Publishers, we know it’s been a wild ride lately. Between the impending third-party cookie total annihilation and generative AI nibbling away at referral traffic, finding ways to keep your audience — and your revenue — intact is more important than ever.

That’s why, in our new survey, we’re diving into audience amplification strategies. We want to hear from YOU about how you’re reaching audiences beyond your site and where you see the next wave of revenue opportunities.

Take the Amplify Your Audience Survey Now!

Your input will help uncover what’s working, what’s not, and what’s on the horizon for publishers. We’ll explore the balancing act of leveraging first-party data without losing your competitive edge and dive into tactics from retargeting to renting access to segmented data. With your insights, we’ll map out the best strategies to amplify your audience, drive revenue, and keep your content thriving in these ever-shifting digital waters.

The post It’s Time to Unlock Audience Amplification: Share Your Insights Now! 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.

Pending publisher licensing deals with OpenAI aside, one part of the news organization finds generative AI extremely useful, and in some instances, transformative: the Ad Ops team. AdMonsters has interviewed numerous Ad Ops people across several organizations to see if and how they’re using it.

Reshaping Ad Ops With Generative AI

Ad Ops professionals aren’t just dabbling in generative AI; they’re diving in deep and successfully putting it to work to improve their daily jobs and elevate the overall Ad Ops team. It isn’t a surprise that they’ve largely sidestepped the challenges others have faced using generative AI. As tech-savvy people, Ad Ops professionals are well aware of the limitations of all AI and take active steps to mitigate the pitfalls and problems.

This Publisher Pulse looks at:

• • Popular generative AI tools used by Ad Ops team members
  • Ad Ops personas — distinct ways that interviewees use generative AI to elevate their performance or the performance of their teams
  • AI use cases
  • How generative AI will transform the Ad Ops Teams
  • Tips for getting the best results out of AI
  • Sample outputs

Enter your info to download your copy below!

The post AdMonsters Publisher Pulse: Ad Ops Reimagined — A Guide to Reshaping Ad Ops With Generative AI appeared first on AdMonsters.

The key is understanding all the data surrounding ad buys to ensure publishers know exactly what they’re selling and receiving in return, reconcile discrepancies between their books and those of advertisers, and identify areas that need improvement.

But let’s get more specific. Here are five things publishers should be doing to shore up their finances.

5 Financial Best Practices for Publishers

Reconcile Discrepancies

Publishers get billed on third-party ad server numbers, so they should monitor and reconcile discrepancies between their first-party ad server and third parties. Then, they need to send the finalized numbers to their finance team for billing, often via an order management system.

Publishers should be able to automatically reconcile these discrepancies so that they can more quickly identify campaigns not meeting their delivery goals and resolve issues. Automated reconciliation also avoids disconnects between advertisers and publishers, as well as between ad ops and billing, saving everyone time and improving both relationships.

Automate the End-of-month Process

By automating the EOM process, publishers can send invoices to their customers weeks earlier, leading to earlier payments. For example, by automating the usually manual process of consolidating third-party data with first-party data, publishers might be able to push up invoicing from the middle of the month to the first few days. They can also streamline and verify the transmission of financial data from ad operations to the finance team. 

Another manual task that publishers can automate to speed up EOM is making adjustments for over-delivery. For example, if you delivered 50,000 more impressions than you were supposed to, you’d be able to automatically take that out of the invoice. 

Finally, they can automate assembling different metrics (such as impressions, viewable impressions, or co-view impressions) for different campaigns based on OMS information. 

Get Good at Forecasting

Publishers who forecast their direct-sold inventory with high accuracy maximize their yield — which is particularly true if their business is susceptible to seasonality or external events. For example, it’s really difficult to know how to optimally sell inventory based on Black Friday traffic if you don’t have a model capable of anticipating an unusual spike in inventory availability.

Besides driving higher sellthrough rates and revenue, accurate forecasting also provides publishers with higher confidence in their overall financial planning. Use industry benchmarks and seasonality to try and forecast programmatic yield as well.

Predictable revenue is critical to making virtually all other business decisions. 

Automate Tasks Where Possible

Publisher teams, especially ad and revenue operations, are generally mired in a lot of rote work, such as data aggregation, reconciliation, and reporting, that can and should be automated. By automating as many tasks as possible, publishers will keep their teams happy (because they won’t be saddled with busy work), allocate talent optimally, and increase their bandwidth to perform more revenue-driving tasks, like taking care of clients.

Brush up on Revenue Reporting

Periodically, review which aspects of publisher data are included in executive reporting. This allows rev ops teams to align management on the KPIs they should prioritize. For example, it might be pertinent for management to know which sites perform relative to others. Or there may be shifts in display and video revenue. Ad ops people should regularly review which facts they’re putting on the executive team’s radar to facilitate strategic adjustments.

Reconciling discrepancies, automating EOM, mastering forecasting, automating tasks where possible, and updating executive revenue reporting will help publishers solidify their finances, identify prime growth opportunities, and ultimately instill greater confidence in their decision-making. That’s what financial literacy is all about.

The post 5 Financial Best Practices for Publishers appeared first on AdMonsters.

The streaming era of television has drastically changed how consumers watch content and, therefore, how advertising works. There are many streaming channels now — the doors that Netflix opened — and plenty of consumers have subscriptions to several platforms. But how are they able to afford them all? 

For the past fifty years, the video industry used a dual revenue-stream model. This meant that TV networks and pay-TV operators shared the revenue consumers paid for subscriptions and the revenue generated from ads. Then the rise of Netflix’s ad-free platform birthed the streaming dynasty, opening a gamut of questions about the future of advertising in television. 

Meanwhile, Hulu and other streaming services began offering ad-supported options at a lower price, which also led to the rise of the FASTS, and the popularity of the option showed that it was viable. It begged the question of which ad-supported tier would become the industry standard.

One of the original appeals of streaming was ad-free content, but as the streaming medium became oversaturated, ad-supported tiers became a tactical revenue stream. As the streaming wars waged on for three years, lower-cost ad-supported plans “have provided consumers with the ability to afford more services with their entertainment wallet.” 

The growth of ad-supported plans has grown exponentially over five years. By the end of Q1 of 2023, ad-supported streaming made up one-fourth of SVOD subscriptions. 

The Big Four: “Ad Avoiders,” “Ad Takers,” “Ad Managers,” and “Ad Oblivious.”

The popularity of ad-supported subscriptions is undeniable, but the statistics vary based on the streaming platform. For example, two out of three subscribers that signed up for Peacock in Q1 of 2023 chose the ad-supported plan. On the other hand, only one-fifth of subscribers signed up for the ad-supported tier on HBO Max and Netflix.

But why are consumers making these choices? 

Antenna, the subscriber measurement company, created four consumer categories to understand consumer choice: Ad Avoiders, Ad Takers, Ad Managers, and Ad Oblivious. 

Ad Avoider: This segment of subscribers always chooses an ad-free plan. Platforms presented them with an ad-free and ad-supported tier, and they always chose the former. 

Ad Taker: This segment was presented with both options and chose the ad-supported tier. 

Ad Manager: They mix and match both ad-free and ad-supported tiers.

Ad Oblivious: They have not yet signed up for a service where advertising was an option.

Ad Choice Segmentations (All Subscribers) 

This idea of ad choice in CTV is a fairly new concept. Three years ago, 64% of U.S. video streaming subscribers were Ad Oblivious because platforms never presented them with a streaming service with an ad-supported subscription tier. Now the number is down to 32%, a significant drop. 

The upcoming years will be vital for determining the future role of advertising in subscription-supported streaming. This is the first time the CTV industry is offering this amount of ad-supported streaming content, and platforms will need to take this time to understand if consumers bought into the value proposition of advertising, especially as one-third of subscribers remain Ad Oblivious. 

If you put aside the Ad Oblivious segment and focus on the two-thirds of subscribers who made a choice, 58% of Americans chose advertising either some or all the time they had the option. However, Ad Avoiders are the largest single segment at 42%. 

The Ad Manager portion, in which subscribers filter back and forth between both options, might be the way of the future. The Ad Manager portion is small, but there is room for exponential growth. 

“By definition, a consumer can’t be considered an Ad Manager until one has made the ad choice at least two times. If we isolate only the consumers who have been faced with the ad choice two or more times, a fascinating story emerges: 71% of these Americans have chosen advertising at least once. And nearly one-in-two are Ad Managers. Consumers are not only learning to choose whether or not they want ads, but they are also learning to decide on a service-by-service basis,” wrote Antenna. 

There’s room for both ad-free and ad-supported services in the future. The data shows that it depends on the platform. 

The post The Subscription Economy, The Streaming War, and Ad-Supported Media appeared first on AdMonsters.

To date, however, “attention” has been thought of as site placement + ad unit. Should the creative format itself be considered in attention calculations? What is the impact of creative innovation on critical attention metrics, such as brand recall, ad recall, and attention rates? 

To answer these questions, Emodo teamed up with Persuasion.Art to create a new attention metrics methodology, called Creative Attention Effectiveness. This methodology allows advertisers to measure the impact of both ad slots and creative formats on ad effectiveness.

Let’s dig in.

The partners began by testing the effectiveness of animated ads and found they delivered strong performance on key metrics:

Digging deeper, the researchers tested the animated ad format against static units across three different ad sizes. The animated format outperformed static ones across all units.

Next, the researchers tested the impact of creative format by site category, looking at four categories: gaming, news, weather, and productivity properties. 

The chart below shows that animated ads consistently did better on all Attention and Memorability metrics, across the site categories. The highest lifts were seen on brand recall (61.8% lift) and ad recall (56.4% lift) in the News category.

Ad Format vs. Site Selection: Which Affects Campaign Performance More?

Current attention metrics tend to focus solely on the impact of site and ad unit, not the actual ad format. This, according to the researchers, misses a critical opportunity to drive campaign performance with innovative creatives.

The chart shows that site selection had a modest  impact on performance, as there were small variations across site categories:

Next, the researchers compared the best and worst performing creatives and the best and worst performing sites. The results show that creative formats play a critical role in optimizing all metrics.

“Our tests conclusively show that creative has an impact on attention and memorability, often more than site. Optimizing only for ad slots, not creative, is a missed opportunity. While optimizing creative formats boosts performance, the real opportunity to drive Memorability and compound effectiveness lies in a combined optimization of creative and media,” said Megan Saunders, SVP of Global Marketing & Growth at Emodo.

The Connection Between Attention and Memorability 

Finally, the researchers wanted to explore a potential correlation between attention and memorability at an ad and campaign level. Unsurprisingly, the study found that the more time a consumer spent looking at an ad, the greater the likelihood of recalling the brand.

The data showed a consistently positive correlation between attention and memorability at a campaign level. Specifically:

• We see a strong 0.6 correlation between time spent on an ad (attention) and brand recall (a key measure of Memorability) across all 9 tests at the campaign level 
• We also see a 0.52 correlation between attention and ad recall.

This means that by driving attention, advertisers will consistently drive better brand metrics. Even if the lift itself is modest, such as when the creative format is held constant (as the chart above illustrates), it is consistent. When optimizing to creative formats that are more attention-grabbing, however, the lift in recall is far higher.

Learn More

Download the complete report here.

The post Memorability Matters: The Role of Creative Innovation in a Post-cookie World appeared first on AdMonsters.

But how widely is this insight shared with the sales and ad product teams? Is your business suffering from a data divide, inhibiting a successful monetization strategy?

Share your insight in our 5-minute survey.

Your contribution to this survey will help other publishers fully understand if they have a data divide and what they need to do to close it to bring in more revenue or repeated business.

From your feedback, AdMonsters, supported by DoubleVerify, will create a Playbook that digs into how well AdOps, Sales, Product, and Analytics/BI teams collaborate and share data about sales and campaign and inventory performance to help each team be more effective at their jobs. We will also provide best practices and tips for setting up workflows and streamlining access to data to help you develop a successful monetization strategy.

The post Bridging the Data Divide to Develop Effective Monetization Strategies appeared first on AdMonsters.

Back then she was a senior manager working in Digital Ad Sales and Finance Business Intelligence at Viacom and was responsible for providing the company with data regarding its digital ad sales revenue. 

Her team was tasked with creating ongoing management, sales, and financial reports for the ad ops team, as well as monthly and quarterly reports that rolled up to the CFO and were delivered as part of the quarterly earnings. 

“On a monthly and quarterly basis, I had to pull and consolidate data from so many sources and my spreadsheets were really large with a lot of tabs,” explained Naveh. “It took me more than 40 hours, which is well over a week. I spent probably closer to two weeks wrangling data, doing vlookups, and ensuring the data is in the same format.”

The Race to Report

All of the reports required accurate revenue and impressions data across the multiple platforms that served ads to Viacom viewers. For instance, to gather display data, the team pulled data from the Google Ad Manager instances for BET, CBS, and the rest of Viacom’s properties. The team also pulled video data from Freewheel, as well as data from myriad SSPs and ad networks with whom Viacom worked, such as Rubicon, SpotX, and OpenX.

All of the manual data pulls and subsequent formatting and uploading to spreadsheets left Naveh, who majored in Business & Corporate Finance, with little time to do the things she went to school for, specifically analyzing the data and gleaning stories from its meaning.

“I spent so much time just getting the data that I didn’t even have much chance to think about it or ask questions. Obviously, I want to know why things happen, and what they mean for the business. But by the time the numbers were ready, it was like time to deliver them up, that was it.”  

With the data due before she had any time to think about it, Naveh’s team never uncovered the core drivers behind the trends reported (e.g. “Why did this business behave this way this quarter?”).

More People Not the Answer

Would having a larger team have given Naveh the time she needed to analyze the data and tease out the stories she knew it contained? 

“Not really,” she said. “Working with spreadsheets is a one-person job. Perhaps we could have hired an analyst to pull the needed files from the different sources and then another analyst to aggregate into a spreadsheet, but version control quickly becomes a nightmare. Which spreadsheet is the most accurate? What is our shared version of truth?”

Introduction to Burt Intelligence

In August 2019, CBS and Viacom announced a merger, and Naveh was trained on CBS processes. It was then that she discovered Burt Intelligence, a platform that harmonizes disparate advertising data, and applies machine learning to spot anomalies and emerging trends. 

“I loved the user interface, and the ability to drag and drop new data into Burt, which was one of the biggest challenges we faced at Viacom,” Naveh said. What once took 20 hours now takes less than 30 minutes.

The visualizations she saw were also game-changing. Naveh had been using Power BI for a number of years but found the tool difficult to use. In fact, her team frequently hired consultants to work on visualizations projects for them.  With Burt Intelligence, she saw the possibility of wholly democratized data science. Any team member can build a dashboard, visualize trends and get to the core drivers behind critical trends.

“When I was at Viacom, I saw a shift in revenue, from mostly display to 50% display, and eventually to mostly video. This is the kind of trend that would have been great to visualize. The same is true for the platforms our viewers use to consume content. Our audiences went from desktop to mobile to CTV, and being able to spot and validate those trends early on would have helped us make better decisions about the channels to invest in.”

A New Job; New Insights

Eventually, Einat Naveh left Viacom to join the Burt Intelligence product team, where she primarily focuses on Burt Advisor, a curated, daily email that prioritizes how ad ops professionals should make decisions to preserve as much revenue as possible and deliver the best results for brands. 

She also helps clients build end-of-campaign wrap-up reports, but her goal is to empower the people who are in charge of a campaign to do all of the reporting themselves. 

“This is an important step for the industry because it will mean that we have achieved a true democratization of data science,” Naveh explained. “If you work in this business, you have a natural curiosity and an impulse to answer questions about your campaigns. That requires easy and seamless access to data.”

Democratization of data requires pre-built templates and dashboards that serve as a starting point for analysis. The templates are based on a range of campaign criteria and goals, such as click-through rate, viewability, or video completion rate. The templates automatically pull information from the sources, whether it’s GAM or OpenX, and populate the fields with real-time data. 

AI is then deployed to spot anomalies in the data, such as discrepancies in impressions served, that are difficult to spot due to the enormity of campaign datasets. Machine learning helps campaign managers assess which aspects of a campaign are performing better than anticipated, and which are delivering disappointing results so that they can redeploy media spend to optimize overall performance.

“AI is great for first finding things that don’t make sense, and then helping us get to the root of the issue.” Error prevention is a top concern for Naveh. 

But AI isn’t just about problem-solving. It’s also a critical tool for understanding an audience, and how its consumption patterns shift from day to day. This is the kind of insight that can help an advertiser drive efficiency in their programmatic ad spend. 

If a client’s top priority is viewability, is the media plan acquiring the desired number of impressions that are in view? Or is it time to swap out some publishers in order to meet the campaign’s criteria? Without AI, the right answers may not come until long after the campaign has ended.

But AI isn’t just about problem-solving. It’s also a critical tool for understanding an audience, and how its consumption patterns shift from day to day. This is the kind of insight that can help an advertiser drive efficiency in their programmatic ad spend. 

“When trends are displayed daily on a dashboard, the campaign manager can pivot in time to materially affect a campaign’s performance,” Naveh explained.

Put another way, AI allows campaign managers to focus less on what happened, and more on the leading indicators that predict what will happen as a campaign unfolds. In the future, Naveh would like to see tools like Burt Advisor do more forecasting of trends that affect individual campaigns. 

She envisions a scenario where AI helps a campaign manager predict where an audience is going, how the impression mix will change, and how best to spend a budget as the campaign progresses.

Tools that harmonize campaign data and apply machine learning to it are very much in demand. The digital advertising industry has always been data-heavy and has seen a plethora of point solutions and platforms that generate it in abundance. But data is only as good as the analytics that we can apply to it.

The next challenge is to find ways to harness that data so that regular people can make sense of it, and use it to make smart decisions ASAP. This will be the next frontier of decision intelligence.

The post How Life Changes With Automated Insights: A Business Analyst’s Perspective appeared first on AdMonsters.

While many pubs don’t distinguish much between SSPs and demand sources, the nuances between them add up. Where an SSP gets their ads matters, for instance, whether it be from uniques or from trade desks.

“I think a classic SSP needs to have a particular toolset that a demand source wouldn’t necessarily have,”  one publisher said, speaking with us at a recent Think Tank with Sovrn.  “That’s an important differentiation. An SSP needs to have deal ID-building capabilities. Not all demand sources have that, but any decent SSP should.”

As the Think Tank progressed, it became clear that the depth of tools and analytics that SSPs provide continue to play a crucial role for publishers. What’s more, the service that pubs receive from SSPs —and how much human touch that service has — makes a world of difference. 

An Emphasis on Service 

Most pubs were eager to emphasize the fact that they don’t feel great about communicating with an SSP through a ticketing system. They much prefer a human rep, and ideally a single point of contact, to address changing needs and figure out solutions together.

“I need to feel like there is a person who understands our partnership, who is there to help me,” one pub said. “That means if I ask for an intro to a DSP, they can get it for me, or if I need certain data that’s not in their UI, we can have a conversation about how to get that.” 

Another added that, as more SSPs forgo providing human reps in lieu of ticketing systems, they lose a competitive advantage to Google. Although Google has pretty terrible service, they do provide support via a real person, even though that person usually isn’t an expert in the specific needs of the pub. 

As one pub put it bluntly, “We probably wouldn’t use any features an SSP brings to us if we don’t have that service relationship with them, because we need to be able to have that support as we roll out new features.”

Tailored Reports are a Must 

As pubs pivot their strategies to meet the myriad of challenges coming over the next year, they also require increasingly robust, tailored reporting from their SSPs. And that can’t take the form of an emailed file with formatting problems, misplaced fields, or other issues that slow down the pub’s ability to pull insights from the data. 

I really wish the IAB would come up with API standardizations, a list of dimensions and metrics and if you really want to work with partners, you have to check a box and you have to be able to provide this.

One pub said that of the two dozen SSP demand sources they work with, only three provide them with satisfactory reporting.

“I’ve got a standard list of about a dozen different dimensions and about four different metrics,” they said. “It’s really basic shit, right? I want to know how many requests I’m sending out. I want to know how many bid responses I’m getting back. That’s Greek to the majority of our partners.”

Instead, pubs said that most SSPs still only provide them with a grand, daily total that isn’t well organized or broken up by property.

“I really wish the IAB would come up with API standardizations, a list of dimensions and metrics,” said another pub, “and if you really want to work with partners, you have to check a box and you have to be able to provide this.”

Where Are the Benchmark Reports?

A chorus of pubs also wondered why most major exchanges can’t provide them with monthly or quarterly benchmark data that shows how their CPM compares to that of their colleagues. Pubs are only ever able to get those from SSPs if they ask multiple times and wait for a timely turnaround. By that point, the insights aren’t always actionable.

Many want this report to be automated for each pub, then sent in the form of a monthly report card. Of course, it would be totally anonymized. 

These periodic benchmarks would allow pubs to pivot their strategies in a more timely fashion, a necessary consequence of the privacy and regulatory changes coming this year.  “That would be amazing,” said one pub. “Especially when you’re trying a lot of different things, which I was certainly doing in March and April, and nothing was working.”

Most were incredulous that these reports aren’t often included already, and another wondered why an SSP that makes “like a hundred million dollars an hour has to charge me fifteen hundred bucks a month to get the data.”

How Can Pubs Highlight Risky Demand Sources?

As pubs express a continued need for more robust service and reporting, both needs fall under the umbrella of tools — whether human or automated — that ultimately help a pub mitigate risk.

Everybody’s default risk odometers went sky high as soon as the pandemic started. And as pubs begin to understand their risk profile, Brian Bouquet, Vice President of Product Management at Sovrn, said that the SSP is almost ready to roll out features that allow pubs to adjust their bidders accordingly.

Bouquet explained that Sovrn will soon be releasing controls that give publishers the ability to filter out certain bids depending on the pub’s risk profile. For instance, a pub may decide that they don’t want to pay insurance for the 10-20% that a creditor may not underwrite.

“We are constantly mitigating the risk from demand-side defaults on behalf of our publishers,” says Brian. “We continuously perform thorough credit reviews of all our current and prospective demand partners. We only work with those partners who meet our strict criteria and we establish strict credit limits for all of our active demand partners.”

Sovrn approaches these features in a couple of different ways. They let pubs access the demand that’s guaranteed 100%, or they can access all Sovrn’s demand, which gives them extra DSP partners that their creditor will not underwrite. He added that this mitigation program would be completely free. By selecting only guaranteed DSPs, publishers will impact bid depth which will ultimately impact revenue.

“Every company needs to make their own decision about how they want to treat that risk with demand partners,” Bouquet said. “We’re building it with flexibility so you can opt-in and choose your own path.” 

How Will SSPs Help Figure Out the Cookie Conundrum?

As reports about the imminent death of third-party cookies keep coming, pubs see a red flag with any SSP who says they’re still in the early stages of figuring out a replacement.

Let's lobby hard to make sure that ID modules stay on the table. But that's not on us. That's on SSPs, because they will just go away if there's no addressability.

A couple of ad tech vendors have submitted big proposals on top of Google’s TURTLEDOVE proposal, like Criteo’s SPARROW and Magnite’s PARRROT. Features of those proposals have made it into Google’s FLEDGE proposal for operationalizing TURTLEDOVE. Some pubs support SSPs partnering with ID modules as a potential solution. But ultimately, the obligation is on those SSPs to figure things out before the industry takes another huge hit.

“Let’s lobby hard to make sure that ID modules stay on the table,” said one pub. “But that’s not on us. That’s on SSPs, because they will just go away if there’s no addressability.”

Another explained that the responsibility for figuring out a rebound strategy falls on the marketing side, not the publishing side, because the marketing side will only spend money where they are going to get a return. 

“If the dollar originates from them and ends up at us, I feel like there’s only so much we can do,” they said.

Even if pubs spend time with SSPs to get IDs set up, potential conflicts abound. What if the ID methodology doesn’t bring an advertiser the same returns? The advertiser will likely turn down their spend with the SSP and spend more with Google. Because pubs are connected with Google, they’ll retain some of that spend. But it could also create a situation where less pressure is put on Google from SSPs, and the CPMs for publishers suffer significantly.

“Publishers can run around and scramble and put whatever solutions in place that we think will work or be appealing,” they said. “But if the buy-side doesn’t agree, doesn’t find value in them, doesn’t see results from them, it’s kind of all for naught.”

The post Pubs Want SSPs to Offer More Reporting and Advocacy appeared first on AdMonsters.

One way we did this back in June was to virtually recreate Publisher Forum Wednesday Workshops, where we let the attendees “take over” the conference. Three publisher revenue specialists led discussions on getting started with Google Data Studio; workflow hacks; and programmatic video and we published the takeaways here.

Another thing we did is make our Think Tank sessions from PubForum virtual. It’s where we bring together groups of 10-12 director-level-and-up ad ops and rev ops folks for intimate hourlong discussions on a specific topic like consent management, first-party data, and top of everyone’s minds—how to survive the pandemic.

Thanks to the following sponsors for making these happen: DV Publisher Suite, DanAds, Advendio, OneTrust, Permutive, Celtra, and Sovrn.

Below is a summarized list leading to 10 longer executive summaries we captured from those conversations.

10 Thought-provoking Publisher Revenue Think Tank Takeaways

1. Brand Safety: Tools Will Drive Transparency As fun as it is to joke about blocklists, if we’ve learned anything over the past few months, it’s time publishers stop complaining and laughing over brand safety horror stories. We need tools to get the transparency we need—and truly connect with our counterparts on the buy-side when it comes to brand safety. Read more.
2. Pubs Extol the Upside of the Pandemic It probably doesn’t seem like there would be an upside to the pandemic for pubs, but when most office employers told their employees to work-from-home following the government-sanctioned stay-at-home orders, publishers briskly began developing revenue diversification strategies and soon realized that with just a few minor adjustments they could actually be highly productive and more efficient. This, even with the challenges that come with mixing the worlds of work and home. Read more.
3. Media Quality Measurement: Finding Harmony With the Buy Side Instead of complaining about the injustice of it all, this Think Tank had been assembled to develop best practices for easing tensions over brand safety, viewability, and invalid traffic measurement—the key elements of media quality. In discussing their challenges, the publishers in the room realized they needed better avenues to communicate brand safety best practices on a site-level or even campaign basis to advertisers, as well as tools to manage fragmented data coming in from a host of media quality vendors.
4. You Gotta Sell Self-Serve “Build it and they will come” isn’t going to work for many publishers. Yes, you want that storefront open for someone to buy on their own. But if you’re looking for real revenue gains, self-serve is something you have to sell. Read more.
5. The Next Phase of Consent We’re now at a stage in the consent management and communication game where pubs can rebuild and strengthen their relationships with their audiences. Why would a publisher only ask for consent for regulatory compliance when they have a prime opportunity to educate customers about the services provided in exchange for data? Read more.
6. First-Party Data Transformation: Driving Cultural Change As damaging as COVID-19 has been to publishers’ revenues, it has presented them with an opportunity to rethink their business models with a focus on building their first-party data strategies. Publishers are finding themselves in a new world that’s been accelerated by the pandemic, as well as privacy regulations granting consumers more control over their data—and the deprecation of the third-party cookie and IDFA. Read more.
7. Pandemic Pushes Self-Service Ad Platform Adoption Forward It was slow starting for the self-service ad platform, as buyers were hellbent on using exchanges to cherry-pick their inventory. If buyers could find a seller’s inventory on the open markets, and often for a cheaper price, why would they choose to go to a pub directly? But 2020 is a very different marketplace, largely shaped by how the global Coronavirus pandemic has altered the landscape. In particular, publishers’ sales teams have been focusing on big buys, leaving the occasional smaller buy on the table. Self-service tech is growing as a preferred brand-safe option for capturing that smaller spend, even with thousands of dollars now getting tossed to self-service ad platforms. Read more.
8. How the Pandemic Got Ad Ops and Sales to Cozy Up Since the pandemic, the relationship between ad ops and sales has become far more collaborative. Now, the two teams are coming together to rethink and revise their processes, client approaches and even their workflows—and often they’re leveraging automation technology to maximize efficiencies.We recently chatted with publishers—at a Think Tank supported by ADvendio—about the transformation happening within their organizations as a result of the pandemic and how it’s impacting the overall sales process. Read more.
9. Publishers Prep Post-Pandemic Ad Product Evolution As pubs ruminated about how the Pandemic has changed their operations, they also talked about this juncture as a time for being more flexible with advertisers and empathetic to the uncertainty occurring in the marketplace. It’s also a time, they said, for presenting big ideas that win RFPs and deliver on advertisers’ KPIs, with scalability in mind. Read more.
10. Pubs Want More Financial Assurances From SSPs As we get deeper into Q4, we’re starting to experience a rebound but publishers are still concerned about payments nonetheless. Pubs are looking for assurances (and insurance) from their SSP partners that they won’t be the ones left holding the bag when there’s a default somewhere along the chain that links the relationship between advertiser and publisher. Read more.

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