Yieldex created the first comprehensive, cross-channel revenue and inventory management platform for digital publishers. In this DPS Kickoff Workshop, hear how Yieldex maximizes advertising revenue and CPMs for publishers.
Something a little vulnerable – maybe: thanks for being here and traveling on Sunday, I left my family at 5am this morning and I know many of you did too, so thanks for being here.Since I’m the only thing between you and the cocktail party to kick off the conference, I thought I’d do a presentation about throwing a great party. And, trying to buy advertising is a bit like buying food for a party. I’m an engineer so I know a lot about parties. And marketing, for that matter. I’m only an engineer because I didn’t have the personality to become an accountant.
In the old days, you might walk from store to store, asking for a recommendation for bread at one, and for a recommendation for cheese at another. You can put together a wonderful party tray this way, but it takes a lot of time and effort, and probably isn't the cheapest way.
To get to that, I want to focus on the bread. Selling bread is like selling great content.
For the purposes of this analogy, let’s say that you, the publisher, are a baker. And your content, of course, is bread. You craft fine, high quality bread with organic ingredients, made with patience and care. Your customers love your bread.
Those party planners will often start with a “centerpiece” loaf of bread, something custom baked for the party. They will of course want a number of high-quality loaves and rolls for the meal, and may fill out their basket with some croutons or bread crumbs. You are happy to supply all their needs, but of course you make most of your money on the centerpiece and the high-quality loaves.
But the world is changing around you. People don’t have as much time to walk to your store any more, it’s more convenient to go to the supermarket and buy cheap bread. Networks of supermarkets offer to buy some of your bread at rock-bottom prices, then mark it up and re-sell your artisanal loaves on a shelf right next to the Wonder bread. Sometimes you try removing the name from the label, so you don’t cannibalize the sales at your bakery, but you are still getting pennies on the dollar.
Worse still, some guy just came by and offered to buy all your day-old bread and sell it for you, giving you a percentage. Once in a while he gets a decent price, but mostly he gets the same as you were getting for bread crumbs. And again, he tosses your bread in with everyone else’s, so even though your bread is better, nobody can tell.So, what’s a premium baker to do? And how does this relate to the publishing industry?
Last year at this conference, Meredith Levien gave a great presentation on the future of the publisher sales force. She talked about how a typical publisher business is broken down into these three categories today. Our baker probably has the same rough categories, custom baked loaves, standard hand-made artisanal bread, and then a few crumbs left over.
But as Meredith pointed out last year, the world is changing around us. People still go to the bakery for the custom-baked loaves, but increasingly they are turning to different channels to buy breadcrumbs. Here’s where I’d like to add a bit of detail to this slide. People still want to buy high quality loaves of bread, they just want to buy them more easily.Programmatic buying is changing the digital advertising landscape. But it doesn’t need to commoditize all the inventory into a pile of crumbs. Programmatic Direct is the way you preserve your high quality and differentiation, while still adapting to the changing world. You spend a lot of time and energy building your content, or baking your bread, don’t just crumble it up.
It takes a lotta dough to make good bread.If you want to be a premium baker, make sure you stay focused on the bread, or you’ll be stuck with just crumbs. Thank you.