In the context of ad tech (advertising technology), a direct deal refers to a specific type of advertising transaction that occurs directly between an advertiser and a publisher using pre-negotiated terms. 

There are various ways to buy and sell ad inventory in the digital advertising ecosystem. Programmatic advertising, for example, involves the automated buying and selling of ad impressions through real-time bidding (RTB) platforms. However, the parties negotiate and establish a direct relationship in a direct deal.

Direct deals in ad tech typically involve a direct negotiation between an advertiser (or their media agency) and a publisher. They agree on specific terms such as ad placement, ad formats, targeting criteria, pricing, and campaign duration. For some deals, the publisher reserves a specific portion of their ad inventory for the advertiser, ensuring that the agreed-upon ads will be displayed in the specified locations on the publisher’s website or app.

What are the advantages of direct deals?

Direct deals offer several benefits for both advertisers and publishers. Here are some key advantages:

1. Premium Ad Placements: Direct deals allow advertisers to secure premium ad inventory on high-quality websites or apps. This ensures that their ads are displayed in desirable placements and environments, which can enhance brand image and visibility.
2. Targeted Audiences: Direct deals enable advertisers to target specific audiences more effectively. Publishers can provide detailed audience data, such as demographics or user behavior insights, allowing advertisers to tailor their campaigns and reach the desired target audience with precision.
3. Control and Customization: Direct deals provide greater control over the ad campaign. Advertisers can work closely with publishers to customize ad formats, placements, and creative elements to align with their marketing goals and brand guidelines. This level of control improves campaign performance and brand consistency and ensures that ads are presented in a manner that resonates with the intended audience.
4. Transparency: With direct deals, advertisers can understand where their ads are displayed and can ensure brand safety. They can directly review and approve publisher websites or apps to ensure all inventory both aligns with brand goals and is relevant for campaigns. 
5. Relationship Building: Direct deals foster stronger relationships between advertisers and publishers. This collaboration allows for better communication, feedback, and optimization opportunities. Advertisers can provide feedback on performance, request adjustments, and negotiate pricing or terms directly with the publisher, leading to more efficient campaigns.
6. Potentially Lower Costs: CPMs can be reduced by eliminating intermediaries and running campaigns directly with publishers. With Freestar, there are no additional fees or trafficking fees that are typically associated with intermediaries.
7. Exclusivity and Exclusiveness: Direct deals can offer brands exclusive access to specific ad placements on a publisher’s platform. This exclusivity can help advertisers stand out from competitors, access unique inventory, and improve the effectiveness of their campaigns.

While direct deals offer these benefits, it’s important to note that they may require additional time and effort for negotiation, coordination, and campaign management. Advertisers and publishers should consider their specific goals, resources, and priorities to determine if direct deals are the most suitable approach for their advertising strategies.

How do we support direct deals?

At Freestar, our direct sales team is sourcing deals with brands and agencies through outreach efforts and referrals from our publisher network. In addition, we vet and negotiate inquiries from brands and agencies looking for direct deals.  

Here’s what publishers can expect from Freestar:

• Consider us an extension of your Sales team. We’ll negotiate contracts, complete RFPs, and upsell on your behalf.
• Let us handle the ad operations. Once the deal is closed, we’ll handle trafficking setup, audience targeting, and delivery.
• Manage client services. Managing expectations and collecting creatives can be a time-consuming process. We take that off your hands.
• Our Audience Development team creates customized audiences. Advertisers can reach the user they’re looking for through our advanced audience targeting capabilities.
• See the data in our dashboard. No campaign is complete without reporting. Publishers can view data for direct deals in their Freestar dashboard.
• We prioritize brand safety. We go above and beyond to ensure a brand-safe digital environment for both users and advertisers. 

As an ad monetization partner, Freestar ensures our publishers make the most revenue for each impression. All dollars earned through our direct deals are incremental to revenue earned in the open market. It’s important to know that any advertising publishers referred to us will have direct deals prioritized on their site. If you’re an existing Freestar publisher, sign up now for direct deals.

If you’re new to Freestar, you can get started today by completing this form. Once you’re a Freestar publisher, our team can help you with your direct deals.

The post FAQ: How Do We Support Direct Deals? first appeared on Freestar.

In programmatic direct deals, the buyer and seller agree on the specific terms of the ad campaign, such as the ad placement, the audience targeting, the duration of the campaign, and the pricing model.. The buyer then uses a programmatic channel to access the seller’s ad inventory and reserve the ad space for their campaign.

Direct deals give buyers more control and certainty over where their ads will appear and who they will reach so they’re willing to increase the CPM.  Deals can run across all ad units, including high-value placements, such as homepage takeovers, interstitial and post-transaction ads. 

To understand all that direct advertising has to offer, we’ll go through:

• Benefits to Programmatic Direct
• Types of Programmatic Direct 
• 7 Tips for to Optimize for Direct Deals

Benefits to Programmatic Direct

Direct Deals allow publishers to outwardly market valuable audience segments while also giving buyers transparency and confidence in their ad purchase. Additional publisher benefits include:

• Improved Revenue – Direct campaigns generate above average CPMs and increase publisher revenue by grouping valuable traffic and giving buyers confidence in their purchase. Publishers that incorporate direct ad sales earn a higher eCPM than other publishers who rely solely on bids from the open-market. 
• Brand Control – Publishers gain control over their ad inventory, allowing them to choose which brands show and how specific audiences are targeted based on interests and demographics. Sitelayouts with multiple ad slots can optimize exposure for advertisers and avoid competing messages. This model is seen as the future of digital advertising, with many established publishers adopting direct deals, and publishers can make changes to their inventory at any time.
  
• Build Relationships with Advertisers – Publishers can build direct relationships with buyers. Direct channels grow trust and increase the deal value by aligning site traffic with brand specific KPIs. Publishers who build lasting relationships with relevant brands see strong, long-term success with programmatic direct deals.

Types of Programmatic Direct

Freestar connects our publishers to all types of direct deal campaigns, handling the beginning to end process including negotiating contract and RFPs to reporting on campaign data in our dashboard. We also provide guidance for campaigns managed by publishers.

Freestar supports all the deal types: 

• Private Auctions (also known as Private Marketplace (PMP), Private Exchange) – A private auction gives a select number of advertisers access to an inventory segment at a set CPM price. Campaigns compete at price-priority, winning and filling when they’re the highest bid. Buyers are not obligated to have a spend minimum. 
• Preferred Deals (also known as Programmatic Non-Guranteed) – A preferred deal is a one-to-one negotiation between a publisher and advertiser wherein they agree on a price and terms for inventory. Preferred Deals give advertisers preferential access by inventory because bids are prioritized over open-market. Similar to Private Auctions,  advertisers in Preferred Deals are not required to have a spend minimum.
• Guaranteed Deals (also known as Guranteed Buy, Programmatic Guaranteed) – A programmatic guaranteed deal is like a preferred deal where the publisher and advertiser negotiate price and terms, but the purchase of inventory is guaranteed. Publishers get a guaranteed stream of revenue while advertisers get access to reserved, premium inventory.

7 Tips for Publishers to Optimize for Programmatic Direct Deals

If you’re a publisher looking to access more direct deals, there are a few tips to improve your website to appeal to Programmatic Direct adveritsers:

1. Improve Viewability – Having a site or Ad unit viewability over 70% improves how buyers view your inventory and unlocks better paying deals. You can improve viewability through:
   • Ad Placement – It important to have ad that can be viewed, incorporated with the content. There’s different ad layout strategies you can implement to see what works best for your website. 
   • Lazy Loading – With lazy loading, ads that are not likely to be seen are not loaded, resulting in fewer unviewed impressions being served which improves your viewability.
   • Sticky Units – ticky units like sticky footer, adhesion, pushdown and sidewalls, are great for viewability because they remain 100% visible to users for the entire time they’re on the page, which translates to incredibly high viewability. 
   • Anchor Ads – As anchor units allow ads to be on the user’s page for the entire duration of their site visit, your viewability values increase when enabled. 
2. Utilize Post-Checkout Ads – Websites that have users complete a transaction can enable ads on post-check out pages such as order history, account history and/or order confirmation. A simple 300×250 can see upwords of $20 CPMs for this type of inventory due to the high customer intent. 
3. Enable High-Impact Ad Units – A great way to maximize CPM is by using high-impact ad units such as:
   • Interstitials – The interstitial is a type of ad that will show up after a user clicks on any link on the website. Interstitial is 100% effective for viewability and compared to display, interstitial has 8-10x CPMs.
   • Video – It’s been known that video ads tend to perform better than static ads, specifically 2-4x CPMs compared to display ad.
4. Opt into Deal Only Categories – Another way to optimize your website for direct deals is opening your website to categories such as pharmaceuticals, politics, cannabis, gambling, and alcohol. Activity will vary between site to site but there are deals available in these category that provide high CPMs. Ask your CSM for the Direct Deal survey if not completed before.
5. Use Freestar’s GAM – When publishers use Freestar’s GAM, they get access to our Sales team who sell on your behalf. This makes direct deals much easier for publishers to access. If they’re not using our GAM, publishers don’t have the opportunity to take advantage of our exclusive campaigns.
6. Utilize Email Monetization – Do you have a customer newsletter? If so, consider selling inventory on your newsletter. Email newsletters appeal to advertisers because the customer intent is there and advertisers know that the customers has a level of trust with the publisher. Customers are more likely to trust and engage with ads based on where they’ve been seen. The CPMs for this kind of inventory can vary based on publisher and user list but thhe more niche, the better CPMs.
7. Prioritize Recurring Users – It’s important to focus creating content that promotes reoccurring users. This type of user is highly valuable to advertisers because of the intent and trust they have with a website.

Conclusion

As publishers aim to boost eCPM and advertisers seek to improve brand safety, programmatic direct deals are becoming more popular. They’re a great way to increase revenue, impact brand guidelines, and build lasting relationships with buyers.

Whether it’s a Private Auction, a Preferred Deal, or a Guaranteed campaign, each allows publishers to market their unique audience and improving buyer transparency to create high CPM channels. 

However you choose to run your programmatic ad stack, you can always work with Freestar to handle your RTB ad management as well as programmatic direct deals. To get started with programmatic direct, complete this survey and our team will get in touch with you.

The post 7 Tips for Publishers to Optimize for Programmatic Direct Deals first appeared on Freestar.

What are direct ad sales?

Before the development of programmatic ad technology, direct deals were the only way publishers could sell their ad space.. However, once programmatic media buying was available, buyers were able to access a worldwide audience and began optimizing their bid CPMs to capture more audiences at scale – typically this is done by reducing CPMs to spread budgets across more sites. .

In direct ad sales, publishers work directly with advertisers for a certain number of impressions, and provide them with access to specific ad placements without going through any intermediaries or agencies. Direct ad sales can be done through a variety of deal methods such as Private Marketplaces, Programmatic Guaranteed, or Preferred Deals. 

Directly selling inventory to advertisers has numerous other benefits for publishers. Let’s  take a look at 7 major benefits of direct ad sales for publishers.

Benefits of direct sales for publishers

1. Control over their inventory

Direct advertising sales allows publishers to have more control of their own ad space inventory, which they can sell on their own terms. This means that they can choose which ads to show and when to show them. Publishers can use direct sales to target audiences based on interests and demographics, which enables them to target the right audience with the right message at the right time.

Offering ad packages with multiple slots allows publishers to optimize ad exposure by offering advertisers equal opportunities to reach targeted audiences, while ensuring that they are not exposed to competing messages. This model is seen as the future of digital advertising, with most large and well-established publishers adopting direct deals.

They can also make changes to their inventory any time they want. They can change their ads more quickly than publishers that use third-party ad sales networks and are not allowed to control their ads.

2. Build direct relationship with advertisers

Publishers can be sure that they have a direct relationship with advertisers by selling them ad space directly.  Buyers are able to target specific audiences with the help of publishers, which enables them to connect with the right people.  This enables advertisers to choose effective targeting and spending strategies, which ultimately increases publisher revenue.

3. Expand their audience base

Direct ad sales provide publishers with the opportunity to sell their ads to a larger audience and increase the amount of money they make from those ads. They can also increase the size of their audience through direct advertising sales by establishing connections with new groups of people, such as advertisers who are interested in targeting more specialized markets. They are able to increase their revenue stream because this allows them to connect with audiences that were previously inaccessible.

Using direct ad sales for co-promotion with other publishers allows publishers to grow their audiences while simultaneously increasing their revenue. They are able to communicate with a larger audience by focusing on particular demographics or geographical areas. Not only are they able to connect with new audiences and extend their reach, but they can do so in a manner that is efficient and inexpensive.

4. Improve their revenue

Direct campaigns with buyers generate above average CPMs and increase publisher revenue. Publishers that incorporate direct ad sales earn a higher eCPM than other publishers who rely solely on bids from the open-market.  Platforms have seen an improvement in the effectiveness of their ad sales, which has resulted in an increase in revenue. Since they switched to direct ad sales, they have also noticed a significant increase in the number of people purchasing their advertisements.

When publishers engage in direct ad sales, they are able to make significantly more money. Publishers have the ability to determine their own inventory pricing and terms, which makes this form of advertising potentially more lucrative than other available options. By setting up their own advertising channels and selling advertisements directly to customers, publishers are able to keep all their cards in their hands and negotiate prices, terms, and the length of their contracts.

5. Take advantage of high impact placements

When publishers sell advertising space directly to advertisers, as opposed to selling it through advertising networks, the publishers retain a greater degree of control over their ad space. This provides publishers with the flexibility to provide various high impact ad placements (i.e. interstitials, background skins, etc.) that will be:

• The most relevant for their audience.
• Improve overall website layout and user experience.
• Most desired by advertisers.

Additionally, publishers have more leeway when it comes to changing their pricing models and selling advertisements, which enables them to keep up with the rapid pace of the digital advertising market in today’s world. This is another point on how they can make more revenue by charging advertisers what they want.

By working directly with the advertisers to create deal segments, publishers have the ability to select which audience sees a particular type of adas well as the frequency with which it appears. They are also able to choose the targeting metrics that are used.. In contrast to other ad selling models, which restrict the options available to you and your company if something isn’t working, direct deals give publishers the ability to switch formats, reduce their ad rates, and increase their revenue by lowering the cost of their advertising inventory.

Wrapping up

The model of direct ad sales provides publishers with a variety of advantages. First and foremost, direct campaigns usually have an above average CPM which increases revenue without reducing user experience.  With direct deals, Publishers can sell advertisements in a manner that is more targeted and relevant to their audience, which, in comparison to the traditional methods of advertising sales, provides publishers and advertisers with a better return on investment. It enables them to control campaign targeting and makes it easier for them to communicate with their audience using relevant ads. Incorporating direct ad sales is also a great way to grow ad revenue quickly. Publishers are able to exert full control over their advertisements, avoid squandering time on the creation of content, and more effectively communicate with the audience they seek to reach.

The post Benefits of Direct Sales for Publishers first appeared on Freestar.