Today’s audiences demand a seamless, coherent experience from publications and brands. They expect access to quality and engaging content across a variety of platforms – print, phone, tablet, and desktop; and in situations that don’t come with an internet connection. And with these number of choices, readers have become more knowledge-driven, economical in terms of subscriptions, and fickle in terms loyalty. At the same time, many are being plucked one by one by niche publications.
These are some of what publishers are facing with the rigid competition.
While today’s digital landscape provides unprecedented opportunities for audience development and engagement, taking advantage of the opportunities doesn’t follow as easy. Publishing today can make you feel like you are constantly living hand to mouth if you do it without any concrete plan to guide you in building a sustainable business model.
To survive, you need to embrace transformational solutions and deliver the numbers consistently. We need to minimize low quality traffic, raise the bar for view ability, and take advantage of innovations in technology, as well as the evolution of private marketplaces. These, combined, can help encourage sustainable revenue.
- Take Steps to Minimize Low or No Quality Traffic
Three things publishers can do to stem the impact of questionable traffic to their sites are:
- Raise concern if any company claims they can significantly boost your site’s traffic. Chances are, these companies will do more harm than good because the traffic boost is most likely fraudulent.
- Find out how your vendor partners address fraud. Research to find what types of measurement and controls the industry recommends, and make sure those controls are in place by your vendors and also on your site.
- Trust expert’s advice on how to keep ahead of fraudsters. Work with third-party vendors to monitor your site’s behaviors and validate its traffic.
Raise the Bar for What’s Deemed as Viewable Ads
Today, the minimum industry standard – as set by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) – is if 50 percent of a desktop ad’s pixels are in view for a minimum of one second, it is considered viewable. But is this really enough time for someone to absorb the message and take action?
While it’s important to meet industry standards, certainly we all want maximum advertiser effectiveness and revenue with greater ad impact and longer times in view. The industry needs to rally and raise the standard of what’s viewable to be closer to 100 percent.
Meanwhile, you can raise the bar for what you consider viewable by making every aspect of your website more viewable by design. Start by including in-view ad products. Also, make sure you’re working with vendors with high view ability standards in place. These actions may require extra steps, but they’re important steps to take.
Embrace Private Marketplaces
In the last year, indirect monetization has dramatically improved. This enables publishers to effectively use the space between open real-time bidding (RTB) and direct-sold so they may offer their inventory to quality buyers. If you haven’t yet, you should consider private marketplaces.
These give publishers the opportunity for another venue, allowing them to fill their inventory and earn higher CPMs in a safer environment. This isn’t to say that private is the only safe environment and open exchanges are fraught with fraud. The reality is that it’s technology, not the exchanges, that can identify and block fraud, as well as boost view ability.
The challenges facing today’s publishers won’t be solved overnight. We will continue to see the rise and fall of publishers of all sizes, across every industry. However, it’s clear that what’s worked in the past will no longer work as well in the future.
Visionary publishers that take aggressive steps to minimize low quality traffic, raise the bar for view ability, and can take advantage of innovations in technology, as well as the evolution of private marketplaces, will find themselves reaping the benefits from creating more sustainable revenue models.