1. DMX is very different from a traditional network. The most successful (read: highest-earning) publishers on DMX don’t just traffic DMX tags into an outside platform to pick up their defaults, they use it as it was intended—as a platform to help them manage their advertising deals. With all of your deals trafficked into DMX, you can leverage all of its power to manage as much of your advertising as possible, forcing both your linked networks and your external deals to compete with one another, earning you as much as possible.
2. More competition is always better. Always. Link to as many networks as you can, while still meeting minimums and receiving checks as often as necessary. Ad campaigns are in constant flux and having a standing relationship with a network ensures that you have access when those rockstar campaigns come through! Use the Analyze tab to narrow down the areas where you have the lowest CPMs and fill, and work to find new partners to improve performance in those areas.
3. Pricing in Manage: update often. While some of your placements may be deals that you sold yourself at set CPMs, odds are that some of them are networks that aren’t a part of DMX. The CPMs those networks are paying fluctuate just as much as the CPMs from DMX networks, so updating placements on a weekly basis to make sure that the price in DMX reflects what you’re really earning is a very simple way to maximize your revenue. Even a one cent difference between the price you have set and the price they’re paying can really add up! Think about it—if Network X wins a bunch of your inventory at $0.75, then only pays $0.65, you could be losing out on revenue if the linked networks would’ve paid between $0.66 and $0.74. Similarly, if you have a placement at $0.75, but it’s really paying $1, the linked networks could be winning auctions for as low as $0.76.
4. Watch the placement of ads on your pages. Use your common sense here. Putting excessive ads on a page could lead your site’s visitors to ignore them, reducing interaction with ads and, in turn, reducing your CPMs. Also, too many ads on a page may annoy visitors and cause them to seek out other pages with more content and fewer ads. Some of our most successful publishers only have one or two ads on most of their pages—the combination of more traffic and higher CPMs works out quite nicely for them.
5. Frequency caps rule. When I think about the most important tools in DMX, frequency caps come to mind. Frequency is at the top of the list of metrics advertisers use to measure the value of impressions. The concept of “ad blindness”–the more ads someone sees, the more that person ignores ads—is as old as advertising itself. Effective use of frequency caps is key to getting the most you can out of each of your advertisers and networks. When in doubt of where to set a frequency cap, ask the forums or a contact at DMX about suggested caps for specific networks.
6. Be creative! We built DMX to help you manage your ad deals, but that doesn’t mean you need to use each tool in the exact way that it’s presented. DMX may be a simple product, but it’s built on a very robust platform, so I encourage you to stretch the functionalities. Here are some ideas:
o Get Fancy with Placements: Instead of setting up multiple placements for an advertiser based on geographical areas, you might also consider trying to analyze the network’s performance and break your inventory into tiers. If you have a network that pays better than anyone out there for fresh eyes, and they’re so-so on the higher frequency impressions, you could set up a placement with a cap of one and a high CPM, then set up a second placement with a lower CPM and a higher cap on the “second tier” impressions.
o Compare Placements: If you have a few ads on each page and want to see how they perform individually, you can just set up different “sites” (e.g. url.com/left and url.com/bottom). After placing tags in the appropriate positions, you’ll be able to see reports on the sections individually.
o If you’re using your own servers and you want to keep your ads G-rated during the day, but PG-13’s ok at night, you could set up different “sites” for the different times of day, associate different Media Guard profiles with those sites, pull two sets of DMX tags, one for the day, one for the night, then use your own servers to serve up the appropriate tags.
o Make everyone play nice: As mentioned in #2, you should be working with as many networks as possible. With all of the advertisers, networks, platforms and other ad management products out there, compatibility can get difficult. The good news is that there’s almost always someone that had to make it work before you, so the DMX staff is pretty versed at the different obstacles to compatibility presented by your external deals and we’ll be able to help you out. There’s no reason to split inventory between multiple servers or platforms, creating a management nightmare, when you can make them all work together in one, efficient auction.
7. Ask us for help! Seriously. Everyone that works at DMX is happy (and paid) to help you out—take advantage of that. Don’t think of us as just a support system or someone to call when things go wrong, think of us as consultants to help you grow your business.

This Wednesday a few members will set out to rep for the DMX team at Twiistup. The unique conference is held in Santa Monica at the swanky Viceroy Hotel and it features influential bloggers, investors, techies, and fellow industry pros. We’re excited to be a sponsor and we’re looking forward to rubbing elbows with some of our publishers and network friends.

If you’re a publisher, a Right Media Exchange client or friend, or simply in Santa Monica and want to learn more about DMX, then we want to meet you! Shoot me an email at kkitchel@rightmedia.com.

For many years now, I’ve been working on a publisher product, Direct Media Exchange and acting as a publisher advocate for Right Media working to help maintain the Internet as an open, transparent and evolving ecosystem.

That’s why I was glad to see that the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) announced a new effort to broaden the coalition of publishers on the web who are shaping industry standards. I encourage all publishers to check out this opportunity to join this important organization (and get some nice membership benefits along the way!)

Beyond all the festivities, though, there is one major topic that I know each one of us really reflects on this time of year: Frequency Capping.

Here are some tips from the Direct Media Exchange team:

Cam says: “Make sure to cap! It helps increase your fill rate from outside third-party networks. It stops sending them the impressions that they would normally send to default. And don’t forget to stick a feather in your frequency cap!”

Joe says: “Find out when your impressions are defaulting and set them appropriately— don’t just put caps on arbitrarily. Adjust your frequency caps and see how your fill rate is affected. For example, if your cap is set at 3 per 24 hours, and you’re still getting defaults, you should adjust the cap to 2 per 24 hours. If you’re getting no defaults, you should raise the daily number.”

Chuck says: “Use the reporting tools in your 3rd party accounts to determine several pricing points based on frequency, then use DMX frequency capping to create multiple placements at those price points. For example: rather than 1 placement capped at 5 per user per day set at $.20 eCPM, you might have a placement at 1 per user per day at $.60 eCPM, another at $.20 eCPM at 2 per user per day, and a third at $.10 at 2 per user per day to more accurately reflect the pricing at your third party.”

I say: “This might take some practice, because frequency capping is an art, not a science. The DMX forum is a great place to go for community support, and remember that the DMX team is always here for you too.”

Direct Media Exchange recently came under the leadership of Cam McNeeley.  Cam has been with DMX since its birth in July 2006, and has seen it through every stage of growth.  He’s the perfect candidate for the job and his vision for the solution is fantastic:

“In an increasingly competitive market for self-service ad management systems, DMX is in a position to differentiate itself as the most powerful free tool on the market to optimize and maximize revenue from multiple networks.  The combination of free, hosted ad management, built-in monetization, and most importantly, DMX’s direct connection to the Right Media Exchange networks, is what sets us apart in this industry.”

DMX Mission:

• Provide a reliable tool for medium to small publishers to effectively monetize their inventory by fostering competition among all of their networks
• Offer fast, high quality support to all clients and high-touch, personalized business advice to strategic Client Services-supported publishers
• Serve the long tail and large remnant publishers

Aside from professional goals and strategies, you should also know some other stuff about Cam.  For instance, sometimes he likes to use computer-related terms to describe human interactions.  I might ask you to ‘tell me about that.’ Cam would ask you to ‘download that information to me.’ But only if you have the ‘bandwidth.’ Or ‘brainwidth.’  It’s not as cool as it sounds.

Some fun Cam facts:

• Favorite movies: True Romance, The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona
• Favorite TV show: Six Feet Under
• Highest Bowling Score: 279
• Favorite quote: “The whistles go WOOOO!” –Bubb Rubb
• Favorite music: acoustic folk guitar, gangster rap
• Favorite drink: “El Cameron Especial,” which contains Jim Beam Black, gingerale, and a lime
• Pet facts: Cam once had a cat named Bruce Dickinson that accidentally climbed into his neighbor’s moving truck and went to Florida.  Now he has an awesome yellow lab named Samba
• Cam loves bacon and breakfast burritos way more than the average person

Any questions?

I was sifting through some of Vince’s old blog drafts that were never posted, and found one summing up an interview he did with me about the approvals process. I thought it might be a good choice for my first entry.

“So imagine that you’ve just created a smoking hot website. The next thing you could do is submit your new website to different advertising partners to be part of their programs. Then you can generate some revenue from your hard-earned, organically grown traffic.

But then the reality of the approval process sets in. Sometimes you’re accepted. Sometimes you wait forever–and then get accepted. And sometimes you’re just outright denied. How do you make it easier on yourself (and the approvers)?

Well, I don’t know everyone’s rules and regulations regarding approvals, but I do know the head ‘approval’ person here for DMX. Kelly K. is her name and approvals (and denials) is her game. Let’s see if we can get the skinny on this whole sticky subject of approvals…

Vince Panero (VP): You do approvals, right?

Kelly K.: Yep, I’m doing approvals.

VP: You know it’s a tricky subject; people like to think they’ll always be approved by the partner they’re applying to, but there’s always ‘content guidelines’…

Kelly K.: I go by the guidelines for approvals. It pretty much covers everything to my knowledge.

VP: What are some of the things that keep potential DMX ‘pubs’ from getting your stamp of approval?

Kelly K.: Well, the most common reason that I deny a site that could otherwise be OK is ‘adult content.’ It’s so common because just ONE inappropriate picture makes their whole site deniable. Another one is that the publisher ‘contact and sign-up’ information doesn’t pan out—there’s something fishy or odd about their site/sign-up info, so I email them and never hear back.

VP: What else?

Kelly K.: Copyright violations—usually with music and movie download sites. Another is poorly-designed sites with too many ads, no original content, etc. That’s a big DMX guideline: ‘Be clean and professional in design with quality content.’

VP: So, for publishers, what can they do to fast track their approval process?

Kelly K.: They can start by referring to our content guidelines to make sure they make the cut. Another thing off the top of my head is that they can register with an email address from their website domain.

Here’s an example: if I see ‘joeschmoe@xyzmail.com’ registering with a great website that isn’t ‘www.xyzmail.com’, I often have to go through the process of emailing them to verify that he/she owns their sites.

Now, if they register with joeschmoe@greatwebsite.com, (the same domain that they are registering) then I don’t have to take that extra step (most of the time). It saves me work, but it also just gets them on board a lot faster.

VP: Well, Kelly, we collectively appreciate your efforts over here. It’s tough to cycle through so many publishers.

Kelly K.: Hey, thanks. But it’s fun to see all the cool people coming to join our exchange. It rocks.

VP: Thanks K!

Kelly K.: Don’t mention it V.
…and if you’re ready to get your site approved for Direct Media Exchange, click here.”