James Walmsley, Digital Trading Director at Immediate Media, and Alex Barstow, Publisher Director UK & NL at Adnami, discuss how their partnership has pushed the limits of creative innovation to boost the publisher’s high-impact advertising performance…
James, what attracted Immediate to working with Adnami, and what problem were you trying to solve?
Immediate and Adnami have actually been working together for a couple of years. Initially, we were simply looking for a new high-impact skin provider, but in the last 12 months or so Alex and I have worked closely together to build and expand upon the initial promise we both recognised the partnership holds.
This meant working together on new ideas and ad formats, but also in boosting revenue by taking some activations in-house, away from third-party sellers, and subsequently helping our advertisers get closer to their audience and build brand awareness more efficiently. Adnami has been key to helping us do this.
Can you expand a little on how Adnami has allowed you to do this?
James: Well, there are two key ways that Adnami has helped us. First of all, their creative department is fantastic. We’re in a world where a late market is now the norm and, even though we’ve got a brilliant in-house creative team, they’re often swamped. Being able to outsource ad creative to Adnami, who will produce super high-quality content in just three to five days, has allowed us to be flexible and dynamic in the market. We can take advantage of the most appropriate opportunities that come our way.
Second, Adnami has helped us to create bespoke skins that we can take direct to advertisers in our core segments, bypassing third-party sellers. In doing so, we can provide advertisers with better data, a greater number of Immediate’s users and an enhanced understanding of the market and our content. As a result, not only do we boost our revenue, but we also become masters of our own destiny. By using this approach we’ve had great success in winning big campaigns with Disney, Pernod Ricard and Sky, among others.
Alex, what excited Adnami about working with Immediate?
Alex: Working with Immediate has introduced Adnami to some of the biggest brands in the FMCG and entertainment business, including BBC Good Food and Radio Times. We’ve learned a huge amount and it’s great to show giants such as Disney, Lionsgate and Paramount what Adnami is capable of from a creative perspective.
Simultaneously, the work James and I are doing is helping to develop the Adnami global platform and the products we offer there, so that’s also great.
It would be disingenuous if I didn’t say that the revenue stream around the creative production that we do for Immediate isn’t important. This service was initially offered by Adnami mainly in the UK, but as its success grows more markets are beginning to offer this work, and that’s hugely rewarding.
How has Adnami helped Immediate’s advertisers advertise more efficiently?
James: There are numerous ways Adnami has really helped us, especially in this late market. As I’ve already mentioned, turnaround times are really fast, and the range of skins we’ve developed together lets us quickly take advantage of any late money that comes to market.
Immediate has actually reduced its pricing a little in the past year, which isn’t something a publisher will often admit to, but Adnami’s high impact pricing is really competitive and that has allowed us to tap into new revenue streams. The Adnami team are also highly innovative and their creativity has seen a remarkable boost in campaign performance for us; our CTRs have doubled in two years. And that’s down to a combination of Immediate’s quality content, and Alex’s team understanding a creative brief, and delivering the best format and executions for these campaigns.
I would also add that Adnami has been critical in helping Immediate develop video skins that drive VTR. That’s a hard thing to do for a publisher – we mainly focus on the written word – but Adnami’s creative team has produced a custom skin for us that drives both VTR and CTR, which has been massive for Immediate, producing some stunning performance metrics.
Attention measurement has come a long way in two years, how has Adnami helped shape Immediate into a publisher primed to attract attention?
James: In my experience, attention is still in its infancy in terms of industry adoption, but interest is definitely growing and there’s absolutely an acceptance that we need a new metric that goes beyond CTR and VTR – one that gives us a way of fully understanding how high impact advertising performs.
Because of this, we’re trying to get ahead on attention, and educate the agencies we visit. By including attention as part of their high-impact offering, Adnami makes it very easy for us to push the metric at an appealing price, which isn’t the case with all suppliers.
Attention is also embedded into the core of Adnami’s platform. The Adnami Attention Score is designed to benchmark the entire market, which is really useful for us because we can measure ourselves against other publishers to know where we perform well and where we don’t. Finally, it’s great to go to agencies and show how we drive attention, as well as CTR and VTR.
Alex: I agree with James in that while attention is in its early days, adoption is picking up fast, and Adnami is keen to make it available to all. That is why The Adnami Attention Score is currently offered for free via our platform across all campaigns.
What does the future hold for your partnership?
James: Well, for my part it’s about growth, growth, growth. Our partnership and campaigns have been so successful, for both desktop and mobile, that we’ve blown all benchmarks out of the water, especially with desktop, so I’d like to really double down on mobile and look to replicate desktop’s success there.
Elsewhere, I think next year we’ll investigate filling that midpoint between the OMP and our premium offering, and how we can work with Adnami to provide the smallest amount of touchpoints for agencies while delivering the most scale. I think there are real opportunities for both of us there, and our respective marketplaces. Finally, if we can solve video on mobile, that would be a dream.
Alex: In terms of our partnership, long may it continue. We love working with Immediate, and the prospect of building on this year’s success is exciting. I’m personally really looking forward to pushing our creative innovations, and to help Immediate achieve their goals in getting where they want to be with mobile.
