Overview

Increase reach and scale by linking directly with other clients in Yield Manager. This feature enables networks, publishers and advertisers to partner more easily with each other. Networks have always had the ability to find and request links. But now we’re opening that up to all of our clients. 

The Benefits

For advertisers, linking eliminates the need to send creatives for each campaign to your media partners and require them to traffic creatives into other ad serving solutions. Once trafficked into Yield Manager, the same pool of creatives can be used for any publisher that wants to link with you.

For publishers, linking means that campaigns can get set up in hours rather than days. Not only do you eliminate room for error in trafficking or click tracking code, it also allows you to realize revenue faster.

For networks, linking increases the access to both advertisers and publishers otherwise not in their own network. Create more competition at each auction and increase the revenue potential.

Direct Linking

In the Linking tab, you can research other companies, rate ones you’ve worked with, and request links to those with whom you’d like to partner.

Build the company profile. Introduce your company to other clients with a brief company description. Let others know what you’re targeting (i.e. channels for publishers, offer types for advertisers) by broadcasting your needs and the appropriate contacts.

Find partners. Use the Linking tab to research other Yield Manager clients. Check out company profiles, their specific needs, and what others have said about them. Add your insight about companies you’re currently working with so that others may benefit.

Invite others to link. Found someone you’d like to work with? Request a link to create an insertion order. The other company will receive an email notification of your interest. For you, the other company will now be a pending link as well as show up on your Advertisers or Publisher lists. However, until the other party approves the link, this insertion order will remain inactive.

Approve partner links. Did you receive a request? Do some research on the company and decide whether you’d like the partnership. If you wish to work with them, virtually “shake hands” by approving the insertion order.

Serve Ads. You’re not quite done yet. Before you can start serving ads, both parties need to negotiate the financial terms of the agreement and add the appropriate line item(s).

Things to Consider

While the Linking tab facilitates direct linking, it does not replace your sales and business development teams. Your company still needs to decide who you’re willing to work with and on what terms.

When researching other companies consider things such as payment terms, payment types, content types, channels, creative types, offer types, cancellation policies, uniqueness of offering as compared to existing partners, and other partner ratings and comments.

In writing your company profile and the needs sections, keep in mind all these business rules and disclose as much information as you would find useful when you’re looking for a partner.

Feedback

Right Media is dedicated to providing our clients with a robust product. Any feedback, as always, is appreciated.

Line items are like opinions…everybody has one. In most cases, a line item between Right Media and a publisher is a pretty standard thing. It holds the information about the revenue share agreement and includes some targeting and banning options as well. In most cases, this is sufficient to accomplish what the publisher needs. But there are some exceptions where you might want to get more sophisticated with how ads are delivered to your inventory and you wonder…What if they could do more?!

In fact, they can. Some publishers have such diverse inventory that using one set of targeting and banning rules isn’t a good solution. I had a client approach me with this problem and we were able to solve this dilemma.

This publisher owned both a desktop application and a network of sites where he wanted to show Right Media ads. His problem was that on the desktop application, he had strict guidelines on what could be shown, since these ads would be seen by users who had to pay for this software. Keeping those users happy and seeing only what he approved was more important to him than eCPM rates. For his sites, on the other hand, he was willing to be more open about what types of ads he showed, knowing that allowing a bigger creative pool was beneficial to the auction process used by the Right Media ad server, Yield Manager. The more creatives he allowed in the rotation, the better his eCPM rates would be.  

The solution was to create two different line items with different banning rules. Both were set at the same revenue share but were targeted uniquely, per inventory type. The desktop software line item was targeted at that specific section and he was able to put in all of his strict banning rules. The other line item was targeted at his web inventory and left mostly untouched to allow wide open delivery. Using this method, he was able to keep his paying users happy while he maximized eCPM on each inventory type. 

When faced with diverse inventory, with different needs, multiple line items might be the answer. 

In recent weeks, more and more companies have been trying to scam ad networks by spawning pops off of regular banner ads. These scammers–usually unknown third parties–think that they can make “free money” by buying cheap banner inventory and using that inventory to sell pops. This illegitimate business hurts everyone in the entire industry.

At first the pops spawning off of banners (“banner pops”) were mostly limited to third party tags. In recent weeks the problem has spread to actual flash creatives as well. Scammers are embedding some bad javascript code into creatives which run infrequently and are often targeted to only show to certain geographical regions. Sometimes they even pop at certain small time intervals throughout the day! These companies set it up so that the networks that they buy from never actually see these pops. 

Everyone gets hurt by these scams. Those on the front line, the publishers, have to fend off complaints by their visitors about bad pops showing up on their sites. They, in turn, complain to the networks, who have to track down the bad creative (which of course can be nearly impossible if it’s set to only pop at strange hours of the night in Canada!!).

The Right Media tech team is working on several tools to both detect bad creatives before they hit publisher’s sites and help users track down misbehaving creatives faster. We also work around the clock making sure we track down any bad creative that gets reported to us. Moreover, we’re always trying to pinpoint the companies that are perpetuating the scam, and keep them out of the marketplace.

The other day I went to see a company that has been buying media on the Right Media Network for years. This Market Research Company acts like an ROI-focused advertiser, with conversions defined as a completed survey. The situation is more complex on second glance: surveys change frequently (more or less complex with different topics, etc.), as do their targets. Above all, the company is concerned about unduplicated reach (which should be high) for sampling validity. So the goal of ROI optimization (zeroing in on the targets) and the objective of maintaining high reach need to be re-balanced continuously.

Proposing a self managed advertiser solution is obvious. The Advertiser will gain operational efficiencies – trafficking, unified reporting and comparable data sets. They will also be able to change things on the fly at any time without having to talk to Account Managers at the ad networks. But beyond these benefits, which can be accomplished with pretty much any third-party ad server, implementing Yield Manager for Advertisers will provide them with some crucial benefits.

First off, the client will be able to control exposure globally across networks, thus giving them the ability to manage unduplicated reach — particularly important for the research client. Furthermore, the client will have instant access to the Yield Manager Marketplace — an open exchange of media for all clients on the platform. It will enable the company to evaluate all impressions across the entire marketplace (not just on the Right Media Network) and only bid on and buy those impressions that meet their goals. This drastically increases acquisition efficiencies, allowing massive scale at tightly managed ROI.