bidding - amazon s3 · is rtb (real-time bidding) ... video players. tiny banners hidden on a...

A COMPLETE GUIDE TO

MOBILEPROGRAMMATICAND REAL-TIME BIDDING

As Seen On:

In this special edition of our eBook

series, TapSense thought leaders

help advertisers and publishers

navigate the emerging programmatic

and RTB (Real-Time Bidding)

technology landscape.

Introduction

Is RTB (Real-Time Bidding) the most overhyped technology ever? Have reports of the death

of the manual insertion been greatly exaggerated? It certainly depends on who you talk to.

eMarketer currently estimates that RTB in 2014 will account for 22% of digital ad spending,

a significant increase from only 8% in 2011. The same report projects RTB will account

for 29% of digital ad spend in 2017. We will certainly witness the death of some insertion

orders, but not all.

In this guide, we’ve collected our best thinking on the subject of programmatic advertising

and RTB. We address publisher monetization in depth, and provide advice on how a

publisher can best take advantage of programmatic selling of their inventory. We also

debunk popular myths about RTB exchanges, offer examples on how a publisher can work

with exchanges, and explain how publishers can set up their own private exchanges.

I hope you find this guide both informative and useful as you research the mobile

programmatic and RTB space.

Sincerely,

Gregory Kennedy TapSense Senior Vice President, Marketing

Table of Contents

Four Ways Publishers Can Improve Their Ad Monetization Efforts 2

Why the Private RTB Marketplace is the Future of Publisher Monetization 6

Nine Things to Look for in a Premium Mobile Publisher Solution 10

What is a Private Mobile RTB Marketplace and How Does it Work? 14

Four Myths About Mobile Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Debunked 18

How to Setup a Private Mobile Ad Exchange 22

Three Important Monetization Trends for Independent Mobile Publishers 27

Four Ways Publishers Can Improve Their Ad Monetization Efforts By Ash Kumar

The publishing business is competitive. New players can emerge quickly, while incumbents from the traditional media space have lots of resources they can sink into mobile loss leaders for years. However, the smart publishers who are succeeding, maximize every opportunity to it’s fullest. Here are four tips on how to improve publisher ad monetization efforts.

3A Complete Guide to Programmatic and Real-Time Bidding

Put great tools in place to manage direct-sold campaigns

Making the sale to a customer is only half the battle. Developing satisfied customers who

buy again is most important. This requires having in place the right tools and technology to

manage customer campaign properly.

What does a typical customer expect? At a minimum, you should be able to: Pace the

campaign properly and control exactly how much is spent per day. Pause the campaign

exactly when the budget has been spent. Provide accurate and detailed reports on a daily

basis. Frequency cap the campaign, to ensure each ad is only displayed a specific number

of times a day to a unique user. Ensure the ad creative is displayed properly and is not cut

off with only a portion of it displaying. You must be able to do all of this flawlessly.

The technology required to do this well is a big investment for most publishers to make.

Rather than build it on your own, consider working with a third party ad server that has all of

these tools and more. If you do it right, your customers will love you for it.

Develop ad placements that have the highest value

Where you place the ad slot matters a lot. Premium ad slots placed on the startup screen,

or native in-stream placements are generally considered premium. Advertisers will pay

significantly more for them. Also, placements with relevant context are slots that advertisers

will pay a premium for. Examples include highly trafficked content areas, logout screens, or

video players.

Tiny banners hidden on a settings screen don’t have a lot of relevance for the user or

the advertiser. In general, those types of placements perform poorly. We recommend

publishers consider removing their lowest performing ad slots, which can drag down overall

performance and reduce CPMs.


Collect data that is relevant to most advertisers

All publishers know that data for ad targeting is valuable, but not all targeting data is

valuable. Focus on collecting data that can be used at scale across your user base. The

simplest and most obvious example is demographic data, such as male / female. It’s

generally the most valuable data because it is actionable across a high number of users.

When exploring other types of data, limit your efforts to datasets that you can deploy across

at least five million users in a single geo.

Building complex tools that collect users’ interests, track their behavior, and monitor

keywords is very hard for most independent publishers to sell. The granularity of this data

can make it challenging to target users at significant scale.


Improve your understanding of what your advertisers want and build that

Most publishers have a good process to do this when it comes to end users. Why not apply

the same process to advertisers? Have the monetization team spend time with advertisers,

evaluate their needs, and develop products that make it easier for them to accomplish their

goals. Conduct interviews with top buyers. Understand agency and DSP needs. What data

can top buyers use most effectively? What type of placements work best for them? Use

this qualitative data, along with data pulled from your RTB platform to prioritize your product

roadmap and maximize your app’s monetization potential.

Why the Private RTB Marketplace is the Future of Publisher Monetization By Gregory Kennedy

In spite of its obvious efficiencies, RTB or Real-Time Bidding of ad placements on the PC web continues to be dominated by direct response advertisers buying remnant inventory. While many attempts have been made, premium publishers remain reluctant to put their inventory on public exchanges. They fear a “race to the bottom” in CPMs, as they compete against the sheer volume of impressions thrown off by social media, email and other utility type sites. In mobile, the RTB ecosystem is evolving differently.


New approaches, better technology and smarter implementation methods are emerging

that promise to overcome many of the hurdles that RTB still faces on the PC Web. It’s the

private marketplace model in particular that’s gaining traction and helping lead the way

forward for premium RTB. This set-up allows premium publishers to control their inventory

and overcome the pitfalls of public RTB exchanges.

At TapSense, we work on monetization for a number of Top 25 app store apps, on both

iOS and Android. We’ve seen a lot of different approaches and tested a lot of ideas. Based

on our experience from the past three years, here are four ways we publishers are sure to

improve their monetization efforts.

Avoid the “Race to the Bottom” for Prices Seen on Public Exchanges

On public exchange, it’s hard for premium publishers to differentiate themselves. Buyers

see their inventory as a small portion of very large pool of low quality impressions. There is

little information available to help buyers make decisions. Most RTB exchanges only provide

a source URL to define the inventory. This favors the mega providers who have literally

billions of impressions they want to offload. Because it’s all happening in real-time, in many

cases, RTB ends up reducing the value of premium inventory. Conversely, RTB should be

increasing inventory value by increasing the competition between buyers.

Premium publishers, particularly in mobile, have found that deploying a private exchange

can help mitigate the CPM drop they experience on a public exchange. There are four major

reasons for this. A private exchange allows for 1) the ability to set CPM floor minimums 2)

the creation of an approved list of buyer tiers called whitelists 3) making actionable unique

first-party data to buyers and 4) the ability to market a private exchange separately from the

public exchange.


Making First-Party Data Actionable to Trusted Buyers is Key

Making first-party data actionable is the core component that significantly increases the

value of premium inventory. Most premium publishers have lots of great data about their

users. The private exchange allows them to easily capitalize on that data and get a premium

for it. On a public exchange, if a premium publisher makes their data available to buyers,

they face a host of issues, such as data scraping. This is where unscrupulous buyers, ad

networks and other third parties scrape the public data from the exchange.

They then cross reference it with other data and resell it, all without the publisher’s

knowledge or control. This hurts the publisher’s brand, as unknown third parties sell

targeting that is of poor quality due to limited data access.

A private exchange easily solves this problem, because buyers can only access a premium

publisher’s inventory through their private exchange. Also, the buyer must adhere to the

rules and policies that the publisher puts in place. The data, targeting and impressions are

all protected inside a walled garden that is within the publisher’s control.


Worries About RTB Cannibalizing Direct Sales are Unfounded

Most large media companies and their digital divisions worry that RTB and automation will

cannibalize their direct sales, which will reduce CPMs across the board. This “horror story”

scenario is just not true. Any high quality private exchange technology provider should have

the systems in place to manage a publisher’s direct-sold campaigns. In fact, they can give

preference to direct-sold campaigns over all the other buyers on the exchange. This ensures

delivery of direct-sold campaigns in full. In this scenario, automated buying is used to fill the

gap of unsold impressions.

Private RTB Exchanges Maximize Revenue

With RTB in place, large publishers can actually earn more money by easily monetizing

their international traffic. Most publishers are leaving money on the table, and not effectively

maximizing international sales. Why? Because publishers don’t have the impression

volume in those regions required to sell the inventory directly. The RTB exchange model

allows publishers to sell this traffic to demand-side platforms that specialize in repackaging

and selling of global traffic. These specific inventory pools can be blinded to prevent data

scraping issues.

The same technique, repackaging excess inventory, can be applied in reverse. Most media

companies own a number of small niche sites. Offering them on the RTB exchange as one

single selling source is an easy way to maximize sales. With a private exchange in place,

it’s also possible to apply unique first-party targeting data to the inventory, which vastly

improves its value. As the industry evolves, the hurdles to getting RTB right for publishers

are significant. Those who make the investment will be well positioned to reap the benefits.

Nine Things to Look for in a Premium Mobile Publisher Solution By Ash Kumar

1. Superior Monetization With RTB (Real-Time Bidding)

RTB technology is designed to make buyers compete in real time and maximize the value of a publisher’s advertising inventory. It also simplifies the buying process and creates more efficiency, eliminating the need to do insertion orders (IOs) for each buy. RTB platforms in mobile have scaled significantly over the past two years. All publishers should have an RTB strategy and look for a platform that allows them to sell in real time. As more dollars migrate to RTB, publishers without with the right technology will miss out on a big segment of buyers.


2. Mediation of Top Ad Networks

In order to maximize fill, publishers need ad network mediation that supports all top

mobile ad networks, including the recently launched Facebook mobile ad network. With

a mediation layer in place, publishers are guaranteed to maximize revenue and ad fill by

running multiple networks at the same time, favoring the impressions with the highest CPM.

3. A Private RTB Marketplace Option

Having RTB technology and mediation is still not enough. Look for partners who can

implement a private RTB marketplace solution. The private option gives publishers total

control over how their inventory is sold. They can develop tiers, whitelist specific buyers, and

set CPM floors. This helps maximize the value of their inventory and prevent the “race to the

bottom” CPMs seen in public RTB.

4. An Independent Platform Operator

Seek out an independent publisher platform operator to ensure your interests are aligned.

Working with a platform operated by large technology conglomerate has a number of risks:


• If publisher solutions aren’t their primary business, they will be slow to

roll out new features.

• They can use your data in ways that you can’t control.

• You may be a small fish in a big pond and not receive the level of service

you need.

• After gaining knowledge of your business, they may decide to compete with you.

With an independent platform, the publisher is in control.

5. First-Party Data Control

Publishers who make first party data available in public RTB run the risk of losing control

over how it’s used. This puts the publisher and their users at risk. Unscrupulous ad

networks, buying platforms, and other third parties can scrape that first party data from the

exchange. They then combine the data with other data, cross reference it and resell it, all

without the publisher’s control. This has sometimes resulted in the data being used in ways

that can violate the publisher’s own terms of service. A private marketplace mitigates all this

risk. It allows publishers to define rules over how first-party data is used and limit buying

access to reputable partners only.

6. Innovative Ad Formats

Banner ads are clearly not enough. In fact, the popularity of video and native ads this year

shows that the banner ad in mobile could have a limited life span. While banners are simple

for publishers to implement and easy for advertisers to create, they don’t add a lot of value.

Seek out a platform that supports new technology such as rich media, audio and video

through standards such as VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) and MRAID (Mobile Rich

Media Ad Interface Definitions).


7. Advanced Campaign Tools for Direct Sales Teams

Most large publishers have a direct sales team and need great tools to manage the

campaigns they sell. Those buyers will have high expectations, including agency buyers

who will expect you to be able to start campaigns at a specific time, pause when requested,

end the campaign at a specific time, limit the daily spend to a specific dollar amount, target

the campaign properly, limit how many times a unique user is shown an ad, and provide the

customer with detailed real-time reports. This is a lot of functionality. Additionally, agencies

love customization. Look for a partner that has ad serving that can meet the demands of

high quality buyers and gives your sales team the tools they need to succeed.

8. Third Party Compatibility

Compatibility with other ad servers such as MoPub, AdMarvel, Burstly and DoubleClick

for Publishers is important. You want technology that plays well with other platforms. A

publisher solution that can work with an existing SDK helps your technology team save time

as they don’t have to test and integrate another one.

9. One Vendor With a Proven Track Record

Publishers have a lot of needs. Not all vendors can deliver all the required technology.

Working with multiple vendors is complex and confusing. Find a single stack solution from a

vendor with a proven track record of success.

What is a Private Mobile RTB Marketplace and How Does it Work? Kathie Green

A private mobile RTB marketplace connects publishers to demand sources. The advertiser, or demand side, bids on mobile ad impressions in real time from publishers, or the supply side. The term “private” means that a specific publisher has opted to sell their inventory on an exchange, but they limit and control the demand side.


What is RTB (Real-Time Bidding)?

Mobile RTB is a real-time auction in which the demand side bids on publishers’ ad slots,

which may include native, video, and full-screen interstitial ads. The ad slot goes to the

highest paying demand partner, and the winner’s ad is displayed on the publisher’s

inventory.

Real-time bidding is the best way for mobile publishers to monetize their apps or mobile

sites. The demand partner that is willing to pay the highest CPM for that impression wins

the publisher’s inventory. RTB gives publishers a way to capture demand that exceeds the

capacity of their in-house sales team. Another benefit of RTB is that it allows a publisher to

scale direct sales efforts by using RTB as the delivery method for direct buys.

What is a Private RTB Marketplace?

A private RTB marketplace allows publishers to control which demand partners, advertisers,

agencies, and brands buy their inventory. In the private set up, the publisher controls three

major parameters. The publisher is able to:

1

2

3

CPM $1.90

CPM $1.40

CPM $1.20

4CPM $1.00

5Blocked

Premium PublisherPrivate Mobile RTBExchange

WINNER

1Publisher determines white listed

demand partners or buyers

2White listed buyers bid

on impression.

3Buyer who bids on the highest

CPM wins the auction.

1Publisher determines white listed

demand partners or buyers

2White listed buyers bid

on impression.

3Buyer who bids on the highest

CPM wins the auction.


• Determine the whitelist of approved demand partners, blocking buyers who could

otherwise bid in a public exchange model.

• Set price floors or minimums. This helps helps keep publisher CPMs high, so they

can command a premium for their inventory.

• Tier access by providing first right of refusal to a premium demand partner.

This feature allows brands to bid first, before direct advertisers, which ensures

ad quality.

What are the Benefits?

RTB enables publishers to make their first-party data actionable for advertising demand

partners. It also allows the inclusion of third-party data for targeting at the exchange level,

such as geotargeting and audience segmentation data. Because the data targeting is done

on the exchange, the publishing partner doesn’t need to implement this technology on

their end.

Four Myths About Mobile Real-Time Bidding (RTB) Debunked Shawn Aguilar

Real-Time Bidding (RTB) is growing and the data shows there is no sign of it slowing down. Twitter purchased MoPub for $350 million, Rocket Fuel’s IPO has been a success, and AppNexus has grown rapidly, with IPO rumors circulating. Clearly, RTB is the hot thing right now in advertising and it is now making its way to mobile.

Even with the growth and advances in RTB technology, there are still a lot of myths out there about the pitfalls of RTB. Lets go over some of the main ones:


Myth 1: Premium Publishers Are Not on RTB Yet

Premium publishers may be underrepresented on RTB today, but I predict this will change

dramatically by the end of 2014. Now there is data from Adomic that shows 20% of the top

3000 publishers’ inventory, on average, is going to RTB. They may not be selling their top

banner ad space through RTB yet, but these top tier publishers are starting to put their other

inventory on RTB ad networks. This trend will continue to increase as publishers leverage

blocking tools on exchanges that enable them to prevent certain brands, advertisers, and

even referral URLs from advertising on their inventory.

RTB can also help publishers’ direct sales teams. RTB allows publishers to see which

advertisers are bidding on their inventory, which is intelligence the sales team can use to

increase direct sales to those advertisers. Publishers’ sales teams can see the CPM bids for

the inventory too, which could enable them to increase their CPMs on the direct sales side.

Myth 2: I Don’t Need RTB Because I Can Just Buy from Mobile Ad Networks

Currently, if you were to scour the internet for mobile ad networks, you will find that there are

currently over 400 ad networks globally. There is no denying that all of these networks share

some of the same inventory, and as time goes on, it’s going to be very hard for them to

differentiate. If you are the advertiser, how do you decide between all of these ad networks?

With this lack of differentiation, what happens next for mobile ad networks? We here at

TapSense believe we are going to see further consolidation of ad networks, across both

mobile and desktop. What does this consolidation look like? The answer depends on who

you ask, but I believe we will see an arms race among major players like Google, Amazon,

and Yahoo. These major ad networks are growing and increasing their ad revenues, and

smaller ad networks cannot keep up. Rather than waiting for diminishing revenue to drive

them out of business, smaller networks will look to get acquired by larger players.


Myth 3: Buying RTB is Too Hard, Expensive and Complicated for Marketers

Back in the early days of RTB, it was hard, expensive, and complicated to get started.

In the RTB space today, however, it is actually very easy to get going. Before, you would

have to set up a trading desk, ensure you are connected to the right ad networks, and

then ensure you have the proper DSPs in place so you are not depending on just one DSP.

Today, setting up RTB advertising is as simple as placing a phone call. The number of ad

tech companies that allow you to purchase inventory via RTB is increasing. Whether you

are trying to purchase inventory to drive clicks (through ad buys) or to drive conversions

(through retargeting) there is an ad tech vendor that can solve those needs. Today, it is also

considerably less expensive to get started. With ad buys being as cheap as $1000-$1500

per month, and retargeting campaigns as cheap as $500-$1000 a month, it is very easy,

even for smaller advertisers, to start running RTB campaigns.

Myth 4: RTB Inventory is All Remnant Inventory, So it Does Not Perform

The myth of poor performance is another common misconception. Although only a minority

of the top premium publishers have their top inventory on RTB networks, there is plenty

of additional high quality inventory on RTB ad networks, and it does perform. Data proves

mobile RTB performs better than non-RTB campaigns. Adfonic, a mobile DSP, found that

mobile RTB CTRs are 100% higher in the UK, 97% higher in the US, 80% in Australia, and

50%+ in France and Holland, compared to their non-RTB counterparts.

Why do RTB campaigns perform so much better than non-RTB campaigns? The targeting

capabilities of RTB campaigns ensure users see ads that are specific to them in some way,

such as a retargeted ad from a website the user visited in the past. All marketers know that

when users are shown ads that resonate with them, they are more likely to engage with that

ad regardless of ad location.


In conclusion, it’s time for marketers to rethink RTB. Abandon preconceptions about

premium vs remnant inventory. If you were to ask five people in Ad Tech to define “premium”

inventory, you would get five different answers. Rather than focusing on whether your ad

buys are premium or remnant, let the ad performance data drive your decision making

about where to invest your ad dollars.

How to Set Up a Private Mobile Ad Exchange By Ash Kumar

The mobile RTB space is expanding rapidly, and has already been embraced by some of the biggest players in the online ad space including both AOL and Twitter. The benefits of RTB are clear. Eliminating the insertion order process, creates more efficiency for both the publisher and advertiser. It also gives advertisers easier access to targeting data, which improves the ROI of their ad spend.


To date, the public exchange model has been the most popular implementation. In this

model, mobile publishers put a portion of their inventory on an open exchange and buyers

bid across all the inventory, from all the publishers. The results have been mixed, with early

adopters experiencing limited competition for inventory, which in turn drove CPMs down.

This has left premium publishers reluctant to to participate, because it’s hard to stand out

and command a premium for your inventory in an ocean of billions of impressions from

small, unknown apps.

Rather than miss out on the dollars flowing into RTB, large publishers should consider a

private marketplace solution. This implementation offers the best of both worlds, allowing

the publisher to maintain buyer advertising quality by selecting partners who can participate.

It also gives the publisher more control, such as the ability to set CPM floors and put in

other measures to ensure that they don’t see a drastic reduction in CPMs.

Since each publishers is different, there are a number of different implementations that

publishers should evaluate when considering a Private Mobile RTB Marketplace. In this

document, will provide an overview of the three most popular methods:

A Segmented Marketplace

This is the most popular use case for a private marketplace. In this implementation, a

publisher whitelabels an RTB platform and sells their inventory separately from that RTB

platform. The platform’s look and feel is branded to represent the publisher. This allows the

publisher to represent their own inventory and utilize the RTB technology. The publisher also

controls most of the sell-side rules such as transparency, pricing, auditing of creatives, and

demand inclusion or exclusion. This way the publisher can ensure only the buyers they want

are on their exchange, control the CPM pricing, and ensure brand safe creatives are running

at all times.


This method is great for large publishers with lots of inventory that have existing sales

relationships. The white-labeled solution makes it easy to take advantage of the efficiencies

that RTB provides, such as the speed, efficiency and access to targeting data. A white-

labeled solution also means the publisher will benefit from platform improvements and

new technology that is rolled out across the entire platform. Also, publishers can easily tap

additional demand by making some inventory available in the public market.

Strengths

• Control the quality of advertisers on your marketplace

• Get the operational efficiency of RTB (Real-Time Bidding)

• Set all the sell-side rules for advertisers to follow

Weaknesses

• Large technology investment to set up

• Requires large inventory mix with existing sales relationships

• Limits competition to an approved set of whitelisted buyers

Tier Auction Private Marketplace

In this implementation, the publisher sells their inventory on a RTB exchange, and create a

priority “tier” to allow only certain advertisers access inventory ahead of other buyers. This

set of advertisers are decided upon by the publisher. Generally, most publishers use this

model to give high quality brand advertisers priority access, before the inventory hits the

open market. Think of it as first right of refusal. The benefit of this set up is the publisher

does not have low quality advertisers eating up impressions that a brand advertiser could

use. It also gives the advertiser the ability to exercise control over the inventory they want to

purchase.


This option helps publishers take advantage of different price points and maximize yield

for their inventory. Most publishers have a publisher platform that they optimize manually

in order to achieve similar goals. The big difference is that RTB is much more efficient at

allocating the traffic. Publishers still need to manage all this complexity by creating the

pricing, transparency, and other rules based on the demand segment or “tier” of the buyer.

Strengths

• Publisher ensures high quality advertisers are in the first “tier”

• Able to create multiple “tiers” by brand or price

• Gain technology advantage of RTB platform for delivery

Weaknesses

• Difficult to maximize CPM pricing

• Must create sell-side rules for every tier in the auction

• Limited competitive pressure to drive up pricing

Exclusive Access Marketplace

The exclusive access marketplace implementation is the simplest. It allows buyers and

sellers to negotiate predefined terms for pricing, availability of inventory, transparency, etc.

With the RTB platforms utilized as the delivery vehicle for these terms. Generally this means

offline terms are negotiated with RTB as the delivery method. With this set up publishers

get the speed and efficiency that RTB offers, because it’s easy to setup and manage

campaigns. It will however have very little impact on pricing as there is no competition for

your inventory. All terms have been decided in advance.

This type of set-up can compliment your direct sales channel, by enabling marketers

to leverage the efficiency of RTB. Media buyers can take advantage of global targeting,


frequency capping, creative rotation, and first party data that is available on your

marketplace. This model works best for large publishers with complex targeting and first

party audience segments. The RTB platform is great at delivering complex buys in an

automated fashion at scale.

Strengths

• Does not compete with publishers’ direct sales channels

• Publisher gains complete control of advertisers and sell-side rules

• Get the operational efficiency of RTB (Real-Time Bidding)

Weaknesses

• Hard to scale and take advantage of aggregate small buyer demand

• CPM pricing does not follow real time market dynamics

• Price maximization comes from offline negotiation, not technology

Three Important Monetization Trends for Independent Mobile Publishers By Ash Kumar

The monetization options available to mobile publishers have expanded rapidly over the past year. This is great news for independent publishers, who were previously stuck trying to optimize low performing banner ads from mobile ad networks. With a limited salesforce and even more constraints on technology development, independent publishers need to carefully consider their options when it comes to monetization. For 2014, we recommend that independent publishers look closely at the following trends:


Native Ads

Facebook pioneered this format and has scaled it to a multi-billion dollar opportunity. Driven

primarily by their app download product, Facebook single-handedly created an entirely new

advertising market. Sponsored posts, incorporated into a news stream, have also performed

well on other publishers besides Facebook. What most publishers like about this format,

in addition to the higher CPMs it delivers, is a superior overall user experience. In the past,

most ad models were built on interruptions or distractions that users dislike. Native formats

provide mobile users with real value that’s presented in a noninvasive and comfortable way.

All publishers should leverage a native strategy if applicable. Do they have a newsfeed or

stream that they can utilize? If not, what other options are available? Some publishers have

gone to great lengths to develop new products into which they can incorporate native ads.


Programmatic Buying and RTB (Real-Time Bidding)

Recently, advances have been made in the mobile RTB space. Twitter’s acquisition of

MoPub paved the way for mobile RTB legitimacy. It now represents a sizable portion of

Twitter’s business. For independent publishers, RTB can mean that there is no need for

direct sales at all. Federated Media recently went 100% programmatic. This approach

not only reduces overhead, but it also helps the team stay focused. A publisher’s product

and engineering teams can now put all their effort into scaling the business, not building

monetization tools. This approach also scales internationally. Many mobile publishers have a

significant portion of inventory in overseas markets, and building an international sales team

is tricky. RTB platforms offer easy access to buyers, both international and domestic.

Programmatic is a great solution for independent publishers. When you’re not part of

large media company, building and managing a sales team is a major undertaking. RTB

offers flexibility, access to multiple demand partners, and targeting data. It can also easily

coexist with a smaller internal sales effort, by using the RTB platform to deliver direct-sold

campaigns.

Video

Mobile video monetization platforms have grown rapidly over the past year. The large

installed base of high-end smartphones have made it relatively easy to stream TV quality

video at scale. CPMs for video ads remain high, and publishers that set aside even a small

portion of inventory for video will see a significant bump in overall monetization. Advertiser

demand for high quality video impressions continues to surge as TV viewership declines

and PC Web usage flattens.

Most publishers don’t get excited about forcing video interstitials into their app. They’re

correct that this approach does not yield good results. Publishers need to develop a user


experience consistent with the video experience if they want take advantage of this as part

of a monetization strategy. But the investment can be worth it.

Don’t Go it Alone, Select Best-of-Breed Partners

There is now significant buyer demand supporting all of these trends, and technology

platforms that can provide publishers with plug and play access to it, at scale. Publishers

need to think beyond the banner and get creative about monetization. Native, Video

and RTB implementation all require a well-planned approach to implement correctly, as

alignment across multiple functions is the key to success. Don’t waste time evaluating

partners with a goal of selecting just one. Build relationships with multiple partners, put in

place technology that will scale, and keep your options open. The market changes rapidly

and you’ll want to maximize what each player can offer.


About TapSenseTapSense is the leading independent mobile advertising exchange,

and has been featured in publications including Forbes, Bloomberg,

VentureBeat, GigaOM, CMO.com, MediaPost, Entrepreneur and

AdExchanger.

TapSense was founded in 2011 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Investors include top Silicon Valley venture firms, Ron Conway’s SV Angel

and Maynard Webb, a board member of Salesforce and Yahoo.

Contact Us

Email: [email protected]

Follow us: @tapsense

www.tapsense.com

bidding - amazon s3 · is rtb (real-time bidding) ... video players. tiny banners hidden on a...

Documents