenges and how to rectify them.

First-party Data and Letting Go

“We sit on a wealth of first-party data, and quite a high percentage of our ad revenue is data enabled,” said one publisher.

“Targeting is heavily utilized. In terms of the intersection of data with creative, there are places where we’ve been really strong and done a really great job, and we’ve had to sort of prioritize what we focus on. We have really strong first-party multicultural data, and we know that our advertisers really needed some guidance about what is the right way to message these audiences: ‘When should I deliver an ad in Spanish versus English? When should I have cultural nuances or words inserted that show the audience that I’m aware of who they are, and they’re more receptive to the message.’ So I would say multicultural is a place where we focused because we saw that there’s a huge opportunity.”

Letting go is hard in all aspects of life; in love, in death, and in business. More times than not, it’s the right call.

“It’s okay, to throw things away,” added another publisher. “I think a lot of times we forget that. It’s fine if you tried a product and you learned from it and now you don’t want to use it, you want to sunset it or phase it out. And I think sometimes it’s easy to say, ‘well, we put so much work into this, so now we have to keep doing it because we spent all this time and money and resources doing it.’ But then you end up supporting too many things and maintaining too many things.

We did that recently. We phased out a pretty big product that just never worked the way we wanted it to work. It was like, okay, we tried and we tried, and it was too hard and too expensive to make it better. And it was disappointing but it was the right move.”

Template Is Not a Bad Word

Everyone wants to feel special, have that custom, unique experience, whether it’s as an individual or a business looking for that “wow” factor. Advertisers can still have that wow factor with the use of templates on the back-end. Templates work, for starters, and they are also easy to set up and ease the burden on an already stretched-thin ad ops department. 

“We try and make sure that the client understands that even though it’s a template,  it’s going to meet their KPIs,” said one attendee. We try to make these templates as simple as possible for clients. And, it’s repeatable. The agency loves it because for some of our units, it’s three assets, video and image and maybe a poster thumbnail and the pixels. And then we can just crank that out. If agencies want to rotate five different titles or five different versions of creative for the same unit, depending on it, we’ll throw it in for them, because it’s so simple to do, and they know exactly what they’re giving us every time.”

“Template can almost be considered a bad word from a sales perspective, because sales wants to sell customized experiences,” added another participant. “Advertisers want to want it to feel custom, want it to feel special.

But on the back end, you can use a template, and the output can still look and feel like it is custom for that advertiser.”

The post Things That Keep Publishers up at Night appeared first on AdMonsters.

Publishers know that advertisers will pay more for premium ad experiences as they drive better engagement, and Sandow Media has seen the results. They’ve streamlined workflows while delivering dynamic ads with more granular targeting and personalization. And with fewer banner ads, the newsletter reader experience has dramatically improved.

In preparation for our webinar: How Pubs Are Increasing Revenue While Delivering Premium Ad Experiences In Email, on Wednesday, September 22, 2021, @ 1 PM EST (Register for the free webinar now!) — featuring Jessica Munoz, SVP Product Marketing & GTM Strategy, LiveIntent and Bobby Bonett, VP, Digital, SANDOW — we spoke with Nick Bolt, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Publisher Solutions, LiveIntent, about how native ads can help publishers grow their business and revenue, as well as how they can significantly streamline their workflows and gain back resources with dynamic ads and sophisticated targeting options.

Lynne d Johnson: Native advertising is one of the fastest-growing areas of digital display when it comes to ad spend. I think eMarketer is predicting native will account for $57.27 billion of display spend this year. But a lot of that money is going to the walled gardens, primarily social networks. What other opportunities do publishers have to cash in on this native advertising surge?

Nick Bolt: While there are plenty of native opportunities publishers can tap into on the web, email poses a valuable option for publishers. Native ads garner high engagement rates for advertisers, and in turn, high CPMs for publishers — which only increase in the opt-in environment of email.

Native ads also enable publishers to diversify their media kit with premium ad units that elevate digital experiences. Furthermore, with native ads in email newsletters, publishers can transform their newsletters into a channel for first-party data collection. With more premium options publishers can attract a larger array of advertisers and acquire more data to continue growing their business and revenue. 

Lynne d Johnson: Native in email sounds great, but how can publishers capitalize on native ads without undercutting the work they’ve put into cultivating their display inventory options? 

Nick Bolt: Native ads and banner ads both play an integral part in monetization and advertising strategies. While native ads may garner higher engagement rates for advertisers, they’re designed to fit the look and feel of the publisher’s branding; an advertiser may prefer an ad unit that provides them with the opportunity to showcase their branding and logos instead, as is the case in brand awareness campaigns. The key is to have one’s native and display inventory work together as a multi-format buy where advertisers can purchase both types of inventory for a full newsletter sponsorship. 

Lynne d Johnson: One of the many benefits of native ads in email is that publishers get to use data to make advertising extremely relevant for readers, which of course is a win-win for buyers. What are some of the other benefits?

Nick Bolt: With native ads in email, but more specifically LiveIntent’s Native Ad Blueprints, publishers gain more control and greater flexibility. Native ads enable publishers to monetize their email newsletters while maintaining their brand identity. As publishers work to increase their subscription and retention efforts, native ads are a valuable way to improve subscription experiences with highly-curated, premium ad units powered by reader behavior and interest data. 

Lynne d Johnson: Besides monetization opportunities, what are some of the publisher benefits of using native ads in email newsletters?

NB: With Native Ad Blueprints, publishers can go beyond guaranteed deals committed to a single advertiser and instead can run multiple deals across several advertisers that serve the most relevant ad to readers. Publishers and their ad ops teams can do this while significantly streamlining their workflows and gaining back resources with dynamic ads and sophisticated targeting options. Furthermore, our Native Ad Blueprints solution enables publishers to leverage their email newsletter inventory for their own marketing needs, targeting their audiences with ads that will help them achieve their own marketing goals and objectives.

Don’t forget to sign up for our free webinar with LiveIntent: How Pubs Are Increasing Revenue While Delivering Premium Ad Experiences In Email, on Wednesday, September 22, 2021 @ 1 PM EST (Register for the free webinar now!)

The post Pubs Are Increasing Revenue and First-party Data Collection With Native Ads in Email appeared first on AdMonsters.

During our April 22, 2021 webinar, Unlocking a Creative-First Approach to Social Display, Nikki Gertner, Senior Product Manager at Celtra and our own Rob Beeler dug into why publishers should look for more functionality — whether that’s the ability to make content “shoppable” or even just build out time-saving templates — in a social ad solution.

Nikki and Rob also covered a few tips and best practices for how publisher ad teams can turn social content into a premium ad experience that entices both users and advertisers.

Key Takeways:

• The beauty of social display is its ability to mimic the social media experience that both users and advertisers have come to expect: Gorgeous creative with rich functionality, like video, parallax scrolling, and other animations.
• It’s all about the remix: Social posts contain high-performing assets like copy and images that advertisers are eager to repurpose.
• Without the right tools, efforts to resize and otherwise modify social content can be time-consuming for publishers’ ad sales teams (especially teams without in-house designers).
• “Template” doesn’t have to be a dirty word when it comes to social ad creative — in fact, using templates can help streamline workflows and give your team more time to ideate.
• The “half-life” of social content on platforms like IG and Snapchat is short, but using templates that easily port it to the display channel can drive more engagement with that content over time.
• Premium social display experiences feature-rich media capabilities like parallax scrolling and image transitions that encourage interaction.

The post Webinar Replay: Unlocking a Creative-First Approach to Social Display appeared first on AdMonsters.

So how can publishers help advertisers maximize their existing content while offering them trusted inventory to advertise on? As alternative ways to distribute social content become more important, publishers are now offering solutions that help brands take their social creative and run it across publisher inventory with Social Display.

In preparation for our upcoming webinar, Unlocking a Creative-First Approach to Social Display, on Thursday, April 22 @ 1 PM EST (Register now!), AdMonsters Advisory Board Chairman, Rob Beeler, spoke with Nikki Gertner, Senior Product Manager, Celtra, about monetizing an advertiser’s content from social media, having a range of ad product templates in your arsenal to leverage an advertiser’s social content, and how to stand out from your competition by offering creative services.

Rob Beeler: Are publishers missing an opportunity to monetize an advertiser’s content from social media?

Nikki Gertner: If a publisher does not offer any kind of ad product that can meet a social distribution KPI, then they are absolutely missing out on an opportunity. It takes a lot of resources on the publisher side to come up with new and innovative ad products. Researching client KPIs, prototyping an idea, building a template, A/B testing, etc. You could dedicate an entire team to this, but with Social Display the majority of that ideation work is already complete. It’s just a matter of getting your hands on the right assets, and how publishers can stand out from the competition by offering creative services to advertisers.

RB: It seems to me with so many different social platforms, it would be complicated to build ad products that can distribute content for each. How can publishers manage all these specifications?

The post How Pubs Can Monetize Advertisers’ Content From Social Media appeared first on AdMonsters.