Choosing the right retail media provider is crucial for your advertising strategy. With US omnichannel retail media ad spend projected to hit $54.85 billion in 2024, growing 26% year-over-year, retail media will make up 21.8% of total US media ad spend by 2027. This growth demands that agencies select partners who can drive real business outcomes.

As retail media expands, so does its complexity. It’s no longer just about placing ads but leveraging retailer-specific insights, ad innovation, and personalization. The right provider will offer precision targeting, data transparency, and seamless campaign integration, helping advertisers achieve measurable, data-driven results in an increasingly competitive landscape. 

“When choosing a retail media network, we focus on finding a partner that can help us drive meaningful results for our clients,” said Chelsea Monaco, SVP Commerce Media at Digitas. “We look for networks that offer strong audience reach, flexibility in ad formats, and the ability to provide actionable insights. Ultimately, we want a platform that delivers high visibility and supports strategic, data-driven decision-making to maximize impact across the board.”

We’ve worked with some of the top retail media networks on the market to identify the top criteria ad agencies and brands look for when selecting a Retail Media Network (RMN). Here’s what we’ve compiled from those conversations: 

1. Retailer-Specific Customer Insights: What exclusive insights can you tap into? Retail media networks grant access to valuable first-party data directly from retailers. This data offers a window into detailed customer purchase behaviors and evolving shopping trends, empowering you to make smarter, more informed advertising decisions. By leveraging these insights, you can create highly targeted campaigns that align with real consumer interests and buying patterns, boosting relevance and effectiveness.
2. Ad Innovation and Personalization: How advanced is the technology? Seek out networks that provide innovative tools like dynamic ad creatives, personalized offers, and AI-powered product recommendations. These advanced capabilities help ensure your ads are more relevant to individual consumers, driving higher engagement and better overall performance. By harnessing technology to deliver tailored experiences, you can create more impactful, results-driven campaigns. 
3. Brand Alignment: Does the retail network resonate with your client’s brand? The retailer’s reputation and brand image significantly influence how consumers view your ads. It’s essential to select retail partners that share your client’s brand values and appeal to their target audience, ensuring that your message is consistent and strengthens brand perception.
4. Audience Targeting Capabilities: Who are you trying to reach? Make sure the retail media network provides comprehensive targeting tools, including insights into customer demographics, purchase behavior, and browsing patterns. The more refined and accurate the targeting, the greater the chance of connecting with the right audience and driving meaningful results.
5. Ad Placement Options: Where will your ads appear? Consider the range of placements offered, such as on product pages, checkout pages, search results, or homepage banners. The relevance of these placements to your target audience’s journey is critical.
6. Data Transparency and Reporting: How transparent is the data? Ensure the network provides real-time performance insights with granular reporting on key metrics like impressions, clicks, conversions, and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). Access to detailed analytics will allow for continuous optimization. Also consider the pricing models (CPM, CPC, CPA) offered by the network. Compare the costs with the expected returns based on the network’s historical performance and your campaign objectives.
7. Integration with Other Campaigns: Does it complement your broader strategy? Evaluate how well the retail media network fits your broader digital and omnichannel advertising strategy. The ability to integrate with existing campaigns across channels like social media, search, or programmatic is crucial for holistic marketing.

“Selecting a retail media network is about finding a platform that provides deep customer insights and the flexibility to precisely target the right audience. It’s about finding a solution that offers strong brand alignment and the tools to create impactful, personalized ad experiences,” said Janine Flaccavento, EVP, Vertical Lead at Merkle. “Ultimately, I want a partner that can deliver measurable results and help drive real business growth for our clients.”

 The retail media landscape is rapidly transforming, with several key industry trends driving this growth. Retailer-specific customer insights powered by first-party data give advertisers unprecedented access to consumer behaviors and shopping patterns, allowing for highly targeted and relevant campaigns. Additionally, advancements in ad innovation and personalization, such as ad creatives and AI-driven recommendations, are helping advertisers deliver more engaging, tailored experiences that increase consumer interaction.

As retail media networks become more integrated into omnichannel strategies, advertisers focus on networks offering advanced audience targeting capabilities, real-time data transparency, and seamless integration with other marketing channels. These trends are forcing advertisers to rethink their approach, demanding more strategic partnerships that align with the evolving digital ecosystem and consumer expectations.

The post Inside the Buy Side: What Retail Media Network (RMN) Is Right for Your Ads? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Publishers, imagine this: You check your ad account like any other day and find $1 billion worth of CPMs. A sudden rush of shock, excitement, and disbelief runs through you; maybe someone is even fanning you off the floor. You ask yourself, “This is too good to be true, right?”  

Last week, a group of publishers did log onto their ad account, seemingly attaining millions of ad dollars in minutes. According to Business Insider, this is the amount a medium-sized outlet expects to make in a year. 

After some ad experts investigated the programmatic ad auction, they found that some advertisers were bidding at rates as high as $1 billion. But was this real? How did it come about? The secret behind these bids was simple, but the implications are complicated. 

The error was a brief server anomaly at Pubmatic. A spokesperson for the SSP said that the anomaly occurred at one of its US data centers, causing publisher ad servers to receive abnormally high CPMs on a limited number of impressions. The error lasted for 40 seconds on March 15 and had by then been resolved. 

The Billion Dollar Ad Server Error

Adomik, a data analytics company, identified that these high CPM bids caused tens of millions, possibly up to $100 million, in erroneous advertising bidding. Notable bidders included brands like Delta Airlines and Comcast, alongside smaller buyers such as local banks and hospitals, typically spending only a few dollars daily per publisher. 

While the cost looked high, no real ad dollars were spent. Advertisers did not cash additional dollars from Friday’s fiasco, and publishers didn’t see millions deducted from their bank accounts overnight. 

In essence, it was a reporting glitch, not a billing error. PubMatic assured it would compensate publishers according to advertisers’ actual bids and actively engage with customers to address the problem.

Experts expect the financial repercussions for individual publishers and ad tech firms will be insignificant. For example, Origin’s executives noted that although initial figures suggested a $15 million increase in ad revenue on Friday, it likely only amounts to around $600 at the accurate CPMs. The excessively high bids from PubMatic’s error affected only a small portion of ad impressions.

Pubmatic, publishers, advertisers, and many other facets of the programmatic ecosystem breathed a sigh of relief. However, other industry experts wonder what this could imply for the larger programmatic ad auction. 

Programmatic’s Complexity Problem

The programmatic supply chain is a large, complicated ecosystem with hundreds of moving parts. This slight anomaly proved as Business Insider pointed out, “a 40-second server malfunction at just one vendor could cause a large ripple effect.” The Butterfly Effect is strong even in ad tech. 

Hundreds of businesses were affected, including ad agencies, demand-side platforms, ad networks, SSPs, data providers, ad verification services, and more. While the issue was primarily benign — minus the reporting headaches for publisher ad ops professionals and ad tech vendors — it highlights that there is still much room for improvement in the programmatic ad auction. 

As we discussed at PubForum New Orleans last year, there is a power imbalance between the sell and buy sides, an oversaturation of intermediaries, and walled gardens monopolizing the space. While some see the benefit of eliminating a few of these intermediaries and even predict that a little excess meat in the supply chain will be cut soon, the true message was better collaboration on all sides. 

More importantly, there needs to be precise regulations to benefit all sides. As industry veteran Scott Messer of Messer Media points out, this bidding anomaly should raise alarms about how to handle something like this on a broader scale. This would include more regulation for the greater programmatic supply chain.

The post A Pubmatic Server Anomaly, $1 Billion CPMs, and a Complicated Programmatic Ecosystem appeared first on AdMonsters.

While GroupM and others are forecasting a modest slowdown in advertising spending next year, one channel will see a sizable bump: retail media. 

According to a DoubleVerify survey of 400 US, UK, French, and German marketers, retail media networks are an attractive, privacy-friendly way to reach new customers and engage consumers as they shop.

US marketers have been quick to embrace that channel, with 87% of them saying they already invest in retail media and 83% planning to increase spending over the next 12 months. Not surprisingly, the big retailers Amazon, eBay, and Walmart are the predominant RMNs of choice for survey respondents.

Compelling Benefits of Retail Media

Retail media offers compelling benefits to marketers, especially as the deprecation of third-party cookies looms. Brand marketers like the channel’s ability to put them in front of the right audience, and 37% cited targeting people by demographic and product interest as the biggest benefit of RMN. 32% of agencies say the biggest advantage is raising brand awareness.

Regarding campaign objectives, nearly half (45%) of brand marketers prioritize attracting first-time customers as their primary goal for retail media campaigns, with another 40% aiming to target customers likely to be interested in their products.

Thirty-seven percent said they want to reach consumers at the point of purchase, which is surprising as brands often touted this as a critical benefit of retail media.

When evaluating RMN effectiveness, 50% of brand marketers say a campaign is successful if it leads to more in-store or online sales, whereas 43% of agency respondents prioritize impressions and reach.

Strong Results Justify Premium Costs

Nearly half (48%) say retail media CPMs are higher than other channels, but campaign results justify the expenses. When asked about retail media’s return on ad spend (ROAS), 61% of buyers said that RMNs perform better than other channels. 

Challenges Marketers Face

As much as marketers like the ROAS retail media and appreciate its ability to help them build their new customer base, it’s not without its challenges. Trust and transparency are vital concerns, as marketers want assurance that the right consumers saw their ads at the right time. Unsurprisingly, 91% of retail media buyers report working with an ad verification partner today. Additionally, 89% of those polled in the US said “ensuring ad quality within retail media networks is important.”

While most marketers are spending on retail media currently and plan to invest more over the next 12 months, they’re still concerned with limited targeting options, constrained on-site ad space, high CPMs, and the absence of third-party ad quality verification.

“Retail media offers a substantial opportunity for marketers to connect with customers during their shopping journey. However, like all emerging channels, the importance of trust and transparency cannot be overstated. Third-party verification is crucial for cultivating this trust. We see a rapid expansion of Retail Media Networks in the market, and those that provide independent measurement will have a distinct advantage.” – Andrew Smith, SVP, Product, Publisher.

The post DoubleVerify Survey Projects Strong Growth for Retail Media Networks appeared first on AdMonsters.

It’s almost the most wonderful time of the year, and marketing strategies are heating up as paid media campaigns begin to feel the pinch of rising bid costs. Simultaneously, the groundwork laid in content published in early fall begins to bear fruit as it gains significant traction in search engine rankings through improved SEO. These audience insights poise businesses to take action and make the most of this crucial season. 

This time is the opportune moment for brands to assess the performance of their existing campaigns and identify areas for improvement and optimization. It’s also time to lay the foundation for highly targeted and compelling holiday-focused promotions to capture consumers’ attention during this festive season.

Address Rising CPMs

As we continue navigating through the holiday season, the surging bid costs of advertising campaigns demand our attention. The ramifications of not addressing these rising CPMs can be profound. It may strain your marketing budget, potentially restricting your capacity to reach your target audiences effectively. By proactively tackling the challenge of escalating CPMs, your holiday campaigns can maintain cost-effectiveness, ensuring that every marketing dollar is well-spent.

One effective strategy for addressing rising CPMs is to expand geographic targeting. This approach enables your campaign to venture into markets or regions with untapped potential. By diversifying your advertising reach, you can offset the adverse impact of heightened competition and soaring CPMs in specific markets. 

It’s also essential to ensure that you’re refining your campaign demographics as you go along. This involves narrowing down and fine-tuning your target audience based on specific demographic characteristics, ensuring that your marketing efforts resonate with the right people at the right time.

Additionally, take into account the power of A/B testing. Experimenting with ad variations, content, or messaging allows you to identify what resonates most effectively with your target audience, enhancing the efficiency of your holiday campaigns and optimizing your advertising spend.

Evolving Organic Social Efforts

Enhancing your organic social efforts during holiday campaigns is crucial to any successful marketing strategy. To effectively engage with your audience during the festive season, diversify your content calendar by meticulously planning and scheduling various content types, topics, and formats. By doing so, your brand can keep the holiday conversation fresh and captivating, offering your audience a dynamic experience.

This approach ensures that your social media presence doesn’t become monotonous or predictable but instead remains engaging and tailored to the interests and desires of your audience.

User-generated content (UGC) can be particularly pivotal during the holiday season. Why? Because during this time, consumers seek genuine connections and recommendations from their peers. UGC is a testament to your brand’s authenticity and trustworthiness, as it involves customers sharing their real experiences and testimonials. It’s far more convincing than brand-generated content, especially when potential customers make holiday purchasing decisions. 

Leveraging UGC creates an emotional connection between your brand and your audience. This connection can be especially compelling during the holiday season as consumers seek authentic and relatable content to guide their choices. By tapping into the enthusiasm and advocacy of your customer base, you can effectively amplify your holiday campaigns and foster more profound, lasting relationships with your audience.

Revamp Email Marketing

Revamping your email marketing strategy is necessary during the holiday season when inboxes are overflowing with promotional messages. First, personalized messages elevate emails beyond simply addressing recipients by name.

This approach entails a deeper understanding of your audience. By leveraging data insights, you can segment your email list and tailor your messaging to connect with individual preferences and behaviors. This personal touch increases engagement and fosters a sense of connection and trust between your brand and your customers.

Incorporating attention-grabbing practices is also important. Holiday marketing is competitive, and your emails must stand out in a crowded inbox. Begin with captivating email subject lines that pique curiosity and immediately convey the value of your message. Visual appeal, storytelling, and emotionally engaging content play a significant role in holding your audience’s attention, leveraging emotions like joy and nostalgia that are particularly potent during the holidays. 

Furthermore, by encouraging social sharing and including social sharing buttons in your holiday email campaigns, you can turn your subscribers into brand advocates, extending your reach and influence through their networks. Revamping your email marketing with personalized messages and attention-grabbing practices ensures that consumers see your messages and deeply resonate with them. 

Implement Impactful Website Changes

Elevating your website during the holiday season is a strategic move, empowering your business to improve user experiences substantially, driving sales growth, and leaving a lasting impact on customers.

One way to do this is by optimizing your website’s load times. Sluggish websites can dissuade visitors and negatively impact conversions. Swift load times not only enhance the user experience but also contribute to improved search rankings and heightened conversion rates, demonstrating that your website can handle the surge in holiday traffic.

Streamlining navigation is another critical element to help enhance your target audience’s web experience. By making it easier for visitors to explore your website, find relevant products or information, and ultimately make purchases, you impact critical metrics like bounce rates, session duration, and conversion rates. A user-friendly, intuitive navigation structure is a gift that keeps giving to your customers and your bottom line.

Integrating essential features for your holiday campaign can be a game-changer. Simplifying the checkout process with guest options and diverse payment methods, utilizing widgets for customer reviews, updating return and shipping policies for clarity, and enabling wishlist functionality all enhance user engagement and retargeting opportunities. These features improve the overall shopping experience and provide your customers with added convenience and confidence, ultimately leading to a more prosperous and rewarding holiday campaign.

From optimizing load times to streamlining navigation and implementing essential features like simplified checkouts and social proof, every element of your holiday campaign plays a crucial role in capturing the hearts and wallets of consumers.

As we step into this season of giving, remember that providing a seamless, personalized, and engaging user experience is not just a strategy but a gift to your customers. By embracing these strategies and features, your brand can stand out, creating lasting connections.

The post Mastering the Holiday Marketing Frenzy: Strategies for Success appeared first on AdMonsters.

Attention metrics are gaining traction, but one fundamental aspect that continues to hold significant value for advertisers is viewability. While advertisers recognize the importance of capturing users’ attention, ensuring their ads are viewable remains a top priority.

Viewability refers to the measurement of whether users see an ad. In the past, publishers could generate revenue solely by placing ads on their websites, irrespective of whether those ads received any views. However, the landscape has transformed dramatically, and advertisers now emphasize viewable impressions. Publishers need to comprehend how the costs of impressions are measured to monetize their digital ad inventory effectively.

To be considered viewable, an ad must meet specific criteria. According to industry standards, an ad is viewable if at least 50% of its pixels are visible on the user’s screen for at least one second. 

But how do you measure viewability correctly? 

vCPM: The Cost of a Thousand Viewable Impressions

Calculating the value of viewable impressions is where vCPM (viewable cost per mille) comes into play. vCPM represents the cost of a thousand viewable impressions, indicating the number of people who see the ads on a web page. It provides advertisers with a clear understanding of the value they are getting from their advertising investments.

While CPM measures the cost per thousand impressions, regardless of their viewability, vCPM focuses solely on viewable impressions. By leveraging vCPM, advertisers can make informed decisions and allocate their budgets more effectively, optimizing their ROI.

To bid on vCPM, advertisers must be aware of the ad’s visibility percentage and the count of viewable impressions, as these factors determine the resulting vCPM. The total vCPM is determined after deducting any portion of the ad that remains outside the screen, rendering it invisible to viewers.

Attention Vs. Viewability

As the industry ushers in the cookieless era, publishers and advertisers also preach the importance of attention metrics. While creating viewability for your ad is essential, some argue it’s losing relevance because it “simply represents a measure of an opportunity for an ad to be seen – not whether a viewer actually saw an ad.” 

Attention metrics grew in prominence because of the lessening popularity of identifiers and the increased difficulty of gaining consumer attention because of the oversaturation of ads online. Brands measure attention metrics through viewability, creative size, interaction, ad position, time of day, publisher or program, audibility, page clutter, device frequency, and eye tracking. Viewability metrics are still vital to understanding attention metrics, so brands need robust measurement tools for viewability. 

The Publisher Benefit

Enhancing viewability and vCPM is a crucial objective for publishers aiming to maximize ad revenue. Several strategies can help improve viewability metrics: 

• Ad Placement Optimization: Placing ads in strategic positions on a web page, such as above the fold or within the user’s natural line of sight, increases the likelihood of viewability.
• Responsive Design: Implementing responsive website design ensures that ads adapt to various screen sizes and resolutions, allowing for a seamless user experience across devices.
• Ad Formats and Sizes: Choosing ad formats and sizes that align with the website’s layout and content enhances visibility and engagement, driving higher viewability rates.
• Page Load Speed: Optimizing page load times reduces user abandonment and increases the chances of ads being viewed before users navigate away from the site.
• Ad Fraud Prevention: Implementing robust ad fraud detection and prevention measures safeguards viewability by eliminating fraudulent or non-human traffic that artificially inflates impressions.

By implementing these strategies, publishers can elevate their viewability metrics, positively impacting vCPM and attracting higher-quality advertisers to prioritize viewable impressions.

Understanding the concept of viewability, measuring it through vCPM, and implementing strategies to enhance viewability benefit publishers in terms of increased ad revenue and ensure advertisers receive the value they seek from their digital advertising investments. As the industry continues to evolve, keeping a keen eye on viewability will be instrumental in driving success for both publishers and advertisers in the digital advertising ecosystem.

The post What is vCPM and How Does It Relate to Viewability? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Programmatic display CPMs may be cents, but they bring few clicks and often zero conversions. Unfortunately, industry expectations don’t seem to match this scenario. According to the Epom client survey, 71% of programmatic agencies prioritize performance over reach. 

Are demand-side platforms to blame for underperforming traffic? Don’t rush the verdict since the issue lies under the hood of the campaign itself. Instead of buying traffic resold by intermediaries at subpar CPA or CPC rates, agency-employed media buyers can tweak their CTR and conversion rates directly in the platform.

Switch the Bidding Model to CPC

RTB auctions are initially based on CPM pricing. Supply-side platforms, like those that sell native traffic, might also take payments per click. Likewise, demand-side platforms add CPC bidding as an option. It’s the most obvious tweak to increase performance: paying by click guarantees website visits. 

Supply-side platforms that don’t sell traffic via CPC will still have to convert prices into CPM, causing budget leaks and discrepancies. Thus, a media buyer needs to know that both sides have the same settings. 

Even if your self-serve platform supports CPC, you might not know which traffic is CPC. Consequently, you bid by CPM but pay the converted CPC – which can hurt your budget if the traffic delivers low performance by default. 

Getting proprietary technology that supports CPC bidding and lets you connect other traffic sources is smart if you plan to pay by click for your display ads. A digital agency can either buy the platform from scratch (not recommended) or white-label it. 

The latter option saves money on development but allows setting up custom SSP endpoints for a relatively low monthly fee. Therefore, media buyers buy traffic from the partners they pick, not the ones offered by the providers’ ad exchange. 

Blacklist Underperforming Traffic Sources

The simplest way to increase the traffic quality is not to jump between several DSPs looking for the perfect match but to weed out the bad traffic from the campaigns you already have. Here auto optimization comes to the rescue. 

Disclaimer: optimization options may vary on different DSPs. However, advanced platforms incorporate flexible auto-optimization algorithms which you can fine-tune according to your needs. In Epom DSP, we call them Bidding Rules. Let’s take a closer look at how they work.

Alt: Example of a bidding rule in Epom DSP.

For example, your client wants a 10% CTR on their ads. Creating a filter to leave only traffic that performs higher than 10% will help here.

You go to your optimization settings and set the condition to add low-performing traffic sources into a separate list. If impressions are more than 100 and CTR is less than 10%, the source will be automatically “blacklisted.”

Let the testing campaign run for several hours so that the platform will gather enough data about your traffic. Then, return to the campaign settings and tweak your targeting to exclude this list. When the rule starts working, you’ll no longer buy inventory from sites or apps where people don’t engage with your ads.

Multiply Bids for the Traffic with a High Conversion Rate

Clients of performance-based agencies demand high conversion rates on their ads and pay high CPAs reluctantly. Although with little effort, media buyers can provide them with a lower CTA while still bidding by CPM.

In the same way as the previous example, you can automatically change your bid for specific sources based on your KPIs and juggle your CTA to fit your client’s budget. Let’s see how.

In Epom DSP, we call this optimization the Bidding Multiplier. Based on how their audience interacts with your landing page, you can increase or decrease bids with its help. For example, you can create a separate list of websites or bundles that deliver leads for less than $5 each.

Later in the Bidding Rules, you use “if/then” logic and define a rule in the following way: if a campaign gets one or more conversions on a site, and the CPA is less than $5, then Bidding Multiplier will increase bids on this site by 20%.

There’s a widespread concern here: why do we get a lower CPA if we increase the bid by 20%? By using a multiplier, you increase the bid only to win a quality impression, but you only pay 1 cent more than the 2nd highest bidder.

After enabling this rule, you’ll bid higher on the inventory from cost-effective sources. As a result, your budget will be used more efficiently. Wasn’t that your goal?

Collect Bidstream Data and Contextual Data

Besides segments derived from data management platforms and used for behavioral targeting, you can collect valuable data points directly via a demand-side platform. Two of the types we will discuss today are bidstream and contextual data.

Bidstream is the data forwarded from the publisher to the advertiser’s DSP. Most SSPs enable transmission of non-PII data like location, inventory specs, and device properties since this information doesn’t require gathering user consent.

Contextual data is often collected without user permission as well. It’s related to the content on the page rather than user behavior and usually represents the page’s category.

Both types of data are immune to the upcoming 3rd-party cookie phase-out and don’t require you any additional tools for their collection. In Epom DSP, for example, you can request bidstream data export, process it with a business intelligence tool, and then build custom user segments for your audience.

It’s even more straightforward with contextual data: you enable a website or page category as your custom targeting parameter — in Epom DSP, it’s called an Extension Filter — and start targeting audience by categories. The only tricky part is ensuring that your chosen SSPs forward category data to the DSP.

Alt: Contextual targeting implementation

Enriching your targeting data with bidstream and contextual, you buy more relevant impressions and get more clicks and conversions on your ad. 

Utilize Advanced Geo-Location Targeting 

Using location-based targeting is another way to get hyper-relevant. In addition to targeting by country or city, there’s geofencing. This tool allows you to reach users within a 100-meter radius of the desired location. 

This could be your ace up your sleeves if you’re in an agency that works with local brands. Moreover, geofencing lets you target several spots simultaneously to cover all your competitors. 

Combining geofencing with branded campaigns is also effective. Firstly, you run simple awareness campaigns, add these people to the list, and retarget them while they’re in a specific place. 

How to Pick the Right DSP to Perform All These Actions? 

It’s a good question! We based all tips on our white-label DSP but wanted to give some unbiased advice on how performance-based agencies can pick the right tool. Here they are: 

• A white-label option would be better than any self-serve because it allows the agency to re-brand the platform, offer self-serve RTB as a client service, export bidstream, and have complete control over the connected traffic sources. 
• Platforms should have transparent optimization rules that media buyers can customize. 
• When you’re setting up a white-label DSP for the first time, it might be a bit daunting. Ensure the platform’s provider has a proven record of quality customer support. 
• If you want to implement all five tips, ask about CPC bidding, geofencing, and contextual targeting during a demo call.

To thank you for reading our article, we offer an extended trial for Epom DSP. You can test the platform for one month and learn if the tips above work for you. 

The post 5 DSP Tweaks to Increase Programmatic Performance From an Expert Media Buyer appeared first on AdMonsters.

For example, in the digital advertising landscape, programmatic advertising has revolutionized how advertisements are bought and sold, using technology to automate the process and deliver targeted, data-driven campaigns. This has only been further compounded by the emergence of ‘Header Bidding,’ which offers a more streamlined and efficient way for publishers to monetize their inventory and for advertisers to reach their desired audience. 

A recent study showed that header bidding led to a 23% increase in fill rate and a 20% increase in average CPM. With these benefits and more, it’s no wonder why header bidding has become a popular and essential tool for publishers looking to maximize their monetization potential.

What Is Header Bidding and How Does It Work?

Header bidding, or pre-bid or advanced bidding, is a programmatic advertising technology. It is a real-time programmatic auction where multiple demand partners bid on a single impression. 

Header bidding allows publishers to offer their ad inventory to multiple SSPs (Supply-Side Platforms), ad networks, and ad exchanges to bid before sending the bid call to the ad server. This results in a more competitive and transparent bidding process, as demand sources compete against each other for the same inventory in real-time.

Behind the Scenes:

Header bidding works by incorporating a JavaScript code snippet into the header of the publisher’s website. So, when a user visits a page, this JS code sends out an ad call to all configured demand partners to bid on the available ad units. While the header auction happens, Google Publisher Tag is paused. Once the bids are received, they are sent to the ad server for the second auction round. Based on the configuration set by the publisher, the ad server filters out the winning bid and serves the creative on the user’s page. 

What’s interesting to note here is that all these auctions happen while the page loads on the user’s browser. And as soon as the page loads, the aim is to display the ads at the required places. 

Benefits of Header Bidding

Before header bidding, publishers and advertisers relied on the ‘Waterfall or Daisy-Chaining’ method to buy and sell media. In waterfall, a series of demand partners sent ad requests, each given a priority based on their past performance and the estimated value of the ad inventory. So, if a demand partner sitting at level 1 cannot fill the ad request, the bidding call will go to the next bidding partner sitting at level 2. The bid request will keep on moving down until it is sold off. 

As the bid request trickles down the hierarchy, it often results in a slow and inefficient process, with many ad impressions going unsold. Also, as the partners are arranged based on their past performances, it might happen that a bidder who is willing to bid more but is sitting at level 2 or 3 might never get a chance to bid. The method lacks transparency and limits the ability of publishers to earn maximum revenue.

Header bidding evolved as a replacement for the waterfall method and brought great relief to the users as it allowed:

1. Increased competition: Header bidding allows multiple demand sources to bid on the same inventory simultaneously, leading to increased competition and higher CPMs for publishers.
2. Improved transparency: It provides greater visibility into the bidding process, allowing publishers to understand the value of their inventory better and make informed decisions. 
3. Faster load times: Header bidding enables publishers to load bids from multiple demand sources in parallel, reducing latency and increasing the number of impressions served. The bidding happens during a fixed timeframe. 
4. Flexibility: It allows publishers to make real-time adjustments to bidding strategies, enabling them to optimize for specific inventory and respond quickly to changes in market conditions.
5. Better targeting: Header bidding provides more advanced targeting capabilities as publishers can share relevant data with the demand sources in real-time. This, in turn, allows advertisers to reach specific audience segments and helps publishers increase revenue by providing more personalized ad experiences to the users.

How to Set up Header Bidding?

Setting up header bidding can be complex, but it’s worth the effort. The first step involves the integration of a header bidding wrapper, a piece of JavaScript code that is placed in the header of a publisher’s website. The wrapper communicates with demand sources, allowing them to bid on inventory in real-time. Once the container is in place, publishers can integrate demand partners, such as ad exchanges, SSPs, and ad networks. They will also need to configure the settings to meet their specific needs.

Owing to the technical complexity of the setup, it’s always advisable to look out for a header bidding provider. A good header bidding provider will handle the setup, bring in good demand sources, and offer complete transparency. 

Wrapping up

The benefits of header bidding are numerous, and for publishers looking to maximize their revenue, it is an essential tool in their arsenal. By partnering with a trusted header bidding provider, publishers can access the latest technology, expert support, and valuable insights to help them achieve their revenue goals. 

With the right partner, the benefits of header bidding are endless, and publishers can rest assured that they are making the most of their ad inventory and reaching their target audience with the most effective and relevant advertising. 

The post How Can Publishers Boost Their Ad Revenue with Header Bidding? appeared first on AdMonsters.

Already this year, we heard Netflix CEO proclaim the death of linear in five to ten years. And former Disney CEO Bob Iger is riding the same wave of belief that linear’s ending is just a stone’s throw away.

That is the prediction we heard when Steven Cahall, Managing Director & Senior Equity Analyst at Wells Fargo, went on stage at Programmatic I/O 2022 and took attendees on an emotional roller coaster ride outlining what’s next for linear TV and AVOD. “The old business is not good,” he said, “and the new business has not proven itself.”

While projecting intricately detailed graphs and charts on the big screen, Cahall presented his 2023 revenue estimate revisions by advertising channel, revealing that most traditional advertising channels aren’t doing so poorly. And linear publishers have yet to worry about the massive ad spend cuts everyone else is experiencing. Advertisers are predominantly slashing their digital budgets.

Cable/Broadcast Networks, Digital Audio, and Programmatic/Ad Tech will all see significant drops in revenue, with AVOD, streaming, and CTV predicted to experience the steepest revenue plunges of 10%-25% in 2023. It’s also significant that agencies like Inter Public  Group and Omnicon haven’t cut spending as much as others reportedly have. 

“What this tells somebody like me is that while there are challenges in this whole media ecosystem and advertising ecosystem, many of these traditional businesses like networks have very resilient models,” Cahall said.

The Accuracy of Viewership 

When it comes to viewership, there is a big difference between subscribers and viewers. Viewers exist on linear and streaming, but viewership is more accurate on linear. Folks aren’t required to log in on linear. In contrast, with AVOD, people share login information left and right, so the subscription model is not an accurate representation of viewer data. 

We live in times where CPM pricing is through the roof, but we are mainly seeing this in linear in the areas of sports, broadcast, and cable. This conundrum is interesting because, despite the volume of television watching going down, CPM prices are still going up. 

While streaming is a better alternative to television, the muscle memory and entrenched way the market works means that the dollars haven’t yet reflected the behavior change. Ultimately, CPMs are still more costly on linear than AVOD because currently, in advertising, you make more money monetizing a viewer on linear than on streaming.

“Subscribers aren’t viewers in the bundle ecosystem in the AVOD world,” Cahall explained. “When you compare bundle subscribers, it’s like comparing users of Microsoft Access. I think we all probably pay for Microsoft Access as part of Microsoft Office, and I bet none of us have ever used it. And unfortunately, that’s what a lot of media networks are today. So they don’t have real subscribers. They have real viewers.”

The Bag Will Follow the Eyeballs

Over the next two years, streaming power players like Netflix, Disney+, and Paramount Plus will need to start cannibalizing real dollars out of linear. While Cahall does not see Netflix receiving instant gratification from its new ad model, which is active in a few weeks, he anticipates the addition to the service to solve ecosystem issues as we get into 2024-2025.

Cahall’s initial closing point was that the bag will always follow the eyeballs. In 2015, Bob Iger at Disney talked about cord-cutting. In 2022 it’s gotten so bad that we have seen about a dozen mergers.

Netflix and Disney+ introducing ads will benefit the ecosystem down the line and maybe even inspire other AVOD platforms to do the same. It may be the end of Disney on TV as we know it. “Disney sees their future as streaming, so they’re not necessarily in a position to protect the rest of the ecosystem like they have been in the past,” Cahall explained.

The fact of the matter is Wall Street is not a fan of linear, and with that being said analysts believe that more sports on streaming can also help speed up the shift away from the idiot box, as my grandmother used to call it. Just like the cookie, linear is also dying out slowly but surely.

The post Wall Street Analyst Says Yes AVOD Upsets the Apple Cart of TV appeared first on AdMonsters.

But that doesn’t mean it’s been all smooth sailing for pubs. Besieged by a crude cast of characters — fragmentation, fraud, frequency, and let’s not forget measurement — publishers need better control of their inventory to grow monetization.

With significantly higher CPMs compared to online video, most publishers are either ready to stake their claim in CTV land or expand their footprint but in order to do so, the complexities of the industry need to be fully understood before they are addressed.

That’s when having an end-to-end solutions oriented SSP partner comes into play. We spoke with Peter Ackerman, Director of Product Marketing at Unruly to learn more about the challenges facing publishers as they expand their footprint into CTV, understanding inventory control through ad pod targeting and how ad tech can solve for these problems.

Raquel Hudson: It’s no secret that CTV is exploding and therefore publishers are eager to tap into this space. But there is also a major learning curve for those who have lived in the world of online video, particularly around the differences in viewer behavior and the use of ad pods so let’s start from the beginning. What Is an Ad Pod?

Peter Ackerman: For some initial context, it’s important for OLV publishers to keep in mind that distributing content in CTV environments means delivering full-screen video on the largest screen in the home. So right off the bat, there is an expectation from consumers they are going to have the same high-quality viewing experience they are used to with linear TV.

Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case. Whether it’s seeing that dreaded blank screen, seeing the same ad creative repeating or multiple ads from the same brand category within a single ad break, consumers can be turned off from the experience, which is bad for the publisher, bad for the advertiser, and bad for the viewer.

Ad podding is a technology used most often to monetize longform content on CTV. An ad pod enables a sequence of ads to play together in a single ad break, just like a traditional TV commercial break, and enables pubs to generate multiple ads in sequence from a single ad request.

For ad podding to be successful it needs to meet the needs of publishers, their audiences, and buyers. For buyers, they need to provide frequency capping, creative deduplication, competitive separation, and a seamless buying experience.

For ad podding to be successful it needs to meet the needs of publishers, their audiences, and buyers.

Consumers, on the other hand, need a harmonious commercial break free of buffering and definitely no ad fatigue. And for publishers, it’s about maximizing yield for each impression, increasing the fill rate, and keeping both advertisers and their audiences happy.

Where it gets complicated for publishers is managing buying modality, those direct ad buys/insertion orders that handicap a publisher and you lose the benefits of transacting digital, and the related complexities of creating and managing ad breaks. Things like determining the duration of the break, the number of ad slots within that duration, setting the optimal price for each slot, managing for competitive separation, time between exposures, and the list goes on. That’s why you need the right ad tech and ad tech partner in place.

RH: Although CTV is seeing great success, there are still lots of questions about how to best monetize while weeding through some of its pain points (fragmentation, fraud, measurement). What are Unruly’s best practices for approaching CTV and ad pods?

PA: Lean On Industry Experts

Whether you’re just starting to dip your toes in CTV, or diving into deeper CTV waters, you want to take a tandem approach with a partner who lives in this world and has an advanced understanding of delivering a high-quality TV experience.

Discovering the right ad tech goes hand in hand with identifying the right people behind it who know the business and can help navigate uncharted waters. From issues with brand safety to the fragmented CTV landscape, as well as dealing with the robust targeting and measurement expectations that advertisers have, publishers can find themselves in murky waters unless they find a reliable partner at the onset who can help them find their way.

Diversify Ad Pod Positioning

As the CTV market grows, buyers are looking for the same kinds of targeting parameters and competitive separation they are used to in traditional TV. Ad pods provide publishers with the power to bring these requests to fruition for advertisers. For example, enabling a publisher to place a premium on certain positions like the first slot in an ad break.

Employ an End-to-End Tech Stack To Manage It All

This is where we come in. Publishers will not be able to effectively deliver this quality consumer experience if they are not working with a lead system like ours that can make ad decisioning holistically across demand channels, knowing that there is essential data passed with external connections that is key to this process.

One system decisioning makes a better decision when it comes to how the ad break is configured – and what ads should be delivered – to deliver the best quality consumer experience, while optimizing across direct-sold and programmatic demand.

Publishers also working with our SSP enables our connection to DSPs to give us better control over ad decisioning, access to unique data from our DMP to enhance the value of a publisher’s supply, and gives publishers access to the full programmatic deal capabilities of our SSP plus unique demand from our direct sales channels.

We also give publishers a single point of access to these capabilities on a self-service basis through a consolidated UI, enabling a publisher to manage, traffic, and track the revenue and performance of campaigns through a consolidated interface.

RH: There’s a lot to learn and unpack in CTV which can be a little daunting for publishers. How would you suggest they start?

PA: To start securing those higher CPMs associated with CTV, there is a lot for publishers to combat. But they shouldn’t be intimidated by the complexity of the space and understand that both buyers and sellers alike are all still figuring out the medium in real-time. It really comes down to choosing the right partner and technology solutions to solve for specific publisher needs, objectives, and KPIs. If you start from that point, you’re already setting yourself up to ride far into the land of CTV.

The post Best Practices For Monetizing CTV Ad Pods appeared first on AdMonsters.

The results showed that while limiting demand partners is a solid strategy mitigating ad-quality concerns, publishers rely on a high number of demand partners—particularly in the auction—to increase competition and keep fill rates up. In effect, respondents are increasingly leaning on intricate flooring strategies to boost fill rates, while relying more on real-time creative blockers to deal with potential malvertising.

This Playbook, developed in partnership with GeoEdge, offers a candid look into publishers’ multi-front efforts to improve fill rate, as well as offering tested strategies for others to do the same.

Download our Fill Rate Survey Playbook with GeoEdge now!

Download Playbook

The post AdMonsters Playbook: Fill Rate Survey appeared first on AdMonsters.