Ad networks are on the rise, providing a link between publishers and advertisers as media becomes more fragmented. But how do they work? In this Q&A article, Ellie Edwards at Hi-Media and Barry Kent at Visit London provide some publishing perspectives on the role of ad networks.
Ellie Edwards, managing director, Hi-Media
www.hi-media.com
What advantages does using an Ad network bring?
It’s simple. You get specialists. It’s the right people with the right knowledge using the right technology. You can’t guarantee that if you take the service in-house. Good Ad Networks are a sales house offering qualitative solutions who work in partnership with their publishers ensuring that they can offer creative, innovative solutions. Because we’re part of a network we can target people across different properties therefore gaining more understanding of the consumer and increasing relevance.
What are the dangers of trusting your business to ad networks?
There is a feeling that some Ad Networks think that if it’s not their content, then they don’t care if it is inappropriate – as long as it has commercial value. This isn’t a qualitative approach though. A professional Ad Network cares about the quality of the content and also the quality of the publishers that they work with. We don’t have any ‘questionable’ publishers within our portfolio, also we ring-fence any UGC content as an advertiser safeguard.
How will the widened remit of the IASH to include best practice across ad networks, due to be implemented in Feb, affect your business?
On a company level, it won’t affect us at all because we’re a qualitative network and therefore have no need for these safeguards because we don’t do brokering of any dodgy content. For the industry, it’s a great thing as long as it isn’t restrictive. Anyone who can offer online inventory should be involved because they need these industry safeguards.
What are the major issues with allowing a third party to buy Inventory on a publisher site?
This is what is known as brokering and can come with a number of potential issues, if the process is totally automated and you don’t have the correct safeguards in place or human influence somewhere in the process. To give an example inventory could be sold to party A with a list of exclusions in place, but if party A re-sells this inventory to party B then the publishers loses control of the advertising placed against their inventory.
How are issues such as Behavioural Targeting, Real-Time Bidding and Re-Targeting going to affect your business?
Retargeting has been good for display and CPM. In these tough times it’s good to see technology pushing back against market forces and making extra revenue. Real Time Bidding actually allows the market place decide the price it’s a good idea, but if you’re aiming at a quality audience you may not want to trust that to technology – you need people specifically selling that media, otherwise you could be faced with the problem of inappropriate content. Behavioural Targeting is pretty much industry standard now. Everyone should have an element of this. It’s still pretty assumptive but there is so much more we can do about that and we’re making great strides in improving the relevancy.
How do you respond to the claim that ad networks are only there to sell space that cannot be sold?
Some publishers have the resource to sell their own inventory and use multiple networks to sell the remnant. We don’t work in that way, our USP to publishers is that we will act like their in-house sales team. Hi-media goes a step beyond the traditional ad network model we have premium services such as our own payment offering allowing publishers to look at other ways of monetising their websites.
Barry Kent, e-Commerce Business Development Director at Visit London
www.visitlondon.com
What are the advantages of using an Ad network?
We have people working on it full time, this wouldn’t be the case if we sold inventory in-house. It also means we can reach a larger network and have an extended reach into the market. People also trust qualitative Ad Networks, which allows us to reach more and better advertisers though more channels – which we couldn’t do in house. You also have the advantage of being part of a channel or network.
What are the dangers of trusting your business to ad networks?
The downside is not having complete control over who is advertising on your site, and because we’re partly publically funded we have to be careful about this. We need to ensure that we have as many London centric adverts on the site as possible.
How will the widened remit of the IASH to include best practice across ad networks – due to be implemented in Feb – affect your business?
From our point of view it’s a very good thing for the industry because you don’t want your brand damaged by rogue advertising. However, as with any online controls it’s going to be hard to enforce and people may still be able to find their way around any safeguards put in place.
What are the major issues with allowing a third party to buy inventory on a publisher site?
The biggest problem is a potential loss of revenue. For example, we sell theatre tickets on our site but if we have an ad up on the site as well offering 50 per cent off theatre tickets, then that could affect the commission we receive on our ticket sales. Also we might be running a feature on a particular event that’s happening in London and there could be an advert displayed on the same page for a rival event or product.
How are issues such as Behavioural Targeting, Real-Time Bidding and Re-Targeting going to affect your business?
With these sorts of developments, especially Behavioural Targeting, it’s about finding the right mix. Some people still don’t like the fact that they’re being advertised a product they bought two weeks ago. We have to be careful not to make it too Big Brother and use these things to a controlled level.
How do you respond to the claim that ad networks are only there to sell space that cannot be sold?
There is definitely an element of truth in that if you look at some of the smaller Ad Networks. However Ad Networks help you to ensure that you have no un-sold inventory and are therefore maximising revenue. You just need to ensure that you work closely with your Ad Network so that you get the right advertisers on your site. If you find a good Ad Network you can get good advertising that compliments your brand.