Content Will Ultimately Rule
Native Advertising at Sharethrough
Native Ads = Matches Form + Function
As an engineer at Sharethrough, I’m always thinking about ways to improve our end user experience. But who is really the end user? The brands advertising on our platform? The publishers offering their inventory in our exchange? Or is it the consumer actually viewing and clicking on the ad?
In my mind, the end users are the people consuming content on the mobile web.
Advertisers and publishers are actually secondary. If the end user is more satisfied with our ads, he or she will be more inclined to visit publisher pages more often and will be more likely to click on quality advertisements. This is a win-win scenario for both advertisers and publishers. At Sharethrough, we believe the ultimate mobile advertising experience is native — an ad that adheres to the form and function of the site. Currently, we’ve mastered the form of how content is displayed in feeds.
Now it’s time to double down on providing quality content.
Two products I’m most excited about at Sharethough that will take quality content delivery to the next level are our improved Content Quality Score (CQS) algorithms and our Content Library.
CQS
In a generalized second price auction , bidders place bids and the winner pays the second highest bid(unless there is a tie for the winning price and then a winner is randomly chosen).
In this scenario, the highest bidder always wins. This might bode well for advertisers with deep pockets, but what about quality content that’s on a budget? With our CQS algorithms, we are able to ingest data about content uploaded to our platform and assign it a score that helps us bias our auction. Similar to Google Adwords biasing search keywords ads that are more relevant, we are biasing content that is higher quality.
Our biasing rewards quality content and actually makes it cheaper for advertisers who can create quality content. The net result is more engaging ads, more satisfied end user experiences, and better metrics for both brands and publishers.
Content Library
Our Content Library is another product we’re developing that will promote higher quality ads to be distributed throughout our network. Brands are constantly creating quality content, sometimes without even realizing it. The Content Library product is an effort to gather, analyze, and then circulate the best content brands have to offer.
This turnkey solution will provide a way for brands to easily promote their best content.
After providing minimal details about their brand, Advertisers will be given a custom library of content currently available on the internet. This could include Youtube videos, Instagram pictures, or even Pinterest boards. Coupled with CQS, Sharethrough will then optimize delivery on the best quality content.
With our innovative approach to advertising and focus on content quality, Sharethrough is positioned to become the ultimate distribution platform for anyone seeking to spread meaningful content on the mobile web.
