PRINCIPLES of a REVVOLUTION or, the ad server is dead
CORE BELIEF
The evolution of the digital ad ecosystem has put the publisher at a disadvantage, and the balance in the marketplace will increasingly favor the demand side of the equation – at great cost to publishers – if the industry continues to accept the status quo. Publishers’ inventory will face commoditization and CPMs and ad revenues will increasingly erode, threatening the sustainability of the ad-supported digital publishing business. But they’re not accepting the current state: publishers are demanding change.
Open access to high-quality content and media services are vital to a healthy society. Ensuring that digital content remains a sustainable business is our goal; we provide the digital advertising technology and data platforms to help publishers and media to flourish. Publishers need technology engineered specifically for their needs.
We believe that in doing right by our publishers, we will do well – not only for our customers, our company and our stakeholders, but also for the entire digital advertising ecosystem. If we can return the power to the publishers, content will flourish. In turn, advertisers will at last benefit from the long-promised dream of digital advertising as the most precise medium through which to target audiences, ensuring that they can achieve marketing goals with pinpoint accuracy. As more marketing dollars come online, all players in the digital ad ecosystem – from the marketer, to the agencies, to the demand channels, to publishers and ultimately, consumers benefit concurrently.
But first, publishers need to reaffirm their relevancy to advertisers. The shift to selling by audience is the opportunity to do just that. Inventory is no longer valued on content and context alone. The true value of each impression is now based on what is known about a visitor as well as the value of the ad placement. Publishers who effectively sell their audiences – not just their sites, zones, brand and content – will be most successful, because if they can be the very best at delivering a particular audience, then they are of the utmost value to advertisers.
The industry is at last coming to reconsider a long-held assumption: all deals sold directly by an in-house sales team are good, and conversely, deals coming through third party channels, like ad networks, are intrinsically bad. This inaccurate assignment of good and evil in thinking about sales channels in the digital advertising world emerged because publishers did not start out with technology controls and protections in place to ensure that third-party deals were efficient, effective and safe. But with the advent of a platform that empowers publishers to effectively manage all sales channels, direct and indirect, this myth is quickly losing credibility.
For digital content publishers to thrive, we must address the fact that the technology available to them in the marketplace today (and on the horizon) is at best outdated, and at worst putting them at risk, offered by companies whose interests conflict directly with their own. Revising legacy technology, upgrading it, and tacking on bells and whistles isn’t enough to address the challenges for content producers today. Working with companies whose primary goal is simply to access more inventory on behalf of their own advertisers is not only a dangerous business strategy for publishers, but may also contribute to the imbalance within the online advertising ecosystem. Companies offering ad serving technology today focus simply on enabling publishers to deliver the ads that their sales teams sell; they haven’t evolved to keep up with the lightning-paced evolution on the demand-side. And in so doing, the ad server is killing publishers. the Rubicon Project is here to give publishers the weapons to fight back.
Publishers and their partners are at a crossroads. But this time, they don’t have to follow the well-traveled road. The ad server is dead, and there is a better choice.
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