Over the course of a month, we’re surfacing the top topics our publisher community is talking about. Human-generated Insights unless otherwise noted.
Action steps for Publishers
Sign up for the Brand Safety Institute’s MFA Transparency Utility:
MFA Transparency Utility
How do buyers of digital advertising inventory view the quality of your site(s)? The recent trend away from buying inventory on so-called Made-for-Advertising (MFA) sites has signaled the intention of digital advertising buyers to align themselves with publishers who have invested in quality content and positive user experience. The challenge for well-intentioned publishers is that there is no industry definition of what an MFA site is or more broadly what buyers mean by “quality”. In order to help publishers understand how the buyside of the industry views their properties, the Brand Safety Institute has partnered with leading MFA list providers to allow publishers to see how their properties are classified by buyers.
www.brandsafetyinstitute.com
Topics trends this month:
- ads.txt resellers - good or bad
- requests to learn more about brand lift study providers
What we should be discussing more
- Zero Click Search
- The recent VPPA ruling (see below)
- This report on motherhood:
Zoe Scaman THE MOTHERLOAD
Q4 Programmatic Trends
Publisher Survey October 21: Programmatic CPMs Year over Year this Q4 are:
11% Way up (over 15%)
11% Up
41% Flat
27% Down
14% Way down (over 15%)
Maximize Q4 Ad Revenue: 6 Proven Strategies for Publishers
Maximize your Q4 ad revenue with these 6 proven strategies, including dynamic flooring, bid caching, and optimized refresh settings. Perfect for publishers aiming to capture high CPMs during Q4.
www.aditude.com
This hurts. Let’s share what’s working that people can implement within a quarter.
New Benchmark Data
Boostr Media Ad Sales Trend Flash Report (focused on direct sold)
1H 2024 Media Ad Sales Trend Flash Report
eBook
www.boostr.com
Burt Benchmarks - Monthly Report — Burt
Download the Burt Benchmarks report by submitting the form below.
www.burtintelligence.com
In-App: are Mediation SDKs the new wrapper war?
Top line: companies are offering upfront incentives to integrate SDKs. The overall consensus is this is a bad reason to implement a SDK, but it does mitigate the risk. Someone likened it to the wrapper wars of 2016.
The Beeler.Tech In-App community is wicked smart and active. You should be recommending people join these discussions.
Uptick in DMP/CDP evaluations?
No specific evidence to suggest more publishers are looking, but the response we’ve received to start to put together resources on this topic was quite strong.
Help us collect resources to help people make these evaluations. Submit them to support@Beeler.Tech
Oracle Debacle
Oracle is off and at least a few publishers successfully moved over from MOAT to DoubleVerify and are happy with the results. There is some discussion about the difficulty of working with OM SDK, but that appears to be universal and something we’ll look to learn more about.
Privacy & Compliance
Not discussed, but we’re going to surface this:
Second Circuit Revives Proposed Class Action Under VPPA
On October 15, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated the dismissal of a proposed class action against the National Basketball Association (“Defendant”) under the Video Privacy Protection Act (“VPPA” or “Act”).
natlawreview.com
This came up in preparation for Base*Camp Barcelona: if class action lawsuits continue to increase and expand the interpretation of these “dinosaur laws”, we think it’s possible that publishers will HAVE to take an Opt-In stance vs. Opt-Out. Europe will tell you: Opt-In is no joke.
Multiple calls this month for help auditing privacy policy and compliance from outside parties. Our list so far:
Third Party Privacy-focused attorneys
Publisher recommendations:
- Brandon Swinford
- Daniel Rosenzweig
- Morvareed Salehpour
- Alan Chapell
- https://www.privacywise.tech/
Share resources you recommend and we’ll publish them.
Start of a new job trend?
We think we were first to identify that the “Head of Consent” role was an indicator of things to come. While not in the job description itself, we know of a publisher who is hiring someone to help assemble multi-publisher deals. Curation as a Service is a business model that some publishers will be looking to bring in house.
Data-Driven may not be all it’s cracked up to be
We talk about the need to be data-driven as much as anyone else. This article adds some color to where being data-driven falls apart:
Nike’s $25B blunder shows us the limits of “data-driven”
The illusion of data as “objective” conceals that it rarely shows you the whole picture. Making decisions based on the easiest data to…
uxdesign.cc
Amplifying Publisher Voices
Some recent articles/social posts from publishers that you should read, engage with and amplify:
Curation
The New Hotness or the New Not-ness
niceadtechthings.substack.com
What Publishers Need To Know About Floor Pricing | AdExchanger
At Tuesday’s Prebid Summit, a panel of publisher and pub tech execs shared tips for how publishers can get the most out their flooring strategies.
www.adexchanger.com
Client Contributions to the discussion this month
Is Political Ad Revenue Worth the Risk?
As digital political ad spending surges in the final weeks before election day, publishers and platforms must weigh the risks of political ads against potential revenue.
www.confiant.com
How publishers can avoid the high cost of inaccurate data
Every year, poor data quality costs organizations an average $12.9 million, according to Gartner. These companies are actively looking for ways to
digitalcontentnext.org
Contextual recommendations
In today's competitive landscape, readers expect publishers to deliver relevant video content alongside traditional articles.
content.ex.co
How to Do Ad Refresh Properly?
Learn how to implement ad refresh properly to increase revenue while maintaining high viewability for optimal results.
blog.relevant-digital.com
Our speaker contributions
#91: Open Web Market Sizing
An imperfect exercise, but good enough nonetheless.
triscari.substack.com
