The yearly pilgrimage to DMEXCO 2019 in Cologne, Germany turned out to a be very insightful. There were the usual behemoths like Google, Facebook, Adobe and more followed by smaller players and then by the smallest in Hall 9 called the Future Park.
YuktaMedia’s booth was in Future Park in Hall 9 next to all the Programmatic and Yield Management technology providers. YuktaMedia team had a chance to meet with medium and large Publishers and Affiliate marketers from around the world… Belgium, Turkey, Germany, USA and others…
Here’s a summary of our conversations with them:
Publishers East of Western Europe are suffering with low CPMs and Fill rates with the exception of UAE and Saudi, middle east in general. Low CPMs are mostly driven by the fact that Consumers in this region don’t have the purchasing power. Hence, even if Brands were to spend on advertising, they won’t see the kind of ROI from it. Fill rates are low because the supply is very high. Mostly because of the large mobile savvy population in these regions. There’s a lot of content consumption leading to ad opportunities, which unfortunately don’t get filled. Some Publishers non-US and non-Western European Publisher mentioned that their CPMs are 1/20th compared to those in North America and Western Europe.
Some Publishers in EU have taken a different approach. Instead of focusing on 100% fill, they are focused on making sure that the CPMs remain high there by preventing inventory commoditization. They believe that focus on fill leads to drop in CPMs leading to long term devaluation of the inventory value.
Many Publishers in EU region seem to be missing out new opportunities due to the lack of right technology expertise and information at their disposal. In the post GDPR and Unified first-price auctions world, Publishers are more than ever in need to catch up and stay up to date with the new changes. Some Publishers are not willing to take a new approach to do the business and sticking to the old-fashioned way which hurts their business and limits their exposure to the new opportunities.
Most Publishers see the value in data and hence are willing to spend their budgets on it. Hence, they implement reporting systems. But here are some of the key challenges that they face with these systems:
Most of these systems require technical resource to set up and keep up with the changing business needs.
Charts and graphs galore! These platforms have tonnes of ways to slice and dice the data and visualize it. But given the amount of data it doesn’t really remain feasible option to keep creating dozens of charts and graphs. Then Publishers need a team just to do the reporting for them. So, Publishers end up paying for the platform and also a large team to use it and extract the value from it.
For some Publisher, understanding the real value towards business is hard to pinpoint, either in terms of cost savings or increased revenue.
Publishers were still speaking a much different language than that of their Buyers (Brands / Agencies). They were still not talking in terms of audiences, engagement and ROI. There seems to be lack of awareness of how what they have to sell (inventory /ad opportunities) fits in the goals of their Buyer’s goals. There needs to be more education with Publishers so that they better understand Brand’s needs.
The universal question on every Publisher’s mind was “how do I increase my revenue?”. There seemed to be some expectation around finding a silver bullet that will solve all their revenue problems. But unfortunately, it’s not so. Especially when most of Digital ecosystem is skewed towards brands. Publishers have to…
Really understand the value of their inventory as perceived by their Buyers and their own Audiences.
Use automation with managed services to reduce costs and identify new opportunities. Leverage platforms that provide end-to-end business visibility and let teams across Ad Ops, Revenue Ops, Sales and Tech collaborate with each other in real time and make data driven decision making.
Don’t keep 100% dependency on ad revenue. Explore new channels of revenue generation such has a pay wall, etc.
Hope this information is useful. To discuss you specific needs, reach out to us atinfo@webtest.yuktamedia.com
Aditya is the founder & managing partner at YuktaMedia. He has rich global experience in Digital Media having worked with large Publishers and Media Houses. That paired with his deep technical knowledge of enterprise systems has led him to create and lead YuktaOne Media ERP for Publishers.
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