“If you want something done right, do it yourself.” We’ve heard this all our lives; we think and say it often. It’s part of the human fabric from which we’re spun.

This do-it-yourself spirit infuses everything we do, but nowhere do its commercial possibilities shine so brightly as on the World Wide Web. How else can you explain the wild popularity and success of MySpace and Flickr, largely the creation of their individual users, or the entirely new channel of commerce created by ebay and its millions of market participants from Mom and Pop to IBM and John Deere?

Enter Right Media and its platform that enables Web sites, networks and advertisers to link to one another in an endless chain of marketing opportunities. Good relationships generate good business, and good processes help make them better, faster. By providing the tools that enable thousands of participants in an open exchange to link their fortunes to one another, Right Media makes it more efficient and remunerative for all buyers and sellers of online advertising.

We spend a lot of time talking among ourselves and with customers and prospects about how a true marketplace for online ad buying and selling makes the process smoother and more productive for everyone. At its heart, our success is all about letting our customers build our business by empowering them to do it themselves.

The simple act of linking, for example, is a powerful process through which a publisher can increase competition for its inventory, an advertiser can find more prospects for its goods and services, and a network can facilitate trade among all players. So the next time someone asks you how to do online advertising right, tell them to “do it yourself” – with a little help from Right Media.

Updated APIs:

• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Both publisher and advertiser services were updated to be in sync with UI (support for finance office). One change visible to API users is that set of fields in publisher and advertisers types is different then in the previos version. Particularly billing address is gone. Another change visible to API users is that add() method in both publisher and advertiser services has a new parameter contact.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Campaign data type has a new field ‘priority’.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Advertiser/Publisher data types have a new readonly field ‘integration_code’. It cannot be set by add() or update(). There is a separate new API call setIntegrationCode() to set it. Please note that this call fails unless there exists at least one IO between current entity and Advertiser/Publisher you are setting the code for.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Field ‘billing_name’ was removed from Advertiser/Publisher custom types.

Bugfixes:

• When creating an advertiser or a publisher finance_office.label and finance_office.default_type were not set.
• Publisher service didn’t validate if entity name is unique.
• When creating a section it should have ‘Unknown’ channel by default.
• (INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE) Java Axis SOAP clients couldn’t set neither country_id or region_id fields for publisher/advertisers. Workarounded by removing default values from WSDL which most SOAP clients do not use anyway.

API documentation: http://api.yieldmanager.com/doc/.

WSDLs for the production version:

• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/advertiser.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/campaign.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/contact.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/creative.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/insertion_order.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/line_item.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/publisher.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/section.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/site.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/beta/target_profile.php?wsdl

Test version UI: http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-ui/.

WSDLs for the test version:

• http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-0.15/advertiser.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-0.15/campaign.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-0.15/contact.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-0.15/creative.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-0.15/insertion_order.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-0.15/line_item.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-0.15/publisher.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-0.15/section.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-0.15/site.php?wsdl
• http://api.yieldmanager.com/test-0.15/target_profile.php?wsdl

It’s interesting how certain companies get a lot of media attention, while others don’t.  A quick and wise post from The Vantage Point blog points out that Right Media is one of the NY tech companies that actually has a business model.

37Signals continues to be the star of the new world of web software development.  A new article in BusinessWeek talks about their method of developing web applications called “Getting Real”.

I follow 37Signals and their philosophy with interest since our team is currently in the midst of developing a web application, so hearing ideas on how to best develop them is a good learning experience.

Generally, I like their philosophy, but I think too many people in the media, blogs, and actual companies may be taking it too literally.  Ideas like “less is more” are probably pretty universally true, however ideas like not making product specifications and just building it are more specific to their situation.  First, their team is a group that has experience designing, programming, and has the business background to know what will work.  Not all companies or product teams have well-rounded people.  Some companies are going to have dynamite programmers who can’t design anything visually.  Or designers who are great, but who lack the business background to know what the application should do.

I agree with the basic idea of getting the product out there as fast as possible and then getting user feedback to improve it.  However, if you take that too literally, you could potentially release something that just isn’t very good and get a negative reputation.  For 37Signals, they happen to have a very talented team that can put out a product quickly that’s also good.  Other companies may try that and fall flat on their face.

We’re excited to get this product out there and get that user feedback, we’re trying to keep it simple and clean, but it still needs to be good for these 37Signals concepts to work.  We’ve got a talented team on it, so it should work out just fine.

In our effort to continually broaden our suite of solutions we’ve released an interstitial ad size to Yield Manager.

What is an interstitial?
An interstitial is often considered the web version of the TV commercial.  It’s an ad that is shown alone on a page before the originally requested page appears. The interestitial page contains the ad, your logo and a link for the user to skip the ad and go directly to the content.  It also has a set number of seconds before the page auto-refreshes and goes to the originally requested page.  View a demo here.

What size are the ads?
Interstitial ads are usually 720×300 and often contain the types of similar that you’d see in popup or popunder ads.  Although it’s possible to display any ad size on the interstitial page.

What CPM do they earn?
As with all Yield Manager ad sizes, each impression is auctioned off so CPMs will vary per publisher and network, but they generally pay more than any ad size except popups.

What sort of control do publishers have?
Publishers can choose the following:

• Logo used on interstitial page
• Page background color
• Text color
• Link color
• Frequency cap of interstitials per user
• Time it takes to refresh and move on to content

How do I get started with interstitials?
Getting started depends on what type of business you are.

Publishers: Log in and pull an interstitial ad tag under the pops category.

Advertisers: Let your sales rep know you’re interested in running  interstitial ads with Right Media or with another Yield Manager network partner.

Networks: Activate this new tag in your available tag sizes, let publishers know it’s available, and let your ad sales team know that they can sell it.