If you’re involved in your site’s ad sales or operations, you probably get lots of calls like these from networks:

“We’ve got great new advertisers, but you’re not giving us enough inventory. We’ll guarantee you $1.00 cpm for the next three months if you move us up the chain.”

“Our new targeting technology increases results across the board by as much as 1,000 percent. Give us more of your better inventory so we can show you how to generate more repeat business at higher prices.”

Everybody wants your inventory. Let’s celebrate!

Or not. Put on your premium sales hat and now it’s you telling a different story:

“Our site delivers your target audience and keeps them longer than any of our competitors. Our brand-building programs help you capitalize on their loyalty and that stickiness.”

“If we lock up this deal today, I’ll get you the 300×250 on the section front and bonus you an equal number ROS.”

Sometimes it seems like you can’t give it away.

So you keep doing what good publishers must to increase demand: produce better content; find and keep the right audience; package the inventory for easy sale; recruit and train great salespeople who buyers trust.

Then you dump your remnant inventory with those nagging networks and settle for a few additional dollars every month.

It’s ok to admit that you relate to this scenario. For the most part, this is how publishers prioritize and run their ad sales business.

At the iMedia Brand Summit in Henderson, NV, in September 2006, Dave Steinberger, VP of Operations for Tickle, Inc., hit a nerve when he told a room full of publishers how his management team purposefully took a completely new approach to remnant. They had to change their philosophy, their worldview, their perception of the true role of remnant inventory in their overall business plan.

For example, they realized that if they pursued a partnership with several other sites to create a strong ad package for brand advertisers, they would have many times more remnant inventory to deal with. It didn’t make sense to take what might be billions of impressions and hand it to a few networks. Doing so meant that those networks would determine the value of those assets. They would pay the new Tickle Grapevine Network based on their numbers, which wouldn’t distinguish one property’s value from another.

With no ability to see what the networks are doing and how they are valuing the inventory, Steinberger and his partners would never know if they were getting as much as they could for the assets.

Fortunately, Steinberger found Right Media and the Publisher Media Exchange, which made it possible for Tickle Grapevine to scale a large and lucrative network for their remnant inventory.

PMX enabled the publishers to earn market value for every impression, minimize overhead, and maintain full control over what runs on their pages. One person is largely responsible for managing more than 60 advertisers running 3 billion impressions monthly on 12 sites. (Read the full story here)

Ask yourself if you may be undervaluing your inventory. Maybe you’ve put a significant chunk of it in the hands of a few networks and you’re ok with getting a few checks. If you take a closer look, you may realize that you’ve left a lot of money on the table. Get your team together and ask some questions:

• Do we understand how our networks value the impressions we give them?

• Do we know where every ad comes from and how it is performing?

• Can we automate the way we manage our network relationships, consolidate their reports, and approve or ban ad creatives?

• Does our current ad technology ensure delivery of the highest-priced ad on every ad call?

• Do we have a good reason for every house ad we serve instead of a paying ad?

Give it some thought. You may discover that it’s a good time to change the way you think about your remnant inventory.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 1:51 pm and is filed under About Right Media, Publishers, Publisher Media Exchange. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.