Adomik was founded back in late 2012. At the time, many publishers were only just discovering programmatic advertising. Most of them were relying on one single platform to manage their nascent programmatic business and daisy chains were still king in the Ad Server.

Fast forward six years and the advertising landscape is hardly recognizable. In the West, multiple studies state that 80% of digital advertising has gone programmatic. Every day we interact with publishers that use multiple programmatic technologies and products for mobile, video and native. These publishers who understand how important data is, are already onto the next challenge, exploring the future of header bidding.

If we pause and reflect over the past few years we realize how hard publishers have worked to deliver positive results. While the challenge of the duopoly gets stronger by the day, Adomik data shows that the average CPM of publishers increased significantly over the last 12 months. And yet… we believe we haven’t seen the end of it and that the market will keep evolving at a fast pace in the near future. The new trends that will impact the business of publishers are already visible. Just to name a few:

1) Transparency will improve.

This means better tools against fraud, better visibility on how advertiser dollars are spent across the value chain putting more pressure on middle men and probably changing business relationships for publishers. This also means a closer alignment of objectives between buyers and publishers.

2) User experience and data usage will have a greater impact on the ad industry.

In the aftermath of Cambridge Analytica and the GDPR, users are more sensitive to how their data is being used and how they are targeted. While the ad industry is still adjusting, publishers will have to adapt how they rely on first party data and contextual advertising will become more important as a result. User experience – including advertising quality and aggressiveness – will also be a key driver for publishers to attract and retain audience.

3) Programmatic direct will grow strong.

Whether we are talking about PMPs, programmatic guaranteed, audience guaranteed, first party data sales or others, publishers will have more “high value” programmatic products to market and sell in order to better serve the needs of buyers. On the other hand, new “side” products will grow, such as direct subscription models for users.

4) The relationship between publishers and advertising giants will evolve and get more complex.

Publishers are already relying on Google and Facebook for their ad technology, user data, content distribution (search, AMP, Facebook Instant Articles…) and will probably strengthen these relationships (additional advertising services, subscription management, data lakes, etc.), while adding new names to the list with Amazon or AT&T to name a few.

In short, there will be a number of opportunities to leverage in order for publishers to increase their revenue. Adomik is very optimistic about the ability of the sell-side to benefit from all of these trends. But still, you may have noticed that there is one recurring theme across all of these opportunities, from header to GDPR, from programmatic direct to advertising giants and product diversification:

Complexity.

It will not come easy.

These changes will reveal new unresolved questions. Staying up-to-date will become even more difficult. Moreover, identifying issues and missed opportunities may be even more complicated in the future, making the decision-making process more complex. Monitoring and measuring the impact of a decision in a world where most monetizations issues are inter-connected will be a struggle.

How can publishers use their data and expertise to make the right decisions?

We think that there are three key factors that every publisher needs to master in order to adopt a strategic decision-making process:

1) Good, reliable, and various data sets

Rely on data – gathered from your stack but also, as much as possible, from other market players (market data, buyer data…) – on data science and analytics to adopt a rational approach.

2) Industry expertise

When it comes to managing a growing number of demand partners, monetization platforms, advertising products, brand and user requirements, and to understand how a simple change can affect the whole of your business, developing a dedicated expertise will be key.

3) A clear methodology to understand your data

Follow these steps in order to extract useful knowledge that can help you achieve your goals.

1) Identify issues and opportunities,

2) Analyze the related data to support the decision-making process,

3) Implement decisions and

4) Monitor the impact.

But this is easier said than done and not all publishers have the same resources. Therefore we recommend one last step:

4) Partner with a data analysis company

We recommend that you partner with the right data analysis company that can help you through complex data-driven decision-making. With your partners you should:

a) Use state-of-the-art technology

b) Be open and transparent and share data, questions, issues and goals

c) Share common objectives

This collaboration will allow you to cope with current and upcoming monetization challenges and help you gain crucial leverage on data, technology and industry expertise specific to your needs. We have no doubt that if you follow these steps, you’ll be successful.

At Adomik, we feel that we’re just the partner you need to accompany you in this new era of digital advertising. We’ve been aiding publishers for years now and have developed multiple tools to support their monetization effort in a programmatic age.

In light of the recent changes to the advertising industry, Adomik feels it is necessary to keep up with the times and continue to respond to the growing and evolving needs of our clients. Thus we’ve developed an entirely revamped product suite to lead you to success: The Adomik Platform.

The new platform will replace all of our existing products and move from a product-centric to a problem-centric approach. It has been designed for managing publishers’ current monetization issues, and give them the means to understand, operate, decide and sell better.

The new Adomik Platform is powered by our brand new Data Engine which harnesses data from all monetization sources and the major publisher advertising stack tools (ad servers, header, SSPs, search, native platforms, demand partners, web analytics tools, CRM) across all channels, including revenue data, bid data and traffic data, pricing information, brand activity and so on.

The Adomik Data Engine will allow publishers to build the most comprehensive monetization dataset on the market, and beyond that, to power five products that target the most prominent issues publishers experience today and will tomorrow:

We hope that together with your data, and our shared industry expertise, Adomik technology and services will help you navigate the monetization challenges of today and tomorrow, build stronger relationships with buyers and brands, better leverage the stack of ad tech giants, seamlessly manage all your monetization products, and improve revenue per user alongside their site and app experience.

And maybe more importantly, we hope that as a user you enjoy our Platform, that your day-to-day job becomes easier and more interesting with us in this era of growing complexity, and that you really feel empowered to embrace the monetization challenges of tomorrow!

This article is the first of a series on our new product launch. So stayed tuned and check out our new website for more information.