Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

A Week in Digital Media: MediaLad (1)

Who’s MediaLad? In digital media, everyone pretends they know who he, or she, is.

We do. Or do we? What we do know is that MediaLad is NDA’s new regular columnist, providing his/her unique, irreverent view of the latest gossip and goings-on in the digital media industry.

Publishers, listen up

You guys are the key, but you have to stop focusing on things that you read and fixate on. Stop worrying about programmatic sales or PMPs. That stuff will come.

Worry more about where your traffic is coming from and how you can increase your quality time with your end users. They matter and they’re on your site for a reason. Stop gaming the system to get the extra £1.20 CPM from the native company that we won’t name.

In future columns, I’ll be giving gold tips on publisher advice until I get fired by New Digital Age. 

Innovation

My mind was blown this week by a gaming company that’s revolutionising the way we can advertise. It’s rare I’m excited. But this time I got a semi.  

The only other time I got this excited was by the YouTube advertising you can do with the top publishers, directly with no Google involved. Safe to say they don’t like that. 

In fact, they don’t like it so much that they’re cornering the market on YouTube and have just announced they’re running the 20-second non-skippable ad again.

Coincidence? Not with Google…..  

Data directly from your consumers

DTC brands are in a fantastic position to leverage data quicker than their larger, more complex grandparent counterparts. They already do fantastic things with social and search but the next stage is managing display and video better than if they did it via Google Ads (formerly AdWords).

I always get sucked into deals with DTC brands for health, beauty or fashion – so the companies have got a lot of data from suckers like me to build some really smart stuff for targeting. The problem is, this knowledge is held by some of the best people within the agency world. Would they be willing to leave and go client side for a one-trick pony? 

Single ID and stuff

I’m all for the single ID thing in media. It really would revolutionise the advertising we sell to make the consumer experience a lot better. You’ve read that a million times, but it’s true. What I hate is the obvious crap that publishers or supply platforms say about how the data (because that’s what it is) integrated into their technology yields higher revenues. 

I’ve been saying for at least four years that you should diversify across everything as a publisher to ensure you’re managing the different demand sources as best as you can through the supply platforms they integrate best with. Do some research and find the data-driven buyers, the Quantcasts, Captifys or whoever, and check their CPMs on Ad Manager versus other supply sources. Clear to say that there is no level playing field in media. 

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