Find out in this Industry Breakfast for Sellers Presentation tips on how you can successfully monetize and manage non-premium inventory.
Ad revenues soared in 2006 - with little help from most publishers' non-premium inventory. Most content sites continue to pay little attention to what may amount to 50 percent of a site's total ad inventory.
Right Media engaged Insight Express to survey leading publishers in October 2006 to learn more about their strategy for managing and monetizing ad inventory that is not sold by their sales teams.
Respondents were executive, sales and operations management of sites among Nielsen//NetRatings' top 300. The survey revealed that they are somewhat dismissive of non-premium inventory. Comments suggest that what they don't sell directly is readily disposed of through price discounts, handing off to a few networks, or even by running house ads to avoid working with networks. Said one VP of Sales, "Ad networks only earn $1 or $2 and give us less control over our inventory. It's not worth the effort or stress."
Respondents indicated that 52% of their total inventory, on average, is sold as guaranteed campaigns. The remaining 48% is distributed to ad networks (25%), house ads and public service ads (10%), auction-based online media exchange (8%), and advertiser bonuses and makegoods (5%).
A site that makes the decision to adopt a non-premium inventory management strategy, and that dedicates staff to active yield management of all inventory, tend to be more capable of managing inventory through market drops and uncertainty. The survey also showed that publishers that manage yield properly can handle working with multiple ad networks more effectively and produce higher yields after making the shift than they did before.
Tickle and its Tickle Grapevine network provide a good illustration of this. David Steinberger, General Manager, told an iMedia Brand Summit audience in September 2006 that by working with Right Media to create a Tickle Grapevine Media Exchange, they were able to increase the number of sites managed from 6 to 12, the number of advertisers managed from 17 to 66, the number of impressions managed from 238-million to 3.3-billion, without adding any staff.
The Publisher Media Exchange (PMX) platform makes this growth possible by helping publishers create competition for every impression in an open and fair marketplace. PMX provides all the tools needed to maximize yield, as well as access to the Right Media Exchange, where more than 11,000 publishers, advertisers and networks buy and sell more than two billion impressions via real time auction every day.
But any publisher can begin to make the shift to strategic management of non-premium inventory today:
- Take an inventory audit. Sites that correctly classify non-premium inventory monetize it better.
- Put someone in charge. Sites that aggressively manage yield are better able to take advantage of changing conditions.
- Make direct response advertisers and networks compete for your inventory. An auction-based media exchange promotes competition for every impression while protecting premium sales efforts.
Bio: Bennett Zucker is vice president of the Publisher Media Exchange (PMX) for Right Media, Inc. Prior to joining Right Media in March 2006 to help launch PMX in the large publisher market, Bennett spent three years with Tacoda as VP of Customer Success and VP of Global Affiliate & Technology Sales. Earlier, he was SVP of Sales & Marketing and Managing Director - Latin America for Real Media, and publisher for such companies as Rodale, McGraw-Hill and Phillips.
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Presenter: Bennett Zucker, Vice President, Publisher Media Exchange, Right Media
Format: Zipped PowerPoint
