Toms Panders, International Publishers Segment Manager in Gemius, writes about the ways small portals may broaden their offer and fight for advertisers.

Three key problems

Smaller publishers must face a number of issues. The first and key problem is how to obtain advertisers. If a publisher is not widely known, or is only beginning to develop their business, they have to push their way to the market and get advertisers' attention.

The second problem is the advertising capabilities. A small publisher is not able to run large campaigns on his space, as the number of internet users who visit his services is not sufficient. This, in turn, means that his position is not strong enough to compete with other publishers on vast-based campaigns.

Another reason why smaller advertisers have a hard time struggling for clients is the technology for delivery of advertisements. The professional adserver systems entail costs that are theoretically beyond their reach. As a result, they often decide to use free tools, which do not offer any advanced rich media templates, and such presently key functionalities as smart prediction algorythms, performance based planning, underdelivery alerts, etc. What is even more, free-of-charge solutions do not always guarantee the expected level of reliability when it comes to malfunctions and the data they deliver are not always precise. The free tools also have limited possibilities as to reporting on the running campaigns, and this doesn't help increase the sale of online ads.

However, there's a solution to every problem.

Profiling actions ensures competitive advantage

Smaller portals cannot boast with large audience, but they often attract many users of a particular target group. Another upside of theirs is the content – devoted to concrete issues, delivered to people who are interested in the matter at hand. This is why profiled offer is among the best solutions a publisher who wants to develop his business can use. A thorough analysis of the services in question in search of over-represented target groups (high affinity index) may be worthwhile, too. Advertisers are more eager to buy ads, even in a small service, if they are certain that their message is conveyed to their target group. Moreover, high affinity index guarantees that the ads are not displayed to anyone outside the group or the share of such misaddressed displays is smaller than in the competition. This way adspace purchase becomes more profitable.

Targeting will lead the user

Yet another solution is to use the tested adserver technology that will help compile an attractive advertising offer. When selecting an adserver, the main point of interest could be the functionalities it has and that could be later offered to advertisers. What also matters is the possibility to get right through to a desired user with advanced targeting facilities (i.e. geo targeting or targeting to chosen devices), as well as cappings which involves limiting the campaing display to a person who already expressed interest in a given product with a click. The times when a regular double billboard and the millions of page views generated through satisfied advertisers are comning to an end.

Future trends – customization towards user preferances

Properly selected adserver technology will also help broaden the ad creatives offer, e.g. with the increasingly popular video or mobile ads. We can't forget content optimization, too. The more an e-consumer is engaged, the more page views they will generate, and this translates to ad money. There's a number of site-centric tools enabling optimization of a website content. Some of which present live clickability data concerning particular articles, links or other components of a page, thus allowing for regular monitoring of the interest in an article or a lead. Then a decision can be taken to either leave it or change it to check how this influences the views. Tools verifying the history of viewed articles on a website are on a rise as well. They analyse the profile of interests of a given user, offering the publisher an opportunity to automatically suggest such user other articles of potential interest.

A profiled group of audience, thematic content attracting a particular type of users, over-represented target groups, but also a well prepared and varied offer for the advertiser – such involving state-of-the-art advertising formats – are but a few considerations the publishers should take into account when building their business strategies.