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Unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard about the recent acquisition of Lijit by Federated Media Publishing. What you may not have known, is that we were still cranking out new software updates and features throughout the acquisition process. We were able to introduce a lot of new functionality that helps our publishers better understand their audience, and manage their business.
New Notifications System
We believe that communication is key to ensuring our publishers can easily stay on top of what is happening on their publication and everything Lijit is doing to make you succesful. We’ve just made it easier with the new notifications system we’re rolling out today. Any publisher using our ad services will get alerts whenever there are significant changes to how Lijit is optimizing ad campaigns for them. If we add new campaigns, or update targeting or frequency capping rules, you’ll know about it. If you really want to stay on top of everything we’re doing , you can even subscribe to get email alerts whenever new optimization alerts appear. Check out your Lijit dashboard to see it in action.
More Audience Stats
Many audience stats were previously limited to Lijit publishers using our Analytics and Search tools. We’ve been slowly adding audience data to our dashboard for Lijit Ads publishers, and now we offer even more. Publishers using our ad services will see a new tab in their Lijit dashboard called “Audience”. We’re now providing data on what sites are driving traffic to your website. As we compile more data , we’ll continue to add more metrics to this dashboard to empower publishers with data they can use to better understand and engage their audiences.
Bigger and Better
Our advertising services and reader engagement tool usage is growing at an incredible pace. While we’re rolling out cool new features and functionality, we’ve also been scaling our platform to handle our meteoric growth. In the past couple of weeks, we’ve added new Lijit infrastructure in 4 cities in the U.S, and 1 in Western Europe. We’ll continue to add more as we grow to ensure every interaction your readers have with Lijit is fast and reliable.
More to Come
We’re rolling out more exciting features in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for your weekly stats email from Lijit for a sneak preview of what we are planning…
Employees, investors, and friends of Lijit recently celebrated our acquisition by Federated Media with a party at one of Boulder’s newest restaurants, The Kitchen [Next Door]. The restaurant is one of downtown Boulder’s latest additions, serving as a more casual take on the farm-to-table concept that has made its sister restaurant, The Kitchen, a Boulder hot-spot for many years.
The Lijit team loves a good party and in true Lijit fashion we did it up right! On the day we announced the acquisition, our CEO Todd Vernon proclaimed it a “Major Martini Day” and we doctored up a poster in his honor. Check out some of the photos below to get a glimpse of our celebration…
Tags: events, Lijit employees, Todd Vernon | View Comments
Today Lijit announced that it has been acquired by Federated Media Publishing, the powerhouse conversational marketing and media business that John Battelle started in 2005. I could not be more excited about the transaction, and more importantly, the future that the combined company has before it.
About the same time John was starting FM, I was starting Lijit. Not in a friend’s garage, like John, but rather in my basement.
From the onset, Lijit has been keenly interested in helping publishers who create and curate great content that attracts engaged audiences in thoughtful conversations. In the early days we borrowed heavily from the FeedBurner playbook: provide services that are useful and intuitive and create long lasting publisher relationships. Dick Costolo, the former FeedBurner CEO and now CEO of Twitter, was an early mentor and board member who helped me keep the Lijit mission true to course in an industry where data is hard to come by and experience is everything. Over the last few years we expanded that charter to focus on helping publishers monetize their website(s) and bring them technologies and information that would otherwise be out of reach due to their size.
For all this hard work, publishers have rewarded us by trusting more of their ad inventory to us and allowing us to help monetize more of their properties. September was the first month since inception that we paid out more than $1M in revenue to publishers in our network. Even more exciting is that this number has grown over 50% month-over-month for the last year or so. While revenue is the key metric of success for any business, it is still amazing to see the number of positive tweets, inbound emails, and phone calls we get every week from publishers who are too small or too niche to be considered viable by the larger ad channels in our industry. We love publishers and they are our people.
So in May, when we were first approached by Federated Media, it was a case of mixed emotion. Lijit wasn’t for sale, we were fully funded and coming off our 6th straight month of 50% month-over-month revenue growth. Profitability was within sight and occurring on and off on a daily basis. In short, we were having FUN, AND A LOT OF IT. But, at the same time, if there was bigger play to make – an industry changing and industry leading play to make – it was with FM. It all made complete sense from that first instant of thought.
Lijit has one of the best management teams I have ever worked with. Without fail they embody the charter of “hire people that are smarter than you.” This motto has served me well as Lijit CEO, and I am super excited to see what they can accomplish with greater resources and the association with an A+ brand in our industry.
Over the months as I got to know John Battelle, Deanna Brown and the entire FM management team it become even more clear that the combination of both companies was going to create the first major media company designed from the ground up to help the millions of publishers ignored by all the other companies. This company was designed to harness the amazing power of focused conversations in the engaged part of the web – what FM refers to as the “Independent Web.”
FM and Lijit are going to combine efforts to create a company of scale and substance only indicative of industry leading companies. I could not be more excited for the ride.
Tags: features | View Comments
Using SSPs, RTB, and Private Exchanges to Reach the Independent Web at Scale
Sep 22nd
by Sonya Caprio in Community, Company
On Tuesday, September 20 Lijit’s CEO and Founder Todd Vernon had the privilege of speaking at Federated Media’s Signal Chicago conference. His presentation, titled “Using Supply Side Platforms, Real-Time Bidding, and Private Exchanges to Reach the Independent Web at Scale,” provides a brief overview of the latest technologies in online advertising.
In this session, Todd discusses the following:
- How to use SSPs (supply side platforms) to source inventory
- How brand marketers can use audience analysis to reach desired themes and conversations
- How to expose audience and content segments to automated buyers
- How to use audience futures to reserve media through private exchanges
Check out his quick, 10-minute presentation below. Enjoy!
Tags: events, industry, Lijit Advertising Services, speaking, Todd Vernon | View Comments
One of the core pillars at Lijit is a fundamental belief in providing online publishers with “actionable analytics.” We use the term “actionable analytics” to describe the concept of giving publishers access to meaningful, easy-to-understand data that can be used to better engage your readers, grow your website, and make more money. It’s data that publishers can take action on.
This week we are rolling out a brand new, completely revamped weekly stats email that provides publishers with highlights on site performance and other relevant data. Every publisher using Lijit’s tools and services – whether it’s our ad services, analytics, or reader engagement tools (site search, reader widgets, etc.) – receives a weekly email customized to the type of tools and services deployed.
Only interested in ad services? Your weekly email focuses on what you care about – ad performance and revenue. Interested in advertising but still want analytics about your site’s audience? Your email has the best of both worlds because it combines ad performance statistics with audience data to give you a 360 degree view of your site. Layer on top any of our reader engagement tools and you also receive search and reader data to help you learn about your audience and keep them on-site longer. The more tools and services you have, the more data we provide!
The new weekly stats email complements your existing publisher dashboard, which contains more detailed information for publishers to drill down into specifics on ad performance, audience statistics, and search behavior.
Check your inbox this Sunday night and please send us your feedback!
Tags: ads, Lijit publishers, new features, stats | View Comments
Lijit publisher Tweety Got Back brings “sweet sushi” to Lijit!
Jun 24th
by Sonya Caprio in Community, Company, Lijit publishers
At Lijit, we pride ourselves in the personal relationships we have with our publishers. We’ve been lucky enough to meet many of you in person and love to open our doors to locals and anyone traveling through Colorado who wants to check out our office.
This week, one of our local publishers, Tweety Got Back, decided to make the team at Lijit some special treats to say “thanks.” Tweety Got Back is a Twitter theme shoppe offering free backgrounds and themes. For all you publishers who use Twitter to promote your site, check out all the cool themes you can use!
As Rachel tweeted about these sweets she was concocting in her kitchen, we pondered what was going to show up at the office… cookies, brownies, cake? But what walked through the door were some of the most creative sweets we had ever seen. Believe it or not it was “sweet sushi,” made out of rice krispy treats and dried fruit. Needless to say, we ate them up!
Check out some of the photos below to see how beautiful they look, and thanks to Tweety Got Back for taking care of your friends at Lijit.
For those who want to make your own “sweet sushi,” click here for the recipe.
Tags: Lijit publishers | View Comments
For a publisher, the network matters
Jun 6th
by Walter Knapp in Community, Company, Lijit publishers
What we’re working on at Lijit is a way to help publishers extract added value from being part of a network. Here’s how we see it:
According to Metcalf’s Law, a network’s value derives from the number of nodes that are connected to the network. Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2). Metcalfe’s law was originally presented, circa 1980, not in terms of users, but rather of “compatible communicating devices” (for example, fax machines, telephones, etc). Only recently with the launch of the internet did this law carry over to users and networks as its original intent was to describe Ethernet purchases and connections. The law is also very much related to economics and business management, especially with competitive companies looking to merge with one another. For example, 2 telephones can make only 1 connection, 5 can make 10 connections, and 12 can make 66 connections (see graphic to the left).
In the web of online publishing, the notion of network value is under-exposed (forgotten even?) when it comes to individual websites. Most of the “network effect” online remains confined to well-known examples like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and eBay. That doesn’t have to be the case. There is no reason that individual publishers or networks of sites of any size can’t benefit from being a node on the broader network and the associated reader, advertiser and traffic patterns.
Lijit leverages the aggregated network footprint of readers, search terms, demographics, brand advertisers, and a list of other important attributes. We take that aggregated asset and then feed the network value back to each individual publisher or site. This reflection of network value helps publishers simply: be better. Write better content. Curate more relevant things. Uncover ways to engage their readers more. And even make more money if that’s of interest to them. Every offering we have is free to the publisher, simple to implement, and comes with no strings attached. Publishers get value from it, or they vote with their feet and leave the network.
There are 5 primary categories of information that Lijit is providing publishers to help them gain crucial insights and actionable information. Information that they can use to make sites better, create or curate more engaging content, gain reader attention, and deliver better advertising that helps marketers reaches the right consumers.
- Comparisons: How does my site compare to other like sites?
- Trending: Are their macro trends that affect my advertising revenue?
- Indexes: Do sites like mine lag or exceed my peers?
- Intent: What are my readers looking or searching for?
- Engagement: How do readers engage into and with my content?
In each of the topical areas above the answer exists, or is amplified by, the networked connections between aggregation, comparison, and multi-site behavior of traffic, readers, marketers, social content, and reader expressions.
There does not exist a service today that helps publishers extract this understanding, much less value, from being a participant in the internet network. Look for some exciting and innovative new tools, services and analytics from Lijit in the near future that provide added value to publishers based on the key ingredients of network and context.
Tags: industry, Lijit publishers | View Comments
We just completed another round of updates and improvements to our publisher products. We’re putting a lot of energy behind building out our ad services and publisher analytics and we’re expanding our offerings with every software release. So what’s new?
Reader Demographics:
The most important part of being an online publisher, is understanding your audience. On top of all of the other great audience analytics we provide to help you understand your readers, we now offer reader demographic data right inside your Lijit dashboard. This new statistic allows you to see the overall makeup of your online audience, and further understand who you are creating content for, and the demographic distribution of people frequenting your site.
Why are demographics important?
- Understanding your readers
The best way to effectively create relevant content for your readers, and to attract new readers, is to know who they are. Understanding the makeup of your audience is key to ensuring you are producing content that will engage and resonate withyour audience.
- Monetizing your site
Advertisers looking to reach the right audience for their online display advertising campaigns always consider demographics when making targeting decisions. You will be better equipped to attract and sell advertising for your site if you understand the demographic makeup of your audience
Check out your dashboard to see the demographic makeup of your site and start down the path of better understanding your readers. Just goto www.lijit.com, login and check it out at the bottom of your Lijit dashboard.
Other News:
- Removed MyBlogLog support
We removed support for MyBlogLog and disabled it’s use as a content and network source for publishers who use our search engine services. MyBlogLog had a great run and was a key integration partner in the early days of Lijit. Yahoo is shutting down all MyBlogLog services at the end of May, so we decided to deactivate it on our side before that happened.
- Welcome Widget support
We made the difficult decision to “end-of-life” our Welcome Widget product. Publishers who previously used this feature will no longer see a UI to manage settings for the Welcome Widget, and we automatically disabled the functionality it provided. We’re always looking for ways to enable our publishers to better engage their readers, so keep an eye out for more site tools and functionality in the future.
Tags: features, Lijit Advertising Services, lijit stats, new features, publishers | View Comments
To follow up on our last post, here are some interesting findings from b.media forum. The consumer panel – including four consumers ranging from high school age to upper 20’s – provided a lot of interesting feedback on information consumption and sharing habits. Read on to see what our consumer panelists had to say…
Information consumption:
- Nobody reads hard copy newspapers and very few read magazines; everyone goes online to find out news and information.
- Every consumer has purchased at least one app for their phone and/or iPad. On average, tech-savvy consumers have 60+ apps downloaded to their phone but are only actively using 10-15.
- When it comes to online advertising, brand perception isn’t affected if consumers see ads on a “bad” site; however, perception of a website’s quality is absolutely affected if the publisher shows poor-quality/irritating ads (e.g. pop-ups).
- Very few click on ads but when they do, it’s contextually relevant advertising.
Information sharing:
- 3b new photos are uploaded to Facebook each month but there’s a movement towards real-time photo uploads. Nobody had uploaded an entire photo album to Facebook for over six months.
- High school kids use text and Facebook to communicate with their network, with 2x the use of text compared to Facebook. They don’t use LinkedIn and rarely use email (other than Facebook’s email platform).
- An estimated 20-30% of high school kids use Twitter. When they do, it’s to post “random” comments and follow celebrities.
- High school kids haven’t yet been exposed to Quora; young adults use it to find information but rarely, if ever, post questions or answers.
- Young adults primarily use Twitter and Facebook for communication. Tech-savvy consumers are increasingly turning to Twitter to communicate because they are overwhelmed by the amount of “friends” and Facebook requests (e.g. Farmville).
- Every consumer and almost every b.media attendee has changed their Facebook privacy settings.
And for those of you who haven’t yet watched our b.media video, enjoy!
b.media forum from Lijit on Vimeo.
Tags: events, industry, Lijit publishers | View Comments
b.media forum: presented by Lijit and Foundry Group
Apr 22nd
by Sonya Caprio in Community, Company, events, industry
Yesterday, Lijit and Foundry Group hosted the inaugural b.media forum. Based in Boulder, b.media brought together the digital media industry’s top entrepreneurs and thought-leaders to discuss consumers, online advertising, and publishing. Click here for a full list of attendees.
The half-day interactive discussion included three panel sessions:
- Consumer panel: moderated by Niel Robertson, CEO of Trada. Panelists included Dave Heal, Tim Falls, Cali Harris, and Casey Finkel.
- Publisher panel: moderated by Todd Vernon, CEO and founder of Lijit. Panelists included Todd Sawicki, CRO of Cheezburger Network; Andy Clurman, COO of Active Interest Media; Kurt Kohlstedt, Executive Editor of Webist Publishing & Misnamed Media; and Jeff Reine, GM of TypePad.
- Advertiser panel: moderated by Seth Levine, Managing Director, Foundry Group. Panelists included Rajeev Goel, CEO of PubMatic; Philip Smolin, VP and GM of TURN; and Jay Ferracane, Creative Director of Angry Bovine Advertising.
There were numerous insights from the forum that we’ll cover in upcoming blog posts. In the meantime, check out our cool b.media video with tons of interesting market stats. And here are some photos below. Enjoy!
Todd Vernon, CEO of Lijit; Seth Levine, Managing Director of Foundry Group; and Jeff Reine, GM of TypePad
Cali Harris, consumer panelist
Our fearless leader, Todd Vernon, moderating the publisher panel
Lijit's Todd Vernon and Walter Knapp walking to networking reception with Lijit Board members Mark Solon and Paul Berberian
Rajeev Goel, CEO of PubMatic, and Alex Vogenthaler, Product Manager at Google
Brad Feld, Managing Director of the Foundry Group
b.media networking reception
b.media networking reception