How Publishers are Adopting to New Reality?
COVID-19 changed several industries dramatically and we don’t even live in the same way as we used to. Publishers are no exception. Publishers have been dealing with the pandemic in their own ways and now we are going to look at some examples from last week’s news cycle.
Approaching the Advertisers Relying on Offline Events
Even when many B2B media companies are struggling to stay afloat and hit their revenue targets, Industry Dive is emerging as a winner. It launched two new verticals, acquired a content studio business, and grew its revenue 30% YOY.
How? It capitalized on the fact that advertisers have to spend the events budget elsewhere this year. Initially, buyers turned to walled gardens and digital platforms as usual. And, this, in turn, increased the competition there and pumped the price up a lot.
“When there are shocks, it’s great from an audience standpoint. But when budgets get real tight for folks, being able to generate real demand for partners is key.” - CEO Sean Griffey.
Industry Dive understood the dynamics and rolled out several digital ad packages targeting the B2B businesses and agencies, thanks to its new content studio, Studio ID. Well, it worked.
“Our clients often had budgets where they said, ‘Help us solve goals that we can’t solve in person now.’”
Changing Account Manager Roles
Account Managers are becoming a ‘growth-oriented role’ recently. The AM role was seen as a position to hold on to the relationship and cater to the demand from the other side. But now, according to Digiday, publishers are trimming the sales team and converting the Account Managers into a dual role — build relationships and pitch ideas, and try to increase the revenue from a single agency/advertiser.
“The key is to not just think about that account manager role as what it used to be, but what it can be. It’s supposed to free up time to sell more, but it can be a growth-oriented role.”
- Matt Bartels, principal and media practice lead at the Alexander Group.
Slate’s 1P Data Ad Targeting Tool
As Google’s phasing 3P cookies, established media brands have either started banding together or building their own technology to ensure audience-based targeting is available as an option for advertisers. Slate is promoting its ‘Slate Select’, an ad targeting tool that allows buyers to reach audiences across its sites and audience network using — first-party data.
It started as a way to help advertisers target audiences on its podcasts and eventually grown into a tool that can go beyond podcasts.
Takeaway
If you’re a media group, it’s time to see how you can centralize your first-party data and leverage it. Keep up with the market changes and change your pitch to advertisers accordingly and stay ahead of the cookieless developments in the industry.
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Also, read the rise of SPO during pandemic, IAB CCPA benchmark Survey & it’s key challenges for the publishers at our originally published blog.
Originally published at https://headerbidding.co on November 17, 2020.
