10up Launches AcceleRev, Provides Smaller Publishers Access To Vital Tools

Katie Wilkerson on March 9, 2020 • 2 Comments

In 1994, the first website banner ad appeared on HotWired.com, boasting a 44% clickthrough rate. Since then, publishers have been investing in monetization strategies like direct display advertising and sponsored content to boost revenues. Today, distracted consumers, increased competition, banner blindness, and ad blocking tools make website monetization an increasing challenge for publishers.

From our work with clients like The Saturday Evening Post, TechCrunch, and PA Media Group, to our partnerships with The News Project and the Google Local News Initiative, 10up has a storied history of collaboration with news and media organizations around the world. Our Audience & Revenue team works closely with publishers of all sizes to:

1. Maximize the value of every visitor through digital advertising, reader revenue strategies, and conversion optimization;
2. Drive up the number of visitors through engagement strategy, content marketing, SEO, and advanced analytics.

Now, 10up is partnering with Google to offer new services through Google’s Ad Manager 360 platform in support of smaller publishers.

Programmatic Advertising

According to Zenith’s Programmatic Marketing Forecasts 2019, 69% of all digital media will trade programmatically in 2020, up from 65% in 2019. For the first time, the total amount spent programmatically exceeded $100 billion in 2019, and is expected to rise to $127 billion in 2020 and $147 billion in 2021. It is estimated that 72% of digital media will be programmatic by that time.

The most prolific programmatic ad network is Google AdSense. Anyone with a website can join the network and earn revenue by displaying ads on their website from companies that advertise on the Google Display Network. AdSense tends to attract smaller advertisers with more limited budgets who are often less sophisticated in maximizing the platform.

Unfortunately, publishers using solutions like AdSense have very little control over the ads displayed, which introduces risk and limits revenue earning opportunities. That’s why many seek access to premium programmatic solutions like Google Ad Exchange (AdX), AppNexus, OpenX, and Sovrn.

Premium programmatic solutions provide publishers with more granular control, higher-quality ads, and better revenue earning potential because they attract larger advertisers willing to pay more for specific targeting or retargeting within their audience.

There’s just one problem. Meeting the eligibility requirements is a challenge.

With high traffic minimums and content quality, relevance, and quantity requirements, solutions like Google AdX, a real-time marketplace to buy and sell display advertising space, are only open to large publishers who qualify. Smaller publishers must gain access through resellers of programmatic optimization who typically charge a serving fee per impression, take 30% of new revenue earned through the ad networks, and pile on additional service charges. Publishers only retain a fraction of the revenue earned.

Fortunately, our new partnership addresses those challenges directly — read on.

Header Bidding

Header bidding is an advanced programmatic tactic that opens a publisher’s ad inventory to several demand partners (like AdX) who bid on the ad impressions in real-time and compete to win the impression. With the highest net bid always winning, header bidding provides publishers with increased revenue earnings.

Adding header bidding to a website is typically a complex process that requires engineering investment, and if client-side header bidding is used, can also increase page latency (load times). Each ad vendor must be manually configured and added to the head of the website. Carefully integrating five programmatic vendors can take weeks of effort (including engineering and testing) and more technical overhead to maintain.

Open Bidding — Google’s version of header bidding — reduces complexity by managing the entire header bidding process within Google Ad Manager 360, eliminating the heavy investment in engineering, site code changes, and manual configuration. It also allows AdX to be more competitive in the bidding process, so both the publisher and Google make more money.

As a premium product, Open Bidding is unavailable on its own; our new partnership helps put it in reach of more publishers.

Our partnership: extending the reach of premium ad solutions to a longer tail of publishers

You may be reading this wondering, “Great! I’m a small publisher, how can I gain access to Google AdX?” or “How can I add Open Bidding to my site?”

We are proud to announce that 10up is now a Google Ad Manager 360 Partner. This partnership puts the tools large publishers have access to in the hands of small to midsize publishers — tools that have been previously out of reach, like AdX and Open Bidding.

Our partnership is built on Google’s trust in 10up: ensuring ad code follows coding best practices and confirming everything is implemented with long-term stability and scalability in mind. We will vet publishers to ensure the program is a fit and take on the responsibility of meeting Google’s required minimum revenue by pooling smaller publishers.

10up is excited to be rolling out three new service options.

• AcceleRev grants publishers access to AdX and Open Bidding and provides set up support to configure both products.
• AcceleRev+ grants publishers access to AdX and Open Bidding, provides set up support to configure both products, delivers a strategic roadmap to maximize revenue, and includes monthly consulting to help increase visibility, which in turn increases the value of the ad units and encourages ad networks to buy all available inventory.
• AcceleRev Premium is a fully customized revenue strategy and management experience, including all the above and engineering implementation services, and tailored to best meet your revenue goals.

While the majority of publishers we work with see a minimum 20% revenue increase, two clients have seen a 110%+ increase in year over year revenue. With our new AcceleRev, AcceleRev+, and AcceleRev Premium services, publishers can enjoy these results without exorbitant fees, large upfront engineering investments, and increased ongoing maintenance fees.

This year, the US programmatic market ad spend alone is worth $67 billion and it is forecast to contribute 56% of new programmatic ad dollars in 2020.

We think you should have a piece of that, don’t you?

If you’re a publisher interested in leveraging Google AdX and Open Bidding to significantly grow your 2020 revenue, reach out and let’s talk.