Introduction

Anyone who has been planning and buying online media has probably come across at least one situation where the inventory that you were looking for on behalf of Advertiser A on Site 1 disappeared because Advertiser B came in and bought it out. Working with high-demand categories (e.g., travel, automotive, financial services) or highly discrete categories (e.g., disease states) can be especially vexing because there is a finite amount of prime real estate to get your message out. And, unlike broadcast or cable inventory, the fluidity of impressions to a particular destination makes a true inventory "on-hold" system a complex challenge for publishers.

However, all is not lost. Even if you're trying to sell ice picks to Eskimos and "www.polar.com/eskimos" is sold out through the year, chances are high that you can find your target audience elsewhere. People (not impressions) rarely visit only one website anymore, and just as you don't exclusively see football ads during commercial breaks for NFL games, advertising opportunities still abound on the periphery of the desired target.

In this piece, we'll review several ways to find the gold in other hills.

Author notes: Eric L. Porres is COO and a partner at Underscore Marketing LLC. Read full bio.