Archive for the ‘Publishers’ Category

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Europe Ahead In Mobile And Creative, But Behind In Rich Media, Video And Data Says VP van den Heuvel of Amsterdam-based eBuddy

Monday, March 1st, 2010

Rogier van den Heuvel, eBuddyRogier van den Heuvel is VP, Worldwide Sales, of messaging service and Amsterdam-based, eBuddy.

AdExchanger.com: What’s the startup culture like in Europe – even Amsterdam, specifically?  Are there hotspots? (i.e. like Silicon Valley in California) Is creating interest with venture capital firms a challenge?

There is a thriving start up culture in Europe including tech, software, internet and mobile companies.  These include: Layar, Distimo and eBuddy in Amsterdam; Amiando in Munich; TweetDeck and Flirtomatic in London; Vente-privee.com and Jolicloud in Paris; Spotify in Stockholm, and many other examples of European start-up success stories. There is not truly one European hotspot for Internet start-ups, although some might say that Scandinavia was at the forefront of Internet connectivity. They were able to get people online quickly and ad spend there was among the first countries to surpass traditional media such as TV.

London is a media center and hub but it’s also rather expensive to live and work there, so setting up a business somewhere else like Amsterdam, Berlin or Copenhagen can be an equally good or better option for a number of companies. London is typically the starting point for a number of US based companies who want to make the step across the Atlantic into Europe, and certainly a part of this can be attributed to the fact that English is their shared common language.

The economy also continues to grow more and more global. We’ve found that it is equally important for European startups to build strong ties and good business connections with companies and business people in Silicon Valley and the APAC region.

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For The Large Publisher, Yield Optimization Is Over – It's Time For The Supply-Side Platform

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

DSP and SSPFeedback has been increasingly consistent within the large publisher community for the past few months.

(Note: I’m not saying “premium publishers.” You can be premium and be small/targeted!)

For large publishers looking to optimize display ad yield on their website, it’s no longer good enough for a yield optimization company to simply offer better CPMs through what publishers see as work-flow savings. As several, large publishers have told me, they think they can manage their ad network stack better “in-house” than through a traditional yield optimization service.

And, another common theme is around optimizer inventory: “Please, God, no more belly fat or teeth whitening ads. Improving yield should not make my site look like a late-night, direct-response TV ad.” Point well-taken, large publisher. And, certainly this is an important challenge for the yield optimizers. But, this may also be a function of the current state of available online ad inventory. As more brand dollars come online (gulp – they better!), and as targeting and optimization tech improves on the buy side, publishers will get better ads – assuming they have compelling content that attracts the consumers advertisers care about.

Evolution Of The Optimizers

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PlentyOfFish.com CEO Frind Says Selling Your Site's Data Will Reduce Your Site's CPMs

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Markus Frind is CEO of PlentyOfFish.com, an online dating site.

AdExchanger.com: The background is fairly well-known about Plenty of Fish (Inc. Magazine, 2009) – free dating site that has taken off with huge traffic and interest – and all built and serviced by one guy – you. Have things changed? Hire anyone?

MF: I don’t want to do everything myself. With over 100 million monthly visitors and 2.5 Billion monthly pageviews it gets complicated. We’ve hired a few people for customer service and to build out our advertising efforts.

AdExchanger.com: What are your thoughts about display advertising these days? Does it work?

Everyone is using the wrong metrics these days. What does CPM really mean in terms of business? I think a far better metric that we use is monetization per pixel. If a 728*90 ad has the same CTR and CPM as a ad a fraction of the size why would you ever use bigger ad formats?

The future of online advertising is not with bigger ad formats, or even existing ones. If you advertise on Facebook you will see 3 of their ad units fit in an existing skyscraper unit. But, on exchanges and elsewhere, you can buy their skyscraper cheaper than you can an individual ad!

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Associated Content Is A Content Platform – And Not Just For News Says Patrick Keane CEO

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

Patrick Keane is CEO of Associated Content, an online publishing platform.

Patrick Keane of Associated ContentAdExchanger.com: Given AOL’s recent positioning in the content creation space, where does Associated Content fit? And, is it odd having Tim Armstrong as an advisor and competitor?

PK: Tim remains an investor and friend of the company. I cannot comment about Tim or AOL’s strategy but he has made a number of very public statements about the increasing importance of scalable and cost efficient content models. In my opinion we at Associated Content have the largest and most open content platform on the web. The web content ecosystem is large and diverse and will support multiple companies.

There has been a lot of talk about pay walls as a savior for newspapers and other online publications. Will Associated Content use a pay wall? Why not? And when do pay walls make sense?

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AdShuffle Serving Ads For Publishers And Advertisers Says CEO Buell

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Ruben Buell is CEO of AdShuffle.

Ruben Buell, AdShuffleAdExchanger.com: How has AdShuffle evolved since its inception?  What opportunities is AdShuffle seeing today that it didn’t see when AdShuffle began in 2005?

RB: AdShuffle started out as a real-time ad serving solution for publishers in 2005 and has grown into a fully integrated real-time advertiser and publisher solution that can easily be managed under one login.  We built AdShuffle on a real-time architecture, so users could manage all their buys and inventory in real-time and run reports in real-time. Then we expanded to real-time automated creative optimization, then landing page optimization and then to integrated remarketing and targeting within our own custom targeted creative sets technology. We continue to push the boundaries of real-time analytics, leading the industry.

AdShuffle was founded on the idea that buying, selling, serving and measuring advertising online should be easy. The single greatest comment we hear from our customers is that their previous ad server was too complicated and didn’t deliver results. AdShuffle solves that. We built AdShuffle as one simple solution for both advertisers and publishers.  And AdShuffle’s ongoing mission is to continue to make everything as easy as possible and to break down some of the process barriers that currently exist in the industry.

What’s your view on the demand-side platform (DSP) trend?   How does it relate to AdShuffle’s business model?

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Rubicon Project On Mediaweek Article

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

This post follows up on an article this week by MediaWeek’s Mike Shields in regards to concerns publishers have about agency demand-side platforms (DSPs). Read the article. In the article, Shields said that Rubicon Project met with some of these publishers. A Rubicon Project spokesperson provided the following responses.

AdExchanger.com: Did Rubicon Project meet with “about a dozen of the Web’s biggest publishers” last week?

RP: No – the overall number was far greater, but in general, yes. And since the Mediaweek article, still more major publishers have been reaching out to us to find ways to solve some of the pressing problems they are facing. We are always meeting with our publishers to discuss how they can regain control over pricing and effectively leverage available channels. As for any one specific meeting – too soon to say.

Do large web publishers fear agency demand-side platforms?

Historically, technology and/or platforms that have been designed specifically for the demand side have been wonderful for buyers, but have driven a loss of control and leverage for publishers. That’s the root of publishers’ fear about these platforms, which Mike Shields documents clearly in his interview quotes from Kyoo Kim of MSNBC, for example. Publishers are expressing this concern to us – privately and publicly – more than ever lately.

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If I Were A Publisher…

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

By John Ebbert, Managing Editor, AdExchanger.com.

Buyers And SellersFor starters, if I were a publisher these days, I’d become a buyer.

I’m not exactly sure how this happens. What should publishers buy, after all? But, publishers need to jump into the weeds and close their gap of understanding when it comes to the rapid innovation occurring on the buy side.

This is not to suggest that the buy side is “running away” with the display ad business, either. The increasing move towards transparency and control which breeds efficiency will only serve to benefit sell-siders with valuable audience.

Still, there is significant value being created today with data – and even more tomorrow – that the buy side is accessing and which the sell side can use to its advantage, too.

Ripple Dissolve

Let’s go deep into the auctions of the future… those high-speed auctions where multiple bidders look at a single impression and figure out what this impression is worth to them and then bid. What will the sellers know about this auction, and what will they do with that knowledge? On the buy side, bidders potentially won’t need to actually bid or buy an impression to grab data at this point. They will be able to just watch and learn – that’s valuable!

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New OPA Study Featured In WSJ; Rubicon Project Partners With Katz; Yahoo!'s Zinman on Exchanges; Quantcast Responds

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

OPA in the WSJPortals, Publishers and Networks, Oh My!

Citing three years of data that include more than 4,800 marketing campaigns collected by WPP’s Dynamic Logic, The Wall Street Journal’s Emily Steel delivers the details on a new OPA study which says that large publisher’s premium (i.e. directly sold) inventory performs better than remnant inventory sold by ad networks as well as the content portals offer. Steel’s article, “Web Sites Debate Best Values for Advertising Dollars,” concludes that perhaps the in-fighting which the OPA study ignites is inhibiting a shift of ad budgets to digital. Yahoo!’s Bill Wise, identified as VP of Business Development at Yahoo, gets in a quote trying to bring everyone together Kum-bay-yah-style, “It is all part of us getting more market share for digital.”

Katz Leveraging Rubicon Project Infrastructure

MediaWeek’s Katy Bachman covers Rubicon Project’s partnership with Katz 360 Sales, the sales arm of Katz Media Group, a Clear Channel company. Under terms of the agreement, Katz will use the Rubicon OnDemand platform for its own Audience Representation program which enables Katz advertisers to buy audience and contextual segments. (Read The Rubicon Project release.) This adds a fourth platform to Katz’s digital audio network, email segmentation, and mobile advertising platforms according to MediaWeek.

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Pandora CRO Trimble Waiting For Brand Advertisers To Start Using Ad Exchanges Before Jumping In

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Pandora CRO John TrimbleJohn Trimble is CRO of Pandora, an internet radio service.

AdExchanger.com: How important is display advertising to Pandora’s overall revenue model?

JT: We are genuinely in a unique position in the marketplace based on our ability to bring brands a digital multi-platform adverting solution with display, mobile and audio. The success of our display has been the core of our revenue, but the growth as a market leader on the mobile app front has created accelerated and valuable scale and engagement to leverage the mobile and radio advertising offerings. We are well positioned to work with brand marketers to develop these multi-platform solutions that take advantage of Pandora’s ubiquitous experience.

Does yield optimization technology provide an important option for you as a publisher?

Absolutely. Not only does AdMeld help us generate the highest yields from our discretionary ad inventory by optimizing multiple networks, they allows us to focus on developing and nurturing direct client relationships and new sources of revenue.

What do you look for in a yield optimization company? Is it just about driving revenues?

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Ad-Juster Technology Bridging Ad Server Discrepencies Says Pres Lewis

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Mike Lewis of Ad-justerMike Lewis is President and Co-Founder of Ad-Juster, an ad server discrepancy management company.

As you have said in your release, Ad-Juster looks to solve “two of the digital ad industries major pain points: 3rd party reporting and discrepancy identification.” Can you share momentum you have seen with Ad-Juster’s product in 2009? And, who needs this the most, in your opinion? The publisher, the advertiser or the ad network?

ML: We at Ad-Juster have been overwhelmed by the positive response that we’ve received from our target audience. We emerged from beta in April of this year and in only 3-1/2 months we have collected a very impressive clientèle and continue to attract major publishers. In an environment where publishers are struggling and budgets are tight, Ad-Juster continues to close sales at a rapid rate. Our ROI is clear, publishers save money using our system. Since we offer a publishers significant cost savings, this economy in many ways is helping our sales process. We have also received a very warm welcome from AdMonsters. AdMonsters has helped us identify and refine our view of the digital publishers’ pain points in the area of discrepancy and third party reporting. Our core customers today are primarily online publishers and ad networks, however our system has clear applications and benefits for advertisers as well.

What is the current state of standards around ad serving and reporting? What needs to change, if anything, in your opinion?

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From OMMA Publish: Turner’s Walker Jacobs Says Ad Networks Are Not Like Outlet Malls

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

OMMA PublishYesterday’s OMMA Publish conference in New York City was at full capacity as publishers came to swap stories and look for solutions in a down economy. One panel, ably moderated by MediaPost’s Joe Mandese, struck at one of the core bones of contention: how to deal with ad networks.

The panel, with the linkbait title, “Fire Your Network: The Great Debate,” showed how publishers still see ad networks as the enemy for effectively causing conflict with their direct sales channel as well as making incremental revenue from data generated, in part, by publishers. Joining Mandese was Richard Frankel of Rocket Fuel, David Koretz of Adventive and BlueTie, David Roter of ESPN, Alan Schanzer of Undertone Networks and Walker Jacobs of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

Jacobs crystallized the large publisher’s thinking for the crowd. And surprisingly for some, he thinks ad networks aren’t all bad:

There is most definitely a valuable place in the ecosystem for ad networks. Particularly those that are helping small and mid-size publisehers save costs and [its an easy way] to put together sales organizations, easy way to gather valuable audiences whether its sports or any other category. I see great value in that.

It’s interesting. You just take a look at the business model, though. The question is: should we perpetuate our own demise? – [particularly] when you look at the business model and how most of these ad networks have made a lot of their money.

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From OMMA Publish: Turner's Walker Jacobs Says Ad Networks Are Not Like Outlet Malls

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

OMMA PublishYesterday’s OMMA Publish conference in New York City was at full capacity as publishers came to swap stories and look for solutions in a down economy. One panel, ably moderated by MediaPost’s Joe Mandese, struck at one of the core bones of contention: how to deal with ad networks.

The panel, with the linkbait title, “Fire Your Network: The Great Debate,” showed how publishers still see ad networks as the enemy for effectively causing conflict with their direct sales channel as well as making incremental revenue from data generated, in part, by publishers. Joining Mandese was Richard Frankel of Rocket Fuel, David Koretz of Adventive and BlueTie, David Roter of ESPN, Alan Schanzer of Undertone Networks and Walker Jacobs of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

Jacobs crystallized the large publisher’s thinking for the crowd. And surprisingly for some, he thinks ad networks aren’t all bad:

There is most definitely a valuable place in the ecosystem for ad networks. Particularly those that are helping small and mid-size publisehers save costs and [its an easy way] to put together sales organizations, easy way to gather valuable audiences whether its sports or any other category. I see great value in that.

It’s interesting. You just take a look at the business model, though. The question is: should we perpetuate our own demise? – [particularly] when you look at the business model and how most of these ad networks have made a lot of their money.

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Vertical Ad Networks Are Different Side of Same Rusty Coin Says CEO Koretz of BlueTie and Adventive

Monday, June 15th, 2009

David Koretz of BlueTie and AdventiveDavid Koretz is CEO of BlueTie, Inc., an email and collaboration services provider and Adventive, Inc., an online ad solutions company.

What media-related trends have you observed in 2009 at BlueTie and at Adventive? Vertical strengths/weaknesses, pricing pressure, etc.?

At Adventive we are seeing large publishers put an increased emphasis on creating unique products for their advertisers that differentiate them from both the ad networks and the other large publishers. Not everyone is going to survive this economic downturn, and as the recession lingers on, publishers are starting to take the gloves off.

Following up on your theme from “Eight Things I Hate About You” in MediaPost in March, what would you advise publishers to do this year – paraphrasing your words – to innovate their product and help advertisers measure success? Is Adventive a step in this direction?

Publishers need to move beyond the banner ad. They need to think of themselves as having two distinct products: one for readers, and the other for advertisers. Publishers would be well served to spend their energy building unique products like site take-overs, sponsorships, and ROI-driven ads that help align them with the goals of their advertisers. Adventive is hyper-focused on innovating both the ad units and the optimization of ads to deliver ROI to advertisers. We hope to be a part of every premium publisher’s arsenal.

In your opinion, does the ad exchange model and automated media trading hold promise for publishers?

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From OMMA Metrics and Measurement: Judah Phillips of Monster Takes Measure Of The Data Tools

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

OMMA Metrics and MeasurementTuesday was OMMA’s NYC version of its Metrics and Measurement conference. Like Digiday on the previous day, this was another sold-out conference – and not just filled with vendors either. In the OMMA crowd were company managers looking to better harness the mountains of data that increasingly makes their jobs one of the most challenging in online advertising and publishing.

On “The Analytics Food Chain” panel, Jodi McDermott of Clearspring Technologies ably quizzed fellow panelists on how they “use audience measurement, campaign analysis tools and web analytics to plan and measure the efficacy of your marketing campaigns.” She was joined by Chris Maher of Hitwise, Dennis Mortensen of Yahoo!, Judah Phillips of Monster, Greg Smith from Neo@Ogilvy (see today’s Q&A) and Vivian Zhu of Razorfish.

In particular, Judah Phillips provided insight on how he and his Monster team are dealing with the data potpourri:

“At Monster, we have a wide range of favorite tools to use from Omniture Discover OnPremise to WebTrends or in external tools we have access to Comscore and some of the other tools that are publicly available on the Web. And for campaign measurement we use Atlas and DART.

How you divide access to those tools is interesting. It depends on product group or functional area within the company. So, for audience measurements tools, for Comscore generally, we tend to provide that data to Finance, we provide that data to competitive intelligence and external stakeholders. Marketing and sales teams use that data.

For internal consumers, we tend to shy away from some of the audience measurement tools because we didn’t feel like it accurately represents the reach and frequency and total breadth of our customers. So we provide our web analytics tools. Specifically, we get down to the visitor level where we work on segmentation and we can also look at various conversion points and value-generating events on the site.

When it comes to campaign measurement, we look primarily at Atlas or DART. We understand from those tools how different campaigns are performing. We’ll also correlate the performance of those campaigns at the business level in our analytics and tools and we end up finding some really valuable insights.

For example, we did a campaign recently with a series of banners across different sites. We noticed that the conversion events that were [registering] by Atlas were a bit different than what we were measuring with Discover OnPremise. We found that some of the visitors that we thought were actually performing value generating events through Atlas really weren’t the types of visitors that we wanted to engage. So, we altered the campaign. We took a look at how and where we were purchasing and where we were really executing. Through some changes in the campaign, we boosted conversions.”

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Forbes.com CEO Spanfeller Says CPMs Under Pressure Due to Move Towards DR Metrics – Not Oversupply

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Jim Spanfeller and Forbes.comAdExchanger.com: How important is the display segment to Forbes? Can you share recent momentum in online display ad revenue at Forbes?  Any verticals showing particular strength or weakness given the economic slump?

JS: Display is very important to our business model.  Of late the recession has taken a toll and we are not seeing the same type of growth that we have enjoyed in the past.  My guess is that the year will come in fairly flat. 

How does Forbes.com try to improve display CPMs (great sellers, vertical selling, targeted content creation, technology, etc.)?  Are ad networks and exchanges a part of the strategy? Why or why not?

All of the above…plus we always strive to test any and all new ideas.  Historically we have been awarded some of the highest CPMs on the web.  There is good reason for this.  We reach a very hard to find but yet very desirable audience in a very efficient manner.  Of late, CPMs around the web have come under pressure.  I feel this is more a result of the move towards DR metrics driven in large part by the horizontal ad networks then it is a factor of over supply of ad impressions.  Clearly there is a discrepancy (and in fact a growing discrepancy) between consumer behavior and advertising spend and this has added huge numbers of unsold impressions.  But this inventory can be controlled if the will is there.  Offline there has been unlimited inventory in print and other media for years and it has not affected CPMs.  The big issue here is that the horizontal ad networks are pushing models that are all about clicks in one form or another.  And as such this has pushed a vast amount of advertising to chase the 20% of web visitors that create 80% of the clicks.  It is almost certain that these strategies will dissipate over time as advertisers become more experienced online and as new metrics are developed and tracked.  In the meantime though we all face pricing pressures and these pressures will continue for at least a few more quarters.

Are yield optimizers such as PubMatic, Rubicon Project, AdMeld, Yieldex and others offering a viable option for publishers?  How does Forbes.com manage yield?

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Web Publishers Need A New Mantra

Friday, May 8th, 2009

I forgot my mantraIn a memorable clip from 1977 film classic Annie Hall, a young Jeff Goldblum says his one and only line into the phone, “Hello? I lost my mantra.” Transporting ahead Star Trek-style to 2009, publishers struggle with their mantra saying, “Hello? I lost my CPMs.”

Demand-side voice, Rob Griffin of Media Contacts – makers of the Artemis platform – tells Joe Mandese in MediaPost today that ad networks’ ability to aggregate audience in a cost-effective manner is changing marketers digital strategies and, consequently, reducing pricing power for large publishers.

Havas’ client – Lenovo’s Gary Milner – adds fuel to the “premium” CPM bonfire saying, “We don’t buy any premium inventory in display anymore…It’s hard to make a $30 CPM work when you have a 15x difference [in ROI].”

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Contextweb Takes On Vibrant Media, Kontera With In-Text Ads

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Expanding its toolkit for publishers, Contextweb announced today that it will make available in-text ads for publishers on the Adsdaq exchange beginning March 31. Leveraging its contextual technology, Contextweb will enter the same space which Vibrant Media and Kontera have dominated in the recent past in a battle-contextual-royale.

Contextweb’s Jay Sears explains how in-text ads will work on their company blog:

“ContextWeb publishers participating in the In-text program will see specific keywords double underlined within their content. Upon mouse-over of the keyword, the end-user will have the option to see and click on ads. The ads are specifically relevant to the keyword that has been double underlined, which enables advertisers to be precise in their targeting. As a publisher, you will be able to name a CPC AskPrice for all the in-text ads served to your account. No additional tagging or integration is required.”

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The OPA Agenda: Declare War on the Long Tail and Blogs

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

Search Engine Results BrouhahaFrom Today’s AdAge article, “Media Giants Want to Top Google Results” by Nat Ives:

“You should not have a system,” one content executive said, “where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately.”

Load the cannons! Kiss the loved ones goodbye! This is WAR!

Premium publisher titans undoubtedly led by the stealthy Death Star of Demagoguery known as the OPA (Online Publishers Association) have inadvertently declared war on bloggers by suggesting to Google that their content is better and deserves better rankings on Google search engine result pages (SERPs).

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Large Publishers Swarm as Pubmatic Premier and Funding Arrives

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Pubmatic Announce New Large Publisher ToolsToday’s Media Post reports that yield optimizer, Pubmatic, led by CEO Rajeev Goel, is providing new tools to large publishers which he says already comprises 80% of the inventory among the 5,500 Pubmatic publishers.

From Media Post’s Mark Walsh:

PubMatic Premiere is aimed at publishers with more than $5 million in annual online revenue, and promises to give them greater control over advertising served via ad networks to help protect their brands and boost ad revenues.

More interesting is this:

In addition to providing on-the-fly optimization in allocating inventory among ad networks, the new platform provides large publishers with a dashboard to monitor ad quality and latency in ad serving. PubMatic co-founder and CEO Rajeev Goel said the company also tracks ad quality proactively based on a publisher’s ad creative requirements (such as banning alcohol or gambling-related ads) and broader industry trends.

MediaPost points to recent “belly fat” ads as potential problems that the new tool solves for publishers that are concerned the blubbery images don’t work with their brand.

In any event, Pubmatic is putting more and more tools in the hands of exchange members as when they announced that ad networks could start buying from their publishers two weeks ago and, now, large publishers can use tools to filter the advertising they want served.

Ad exchanges provide control to publishers and a tool like Pubmatic’s appears to be a great step. As AdMeld, Yieldex, YieldBuild, Rubicon Project and Pubmatic evolve, it will be interesting to see if they may become exchanges unto themselves – diabolical! After all, they are providing an open platform to buyers and sellers.

Pubmatic Premier


Pardon Me, Is That A Cash Infusion?

A second round of funding has also arrived at Pubmatic which included investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), and Nexus India Capital and Helion Ventures, according to the San Jose Business Journal. Pubmatic’s last round closed in January 2008 to the tune of $7 million and, at the time, had only 1,500 publishers.

The new funding, whose total was unannounced, will allow the company to open sales offices in New York and Europe according to the announcement.

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New OPA Display Ads to Help Ad Networks and Exchanges

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

opa-display-advertisingThe Online Publishers Association has nobly decided to help the world of display advertising by introducing three, online display ad sizes.

Each new ad unit will be implemented and sold only through participating publishers’ direct sales teams later this year. Implicit is that ad networks and exchanges will not be selling these units.

Yeah, right.

Publishers, ad networks and advertising exchanges everywhere would be wise to start supporting these sizes ASAP for at least four reasons.

  • Advertisers will be looking to buy inventory for these sizes anywhere they can get acceptable ROI.
  • The new, enhanced units will be costly to make and advertisers will want to stretch their investment on creative dollars.
  • There will be unsold inventory and, rather than serving a house ad, at some point even large OPA publishers will be forced to turn to ad networks and exchanges no matter how much they want to avoid it.
  • Someday, these ad units will be sold through advertising exchanges right out of the gate – rather than through the direct sales team – as premium inventory slides over to the exchange.

OPA chief Pam Horan is quoted in the release, “Online Publishers Association Members Announce New Display Advertising Units,” as follows:

“‘Members of the OPA are offering a set of new principles and unique display advertising units to continue to foster innovation and leverage an environment that research has proven delivers better results for advertisers,’ said Pam Horan, president of OPA.”

$100 CPMs here we come!

Online Publishers Association Ad Unit
Artists rendering of
new, Online Publishers Association ad unit


The OPA continues to try to avoid the insight and power that technology provides in the advertising marketplace through exchanges and networks. We predict that selling premium impressions “direct only” will not yield efficient ROI for advertisers in the long run.

Among the initial group of web publishers set to test the new, larger banners sizes are: The New York Times, Reed Business Information, Bizjournals, BabyCenter, CBS Interactive, CNN, Condé Nast Digital, Discovery Communications, ESPN, Forbes.com, Bloomberg, BusinessWeek, FOXNews Digital, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Meredith Interactive, msnbc.com, IDG, iVillage Network, MTV Networks, Reuters, Time Inc., USA Today, NBC Universal, New York Media, Weather.com and The Wall Street Journal Digital Network.

The OPA offers four reasons of its own for the new ad sizes:

* Inspire creativity and high-quality advertising
* Provide a greater share of voice for the advertiser
* Introduce a measurement to capture impact
* Enhance interactivity to build user engagement with brands

Here the OPA has sided with recent noise from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) suggesting that creativity, somehow, does not exist in current ad sizes. If it wasn’t for those gosh darned ad networks and exchanges which keep monetizing their unsold inventory, their CPMs would be so much better!

The three new ad sizes consist of functonality reminiscent of rich media providers PointRoll, Eyeblaster and Eyewonder:

  • The Fixed Panel – 336 wide x 860 tall.
  • The XXL Box – 468 wide x 648 tall, “which has page-turn functionality with video capability.”
  • The Pushdown – 970 wide x 418 tall, “which opens to display the advertisement and then rolls up to the top of the page.”

Look for the IAB to formally adopt these ads on their “list” of standard sizes in the near future as well.

Rob Hof’s article in BusinessWeek has a selection of juicy quotes from Martin Nisenholtz, former OPA chair and current SVP of NY Times Digital including: “The whole purpose of this is to map the quality of the creative [ad] to the quality of the sites. Part of the problem is that much of the Web is a sewer.”

Translation: The Long Tail sucks. Come spend here on our big portal, Mr. or Ms. Advertiser.

Trouble is, Marty, the Long Tail is now open to advertisers through behavioral and contextual targeting technology among others which efficiently aggregates online ad inventory at scale with reasonable and improving brand safety.

When is the OPA going to understand that technology is its member publishers’ best friend rather than worst enemy?

Answer: Not soon enough.

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