Market Trends & Challenges

Back in the good old days (10 years ago), all online ad campaigns were sold by publishers' own direct sales teams on a guaranteed basis, and all a publisher needed to manage them was a simple ad server.

It's a brave - and scary - new world for publishers today. To get full access to all of the money in the market, publishers need to connect to hundreds of different sales channels (ad networks, exchanges, etc.) since 2/3 of inventory is sold on a non-guaranteed basis. They need to integrate with data providers and exchanges to sell by audience (which is how advertisers want to buy today). They need to deploy security technology to protect their ad stream, both direct- and indirect-sold, their site(s) and their users. More recently, DSPs and real-time bidding networks have emerged on the scene...and next year, it will be something else.

Bottom line? It’s tough being a publisher. They need more technology, greater sales reach and the ability to mitigate the increased risk to their hard-won brands. Without doing something to resolve these issues, they're faced with lost revenues, channel conflict, pricing erosion, lost users and rising sales costs.

How do publishers regain power in this chaotic, competitive landscape?

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