Recently there have been rumors circulating that we are planning on working directly with advertisers or are starting an internal direct sales team. Because we take these accusations very seriously, we immediately took action to set the record straight with our partners. Last week we distributed a letter to our partners addressing these concerns head-on and since transparency is a cultural value of our organization, we wanted to share the letter its entirety with everyone. - Frank
To our trusted partners:
It’s come to my attention that an inaccurate description of Rubicon onDemand that appeared briefly on Forbes.com is causing some concern about the Rubicon Project’s intentions. The article stated that the Rubicon Project has launched this product for advertisers to buy directly from us. It’s not true. The article has been corrected, but I’d like to take the opportunity to reinforce a few key tenets of our business with you.
At the Rubicon Project, we have a very clear focus and strategy. We’ve developed a massive platform for large publishers to make more money, safely, from their advertising business. This strategy has enabled us to grow quickly and amass a positive market reputation, yet our pace of growth has engendered some fear and concern from our trusted partners, ad networks, and from some competitors, too. We’ve learned that another company is attempting to exploit this concern among your ad network peers to paint an erroneous picture of who we are and what we do. We normally wouldn’t let such trash talking bother us, but when things are manipulated in such a way that our integrity as a business is called into question, I draw the line.
Our goal for ad networks has always been to give you better access to the specific inventory you want, to ship back the inventory you don’t, and provide you visibility (and layered data) into the full inventory that’s available across our large publisher base. We want to help you make your advertisers happy – not because we’re just nice people, but because doing so brings more dollars into the market, to the benefit of the entire industry.
If we were to work directly with advertisers, we would be in conflict not only with our ad network and exchange partners, but also in direct conflict with our own customers, the publishers. For these reasons, we do not work directly with advertisers.
Let me take this a step further: our business wouldn’t make sense if we worked directly with advertisers. We’re aiming to be the infrastructure company that connects and protects the industry, with the goal of overall growth across the online advertising market. Traders can’t buy directly from NASDAQ. Consumers don’t get credit cards directly from VISA. These are the infrastructure companies for their industries, and their businesses would be moot if they went direct to the end consumer. The same is true for the Rubicon Project with advertisers.
We’re very clear in our messaging – we do not work directly with advertisers (examples: release, press conference presentation, website ). The error in the Forbes article was simply a “lost in translation” moment with one journalist, which we promptly rectified (Adotas wrote about the impact of this error recently). Rubicon onDemand was built for ad networks, to help buy more efficiently from us, so you can better serve your customers, advertisers, and so we in turn can make selling more efficient and lucrative for our publishers.
In the past two years ad networks have been publicly beaten up by press, major publishers, even C-level executives at Fortune 500 companies. We have stood steadfastly by your side, helping to explain the value networks add to the industry and publishers. Just browse through some of the articles and reports where I’ve shared my opinions about the value of ad networks.
We are committed to your long-term success and value and respect your business. I hope this experience will prove to be an opportunity to move forward and grow an even stronger partnership. I’m available to discuss any questions or remaining concerns, and hope we’ll get a chance to meet soon to discuss new ways we can work to build our relationship.
Best,
Frank Addante
CEO & Founder
Tags: ad network, advertisers, forbes, rumors
