I know I haven't posted in awhile. I've been working on getting free from some prior engagements. But today I want to talk about some secrets not widely known in the relationship between publishers and ad networks. Well, one secret for today and I'll save some for later.
The first secret is this - if you are a publisher and you offer some of your inventory through ad networks, they are probably playing an arbitrage with your inventory. In other words, you think they place ad campaigns they've sold in the inventory you provide. And they do, sometimes. But, sometimes, they just shovel your impression off to another network - who may also shovel your impression to yet another network. This misdirection may occur three or four networks deep.
How do they do it? Well, usually they use some kind of ad exchange - like AdECN or the Rubicon Project or Right Media Exchange or the DoubleClick Exchange. Sometimes, they just traffic unsold inventory to partners using their ad servers - just like you as a publisher might try to use your ad server to rotate between several ad networks you've done deals with.
Want to see an example? Look at this (you may need to click on the picture to actually read some of the text) ...
So this is a screen capture of one of my clients pages who is part of the Glam Network of publishers along with the actual html code being rendered in the page. Yes, this code is complicated and technical - but we're on the Web, just deal with it. The first highlight shows the Doubleclick ad server call made by Glam (I'm guessing Glam uses DFP). The second highlight shows that Glam has, in fact, called Lucid Media. The third highlight shows that Lucid has, in fact, called Google AdSense!
Imagine how the money flow works in this case. RefluxRemedy (the advertiser) pays Google (if I click on the ad), who pays Lucid (the actual AdSense account being used in this case is not my clients but Lucid's) who pays Glam who pay my client. Everyone's hand is out but my client (and Google, in this case, who brings the paying advertiser) is the only one in the chain really providing value.
How does this happen? Publishers have a lot on their colective plates. They need to drive traffic to their site, they need to focus on increasing user engagement (through content or features or both), and they need to focus on direct sales (advertising sales by their own staff). To spend a lot of time figuring out how to best yield money from their unsold ad inventory in the midst of a bewildering number of exchanges/auctions (what, exactly, is the difference between Turn, Right Media EXchange, Rubicon Project, AdMeld, Pubmatic, ADSDAQ, etc.), behavioral networks (acerno vs Tacoda vs c'mon pullleeeeaasssee) and ad networks (Burst, Collective, Specific, Casale, Xtend, AdSense, Platform A, Interclick, Tribal Fusion, and on and on and on and on...) - well, its just too much.
So Publishers go for the easy solution - they pick one to ten networks (most of which approach them anyway), try to rotate them within some ad server and hope for the best.
Ok - enough for today. We'll come back to this later.
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