Nate Hallowell’s

Online Pricing and Security Issues August 10, 2009

Discussing online pricing amongst competing ad networks, what makes paying more for a premium network more sensible than paying less for a high reach network? The quality of online content is often broken into the short and long “tail” of the Internet. Consider this – premium ad networks sell at higher rates because their content is limited to the short tail of the Internet. The number of sites on a premium network is generally going to be a fraction of the sites on another ad network. To make matters worse – premium ad networks generally don’t offer transparency in their entire site list. Why does it make sense to pay more for advertising on a smaller list of sites that you haven’t even seen? For a number of reasons. First, a premium ad network works with top quality publishers. The publishers don’t mind working with ad networks because it saves their sales team time, and they generally have prior relationships with the networks – trusting that they’ll pay on time. However, the publishers don’t want their own sales team competing with the networks who are selling their space as well. When content advertised through ad networks, it’s not just being displayed on one site – impressions are being served and hundreds, sometimes thousands of sites. When advertisers want security in assuring that their content isn’t displayed alongside Paris Hilton’s latest blooper or male enhancement smut pages, they turn to ad networks. A higher reach doesn’t necessarily mean a higher performance and premium ad networks wouldn’t be around if they didn’t offer higher performance. Any good advertiser will also remember at all times that brand enhancement offers just as much value as short term sales offer.