When publishers expand their advertising options, everyone wins. Kontera's SVP, sales and business development explains how to choose the right mix of offerings.
Free market economists have long said that competition is good for everyone. For sure, competition is good for users, who benefit from more choices, and it's good for the industry because when competitors compete, the industry advances with new solutions for users.
I believe it's healthy for the companies competing in a given market as well, because it forces them to push the envelope to develop better and more effective solutions as they strive to be the market leader in their respective industry. These same concepts certainly apply to the hyper-competitive world of online advertising and content monetization.
The online advertising industry has seen a rebirth since 2003, when Google launched AdSense, the company's pay-per-click contextual ad solution that enables publishers to monetize their website content. Today, online publishers are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the broad range of complementary advertising programs in the marketplace. Many of these offerings are built with the clear goal of helping publishers expand their revenue streams and to offer their advertisers and users something different and impactful.
Choosing the right mix of offerings can be tough, but given the strong demand for good content and the uniqueness of the offerings available today, it is worth the exercise for publishers to go through. Here are some fundamental reasons supporting this endeavor:
Publishers benefit from running multiple ad programs simultaneously
With the broad range of online advertising alternatives today, supported by surging demand, publishers should utilize multiple revenue streams to help drive up the yield per page. The days of only running banner ads are history. Now a publisher can run AdSense, in-text ads, video and text ads, banner ads, text links, rich media and more, protecting themselves from a downturn in one of the ad platforms.
Publishers benefit from optimizing online real estate
Like in real estate, in online advertising it's all about location, location, location. For online publishers, your web page is your real estate. Are you optimizing the revenue potential of your real estate? That doesn't mean running more ads that will scare away users, but rather running effective ads that will not distract from the user's experience on your website. It means running ads that provide informational value to users while taking up as little content space on the page as possible.
Publishers should take advantage of cutting-edge technologies
In today's highly advanced algorithmic world, the engines that are powering the cutting-edge online advertising solutions are advanced, proprietary technologies. So before you sign up for another online advertising solution, ask your sales representative to open the hood and show you the engine. What kind of technology is powering the online advertising solution? What advantage does the vendor's technology have over the other solutions that claim to do what it does?
Google rose to dominance because it built better technology. So don't be afraid to ask hard questions about the technology and to be put in contact with the company's chief technology officer.
Advertisers and users must benefit as well
Residing in your online advertising ecosystem are advertisers and users. A solution that is not beneficial to your advertisers and your readers will not succeed in the long term. At Kontera, for example, we are constantly refining and optimizing our relevancy algorithms with the clear goal of finding the most contextually relevant keywords, advertisements and information so that the users have a high value experience when interacting with our product. When publishers consider working with new vendors, they must consider those that have a focus on meeting the needs of the entire ecosystem or the relationship will be short-lived.
So online publishers, dust off your Economics 101 books and let the competitive spirits flow on your websites. Everyone, including your advertisers and readers, will win.
Bryan Everett is senior vice president of sales and business development, Kontera. Read full bio.