Periodic Reporting for period 2 - LONGTAIL (Transforming digital in-content advertising to deliver global scale)
Reporting period: 2016-03-01 to 2017-06-30
During the latter part of the project we implemented the second version of the Platform and progressed with the planned commercial rollout. Scalable Publisher ad service requires that yield management is fully programmatic and automated. To reach the automation, the following features were completed: header bidding support and integrations to all key global ad exchanges with ad network backfill optimization built into Kiosked Supply Side Platform (KSSP), launch of the KSSP instance in Asia Pacific markets, algorithm development in KSSP to optimize the yield further either by a target CPM strategy or by utilizing header bids to raise bid price competition.
3rd party viewability verification together with brand safety and fraud prevention were also implemented as integral part of the Kiosked technology stack in order to secure continued advertiser interested to commit spend with Kiosked.
End-user advertising experience is growing ever more important. For publishers to be able to understand and manage the experience, the platform collects audience value metrics, such as session length and frequency of sessions. To surface these metrics and enable Publishers to control the Ad experience, a new version of dashboard was introduced with vastly extended visibility into audience behavior and resulting long-term revenue prediction.
The engine powering the platform is the Kiosked JavaScript sniffer on page and the programmatic monetization solution delivered earlier in this project. The Audience Value proposition comes from the behavioral analytics, big data processing and user lifetime revenue prediction model built into the Kiosked backend that is visualized in the new Publisher dashboard. The offering ties together the signals from user’s engagement with the publisher’s content and advertising in a completely novel way.
This Life-Time Value (LTV) approach enables Publishers to optimize their core business - long term, sustainable revenue generation from free digital content - from a single platform. The key publisher challenges the platform and the LTV approach is designed to solve are
1) user experience: more ads without optimization of UX has led to rapid adoption of ad blockers costing publishers 30-40% in revenue loss
2) user retention: shorter and less frequent sessions result in overall lower monetization potential for publishers, unless they can identify user segments that are loyal, returning readers and the type of content they engage with
3) user acquisition: all publishers buy traffic, but unable to measure the ROI on the marketing investments without knowledge of the acquired users’ LTV.
Much of the recent years’ innovation and market cap has been on the buy-side. Recent examples include Oracle’s acquisition of MOAT worth $850M and Salesforce acquisition of Krux $700M. Nothing dramatic has changed in the past 10 years on the digital publishing and sell-side, leaving a considerable market potential for innovative and agile companies like Kiosked.