Openads: Business Insider IGNITION 2012 Options

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Tomorrow, I¢ll be moderating a panel discussion at the Business Insider IGNITION conference in New York City, speaking with Ray Faust (VP Sales, Emerging Media, Star Tribune), Amy Horne (National Digital Account Manager, Salt Lake Tribune) and Matthew Pferschy (Manager, Online AdOps and Analytics, The Seattle Times). Together, we¢ll be discussing the various strategies that publishers can deploy to maximize online revenue, specifically focusing on programmatic buying. Each panelist will be speaking frankly and honestly about their observations and experiences of programmatic buying, many of which will be shared by the wider publishing community, including:

Working with multiple partners. The days of sending all unsold inventory to an SSP are over. Using multiple partners to bid for your inventory in real time enables you to get the maximum CPMs possible. Ad Exchanges are the perfect environments for this type of competition, and we¢ll be able to talk more about how these publishers are using exchanges to do this.

Implementing price floors. Stay in control of the CPMs earned by setting specific price floors on premium inventory…by section of your site, page, or event buyer. Whilst competition helps drive prices up, price floors will prevent them from going down, turning the ¡race to the bottom¢ into the ¡race to the top¢.

Challenging your partners. Publishers who work closer with their demand channels are able to increase fill rates and CPMs. When they know you¢re watching you¢ll get better returns.

Thinking like a stock trader, not an ops specialist. Take advantage of the rapid growth in programmatic buying to increase demand for ads. The old days of ¡set it and forget it¢ are over. Monetizing inventory requires a transactional mindset that operates in real-time.

Don¢t load pages with too many ads. Advertisers look for impact, and will pay more for uncluttered ad experiences. Publishers shouldn’t fool themselves by thinking that adding another ad to a page will increase revenue.

Future revenue growth coming from the ¡middle.¢ While premium direct sales remain important to any publisher, the biggest opportunity for revenue growth in 2013 will come from the middle tier of demand partners like ad exchanges. SSPs will become less important as they fill less and less inventory at lower rates, and we¢ll be talking more about exactly why.

If you¢re attending IGNITION tomorrow, we look forward to seeing you there. If you¢ve got something you¢d like to add to this debate, why not bring and share it at the panel¢s closing Q&A session.

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