Email newsletters are one surefire way to achieve both those things, plus they offer pubs a sweet opportunity to earn alternative revenue. 

Given that ad spend will continue its slow descent well into 2023, and direct sales are making a comeback (for some, they never left) — email newsletters provide advertisers with premium advertising inventory that reaches a highly engaged audience. Advertiser Perceptions found that from August 2021 to August 2022, the number of marketers who advertised with newsletters rose from 37% to 65%.

In the midst of mounting privacy regulations, consumers becoming more aware of how they share their data and with whom, and publishers’ concerns about consumer subscription fatigue, I spoke with Anders Rasmussen, CCO & Founder of Passendo, an award-winning email monetization platform that provides value for publishers and advertisers worldwide, about how publishers can future proof their businesses with email newsletters and what’s next for the channel.

How Pubs Use Newsletters to Future-proof Their Business

Lynne d Johnson: How can publishers use newsletters as a channel to future-proof their businesses in the cookieless era?

Anders Rasmussen: First up, publishers have to recognize the power email can wield, and, in a world that’s increasingly obsessed with digital marketing, they need to remember the possibilities an email campaign offers. 

It is a critical component in any healthy marketing program and unique in its ability to entertain, inform, engage and sell through — all this under one roof. Secondly, publishers need to make the absolute most of the first-party data entrusted to them by opted-in, pre-engaged consumers and use emails to activate this critical asset. 

Thinking Outside the Box 

LdJ: Beyond future-proofing their businesses, how can pubs think outside the box to use newsletters to diversify their revenue streams and launch new products?

AR: There are a couple of things here. First of all, the pandemic has immunized consumers against owning content, and in the past couple of years, audiences have been turning to subscription services for entertainment, news, and even shopping. 

Forward-thinking publishers have recognized this and launched newsletter verticals in the form of paid subscriptions for their content. For example, The New York Times offers a puzzles subscription, while Esquire US offers verticals based on particular editorial staff. There’s also the fact that newsletters are ideal for promoting products and driving traffic to a publisher’s website. 

Is Subscription Fatigue a Real Thing?

LdJ: Not every subscription-based media company is experiencing the same success as The New York Times. Looking at streaming services’ declining subscriber rates (cough, cough, Netflix), do you think we’ve yet reached peak subscription accounts for consumers? Are reaching a level of subscription fatigue or is this more about pubs not properly converting the exchange value?

AR: Frankly, I think you’re right that many consumers are experiencing subscription fatigue, but for specific reasons. For example, the average number of subscription services per household has gone up in recent years, and people are beginning to pick and choose the best of what they pay for (after all, the cost of numerous subscriptions quickly adds up.) 

Secondly, Netflix offers a ‘one-size-fits-all’ subscription model that no longer looks either personal or curated. There is so much content on Netflix it can be exhausting just picking something to watch, and consumers are now after increasingly personalized localized programming. Finally, there is simply an increasing number of competitors in the game, giving consumers greater choices in the market. So yes, publishers need to differentiate themselves when it comes to offering consumers subscription products.

Retail Media + Email Newsletters = Perfect Opportunity for Pubs

LdJ: Looking ahead, I’m curious about where email newsletters fit into the growth of retail media. Emarketer predicts ad spend to grow to 31.4% to $41.37 billion this year. Is there a role for newsletters to play in this booming marketplace?

AR: The short answer is: yes email will play a significant role in this rapidly expanding marketplace. In fact, Passendo is already working closely with retail and ecommerce media and we predict the sector will eventually achieve 2-3x the size of the more traditional publishing space. 

A key driver in this is the fact that email uses first-party, opt-in data to speak directly to audiences, and in the privacy-first world we live in this is a highly valuable asset. Add in email’s unique flexibility as a platform to inform and sell through, and you have a very potent asset for the retail media industry to use.

The post Why Publishers Need to Future-Proof Their Businesses With Newsletters: Q&A With Passendo’s Anders Rasmussen appeared first on AdMonsters.

Not only does this powerful marketing tool allow for direct connection and communication to your audience, but it can also be a significant revenue driver for your business.

Year after year, newsletter advertising continues to increase in volume. According to Litmus & Statista, the global email marketing market was valued at $7.5 billion in 2020 and is projected to increase to $17.9 billion by 2027. There are 4 billion daily email users. This number is expected to climb to 4.6 billion by 2025. 

Successful publishers understand email’s value in reaching their users, expanding web and app audiences, and leveraging first-party data. However, more recently many publishers are understandably frustrated by the additional tech, cost, complexity, and having to work through the technical nuances of our industry. 

Therefore it is important to work with the right software, tools, and support team who can navigate an ever-changing digital publishing landscape and grow your newsletter revenue.

OAO, is a leading advertising operations services and technology provider who, in addition to the rest of their sell-side ad ops offering, are driving newsletter ad serving and monetization for their clients.  

OAO is the creator of a proprietary technology known as OAO EAC, which was built as a means for digital publishers who use Google Ad Manager to streamline their newsletter ad deployment and minimize the amount of email-related technical issues affecting them.

Leif Kramer, Product Director, OAO shares some of the main issues affecting publishers when it comes to newsletter advertising, as well how OAO EAC helps to solve them.

Operational and Technical:

Workflow

• Your ad ops team is busy pretty much all the time, so you should always avoid adding unnecessary work to their plate. Using an additional ad server to serve ads into your newsletters disrupts a clean operational workflow by introducing an additional system for trafficking, reporting, troubleshooting campaigns, consolidating reports before sending final campaign data to an advertiser, etc.  

• OAO EAC is built to work with Google’s AM360 ad server, which helps to streamline the publisher’s ad ops workflow. If the publisher is already working with AM360, they no longer need an additional ad server to monetize their newsletters. OAO EAC brings AM360 back to serving ads within newsletters, allowing publishers to serve, manage, and report on campaigns in the same ad server they use for desktop, mobile, video, and audio advertising.

Ad Serving Capabilities and Programmatic Monetization

• Gone are the days of only being able to serve exclusive sponsorships in newsletters. OAO has built additional functionality into OAO EAC that enables publishers to rotate ads in newsletters in addition to standard sponsorships. 

• OAO EAC can also fill a publisher’s newsletter inventory with programmatic advertising via our selected partners. Being an ad ops company, OAO always works to ensure publishers are maximizing revenue with their available inventory. Case in point, we don’t take a rev-share for programmatic or direct-sold advertising that serves via OAO EAC.

Reporting Errors and Delays

• OAO approached building our OAO EAC platform as a “GAM first” solution. This means we have little-to-no error rates in impression and click reporting where other services struggle for direct in-GAM reporting, or completely lose impression and click data. This also means OAO EAC reports the clicks and impressions in near-real-time to GAM, so reporting is single source and always up to date.

Flexible Ad Platforms

• We relied on our 20+ years of industry experience when we built OAO EAC, knowing that publishers are successful because of their unique offerings and that there is rarely a one-size-fits-all approach to anything they do. With that understanding, we made sure that OAO EAC could be easily modified and customized to meet publisher needs, from custom API access to pre-rendering of images and HTML response formatting.

To learn more about OAO EAC and to ensure you have the support you need to work with the ever-changing online publishing landscape, reach out to OAO to discuss your business’s newsletter ad serving needs.

The post Newsletter Advertising: How to Succeed and Common Hurdles to Clear appeared first on AdMonsters.

Just last year, Liveintent found that 87% of publishers and marketers were actively investing in email and 94% were prioritizing scaling their email programs. 

Truth is, publishers have been deploying email newsletters as audience generation tools for their O&O properties for eons. So email is not some brand new shiny thing, but it has mostly played a value-added background role in publishers’ revenue strategies. 

This recent surge can be attributed to all sorts of things from the cookie crackdown to looming privacy regulations to publishers needing to diversify their revenue. I spoke with Rachel Rubin, Vice President, Customer Success, Liveintent to dive deeper into these topics and especially focus on how email newsletters can come out of the shadows to play a leading role in a publisher’s direct-sold program. 

You can watch or listen to the full conversation, or just check out this edited version below.

Email Newsletters Are the New Homepage

Lynne d Johnson: Interest in newsletters is surging. It’s been said that email newsletters are the new homepage for digital publishers, and quite a few large-scale pubs seem to be doubling down on the channel. Is this more than just a trend?

Rachel Rubin: Publishers and marketers have been using newsletters to engage with their readers and their customers for well over a decade now. 

With that said, the focus on newsletters definitely surged over the pandemic. Over the last two years, we’ve seen that email marketing engagement rose by 200%. And the best part is that new readers who started reading newsletters at the beginning of the pandemic are staying in the inbox. 

This spike helped more companies see the value of newsletters as a trusted channel for building and engaging with their audience. Users are opting in, raising their hands, and saying, “Yes, I want content from this publisher — from this marketer.” It’s a really engaged audience. 

Another main driver is email’s growing role as a means of collecting first-party data, which is so important right now. But for the email environment to remain a viable solution, publishers and brands need to continue to provide value to their newsletter readers and be transparent about the value exchange. Email is here to stay. And it’s really exciting to see that everyone is understanding the value now.

Direct-Sold Makes a Comeback

LdJ: We’ve also heard that direct sales are back in style, and PMPs and PGs are trending. What is LiveIntent’s thinking on this?

RR: With the death of the third-party cookie, the future of targeting is kind of in limbo and direct sales are gaining serious momentum regardless of what pipes the execution is coming from. 

LiveIntent is integrated with all the external DSPs — DV 360, The Trade Desk, you name it. We also have a managed service for executing direct deals. And we see priority PMPs coming up more in the environment. We don’t yet have the capabilities for PGs, because, unlike the web which is constant, email has ebbs and flows 

At the end of the day, advertisers want to reach their relevant audience, and publishers who engage with readers on a daily basis know these audiences better than anyone. Publishers who can articulate what makes their audiences and content unique — they’ve really branded and conquested that market. 

Email is a unique snowflake because we don’t rely on cookies, we rely on email hashes. That makes it easier for advertisers or publishers to target their own first-party data.

Increasing Yield With Native Ads in Email

LdJ: In the past, pubs didn’t focus on email because they felt it was too much work. But with your product Native Ad Blueprints, they can build a scalable premium ad experience with little effort and increase the yield of their direct-sold program. Is that correct?

RR: LiveIntent has made newsletters easy. Historically, if you wanted to do native in newsletters, that took a lot of time and bandwidth because you needed someone coding HTML every single time you wanted to switch out your ads.

We’re making that easier without the operational drag of hard coding every single campaign. Publishers can add native ads to their media kit and increase their yield by directly selling native.

And since native ads are designed to look and feel like newsletter content — they drive higher engagement, helping advertisers build brand equity. So they’re a win-win all around. Advertisers get higher CTRs and more performance, and publishers can justify more premium CPMs.

We’ve also recently brought Native Curated Packages to market. This is our version of native demand for publishers. We want to give publishers the control to pick and choose which advertisers run natively in their email newsletters.

Creating New Products and Bringing on New Advertisers

LdJ: In the future, it looks like there won’t be just one thing to replace third-party cookies. Besides being able to collect and activate first-party data, what are some of the other benefits for pubs?

RR:  Pubs can use their newsletter content and ad engagement data to build audiences to segment out audiences by interests — like sports fans, health and wellness enthusiasts, or finance enthusiasts, for example.

Newsletter content and ad engagement data can also lend insight into reader behavior. By examining metrics, you can glean which readers are taking action and then segment those users. You can also create first-party data right in the email environment. 

Tying this all back to your direct-sold and direct-deal question from earlier; this approach helps publishers bring on new advertisers. And they’re able to do that by showcasing their unique offering — captivating content and highly engaged audiences.

Leveraging CRM Data to Increase Reach

LdJ: What about the convergence of martech and adtech — taking first-party data out of silos? How can pubs leverage their CRM data to increase their reach with email newsletters? 

RR: Publishers can utilize CRM data in the email newsletter to target new subscribers, suppress subscribers, target content clickers, or utilize it for marketing campaigns right across the email channel. This is not just within their owned and operated email, but extending their CRM data to target the exchange of emails we have.

Also, leveraging CRM data is not all about targeting. It’s also about suppression. When you are targeting users, it does limit your reach. With suppression, it’s the opposite. You know, who you don’t want to target. 

MPP Isn’t Really Hurting Revenue

LdJ: What about Apple’s privacy changes in the inbox. Is this scary for publishers?

RR: This is something else that requires education. Before MPP launched, we researched and became really educated about it so that we could educate our publishers and ensure they understand what it means for their email newsletters and especially for their metrics. 

We’re not seeing revenue decline, we’re just seeing that the metrics we once loved and held on to are not so accurate anymore. So now we’re in a period of transition and working hard to come up with adjusted metrics so that our publishers and our advertisers can still understand their newsletter performance outside of just the revenue metric. 

Top 3 Takeaways: Direct-Sold in Email Newsletters

LdJ: We’ve touched on so many fascinating topics here. What are your top three takeaways that you want publishers to know about direct-sold in email newsletters?

RR: One, it’s a really easy channel to utilize your first-party data. Two, it’s a really easy channel to create first-party data and create the proper segments to use within your email environment, but also extend it to all of your other channels. And then third, leaning into native can only help increase your yield from both a programmatic and direct-sold standpoint.

The post Unlock Direct-Sold Revenue With Email Newsletters and Native Ads: Q&A With LiveIntent’s Rachel Rubin 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.

And while everyone in the advertising ecosystem is lamenting the total annihilation of the third-party cookie in browsers, it has presented an amazing opportunity for publishers to regain control.

Publishers are already using what they know about their audiences to fuel their editorial, but those very same insights can be used to power advertising and revenue as well. 

Leveraging your first-party audience data, you can build a scalable direct-sold program around premium ad packages that resonate with your audience while driving deeper engagement for buyers by combining two powerful tactics: Native advertising and email newsletters.

Native advertising is now the preferred premium ad format for both publishers and brands, and email newsletters are a critical component of publishers’ monetization strategies. When you bring the two together as native advertising in email newsletters, they become a mighty content distribution channel providing a direct connection between authenticated audiences and advertisers. 

And with solutions like LiveIntent’s Native Ad Blueprints, your native advertising blends in with the surrounding newsletter environment, making it far less intrusive than other forms of advertising, while garnering higher CPMs.

Best Practices for Monetizing Native Ads in Your Email

Show Me the Money

There are a few ways that native ads in email can open up the revenue floodgates for publishers, including direct-sold, open exchange, and newsletter promotions.

Direct-sold campaigns work well for content sponsorships, affiliate product promotion, and brand partner deals. There are three main ways that publishers can sell native ad email inventory. 

1. Guaranteed (aka sponsorships) — Just like selling sponsorship deals for your web inventory, with guaranteed campaigns, you can sell exclusive impressions over a given time for a predefined price and run them across publications, newsletters, and ad slots.
2. Non-Guaranteed — Unlike a guaranteed campaign where you’re offering impressions to one sponsor, non-guaranteed deals empower you to have multiple advertisers compete for impressions in an auction. These campaigns can have branding or performance KPIs, optimized to impressions, clicks, or conversions. Opening up inventory to the open exchange allows publishers to increase bid density, revenue, and overall yield.
3. Curated — You can also group combinations of native inventory (publications, newsletters, and ad slots) into packages, creating premium bundles that spotlight your readers to advertisers. You can create your packages based on content, audience, and seasonal, grouping around reader interests or seasonal events. Once you’ve created your native packages, you can activate them at scale through curated deals, enabling advertisers to target your premium packages through their preferred buying platform.

It’s also important to note that if you work with LiveIntent’s Native Ad Blueprints, you can also tap into exchange demand from the likes of The Trade Desk, DV360, Xandr, and more. By utilizing both native direct and programmatic you can monetize all of your impressions with a range of premium advertisers like Liberty Mutual, Rue Gilt Groupe, Wayfair, and much more. 

Publishers and brands can also leverage native ads in their email newsletters for their own content uses and brand promotions. Being able to personalize email offers without having to set up separate sends for every segment of your email list is a much more efficient way to do business — especially when you need to run multiple campaigns at one time to different segments of your audience.

Designing Your Own Native Ad Blueprint

Now that you know the various means of monetizing native ads in email, you might be pondering exactly how best to implement native ads in your email newsletter for optimal results. Maybe you’re wondering, “How will native ads fit into my email newsletter design and layout without compromising my brand identity or interfering with my readers’ experiences?” Well, lucky for you, you’ve come to the right place for answers.

Before you begin, you’ll want to ask yourself a few questions How should advertiser messaging appear within my newsletter content? Should my native ad placement lend itself to a high-visibility sponsorship? Should my native ad placement exactly match my newsletter content? Am I currently hardcoding ads into my newsletter within a standard layout? Will a standardized design work for my native placements?

While the answers to these questions depend on each individual’s brand needs, the general best practice is to go with a single-column design when you add a native ad slot to your email newsletter inventory. This way, you also won’t have to completely redesign your newsletter and your native ads can blend seamlessly within the natural “scroll” of the content. Also, if you have no booked campaigns or house ads to run, LiveIntent’s Native Ad Blueprints will automatically collapse. Having a single-column design will ensure an uninterrupted user experience when that occurs. 

Once you’ve decided where your native ad slot will live within your email newsletter, you’ll want to think about what elements you’ll require from advertisers. Typical ad requirements include a headline or header, body copy, CTA, image, and a sponsored by field displaying your advertisers’ company name or logo. 

You can set specific elements as recommended or required to inform the number of advertisers eligible to bid on your inventory. For example, if you’re opening up to a wider audience of advertisers, you might want to only make the headline and image required and all of the other elements recommended to maximize bid density.

No Hard Coding Required

One of the greatest barriers to publishers leveraging the opportunity that native ads in email provide — in terms of building first-party data and growing revenue — has been the heavy lifting required. Ad slots are most often hard-coded, with code having to be added or removed from templates for each individual campaign. Publishers with limited resources might forgo this amazing opportunity altogether, while others get caught up in a coding time suck that could be better used on higher-value tasks.

Thanks to the wonders of standardization and automation, those days are long gone. If you never believed that set it and forget it could be a reality, it’s time to think again. With the ability to hyper-segment audiences and improve operational efficiency, isn’t it time you ran your native campaigns smarter?

To learn more about Native Ad Blueprints, visit LiveIntent.

The post Best Practices for Monetizing Native Ads in Your Email appeared first on AdMonsters.

While the rest of digital media is changing all around us, email newsletters are holding steady as the best way to reach an audience, with deeper engagement, plus an amazing ROI. But when it comes to monetizing email newsletters, especially from a programmatic standpoint, many publishers have been leery about damaging user trust by potentially serving them low-quality, irrelevant advertising. 

Perhaps that was a worry long ago, but native programmatic advertising in email has come a long way. It’s growing as a significant source for diversifying programmatic revenue, and as the third-party cookie crumbles, it offers publishers inventory that won’t be impacted by its demise.

With that in mind, LiveIntent recently launched Native Ad Blueprints, a solution for publishers to create scalable premium ad experiences, streamline their native ad operations, and better target, optimize and measure their native campaigns. We spoke with Nick Dujnic, VP, Marketing, LiveIntent to learn more about this new product, as well as why publisher preparation for the coming cookiepocalypse should include programmatic advertising in email to help future-proof their revenue strategy. 

Lynne d Johnson: As we approach third-party cookie annihilation, publishers are turning to various solutions to increase their first-party data, and as well to secure incremental revenue in anticipation of lost CPMs. Email newsletters and logins are at the forefront of those strategies. You guys are planning for this with your new product Native Ad Blueprints. Why should publishers be thinking about native in email now?

Nick Dujnic: I think there are two sides to how publishers are thinking about the third-party cookie deprecation. There is obviously fear over the loss of programmatic revenue, which primarily relies on third-party cookies to identify audiences. And when you can’t identify audiences on your website, it decreases the value of those audiences. That’s why the focus is on email, not just as a way of collecting and building out your first-party data, but also as a way to supplement and future-proof your website audiences and tying that data to the bids that are happening on your website. 

But it’s also that email is a logged-in media channel that does not rely on third-party cookies. Many publishers are thinking about how to build this out more. This inventory isn’t impacted by the third-party cookie’s deprecation from a programmatic advertising standpoint. They’re also looking to mitigate the impact of potential loss in revenue by building out premium experiences with their direct advertising partners and give them more options. Native advertising in email newsletters combines the two.

With native advertising in email newsletters, publishers can offer their advertisers curated premium sponsored content within this logged-in channel, making it the best of both worlds. There are newsletters doing this in a custom way, like Morning Brew and the SKimm, that have content teams working with advertising partners to build out specific content that can be offered at premium pricing. But not every publisher can create sponsored content from that standpoint. Part of why we made Native Ad Blueprints is to provide publishers with a scalable solution for creating those custom experiences within email newsletters without all of that work.

LdJ: How does this new tool impact user experience? For instance, we have a premium content newsletter called the Wrapper, that we work with our partners to craft the content and provide recommendations on their ad unit, and then we place it manually.  We want the sponsored content to flow seamlessly within our content. We fear giving up control over the look and feel because we know our audience. I’m sure other publishers are concerned about UX as well. 

Why do you think many publishers are wary of programmatic native ads in email? 

ND: When a lot of people think about programmatic native, they tend to think about it in terms of those sponsored content pieces that sit along the bottom of an article, like “Ten Ways Celebrities Stay Thin” or “You Won’t Believe What This Person Looks Like Today,” which is the equivalent of the headlines you see when you’re checking out at the supermarket. 

With native advertising in email newsletters, publishers can offer their advertisers curated premium sponsored content within this logged-in channel, making it the best of both worlds.

Those ads are typically sold at very bottom-of-the-barrel prices and the images that are associated with them can be classified as risky. They’re usually not super customizable and are pretty much the same format across the board — square image, 30 character headlines, CTA. These pieces are the opposite of what native ads were intended to be—seamless and not disruptive. Unfortunately, this perception doesn’t reflect a true native ads experience. 

Publishers want the ability to manage the ad experience without affronting their readers with something they find either distasteful or offensive. Up to this point, publishers have had to maintain control by manually creating these experiences themselves, hard coding ads into their web pages, and email newsletters to get the brand-safe experience they want. 

But that’s hard to scale. And it’s also hard to personalize these ads, beyond just the email send list. You can’t work with multiple native advertising partners, serving two campaigns at the same time with the same level of targeting and optimization that you would with display in a programmatic sense. And these are the problems we’re trying to solve with Native Ad Blueprints.

LdJ: If you had to provide an elevator pitch for what you guys are trying to do with native in email, what would that be?

ND: With Native Ad Blueprints, we basically want to make it so anyone who sends an email has a way to make customized ad spots and ad slots and make them a natural part of their newsletters. We want to streamline native ad operations, saving time and effort with real-time ad serving, and provide access to targeting, optimization, and reporting features that you get from other ad serving technology that you’re working with. 

LdJ: Why is native in email ideal for programmatic and how do you make it scalable?

ND: When we talk about scale, we’re talking about really creating and delivering more of these premium ad experiences. 

Suppose you’re a large media company with a broad and diverse audience, and a portion of that audience reads your Morning Alerts newsletter. You’re working with an advertiser partner, and want to offer them a native ad spot but only within your Morning Alerts newsletter. Basically, without Native Ad Blueprints, you can only offer one massive sponsorship that reaches across your entire audience instead of those subscribed to that specific newsletter. The programmatic element comes in with Native Ad Blueprints because it gives you the ability to target audiences at an impression level, at the time the email is opened, rather than at the time of send. And you can have multiple campaigns running at the same time.

So you can have a campaign with a major sneaker brand reaching one particular audience and you can also have another campaign with a major electronics brand. You can set up and serve both campaigns across your entire newsletter inventory — wherever you have these ad slots active — and know that they’ll appear in a way that is complementary to your newsletter, aligned with your brand guidelines, and without having to hard code every single one of your newsletter templates.

LdJ: How does Native Ad Blueprints help tie native into your display strategy?

ND: I would say it’s more complementary, but it can operate in the way that you might be used to serving display. With display ads, you fill a sponsorship, and then once that sponsorship runs out, you might also open up that inventory to third-party demand sources. So you’re just driving incremental revenue down the line with the same level of customization and control that you would have if you were hard coding it yourself.

With Native Ad Blueprints, it could work similarly for your direct-sold campaigns. There is obviously a little bit more from the customization standpoint on the front end. But once it is set up correctly, it’s basically the same — you can dynamically target, serve and optimize. 

LdJ: So to sum it up, LiveIntent wants to make publishers’ lives easier when it comes to creating premium ad experiences?

ND: Right. Publishers are investing more in their email newsletters and see them as more than just a website traffic channel, but instead as a content experience in itself. Publishers want to create more innovative, more premium ad experiences. But as they look to do more, they realize there’s limited scale.

This is something that they want that’s important to them and is critical to their direct sales strategy going forward, so we’re trying to solve it for them as best we can.

LdJ: What can you tell us about the publishers you’ve tested Native Ad Blueprints with thus far? 

ND: I can tell you that their ad operations teams are coming back to us and saying, “You have saved us so much time. This is so much easier than what we were doing before.” 

The tests we’ve run so far are small-scale, but we just reached general availability for this product and we predict — since this is such customized and valuable inventory — publishers will drive a lot of revenue from it. 

The post Native in Email: Blueprinting the Future for Publishers appeared first on AdMonsters.

We provide these webinars free-of-cost to attendees and often follow up with a video replay and/or summary highlights, as well as share slides from the presentation.

As we come to the close of the year, we figured it was a good idea to roll up all these great webinars we had this year into one mega-post for the folks who weren’t able to attend, and even for the ones who just want to revisit them.

Webinar Replay: The Revenue Boost You Could Use Right Now

Ad-blocking users are too often written off as “lost traffic” when studies show they can help revenue efforts when given the right incentives—anything from less intrusive advertising to the ability to pay cash for content. Considering ad-blocking users can average 15% of traffic, that’s potential revenue you should start capturing immediately.

This webinar will help you understand the various approaches to re-engaging the highly active, tech-savvy and educated audience using ad blockers, while also examining what we can learn from ad blocking user behavior in building more user-friendly ad products and sustainable monetization strategies for a new digital media age. Access the presentation and the replay here!

Webinar Replay: Debunking Authentication Myths

The slow demise of third-party cookies has left the advertising ecosystem awash in uncertainty—and a good deal of fear. Beyond the anxiety, publishers need to understand that this is actually an opportunity to reboot our industry and rebuild it based on trusted engagement. At the center of this movement is user authentication, but a great deal of confusion surrounds the process—even over what the term means.

This webinar, with LiveRamp, busts three prevailing myths about publisher authentication while sharing how the right strategy can drive success not just for you, but also the advertisers and audiences you serve. Watch the replay.

Personalization Power With a Push: Top 5 Takeaways

“How do publishers get more info on non-logged-in users or anonymous users? Have them sign up for a newsletter or a push notification. Match them to the content they care about to get more engagement,” explained Kupietzky.

On June 18, AdMonsters hosted a webinar with Powerinbox, Personalization Power at Scale featuring Jeff Kupietzky, CEO, Powerinbox; Max Dennis, Director of Audience Development, Assembly; and Chip Schaible, Director of National Account Sales, IQVIA. The webinar examined the intricacies of this burgeoning channel while highlighting its growing revenue potential. Check out the recap and the video replay.

Driving Revenue Through Deeper Audience Connections

“If you don’t innovate you evaporate,” said multimedia maven and nationally syndicated radio host Kim Komando.

Komando was speaking at a recent AdMonsters Webinar, Multichannel Messaging Made Easy, about how she connects with her tech and media-savvy audience across multiple channels, learns from their feedback, and then uses that information to shape her messaging and monetization strategies while building deeper trust with her community. (Sign up to watch the replay on-demand now!)

Hello First-Party Data Strategy

Digital Trends was a lot like most publishers. Unable to fully activate against audience data because of limitations around third-party cookies in Safari and Firefox, the team knew they were leaving a lot of money on the table. After phases of research and planning, it landed on a solution.

In a recent AdMonsters Webinar with Permutive, Goodbye Cookie, Hello New Data Strategy, Nathan Bell, SVP, Data and Business Analytics and Rachael McCombs, Sr. Director of Ad and Media Operations shared why Digital Trends decided to work with Permutive and how it is developing its first-party data strategy.

Webinar Replay: Is This the Rebound?

This wide-ranging, intimate discussion on October 8, 2020—Is This the Rebound?—with the support of eyeo, brought together a panel of revenue specialists from the US and Europe to talk about what publishers expect during the fourth quarter, how they’re preparing for an uncertain future beyond that, and how their audience relationships are evolving. Watch the video recap.

Webinar Replay: The Login Play

During our Nov. 5, 2020 webinar, “The Login Play,” AdMonsters explored logins through several vantage points, including the potential for single sign-on alliances, thanks to remarkable panelists Claire Groves, Head of Ad Operations at Haymarket Automotive; Achim Schlosser, CTO of the netid Foundation; and Lisa Bouam, Director of Business Development at eyeo. Check out the video replay.

Yes, Virginia—You Can Sell First-Party Data

Now that the third-party cookie is on its farewell tour, publishers are warily giving their first-party data another look, but a big question remains: how do publishers actually sell first-party data marketplaces and garner advertiser interest?

During an AdMonsters Webinar on Nov. 12, 2020, Insider Inc.’s VP of Programmatic Sales Chris Ryan showed how to do that, sharing Insider’s experience bringing its SAGA first-party data product to market and winning over skeptical advertisers. The full webinar, shared here by Permutive, is worth a watch—check out these highlights.

Stop Leaving Money on the Table: Bridging the Reporting-to-Optimization Gap

Deriving insights from reporting is almost as difficult as compiling said reporting from ever-fragmented tech stacks. But then turning around and executing on those insights quick enough to jump on hot trends? Oh boy, another Herculean effort.

Our webinar—From Analytics to Revenue Optimization in Record Time with Exigent Digital and TapClicks—November 19, 2020, provided publishers with several strategies they could immediately take to their reporting and optimization workflows. We also went a step further and analyzed where automation can build a ridiculously fast and effective feedback loop. Catch the recap.

The post AdMonsters Great Big 2020 Webinar Replay appeared first on AdMonsters.

Komando was speaking at a recent AdMonsters Webinar, Multichannel Messaging Made Easy, about how she connects with her tech and media-savvy audience across multiple channels, learns from their feedback, and then uses that information to shape her messaging and monetization strategies while building deeper trust with her community. (Sign up to watch the replay on-demand now!)

“Our revenue, data, and content teams come together every 30 days to look at the numbers to see which products are killing it and which ones are DOA,” explained Komando.

Do you have podcasts? What about push notifications? Newsletters? A website? Are you using social media? Well, there’s a way to tie your messaging together across platforms and monetize it at the same time. What if I told you that you could do this all from one tool?

Multichannel Messaging Made Easy

That’s why Komando partnered with Powerinbox to manage her newsletter and push notification messaging and monetization. And since Powerinbox acquired artificial intelligence-powered personalized notification platform, she now has the ability to automate personalized, curated content to subscribers across multiple channels to increase engagement, traffic and revenue.

When you’re sending nearly 40 million messages per month as Komando does, you need a tool you can rely on.

“It’s all about curating and picking the right content for the right audience at scale—and you will boost engagement,” said Jeff Kupietzky, CEO, Powerinbox. “People want snackable content. Alerts. Breaking news specific to the time of day will be more relevant and receive more engagement. You should use the same mindset that you use on Twitter in a newsletter,” he added.

While most publishers are still warming up to the idea of push notifications, Komando uses them as a litmus test to develop other forms of content. “Did that message die on send?” she asked. “Well, your audience probably doesn’t want to read about that topic.”

A Question of Audience Trust

More people are signing up for subscriber-based content from brands and media properties they trust because they understand the value exchange. “I’ve always told the audience if you’re getting something for free, you are the product. My audience understands that,” Komando said. “Once you develop trust—you’ll develop advocacy. Your audience will be willing to sign up for new products and spread the word.”

How do you know you’ve built up trust with your audience? How do you know you created deeper audience connections? It’s easy. Use surveys. Read your comments. Listen to your audience on social media too. The more data you have on your audience the more you know about when and where to connect with them.

First, foster trust with a newsletter first before moving into push and then tie your messaging together based on what you know about the individual. The email address is the key to identity. And the data you collect on individuals is your map. In this privacy-forward era of marketing, having opt-ins on hand will go a long way toward your targeting capabilities.

And let’s not forget about driving revenue.  “When you use AI-powered push notifications you can set it and forget it (content and cadence) and just collect the checks,” said Kupietzky.

Sign up to watch this informative webinar on-demand now!

The post Driving Revenue Through Deeper Audience Connections appeared first on AdMonsters.

But it’s hard to manage all these messaging platforms and then optimize based on user cues. That’s why you need a good strategy—and solid tools—to hold your multichannel messaging program.

Gearing up to our upcoming webinar with Powerinbox—Multichannel Messaging Made Easy, where we’ll dive into the key elements of a successful cross-platform messaging strategy, as well as what technology will bring it to life—we caught up with Powerinbox CEO, Jeff Kupietzky to talk about why marketers and publishers struggle with messaging and why they need a platform that targets users with personalized messaging across their preferred channels at the right time.

Gavin Dunaway: Where do you see your clients struggling the most when it comes to their messaging?

Jeff Kupietzky: Publishers are struggling to reach the right person on the right platform with the right message at the right time. There are a lot of options out there for push, email and social engagement, but they’re all siloed and fragmented.

Content that works to engage a subscriber on one channel may not work on another, even for the same subscriber—it’s all very nuanced in terms of how people want to receive what content. Getting that right is very tough, and publishers need something that works and works well, across all channels.

GD: Are they overwhelmed by the amount of platforms or do they perhaps struggle with automation reducing the time to manage?

JK: I think both. On the one hand, there are so many platforms and finding ones that work to engage the intended audience is tough. Plus, while these platforms say they’re automated, many of them still require a lot of upkeep and hands-on management, which makes it time-consuming and a hassle for publishers.

Some are probably also a little skeptical that an automated system can actually do a good job of choosing the right content for subscribers, and they might also be afraid of overwhelming their audience with too many messages. You don’t want to annoy your audience and risk driving them away. A platform that can deliver that right message, right time, right channel to the right person is the Holy Grail.

GD: Where do you think publishers (and brands!) get most tripped up when executing cross-platform messaging strategies?

JK: Figuring out which message/platform/person/timing is probably the biggest obstacle, but that’s also exacerbated by shrinking budgets and staff. Publishers and brands alike don’t have a lot of resources to experiment with, and the risk of alienating audiences is very real if you don’t get it right.

That’s why having a platform in place that has the intelligent algorithm to target users with personalized messages over their preferred channel at the right time, that works across all channels and that is simple to manage is so critical.

Sign up for our free webinar with Powerinbox now!

The post The Mediums Are the Message appeared first on AdMonsters.

We already know that email is one of the best channels for delivering the personalized content consumers crave. Instead of using a browser cookie, a user’s interests and preferences can be tied to their hashed email address across devices.

Then there’s the exciting new channel called push notifications. They provide deep one-to-one and highly contextual experiences and are easy to implement and optimize across devices. Plus the acquisition and retention rates are off the charts.

Leading up to our webinar, Personalization Power at Scale, on June 18 at 1 PM EDT (Register now!), I spoke with Powerinbox CEO Jeff Kupietzky about personalization, privacy, and how publishers can build trust while increasing engagement and revenue with push notifications.

Lynne d Johnson: In your report, “Common Audience Engagement Misconceptions: What do digital consumers really want?” You learned that 78% of people are really uncomfortable with being tracked online. Yet, they still expect personalized messaging and recommendations—and even ads. How can publishers best leverage this information and also use it in conversations with advertisers, especially now that the third-party tracking cookie is nearly extinct? 

Jeff Kupietzky: I think what consumers are really telling us is that they want us to protect their data and be judicious in the way it’s used. Consumers hear stories about data breaches, which makes them extremely wary of who has and is using their data. But, they likely don’t realize just how rare those events are when you consider the massive amount of data they share with companies every single day. What they want is to feel comfortable and in control of their data. They don’t want publishers to sell it or share it without permission, and that’s a reasonable expectation. This is also why first-party data—what publishers gather about their subscribers—is so valuable for advertisers. It’s much more precise than cookie data and provides much more targeted personalization.

LdJ: I know in the past you and I talked about the power of personalization (and monetization) in email, but can personalization and privacy really co-exist? 

JK: Yes, and this is why opt-in methods like email and push notifications work so well. Consumers consent to sharing their data when they subscribe, and they can unsubscribe at any time. Of course, publishers still need to take the most stringent precautions to protect subscribers’ data, and by cultivating trust with their subscribers, personalization and privacy can co-exist.

LdJ: Powerinbox recently acquired Jeeng, an AI-powered autonomous personalized notification platform.  You guys already work with a lot of publishers with their email monetization. And you’ve often talked about the value of push notifications for publishers and the brands they work with. How will this acquisition help you to help publishers increase engagement and revenue?

JK: Jeeng gives publishers a new channel to engage audiences and monetize their traffic. Our data shows that more users are subscribing to push notifications and publishers can leverage this growing interest to give their subscribers more of what they want, which increases the “stickiness” of the relationship and keeps subscribers coming back. And by monetizing push, this creates a new revenue stream for publishers that can help to offset some of the ad dollars that are being siphoned off by social channels. Also, from an operational perspective, the ability to manage your web, email and push notification programs all from a single platform is so much more efficient for publishers. This is especially important for smaller publishers with lean teams.

Don’t forget to sign up for our webinar with Powerinbox, Personalization Power at Scale, on Thursday, June 18 at 1 pm EST? Along with Jeff, we’ll have speakers from Assembly and IQVIA. See you there!

The post Building Trust Through Privacy and Personalized Push Notifications appeared first on AdMonsters.