Welcome To AdTech Weekly
I Am Where I Am In Life Because Of Advertising Online.
Ever since I was a ‘tween I wanted to work as a technology journalist. I didn’t know what it was called, or how to go about getting the gig, but every time I stumbled across some consumer technology review on the television (the internet was barely a thing yet), and saw someone talking about gadgets, I knew I'd eventually be doing that too.
The thought about how I’d get paid to do it never once crossed my mind.
Advertising online pays the bills for a lot of everyday people.
It’s easy to get caught up in the machinations of an industry or to bemoan the seemingly Machiavellian plans of some of the largest players in ad tech, with the data collection, cookie syncing, and assault on privacy. When I boil it all down, I come back to one simple truism: advertising online is responsible for driving the revenue of the majority of content creation on the internet. It creates jobs. It helps people chase their dreams.
I got to play tech journalist for a decade. Advertising made that possible. Running display advertisements on my blog paid my tuition costs. It paid for a wedding. It paid for a honeymoon. It paid for a down payment on my first home. It helped me line up all of the things I needed in life to confidently start a family, have kids, and eventually carve out a career.
My little tech blog, monetized solely through display advertisements (thanks to BuySellAds) and affiliate programs (thanks to Amazon and StackCommerce), made my life possible. It made it possible for me to focus on my craft (writing), and make a living while doing it. Millions of small and independent media company owners rely on advertising to grow their businesses (sadly, they’re the ones bearing the brunt of the ad blocker revolution today).
Advertising will always have a soft spot in my heart. It can affect change, and the majority of that change is positive. It happens by lowering real barriers to industries that often have a stranglehold on revenue online. Of course, with all the good, sometimes we get the bad as well. Fake news can be used as a dangerous propaganda tool, and it’s currently being monetized through advertising.
Over the last couple of years, it’s become increasingly evident that the online advertising industry is in need of a soul transplant. But, we shouldn’t throw the good out with the bad. Advertising online can do a lot of good, especially when it’s used to facilitate change in creative and media industries. Lately, everyone in the online ecosystem has forgotten that the consumer’s needs and expectations are the most important part of the advertising equation.
Advertising online is deeply flawed.
Advertising has its problems, and plenty of brilliant minds are trying to tackle the situation directly. Some are looking to redefine the industry, while others are seeking to provide creatives with different tools to earn a living from their life’s work. There’s no one solution, at least not yet. But, we’ll get there. The more monetization strategies available to media companies, both small and large, the better.
I often get asked why I took a job at an Ad Tech company by friends and family. It always comes back to two things for me: first, the industry has given me so much, I’d like to give back and pave the way for the next generation of media startups; second, as a little guy, I couldn’t influence much change on my own. I couldn’t alter the advertising paradigm or change its course, but from within the industry, I can help bring privacy and user-experience issues to the forefront. I can apply my experiences as a publisher within a company that shares my belief that ad tech doesn’t need to rely on deep-targeting data to survive.
I wish more independent publishers would join the ad tech debate and bring their experiences with them.
There Are A Lot Of Things I Don’t Know, But I Know This…
Advertising will always be around. In one form (classifieds) or another (ad tech). People will always market their products. The key to getting back on track, though, is whether or not we can get back to a time and place where we can do those things ethically.
I believe we can.
Joshua Schnell, BuySellAds
AdTech News And Editorial
Customized Ad Tech Can Give Brands A Competitive Edge
Brands should aspire to having technologies customized to their needs, which allows for a competitive edge. Every brand has unique business challenges yet the tools used to overcome these challenges are likely the same or similar to those of their competitors. The differentiator today is the way in which people operate the technology, which is critical, but there are significant potential gains from customizing technologies around specific business use cases. It’s surprising there are few examples of brands doing this.
Google is beating Facebook in the fake news PR war
Google has been “a little more on top of things than Facebook” in addressing fake news because Google’s business model relies more on accuracy, said Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics at The Poynter Institute. Fake news can undermine search results, and that would be a major problem for Google users who use actively seek reliable information. Facebook, on the other hand, is built around giving people a positive or powerful experience, and its users are less likely to be dismayed if they passively come across fake news as long as it makes them happy, she said.
Facebook Shutters Atlas Ad Server, Ending Its Assault On DoubleClick; Atlas To Live On As Measurement Pixel
On Friday, Facebook made the inevitable official by retiring the ad-serving component of Atlas, thereby making it primarily a people-based measurement pixel. The ad-serving capability will be phased out over the next couple of months so as not to be disruptive to users.
Is Search A Publisher’s Best Friend Again?
A few months ago, Google made a few mysterious changes to its algorithm and suddenly publishers with a lot of rich, evergreen content found their results tanking. Google supposedly has a strategy called EAT – expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness – that guides its tweaks to content rankings, but freshness recently has become much more important.
German tabloid Bild's ad cleanup cuts ad space by 20 percent
We set a threshold, and if it’s under-monetized, we get rid of it.
Publishing
For publishers, is the light at the end of the tunnel a train or the future?
With the constant changes occurring in this industry, it’s increasingly difficult to keep up – always adjusting your course, developing new products and services, or simply reacting to an evolving world. How much longer can we all keep up? Major news publishers, once thought to be impenetrable, are no longer enjoying the monopoly they once held on discourse.
Future Of Advertising
Epicurious Rebuilds App To Sprinkle In Native Ads, Video
That new ad experience includes native tiles that emulate article designs, including galleries and recipes. And while Epicurious kept in-stream 300x250s banner ads, it deleted the mobile banner.
Native Ads: Why The New York Times is Right — and You Can Be Too
With better experiences available to your readers, audiences will start spending more time on your site; those audiences will then bounce less (land on a page and immediately leave without clicking around much), and then they’ll start clicking around more — on both additional content and advertisements — as they come to trust a site.
Platforms
Several publishers on Medium have seen their traffic drop
Of the 16 largest publishers on Medium that have existed for at least a year, nine of them (56 percent) have seen their Alexa rank plummet, four of them have seen their rank increase (25 percent) and three have seen their rank fluctuate in no clear discernible pattern (19 percent).
Marketers like what they see in Snapchat Spectacles
Snapchat’s Spectacles have been making the rounds. The company’s latest offering, which hit the streets just over a week ago, is a hit among marketers, with brands and agencies like Sour Patch Kids, Mountain Dew, VaynerMedia and Space150 already trying them out.
Apple's New App Store Search Ads Have Some Brands Cashing In
Apple about three weeks ago debuted its search advertising product, which displays ads related to users' searches in its App Store. Although it's early days, app developers appear to be getting a bargain when it comes to cost-per-user acquisition, a crucial measure as the holiday season approaches and brands pitch shopping apps and, later, apps for smartphones received as gifts.