Freestar partners with many of the world’s largest publishers, a success made possible through strong, strategic relationships with top SSPs, DSPs, agencies, and advertisers. In the past year alone, we’ve seen over 200% growth in deal-based revenue. By raising our standards for publisher quality, we provide advertisers with greater confidence in the value and integrity of our network, reinforcing trust as they invest across our portfolio of sites.
With traffic from major referral sources of the past decade—such as Google organic search, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest—declining, it’s crucial for publishers to focus on UX and content quality. These elements are now essential in building brand reputation and attracting premium advertisers who prioritize engaging, high-quality sites for their campaigns.
1. As a publisher you must be able to show 6 months of historical traffic data. It’s hard to establish the amount of traffic it takes to accumulate meaningful ad revenue in anything less, and even 6 months seems short. It’s safe to say that if you are, paid traffic is a significant part of the strategy.
2. Content must be unique to the publisher, and meant for human consumption, with the majority of traffic being unpaid. A healthy diversification of traffic is safest. We do require access to Google Analytics (or equivalent) to verify that pageviews are from legitimate sources. A diversified traffic makeup commonly comes from a mix of organic search (Google, Bing, Yahoo), social (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram), Google News, Google Discover, Google Images, YouTube, Reddit, and news syndication sources (Smart News, Flipboard, News360, Newsbreak). We use internal testing tools to identify paid traffic, MFA and AI-generated websites.
3. Content must be brand safe. We do not monetize websites that publish, utilize or condone:
4. Publishers must be in good standing with all major ad providers. If you’ve had issues in the past with demand flags, penalties or rejections, we may not be able to work with you.
Related: Publisher Services
In order to provide publishers the high CPMs we do today, we are committed to upholding high quality standards.. As a part of this, we may request access to GA4, and ask for insights into your website traffic, revenue historicals and the relationship status with current demand partners.
We pride ourselves on being content agnostic, with publishers representing 18 different content verticals. As long as you meet all the guidelines we just listed above, it doesn’t particularly matter the niche. Some of our largest content categories are sports, news, finance, automotive, gaming and entertainment.
Content should either be original to the publisher, or using content syndication best practices with proper permissions. The most successful monetization comes in the form of engaged website users. Content strategies that will not be accepted: stolen/scrapped, fully AI-generated, clickbait headlines for the purpose of paid media, and content with potential copyright issues.
We don’t have a hard pageview requirement for acceptance, but in order to bring you meaningful revenue, the average pageviews for our publishers are typically at least a million per month. Once accepted, we have a team of audience development experts ready to work with you on traffic growth strategies!
If you’re ready to monetize with Freestar, meeting our publisher acceptance requirements is the first step toward unlocking new revenue potential. By partnering with us, you’ll join a network that prioritizes quality, transparency, and value, offering a seamless path to higher CPMs and premium demand
Are you ready for the next steps? Click the link below to get started. We can’t wait to meet you!
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]]>Generic, cookie-cutter content no longer cuts through the noise, especially during high-demand periods like Q4. To connect with your audience, it’s crucial to create authentic content that aligns with their needs, preferences, and behaviors.
How can publishers achieve this?
Start by looking at your existing data and using it to pivot your content strategies. Analyze metrics such as backlinks, organic search performance, and Page Speed Insights. These are not just metrics to check off but are critical indicators of how your content resonates.
By leveraging this data, publishers can ensure they are not only creating high-quality, relevant content but are also refining it to meet the evolving demands of their audience as Q4 progresses and into the next year as well.
With third-party cookies slowly becoming obsolete, first-party data has emerged as a critical asset for publishers. This data—whether it’s demographic information, browsing behavior, or engagement patterns—is unique to your platform and provides deep insights into your audience. More importantly, it allows you to create personalized ad experiences, which is crucial for creating an engaging experience for your audience on the website.
Using first-party data strategically enables you to:
Tapping into this data also allows you to demonstrate the value of your audience to advertisers, especially those looking for niche, high-quality traffic.
Q4 is not just about maximizing pageviews—it’s about maximizing the value of those pageviews. As we have seen with our current publishers, video ads, in particular, are in high demand in Q4, with advertisers often willing to pay a premium for these placements.
Freestar’s technology, for instance, provides access to a wide range of demand sources while also ensuring that the most lucrative opportunities are maximized across all ad formats. Reach out to us to learn more about this.
Every publisher’s block list evolves over time. However, as Q4 approaches, it’s essential to review your block lists to ensure you’re not inadvertently blocking valuable demand sources.
Ad placements and formats that worked well in Q1 may not be as effective in Q4. Therefore, it’s crucial to continuously optimize your ad units throughout the holiday season.
Freestar’s comprehensive approach to ad monetization makes it easier for publishers to execute these strategies effectively. With Freestar, publishers can tap into advanced optimized ad placements in real-time to maximize revenue.
As the Q4 season heats up, publishers who combine authentic content experiences with smart ad monetization strategies will have the upper hand. By leveraging first-party data, optimizing ad units, and working with the right partners, you can unlock the full revenue potential of the holiday season. And with Freestar as your ad monetization partner, you’ll be well-positioned to turn those strategies into real results.
The post Top 5 Key Takeaways from our Webinar: Maximizing Q4 Ad Revenue first appeared on Freestar.
]]>Refresh Last Year’s Top Performers
Your top-performing content from last year should be a priority for updates. Pages that previously attracted high engagement, like gift guides, product reviews, and seasonal travel recommendations, are likely to perform well again. Refreshing these pieces with updated trends, new links, or current recommendations can help boost their relevance and ranking in search results.
Leverage Seasonal and Event-Based ContentHoliday-themed content is incredibly valuable in Q4, but don’t forget about other key spending events that can drive traffic. In years with political elections, there’s an uptick in ad spend around political campaigns. Similarly, major sports seasons like the NFL and NBA bring advertisers looking to target engaged audiences during key sporting events. Make sure to align your DIY guides, travel tips, and holiday shopping lists with these pivotal moments to capture relevant ad revenue.
Dive Into Your Data
Looking at past and current traffic data can reveal critical insights for where your focus should be. Understanding what content is driving the most engagement and ad performance will help you replicate those successes. Use this data to optimize ad placements, refresh top-performing pages, and make informed decisions about future content.
Traffic Trends and Recovery
While some publishers are experiencing recovery in their traffic, especially quality publishers producing reliable and valuable content, others are facing challenges. Understanding the broader traffic trends in your industry can help you anticipate changes and prepare for fluctuations. Freestar can assist with analyzing these trends and suggesting actionable steps to optimize for recovery.
Focus on SEO Best Practices
Quality content goes hand in hand with strong SEO. Update meta descriptions, alt texts, and ensure your content is optimized for mobile users. Q4 is competitive, so making sure your site is search engine-friendly will help capture more organic traffic. Don’t forget to focus on keyword optimization around trending holiday search terms!
Boost Performance with Direct PMPs
Private Marketplace Deals (PMPs) are a powerful tool to secure high-value, targeted ad placements. By offering premium ad inventory to select advertisers, you can ensure higher CPMs and better fill rates. It’s crucial to position your site as a valuable, high-quality partner to direct advertisers, especially during this busy season when demand is high.
Scale Issues and Efficiency
With scaling challenges still impacting many, now is the time to focus on doing more with less. Efficient ad layout, strategic partnerships, and traffic quality will become increasingly important in Q4. Quality over quantity is key – advertisers are looking for reliable, high-engagement audiences, and this can improve your value in direct campaigns and PMP deals.
Freestar continues to support publishers by analyzing traffic trends, offering strategic insights, and ensuring you make the most of your Q4 opportunities. Our header bidding technology and network of demand partners can help you unlock new revenue streams while ensuring high-quality ads and traffic recovery.
The post Maximizing Q4 Ad Revenue: A Guide, Part 2 first appeared on Freestar.
]]>Q4 is a crucial period for any industry but more so for publishers looking to maximize revenue, as it’s often the most lucrative time of the year due to increased consumer spending and the holiday shopping season right around the corner. To make the most of this opportunity, publishers must adopt a strategic approach to their ad monetization efforts. Here is part 1 of some key areas to focus on:
Freestar can be a valuable tool and resources for publishers looking to maximize Q4 revenue. With our advanced header bidding technology and access to a vast network of demand partners, Freestar can help you:
To learn more about how Freestar can help you optimize your Q4 revenue, look out for part 2 on the key areas of optimization and be sure to register for our upcoming webinar.
The post Maximizing Q4 Ad Revenue: A Guide, Part 1 first appeared on Freestar.
]]>In the world of digital advertising, balancing revenue optimization and performance is a delicate task. Page load speed, efficient use of resources, and seamless user experiences are as crucial as maximizing ad revenue. Freestar has emerged as a leader with its innovative header bidder wrapper technology, built upon and extending the open-source Prebid.js framework. A key focus of Freestar’s technology is not just maximizing auction efficiency but also modularizing the code to optimize delivery and minimize memory leakage across browsers.
Dive deeper into Freestar’s approach in improving performance in dynamic ad environments which is centered around modularizing its proprietary wrapper and optimizing browser memory management.
Freestar’s header bidder wrapper technology serves as an advanced intermediary between a publisher’s website and various demand sources, facilitating efficient asynchronous auctions. By selecting the highest bidder from multiple sources, Freestar ensures publishers receive optimal revenue for their ad inventory.
However, Freestar’s focus goes beyond revenue generation. It aims to equip publishers with a modularized, performance-optimized orchestration layer that minimizes the impact on page load speed and mitigates memory leaks. Freestar’s wrapper is engineered to deliver only the essential code specific to each publisher’s needs, making it lightweight and efficient.
Understanding memory management is key to appreciating Freestar’s optimization efforts. Modern web browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox use heap memory to store data such as DOM (Document Object Model) elements, scripts, and styles. They rely on garbage collection (GC) to free up memory that is no longer needed by removing objects that are no longer referenced in the code. However, certain elements—particularly those that change frequently, such as ads—can cause memory leaks if they are not properly managed. Memory leaks occur when old objects, such as removed DOM elements, remain in memory even though they are no longer visible or used on the page. Other common causes of memory leaks include closures, event listeners, timers and intervals, and dynamic content.
This becomes particularly important in ad environments where ad units frequently refresh. If these refreshes aren’t handled correctly, the old ad creatives and their associated DOM elements may remain in memory, causing orphaned DOM objects. Over time, this leads to increased memory consumption, leading to greater page load times and a negative user experience.
A key component of modern ad strategies is the use of ad refresh cycles, which replace an ad creative with a new one after a set interval. While this boosts ad impressions and revenue potential, it also increases the risk of memory leakage.
Freestar’s technology takes this into account, offering an intelligent refresh system that ensures proper cleanup of DOM elements and event listeners tied to old ad creatives. This process reduces memory bloat and minimizes the risk of memory leaks during repeated ad refreshes.
Freestar’s header bidder wrapper is built on top of the widely adopted Prebid.js framework, but it goes beyond Prebid’s capabilities to offer a proprietary, modularized solution tailored to each publisher, and to each experience. This approach ensures that the code delivered is highly optimized for each publisher’s specific use case and requirements.
Freestar’s proprietary technology is designed with modularization at its core. This means that, like Prebid, Freestar’s wrapper is broken down into individual components—each responsible for a specific function such as handling bids, managing analytics, or facilitating ad refreshes. However, Freestar goes a step further by allowing publishers to only load the modules they actually need. This results in a highly efficient, optimized payload that reduces the overall file size and execution time, improving performance significantly.
For instance, if a publisher is using only certain demand sources or ad formats, Freestar’s modularized wrapper ensures that the code for unrelated features—such as video ad units or demand partners that are unused is excluded from the build.
So, what does this achieve?
This precision targeting ensures that only the necessary code is delivered to the browser, resulting in faster load times, better performance, and reduced memory usage.
Freestar’s modular approach also enables device-specific optimization backed by data-driven insights into device performance and resource limitations. Different devices—whether desktop, mobile, or tablet—vary significantly in processing power, memory capacity, and network bandwidth. By delivering device-specific builds, Freestar can ensure that mobile users, who account for approximately 50-60% of global web traffic, receive a lighter version of the wrapper with fewer resource-intensive features.This reduces the number of resource-intensive features by up to 30% (as shown from our internal tests), improving page load times and minimizing the impact on device performance.
In addition, Freestar’s header bidding wrapper can be optimized for geographic regions. Depending on where a user is located, certain demand partners or ad formats might not be relevant. Freestar’s modular builds allow the wrapper to be customized by region, ensuring that users only load what’s necessary for their locale, reducing unnecessary overhead.
While Prebid.js serves as the foundation for Freestar’s technology, Freestar’s proprietary wrapper extends Prebid’s capabilities by providing more advanced customization and performance optimizations. Although Prebid is inherently modular by design, Freestar adds substantial value by incorporating proprietary features that fine-tune the framework to publishers’ specific needs. Freestar’s wrapper focuses on reducing the memory footprint, streamlining ad refresh processes, and improving the efficiency of demand-side integrations.
Benefits of a custom modular build,
Freestar ensures that Prebid’s core functionality is tightly integrated with our custom performance optimizations, allowing publishers to leverage Prebid’s open-source advantages while benefiting from Freestar’s enhanced features and control over the header bidding process. This combination leads to higher ad yield and a seamless, memory-efficient experience.
Freestar employs several key strategies to manage memory more effectively within its modularized header bidder wrapper:
Freestar’s proprietary header bidder wrapper, built on and extending Prebid.js, represents a state-of-the-art solution that combines performance optimization, modularization, and memory management. By delivering a custom, lightweight build tailored to each publisher’s specific needs, Freestar ensures efficient resource usage, fast page loads, and reduced memory consumption.
Freestar’s focus on preventing memory leaks, avoiding orphaned DOM elements, and minimizing code overhead sets a new benchmark in the ad tech space. This allows publishers to maximize ad revenue without sacrificing performance. By modularizing its header bidder wrapper, Freestar ensures that only the necessary components are deployed, resulting in an efficient and adaptable solution across devices and regions.
For publishers, this translates into a seamless balance between ad monetization and user experience. Whether you’re optimizing for desktop or mobile, Freestar’s technology can help reduce latency, streamline ad delivery, and enhance overall site performance – ultimately leading to higher ad yield, improved user engagement, and a more competitive edge in the market.
Contact us today to learn more on how we can help you unlock your full potential.
The post Optimizing Ad Tech with Freestar’s Modular Header Bidding Wrapper: Performance Enhancements, Memory Management, and Customization first appeared on Freestar.
]]>Publishers are increasingly reliant on first-party data to drive ad revenue and deliver personalized experiences to their audiences. However, effectively leveraging this first party data can be a complex task. This is where identity solutions (ID) come into play and create efficiency. By providing a unified view of users across different devices and platforms, identity solutions enable publishers to maximize the value of their first-party data.
This allows for more personalized ad targeting and content delivery, leading to improved user engagement and higher click-through rates allowing users to spend more time on the website which in any intent signal tracking and push them to come as returning users to the site. This increases quality traffic on the site which helps in organic ranking across.
With identity solutions, publishers can track users across different browsers and devices, ensuring that their ad targeting remains consistent and effective. This enables publishers to reach their audiences on a wider range of platforms, increasing their potential ad revenue.
The lack of consent from IOS users including Safari have hit eCPMs hard, with revenue dropping drastically across the board. Survey data shows that eCPMs on an average, 70% lower than those from publishers’ addressable inventory. These impacts depend heavily on the percentage of traffic coming from non-Chrome browsers, which can make up about 40-50% of total traffic in regions like the USA, UK, and Australia.
Identity solutions can be implemented in a way that respects user privacy by obtaining explicit consent for data collection and usage. This helps publishers comply with data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA, mitigating the risk of fines and penalties.
Identity solutions can be combined with contextual targeting to deliver ads that are highly relevant to the content users are consuming. This improves user experience and leads to higher engagement rates and better ad performance on the site creating an overall positive user experience for visitors.
By delivering more targeted and relevant ads, publishers can command higher eCPMs from advertisers. This translates into increased ad revenue for publishers, ultimately improving their bottom line.
Identity solutions provide more accurate tracking of user behavior and ad performance, allowing publishers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. Publishers are in need of a secure storage solution for their growing first-party data, and a data lake is often the go-to choice. Unlike traditional databases, data lakes can handle both structured and unstructured data. Publishers can safely store all customer information and easily create custom datasets when required.
Identity solutions enable publishers to deliver personalized content and recommendations based on user preferences, improving the overall user experience.
Identity solutions can help detect and prevent ad fraud by identifying suspicious patterns and malicious activity. This protects publishers’ ad revenue from fraudulent traffic and ensures that their campaigns are delivering genuine results.
Advertisers and publishers can work together through data clean rooms, enabling them to share data in a privacy-compliant manner. Stand alone clean rooms, in particular, allow data owners to match similar audience segments and improve user profiles using look-alike modeling, while personal information remains anonymous.
Identity solutions enable publishers to optimize their ad inventory by matching the right ads with the right users. This maximizes the revenue potential of ad inventory and ensures that publishers are getting the best possible rates for their ad space.
Identity solutions are designed to be adaptable to future industry changes, such as the evolving landscape of data privacy regulations and technological advancements. This ensures that publishers’ ad revenue strategies remain viable and effective in the long run and thus being able to be agile in motion. Through a definite ID framework publishers can collect data in the way they observe it from users’ behaviors and actions on their sites, while advertisers can collect it to help with targeting and campaign measurement which as mentioned above will increase user engagements, eCPMs, inventory management and higher ad revenue.
What does it mitigate?
This reduces all risks involved in the mapping of audiences and segments between advertisers and publishers, in the programmatic ecosystem where there are many intermediaries and bidders.
At Freestar, we specialize in helping publishers navigate these complexities and optimize their monetization strategies. Don’t let the competition leave you behind—contact us today to learn how we can help you implement an ID Graph solution and unlock your full revenue potential.
The post Top 10 Reasons ID Solutions Help Publishers Leverage First-Party Data for Increased Ad Revenue first appeared on Freestar.
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Google’s 20% fee on ad transactions took center stage in its antitrust trial, with the DOJ arguing that the fee highlights Google’s monopoly over online ads. Internal Google emails and testimony revealed executives were concerned about justifying the fee, which was higher than competitors’. However, they maintained it due to Google’s control over a vast advertiser base. The government is attempting to prove that Google tied its publisher ad server to its ad exchange to maintain dominance, despite the company’s defense that publishers benefited from its system. The trial continues with more testimony expected.
The IAB’s Connected Commerce Summit emphasized the importance of understanding consumers in retail media. While expanding ad budgets and improving effectiveness were key themes, many stressed that overuse of retail media could alienate shoppers. Digital out-of-home ads, or “phygital” ads, should enhance the shopping experience rather than disrupt it. IAB research highlighted a disconnect between brands and consumers, with commerce videos seen as intrusive by some shoppers despite advertisers believing them to be effective. The summit concluded that while data is crucial, marketers must rely on intuition and trust to maintain strong consumer relationships.
As the Department of Justice prepares to close its case in the Google antitrust trial, evidence from over 30 witnesses and internal documents suggest Google has operated monopolies in ad exchanges, networks, and search. Notable disclosures include discussions by top executives, like YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, about acquiring competitors to limit competition. The case highlights how regulators failed to act on similar monopolistic practices in the past, and critics argue both publishers and advertisers played roles in Google’s dominance. Industry leaders, such as Alessandro De Zanche and Paul Bannister, emphasize learning from these past mistakes, particularly as AI technologies emerge.
Twitch, in collaboration with Amazon Ads, is launching The Glitch, a customizable Fortnite game designed to connect brands with Twitch streamers and gamers. Created by Halo co-creator Alexander Seropian’s Look North World studio, The Glitch allows brands like Domino’s and Peloton to create unique in-game experiences. Domino’s will introduce a pizza-themed health boost, while Peloton will track engagement with non-combative gameplay.
Amazon invites brands to stay in the game for at least one fiscal quarter to maximize engagement with Twitch’s core audience, primarily aged 18-34. Brand activations will also be promoted through Twitch streamers on the platform’s homepage, broadening visibility. The Glitch officially opens to the public on Friday, coinciding with Twitch’s annual convention in San Diego. Amazon Ads plans to bring more brands into the evolving experience, offering new ways for companies to engage with gamers.
The post ICYMI: Ad Tech Edition | Week of September 16th, 2024 first appeared on Freestar.
]]>Delivering personalized content is key to capturing user attention and driving engagement. However, personalization is only as good as the data behind it. That’s where Identity (ID) Graph solutions come into play. By leveraging ID solutions, publishers can connect data points across devices and platforms, helping deliver the right content to the right audience at the right time.
What’s an ID Graph Solution?
An ID Graph solution connects a user’s interactions across multiple devices, platforms, and channels, creating a unified profile that informs how content is personalized. This holistic view, often referred to as an “Identity Graph,” provides publishers with the ability to deliver content experiences that are finely tuned to individual user behavior and preferences.
Here’s how an ID Graph makes content personalization a reality:
ID Graphs aggregate user data from multiple sources, creating rich audience profiles. These profiles allow publishers to deliver personalized content tailored to each user’s preferences, behaviors, and interests, and the usage of a device The result? More relevant content that leads to highly targeted content that boosts more engagement, and increased loyalty.
ID solutions enhance your ability to offer more accurate content recommendations by drawing on a user’s history across devices and channels. By serving personalized recommendations, publishers can guide users to consume more content, driving deeper engagement that increases the time spent on the site, and improve the click-through rates.
With an ID Graph, users can receive personalized content no matter which device they’re using. This cross-device consistency is vital for maintaining engagement as users switch between mobile, desktop, and other devices thus ensuring the ads are being delivered seamlessly across devices.
Using an ID Graph allows you to deliver content based on highly specific user behaviors. Whether it’s adjusting headlines or recommending articles, the increased relevance makes users feel more connected to your site. This not only makes the website relevant but also can drastically reduce bounce rates and increase page views, achieving a higher level of personalization.
ID solutions enable publishers to segment their audience with incredible detail. By understanding nuanced behavior patterns, publishers can tailor content for specific audience segments, delivering hyper-relevant material that improves engagement. The more tailored your content, the more time users spend on your site.
Personalized content has been proven to generate higher engagement. With an ID Graph, publishers can present users with content that aligns perfectly with their interests, boosting click-through rates and interaction. This increase in engagement not only helps build loyalty but also contributes to higher ad revenues.
ID solutions don’t just enhance content personalization—they also improve ad personalization mapping a better user journey.. By using the same data to tailor both content and ads, publishers can ensure that users see ads that are relevant and engaging, leading to higher click-through rates and better monetization opportunities.
As ID solutions provide valuable insights into the various user behavior on the site, it helps publishers to make not only data-driven decisions but be data-informed as well at all times. This will in turn boost better content creation, superior ad placements, that will in turn impact the ad revenue.
These help in creating long-lasting relationships with the audiences by ensuring that each interaction feels tailored and relevant.
While privacy concerns are becoming highly notable across industries, ID solutions create “privacy-friendly” ways to target users. The shift away from third-party cookies encourages greater transparency and empowers users to have more control over their data, improving online security and reducing cyber threats.
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, reliance on first-party data becomes even more crucial. ID Graphs allow publishers to maintain personalized content delivery even as third-party cookies disappear, ensuring they remain competitive and continue providing a valuable, relevant user experience.
Personalized content is no longer optional—it’s essential. Implementing an ID Graph solution allows publishers to offer tailored content that captivates users, drives deeper engagement, and boosts revenue.
At Freestar, we help publishers unlock the full potential of their content by integrating powerful ID solutions. Contact us today to learn how we can help you personalize your content and enhance your monetization strategy.
The post Top 10 Reasons Why ID Solutions Help in Personalizing Content first appeared on Freestar.
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Aditude has acquired Hashtag Labs, merging two ad tech firms that support publisher monetization. The deal, which closed on August 16, reflects publishers’ need for efficient revenue solutions amid growing competition. Hashtag Labs, founded in 2014 by John Shankman, will integrate its technology into Aditude’s platform. Shankman will become Aditude’s chief strategy officer. Both companies collectively support over 200 publishers, and all 25 Hashtag Labs employees will join Aditude. Aditude, which raised $15 million last year, plans to expand through more acquisitions while building additional products, including analytics tools for publishers.
Google is back in court facing a second antitrust trial from the Department of Justice, this time focusing on its advertising business. The DOJ argues that Google’s ad tools monopolize the market, leading to higher ad prices and limiting competition. If the DOJ succeeds, Google could be forced to divest its Google Ad Manager suite. The case follows an August ruling that declared Google a monopolist in internet search. The DOJ claims Google unfairly leveraged acquisitions like DoubleClick, while Google argues its practices promote innovation and competition. The trial could last several weeks.
PubMatic revised its 2024 revenue projections, citing a $5 million shortfall due to Google DV360 shifting to first-price auctions in May. PubMatic had been tagging bid requests as second-price auctions, winning more bids from DV360 as a result. However, DV360’s updated bidding logic affected all SSPs, redistributing PubMatic’s lost revenue to competitors. Despite the industry-wide shift to first-price auctions in 2017, PubMatic continued using second-price auctions, perplexing experts. The revenue didn’t leave the market but was reallocated to other exchanges when DV360 stopped honoring second-price bid requests. PubMatic declined to comment on the discrepancy.
The first day of Google’s ad tech antitrust trial in Virginia highlighted the complexities of the ad tech ecosystem. The DOJ argues that Google operates three monopolies in ad servers, ad exchanges, and ad networks, citing Google’s control of 87-91% of the ad server market and its tie between Google Ads demand and AdX. Google’s defense counters that the DOJ’s claims are outdated, asserting that ads span multiple channels, and it only controls 25% of the market. Witnesses from companies like Gannett and Index Exchange testified on Google’s dominance, with debates over header bidding, programmatic advertising, and server switching challenges.
On Day 2 of the Google ad tech antitrust trial, key witness Stephanie Layser, an expert from Amazon and former News Corp exec, testified about Google’s Unified Pricing Rules (UPR) and its monopolistic grip on publishers. She detailed how News Corp’s efforts to switch from Google’s ad server (DFP) were hindered by the loss of AdX demand, and Google’s refusal to share logs for comparison. Layser explained how Google’s “last look” bidding practices and lack of competition control affected publishers’ revenue. Jay Friedman, CEO of Goodway Group, also testified about the ad market’s complexity and Google’s dominance.
The post ICYMI: Ad Tech Edition | Week of September 9th, 2024 first appeared on Freestar.
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Aditude has acquired Hashtag Labs, merging two ad tech firms that support publisher monetization. The deal, which closed on August 16, reflects publishers’ need for efficient revenue solutions amid growing competition. Hashtag Labs, founded in 2014 by John Shankman, will integrate its technology into Aditude’s platform. Shankman will become Aditude’s chief strategy officer. Both companies collectively support over 200 publishers, and all 25 Hashtag Labs employees will join Aditude. Aditude, which raised $15 million last year, plans to expand through more acquisitions while building additional products, including analytics tools for publishers.
Google is back in court facing a second antitrust trial from the Department of Justice, this time focusing on its advertising business. The DOJ argues that Google’s ad tools monopolize the market, leading to higher ad prices and limiting competition. If the DOJ succeeds, Google could be forced to divest its Google Ad Manager suite. The case follows an August ruling that declared Google a monopolist in internet search. The DOJ claims Google unfairly leveraged acquisitions like DoubleClick, while Google argues its practices promote innovation and competition. The trial could last several weeks.
OpenX CEO John Gentry highlights how SSPs (Supply-Side Platforms) have evolved beyond being “dumb pipes,” investing in data, identity, and sell-side curation. Gentry emphasizes that direct relationships with buyers, clean ad supply, and innovations in CTV (Connected TV) have driven growth. OpenX has differentiated itself by cutting out low-quality CTV inventory and focusing on premium content. Video, including CTV, accounts for 35% of its business, with CTV growing 80% in the first half of the year. While OpenX isn’t currently pursuing acquisitions or an IPO, Gentry remains focused on steady growth.
Google’s Demand Gen now attributes all conversions to its campaigns, potentially misrepresenting its performance compared to Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns. Consumer data brokers like Acxiom and Experian face criticism for outdated and inaccurate data, unlike more reliable profiles from Amazon and Google. The Trade Desk is developing a new TV OS to compete with Roku and Google TV, aiming to enhance addressable device reach and cross-platform measurement. Additionally, Reddit lacks a formal publisher program but is being tested by publishers, while Twitter investors face losses since Elon Musk’s acquisition. NaNoWriMo’s new AI policy has confused writers, and generative AI is found less effective than humans at summarizing information.
The post ICYMI: Ad Tech Edition | Week of September 2nd, 2024 first appeared on Freestar.
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