Rubicon Project Hires Director Of UK Publisher Development
The Rubicon Project, a yield optimisation platform aimed at publishers and ad networks, stepped up its expansion into Europe by hiring Justin Thomas as Director of UK Publisher Development. Thomas worked as commercial director at Xelector for three years, where he established strategic partnerships with publishers including Tesco, MSN and The Telegraph. The new Rubicon Project hire also worked at AOL for seven years. His primary role will be to build relationships with publishers, and get premium sites to use the Rubicon Project yield optimisation platform. Justin Thomas on his new role at the company:
My background includes developing new revenue streams for online publishers and working for a major international publisher, so the opportunity to apply that experience to help premium web publishers increase their revenue from online advertising seems like the right next step in my career. I was attracted to the pedigree of the people working for the Rubicon Project and the innovation of the technology. I recognise how valuable the product will be in helping UK premium publishers manage, optimise and increase their advertising sales revenue.
John Nardone On The Audience Buy
John Nardone, CEO of X+1, writes about the importance of the audience buy. In his Imedia Connection post, Nardone is sceptical of a new report commissioned by Conde Nast, which points to relevant web content being a major factor in ad recall. He argues that contextual ads on premium sites can often be more costly, and generally don’t scale well for some advertisers:
Let’s say you’re [desinger label] Coach. How many contextually relevant sites can you be on, once you’ve hit the major fashion sites? What’s far more important than getting your ad on, say Vogue.com, is getting it in front of fashion-minded women who have the means to buy expensive leather goods and accessories.
Conde Nast tries to spin its survey by saying that a relevant editorial environment makes it all happen. This may be truer in print, but the online advertising world is a big leap from the landscape where Conde Nast has thrived. The only way to reach a print audience is to buy ads in publications. Online however, audience and content are uncoupled from one another, so you can buy audience without being tethered to editorial.
Nardone goes on to say that premium buys have their place in the media plan, but makes the point that you can reach a bigger audience at a cheaper CPM rate through targeting on ad exchanges and ad networks:
The bottom line is that editorial matters only if you’re reaching your target audience at a price that makes sense for your ROI parameters. You need the right price/value relationship. It often pays to shell out a higher price and get a premium publisher, but most of the time, your best plan is to stitch together a campaign combining direct publisher buys of premium content with the scale of audience-based targeting on the ad exchanges and networks.