Publishers, It’s Time to Take Back Control of Your Inventory.
No one likes seeing irrelevant, creepy, distracting ads. But they’re impossible to escape on the internet, and it’s only getting worse.
Over the past few years, more publishers have handed over control of ad inventory to advertising networks. These auction inventory off to the highest bidder regardless of publisher context or fit.
Ad exchanges are hurting the quality of online advertising and sabotaging publisher revenue and reputation in the process. A publisher’s value is tied to its readers, who loyally return for great content and experience. Yet publishers allow exchanges to serve ads that distract from the content readers came to consume.
The result? Readers stop coming to the website or install ad blockers, sinking publisher value.
The solution? Publishers put themselves and readers first by taking back control of their ad inventory.
Today’s digital advertising is mostly awful.
Data-hungry marketers use ad exchanges to serve ads that are somehow both impersonal and laser-targeted. Cookies and personal data have become a lazy substitute for understanding audiences. The dependency runs so deep that Ad Ops Insider recently referred to cookie-less users as “worthless to an exchange.”
Behavioural targeting and retargeting often comes across as creepy instead of helpful. Being stalked around the internet is no fun. I was recently looking at a new workbag and it wasn’t long before ads started appearing everywhere, sometimes many times on a page.
Dependency on user data has already started to irk people. A KPMG survey found more than half of respondents were concerned about businesses using personal data for unwanted marketing to sell to third parties. With brand trust at a premium nowadays, highly personalized marketing can feel more like being spied on than helped.
Part of the issue is that ad exchanges often serve ads out of context to what a person is doing. Even a valuable, well-targeted ad can seem irrelevant or distracting if it doesn’t relate to someone in the moment it’s served.
I was recently reading an iPad Pro review and noticed ads for a mattress company and Porsche dealership. At the time, the last thing I was thinking of buying was a new bed or car. But display ads for Staples or Best Buy, or even a Surface Pro, would have been useful and relevant in the moment.
In this sense, display ads served from exchanges have become the junk mail of the internet. Someone who’s reading birthday cards and paying bills doesn’t care about a pizza place across town.
Relevance is key to successful marketing, and timing is just as important as audience targeting. Ad exchanges (like junk mail) ignore that, seeking minimal response rates even from highly defined audiences.
Forget “data-based marketing.” Today’s advertisers are throwing mud at a wall to see what sticks.
Readers are done ignoring bad ads.
People aren’t ignoring ads anymore. They’re blocking them out completely.
26% of desktop users and 15% of mobile users have installed ad blockers, and this loss of traffic is expected to cost the industry between $16B and $35B by 2020. Some ad networks and exchanges have tried to force their way around ad blockers, treating the symptom instead of the cause.
A HubSpot survey showed people most often install ad blockers because they find ads annoying, intrusive, or disruptive and have privacy concerns.
These complaints can all be traced to ad exchanges. People wouldn’t install ad blockers if publishers and marketers focused on audience experience rather than the path to the cheapest possible impression.
But HubSpot’s survey also showed readers are sympathetic to publishers and understand that good content comes with a price. Respondents said they were fine with seeing ads if they weren’t annoying or if they supported content. At the end of the day, readers would rather see ads than pay for subscriptions, even if it means turning off ad blockers.
People aren’t anti-advertising. They’re anti-bad advertising.
Marketing in context is the best way to regain trust.
It’s easy for publishers to install AdSense and watch checks come in the mail. But this risks annoying readers and losing loyalty over time — or watching revenues sink as more people turn to ad blockers.
Offering advertisers the option to market in context is the best way for publishers to keep reader trust while still making revenue from advertising. This is done through programmatic direct, or direct buys between publishers and advertisers.
Programmatic direct brings together the benefits of new ad tech (efficiency) with old-school models (premium placements and audiences). Marketers can often reserve inventory and launch campaigns through self-serve checkouts in marketplace or custom-branded models.
Marketing in context provides huge benefits to marketers and readers, with publishers benefiting from those happy groups. Here’s how:
- Programmatic direct establishes respect between advertisers and readers. Publishers try to attract as many loyal, relevant readers as possible. Advertisers booking directly through publishers show that they understand the value of the audience, rather than pushing ads at anyone who matches a certain profile. Putting stock in a publisher’s audience means cookies and remarketing become less of a crutch in achieving goals. This protects user privacy and means marketers can be less concerned about cookie inefficiencies.
- Programmatic direct builds relationships. Advertisers can nurture relationships with audiences by reserving specific placements over a defined period of time. Unlike creepy remarketing ads, these publisher-specific placements foster brand affinity and awareness. Readers could even interpret these ads as sponsorship instead of advertising, as if these brands were paying to keep great content free. This model has worked in the podcast world—think of MailChimp’s infamous Serial ad.
- Programmatic direct strikes a different level of relevancy. Marketing in context means advertisers give readers relevant information based on publisher-controlled data, such as which website they’re on and what content they’re consuming. This removes the creep factor that comes from behavioral targeting while still providing relevant ads to a target audience. For example, an ad on 1stWebDesigner.com could promote a font bundle instead of remarketing a toothbrush to a specific user. The font bundle is relevant to the audience and to the publisher’s content. Most self-serve portals allow advertisers to target ads by category and location, meaning they get better access to inventory and audience targeting. Some go even further—Roku lets advertisers segment by viewership and audience data that’s managed completely in house.
When publishers win, so does everyone else.
Ad exchanges that value audience quantity over quality simply don’t work anymore. Unfortunately, it’s the publishers that lose when loyal audiences block ads or go elsewhere for a better experience.
Everyone wins when publishers succeed, but that’s only possible if publishers take back control of their ad space. Remember, audiences aren’t afraid to block you out.
