For a newspaper publisher, everything starts and ends with revenue. As print has moved online, more and more of that revenue has had to come from online display advertising. Yet advertisers are reluctant to spend money on media buys they can’t measure. This has produced a problem at both ends of the equation: newspapers have lost revenue, and advertisers have lost confidence in their media plans.
That is because historically, the value of online ads to advertisers has been judged by where and how many times they were served. But there’s a big difference between whether an ad is served online and whether it is actually seen by a reader rapidly scrolling down the page, as startups like AdXPose have pointed out. Increasingly advertisers will want to know if their ads are seen.
We’re on it. Last year, we partnered with AdXPose, which was acquired by comScore. Now we can document for our partners when we serve an ad and it is seen. comScore has shared with us numbers that validate our intuition that above and below the fold have become meaningless because of reader habits, and that new ad units can help generate new revenue for publishers.
For example, last year one in four ads above the fold was never seen, and 32% of all ads were delivered but never seen. This means ads below the fold, while traditionally less costly, were almost as effective as those in the traditional “best” spots above the fold.
Because we have been serving ads for over a decade, we were in a position to spot this early, and to do something about it.
We’ve come up with some new, best-in-class products that can be used by any publisher, whether they use our ad server or any other. They’re aimed at creating additional revenue for publishers, while assuring brands and advertisers their ads will be seen (we can prove it) in a brand-safe environment. As far as we know, we’re the first to do this.
We started as the infrastructure for our publisher partners when we served the ad. As we evolved, we became more of a full service outsourced ad operations company. This enabled us to learn more about how online advertising technology really works to help marketers, and therefore to help publishers.
This year, we have begun to launch new best-in-class products for all publishers whether they use our ad server or not. The best-in-class InView format, for example, will appear only if we know the user will see it – and that can be measured. This InView product is designed to meet the new ways readers consume publications.
We will also offer other best-in-class products for all publishers (regardless of which ad server they use). “TVAds OnPage” is a best-in-class video ad format. Ad Ops services from ZEDO are also best-in-class because we are a US company with high standards and because as the only ad ops company that builds an ad server we are a true technology expert that can run any ad server perfectly.
During the course of this year, we will roll out three more products for all publishers that are best-in-class.
We continue to move forward in product development, knowing we operate in a very fast-moving environment and we must continue to prove our value.
About ZEDO
ZEDO, Inc. is a digital ad solutions company that offers products and services for a publisher’s premium, self service, and remnant inventory. Products include ad network optimization, innovative rich media formats for publishers’ direct sales teams, full featured ad serving, behavioral targeting data built into the ad server, an exchange-like platform for publishers to sell behavioral and DMA targeted inventory at high CPMs (see: www.zedoadnetwork.com), a self service platform to allow advertisers to buy directly from a publisher, outsourced ad ops and more. These products are integrated into one technology platform for publishers to choose from, or use seamlessly together. ZEDO has been in the internet advertising industry for over 10 years, and is the most successful independent ad server in the US. The company provides innovative solutions that boost revenues for Internet publishers. ZEDO is headquartered in San Francisco and has four development centers in Russia and India.
Reach out to ZEDO at http://www.zedo.com, or follow the company on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ZEDOadsolutions) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/zedoinc).
