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Rethinking the online advertising ecosystem: from a publisher’s viewpoint
Feb 9th
by Sonya Caprio in Community
Walter Knapp, COO of Lijit Networks and SVP of Platform Revenue at Federated Media Publishing, recently wrote an article for ad industry publication Adotas on how changes in the online advertising ecosystem have affected independent publishers. A snippet of the article is included below. To read the rest of the article, please check it out online.
ADOTAS – The online advertising market is booming. The display market in particular is likely to have hit $9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011 – a growth spurt that even on a steep chart looks like a right angle. That’s the good news. The bad news, from a publisher perspective, is that much of that spend is consolidated by a relatively small number of companies (Facebook, Yahoo!, AOL, Google, and Microsoft). This condensing ad spend runs counter to what the internet is about and why we as consumers spend so much of our time immersed in it.
What does this mean for high-quality, independent, niche and professional publishers that make up the majority of the web? Why are those publishers, authors, creators and curators of some of the best authentic, informational and entertaining content struggling for their fair share of the economics? It’s one of those things that’s simple to understand conceptually, and yet difficult to solve both at the same time.
What do you think? Please feel free to post a comment below or send Walter an email directly.
Tags: blogging, industry, Lijit publishers | View Comments
A few weeks ago a friend of mine and a friend of Lijit’s lost his battle with cancer. They say success has many fathers, but Jerome can certainly claim an important role in making Lijit a success. Jerome was the first institutional investor in Lijit when he was at High Country Ventures.
I got to know Jerome while I was still at Raindance and through the final years of my involvement at Raindance we would often meet for breakfast to discuss my many crazy ideas. When I started Lijit, Jerome helped me formulate some of the ideas and strategies and when our Angel round of financing needed a little more investment fuel he led High Country into a $200K investment.
Jerome was a tough business guy, and like a lot of tough business guys he had his fans and otherwise. I was always in the fan category. When he had something constructive to add around the board table he would add it. When he didn’t he wouldn’t. Jerome was a consummate professional.
A few years ago Jerome moved on to San Francisco and Crosslink Capital. I pitched Crosslink for a late stage investment round but my style didn’t mesh with the other partners at Crosslink. I believe humility is the best tool as a CEO, but as Jerome counseled me after the fact, that style can appear weak – especially to a Valley VC expecting “ego” to be plentiful. We found our investment somewhere else but nearly every time I was in San Francisco over the last two years I would meet Jerome for breakfast at the Meridian Hotel near his office. He always had helpful advice on business and we had great discussions about taking our favorite cars to the track to go fast.
I’m not a friend maker (or collector) by nature. But I counted Jerome as one of them.
Tags: industry, Todd Vernon | View Comments
We are excited to announce Federated Media Publishing’s new Tech Blog. With FMP’s recent acquisition of Lijit Networks, technology has come to the forefront of the company’s business strategy and the new blog will share details about current and future technology initiatives.
Employees across FMP will lift the curtain and talk about the high level technology behind FMP’s advertiser and publisher products and services. As Tim Musgrove, Chief Scientist and FMP, states: “we’ll share some of the results, surprises and problems we’ve uncovered along the way, as well as our ideas on where things might go in the future.”
We already have a few posts up about current initiatives at FMP:
- Our very own Todd Vernon, Founder and CEO of Lijit and now EVP of Technology at FMP, provides his thoughts on how FMP’s acquisitions of Lijit, TextDigger, FoodBuzz, and BigTent will help turn FMP into a top 5 media property.
- FMP Chief Scientist Tim Musgrove provides a deep dive into Conversation Targeting (CT), a top technology priority for the company in early 2012.
- Peter Ridge, Senior Director of Product Management at FMP, discusses security requirements for a wireless network.
Please take a moment to check out the new site, and let us know what you think!
Tags: industry, Lijit publishers, new features, publishers | View Comments
Lijit’s RTB efforts deliver more money to online publishers
Jan 26th
by Sonya Caprio in Community, Company
Many of you are witness to a shift in the world of online advertising that sees ad networks being replaced by programmatic buying technologies like real-time bidding (RTB) and private exchanges. Technologies like these deliver greater return to both advertisers and publishers by enabling them to connect directly to each other. Advertisers set a price for what they’re willing to pay to access a publisher’s audience, and publishers gain greater control over their inventory while at the same time exposing it to a larger pool of demand sources. RTB is what enables this interaction between advertiser and publisher to take place.
Publishers are the core of our business, and because of that we are constantly looking for new ways to deliver higher CPMs and fill rates. When it comes to RTB, the more DSPs we integrate with, the more access brand advertisers have to our publishers’ inventory. The more demand from brand advertisers, the higher the return we can deliver to publishers.
Today we are pleased to announce our latest RTB integration with XA.net, our newest partner. The partnership with XA.net comes on the heels of a handful of other recent integrations with industry-leading DSPs including MediaMath, m6d, Chango, and MyBuys. With these and many more planned for the coming months, publishers should continue to see higher returns from Lijit’s online advertising services.
Tags: industry, Lijit Advertising Services, Lijit publishers, new features | View Comments
DearBlankPleaseBlank.com was started by Jared Wunsch and Hans Johnson as a hobby while the two were still in undergraduate school. What it has grown into is a collection of websites that also includes IWasteSoMuchTime.com, AttackoftheCute.com, and GrouchyRabbit.com. Collectively they see almost 45 million pageviews per month!
Lijit sat down with Jared Wunsch to find out some of his tricks of the trade. Read on to see what he has to say…
Q: What was your original goal for DearBlankPleaseBlank.com?
A: We were just two kids in college who liked technology and wanted to create stuff online for fun. We took an “if you build it they will come” philosophy and because we didn’t build the site to make money, we designed it exactly how we wanted to without an ad-focused layout in mind. I think that’s part of why we’ve been able to build such an audience… because they see that we’re truly authentic.
Q: You started DearBlankPleaseBlank.com less than two years ago, and have now grown into four sites with a pretty impressive readership! How were you able to grow your traffic so quickly?
A: We listen to our readers. We spend a lot of time on our sites… learning who our users are, what their demographic is, and the kind of content they want to engage with. We get to know our users by actively participating in the conversation, providing comments, and taking feedback into account. We also try to keep things current based on what’s going on in the world. All of this has allowed us to build a pretty strong community that keeps coming back for more.
Direct sales and programmatic sales are often discussed as competing functions within the publisher business model. However, the two channels are distinct enough that they should not compete with each other. In fact, the most successful publishers we work with from a revenue standpoint have a strong aptitude for managing direct and programmatic sales alongside one another. In order to do so most effectively, it is important to understand the distinctions. Specifically, the following five points cover some of the things that publishers can offer advertisers through direct sales that they cannot get through programmatic channels:
- The guarantee/sponsorship/future: Advertisers want the guarantee of being placed next to premium content, above the fold, in front of a guaranteed set of eyeballs, for a specific period of time, at a set rate. Further, media buyers are tasked with spending 100% of their budgets for fear they are reduced next quarter because they didn’t spend enough. Without a guarantee in place with publishers, their media spend is at risk of (a) not being spent or (b) being spent in less than ideal context at the end of a fiscal period. Programmatic buying technology like real time bidding (RTB) provides advertisers/media buyers no guarantee on price, contextual placement, or impression volume.
- Site takeovers and other non-standard ad units: A site takeover or “skin” is very visible to a reader, generates high CTRs, and creates brand awareness. Because of this, takeovers have very high CPM rates and cannot easily be bought or sold on an exchange due to the infinite ways for designing and architecting a site. Likewise, ad units that are not standard IAB sizes (160×600, 300×250, 728×90) can and should be integrated into the unique design and architecture of a site, and sold for premium prices.
- Banners integrated with content: Below is a banner from Miller Light from my Fantasy Football league that has been creatively integrated with content. This banner shows the score of the Fantasy game each week and allows Fantasy players to “Smack Talk.” This must have been an expensive campaign due to the way it is integrated into the site. The more integrated the advertisement is into the content of the site, the less the chance that an algorithm can decide the price programmatically.
- The leading edge of media technology: While there are emerging exchanges for both video and mobile inventory, nothing yet exists that is as efficient as the market for standard IAB display banners. Publishers can much more easily package and directly sell media like video, audio, mobile web, and applications than any exchange currently can. Even as exchanges mature for some of these types of media, there will always be something that is a little newer or more innovative than that which can be quickly commoditized.
- Conversation: Publishers have their own brand. And in the age of social media, brands need to be a part of the conversation. Blog posts, comments, and tweets are where this conversation lives in a public forum. The influence of a publisher’s brand within the conversation should not be underestimated—marketers are willing to pay a lot for it. This is something that our sister company, Federated Media Publishing, is pioneering across the Independent Web.
So why in the world would advertisers ever buy programmatically? It comes down to one thing: audience data. I will delve deeper into this subject in my next post and explore some ways publishers can manage their programmatic channels more effectively. Again, the better a publisher is at understanding the distinctions between programmatic and direct, the better the two channels can compliment each other, working together to maximize inventory value and revenue.
Tags: employee guest post, industry, Lijit publishers, publishers | View Comments
Latest version of Flavors.me allows Lijit’s Audience Analytics!
Dec 27th
by Sonya Caprio in Community
Flavors.me takes social networking a step further. With Flavors.me, users have the ability to display content from all of their social media outlets on one convenient home page. With the ability to integrate Twitter, Tumblr, and 29 other social media sites, Flavors.me is a one stop shop for a publisher’s online presence. From the inexperienced blogger to the expert, the ease of use of Flavors.me makes creating a personal website a no brainer.
The latest version continues to offer all of the tools that we love including the drag and drop interface that removes all the hassle involved with coding a website, the ability to customize all aspects of a page in real-time, as well as some new tools like (you guessed it!) Lijit’s audience analytics. While Flavors.me is a website publishing service that can be used free of charge, upgrading your account to the premium service provides additional tools – like Lijit – that are necessary to make your webpage that much more successful.
If you are a premium Flavors.me user you will be able to get Lijit Audience Analytics, which help publishers better understand their audience so they can make the most out of their Flavors.me website. Publishers can now get access to stats like Audience Demographics and Advertiser Insights which you can’t get anywhere else.
To get started
- Sign-up for an account at http://www.lijit.com/signup
- Select “Audience Analytics” from the Lijit tools & services.
- Copy the code provided and paste it in the “External Stats” section of your stats page on Flavors.me
- Click Complete Sign-up on lijit.com to be taken to your dashboard.
We are excited about this updated release and all the amazing new features such as Lijit’s audience analytics that are now available!
We caught wind of some changes over at SAY Media. Seems they have asked some of their smaller publishers to find an alternate ad network.
We could speculate as to why they made this decision, but that really does not matter much.
What does matter is the publisher.
We would love to extend an invitation to any publishers who would like to work with us over here at Lijit.
Publishers are our people.
Let us know right away if we can help you continue your revenue stream – especially at the most important time of the year.
Here is more information on our ad services.
Please email us and a member of our publisher development team will be in touch shortly. We look forward to working with you.
Happy Holidays!
Tags: industry, Lijit publishers, publishers | View Comments
ad:tech and The Unofficial User Generated Music Party
Nov 16th
by Sonya Caprio in Community, Company
Last week a group of us here at Lijit ventured to New York City for the annual ad:tech New York event. ad:tech is always one of the industry’s biggest events of the year and this year proved to be no different. The event brings together industry professionals from all aspects of the digital space – from the extensive amount of publishers present, to technology providers, and everyone in between, the opportunities for networking and idea sharing were endless!
To kick-off ad:tech, Lijit co-hosted the Unofficial User Generated Music party along with M6D, AdSafe, Audience Science, and Pubmatic. With more than 1,000 people in attendance, the evening was definitely one to be remembered!
The amazing night of entertainment began with an industry band—Something Heavy—and was followed up by rock star live band Karaoke. Lijit’s very own Manny Puentes graced the stage and proved that CTO’s can sing too! Check out pictures from the event below…
A big thank you to all Lijit publishers who came and supported this event as well as our new FMP team members in the New York office!
Tags: fun, good times, industry, lijit, Lijit publishers | View Comments
How to use LinkedIn to build your brand, grow your network, and make more money
Nov 2nd
by Kent Riggs in Community
So you’ve managed to imbue your articles and posts with wit and creativity. Check. You’ve developed an audience. Check. You’ve embraced the twitterverse and gotten positive response but you’re still not getting paid. Wait, what? Every day I meet new people who are in the various stages of monetizing their website through online advertising. From seasoned veterans to the novice looking for a turnkey solution, one aspect of connecting with your prospective income conduit is often overlooked: the personal branding found on LinkedIn.
Many publishers embrace the anonymity that is afforded them through their work by posting in a pen name or simply staying under the radar. When it comes to digging up information about potential advertisers it’s a cold case with no leads. If you want to make money with your content, and you should, let it be known who you are and why the world should do business with you. There are literally hundreds of options out there waiting at your beck and call to put a dollar sign in front of that talent if they could just find you.
Tags: employee guest post, Lijit publishers, publishers | View Comments