Programmatic had an eventful year, what with ad fraud, blind-buys' brand-risk, courtroom battles over hidden vendor fees, targeting mishaps, and more dogging the industry throughout 2017. Despite all that, programmatic spending is at an all-time high, especially on PMPs. PMPs — private marketplaces — are popular for reasons that range from brand safety to better tra … [Read more...]
10 Ad Tech and Media Buzzwords of 2017: Explained
Anyone who works in ad tech knows how much the industry loves its jargon. Here are some quick explanations for a whole bunch of ad tech and media buzzwords that were thrown around this year, so you can gain a working knowledge in minutes. Note: Many of these have been covered more extensively in our explainers before. Pivot-to-Video What: ‘Written-word’ media houses … [Read more...]
What Publishers Need to Know About Ad Verification Companies
The cat’s out of the bag. Brands now know that a huge chunk of their ad dollars are wasted on ads that never appear before a human. That’s part of the reason why the biggest media buyers are insisting on MRC (Media Ratings Council) accredited ad verification. For those not yet familiar with this bit of ad tech, IAB has a definition (edited slightly for clarity): Ad ver … [Read more...]
The State of Ad Tech Industry: Asia-Pacific
The recently released Quarterly Mobile Index (Q2) 2017 report from Pubmatic had some mixed news for publishers in Asia-Pacific region: Leading YoY growth in monetized mobile web, header bidding impression volume grew the most in APAC. Lowest mobile web (display) eCPMs of all regions despite 48% uplift YoY. Massive drop in the share of monetized mobile app impressions … [Read more...]
The Beginner’s Guide to DFP Native Ads
Remember, in April this year, Google was beta testing native ad formats for AdSense? Four months later, Google launched native ads on DFP ad server, this time with demand for AdSense and DoubleClick Ad Exchange publishers. In this post, we're going to cover how the new native ad format in DFP works and all the ways it can enrich your ad inventory. What is DFP Native? When … [Read more...]
Explainer: The Four Types of Programmatic Deals
Not all impressions are created equal. So why trade them wholesale without distinction? It’s a good and democratic way to trade all your impressions in open RTB environment (akin to AdSense)—all publishers get the same data and price floor, the highest bidder wins, end of story. But that sort of “throw it to the market and let them decide” approach severely limits yield and b … [Read more...]
The New Rules of Mobile Web Monetization
Mobile-based impressions and clicks are primary growth drivers for digital advertising. That’s one major takeaway from Digiday’s State of Mobile Advertising cheatsheet. Other interesting tidbits are about internet usage on mobile (71 percent), ad spend on mobile web ($24 billion), and Google’s mammoth share of mobile web ad spend ($18.9 billion). To spell it out: Mobile is … [Read more...]
Top 10 Header Bidding Demand Partners of 2017
We have previously listed some header bidding demand partners to add in your wrapper. But there's more to bidders than just their demand. The following list contains only the top tier demand partners currently in the header bidding game; the kind that require you have a hefty number of minimum monthly impressions just to get a quote; the kind that bring in considerable … [Read more...]
Google Chrome’s Built-in Adblock Shows up in Chrome Canary
Google’s “no holds barred” approach to bad ads isn’t just for show. The Chrome ad blocker is real and currently being developed for Android. Chrome Canary, an unstable developer-build for Chrome browser (for Android), was recently found containing a new feature: an ‘Ads’ toggle within the Site Settings menu. This option (turned off by default in the current build) gives users … [Read more...]
Direct Ad Sales: How (and Why) to Sell Your Ad Inventory Directly
Before we get into this, let's make one thing clear: Direct ad selling is NOT just for big league publishers. Any publisher with original content and human audience can do it. As concerns about brand-safety and advertising fraud steer advertisers away from programmatic, enterprising publishers have a lot of leverage to pitch their ad space directly to a … [Read more...]