Talking Monetization: 3 Insights from the Digiday Publisher Summit

Last week, the 33Across publisher team attended the Digiday Publishing Summit in Key Biscayne. Aside from the beautiful setting, we also enjoyed meeting with publishers from across the country to discuss new opportunities and industry trends. Here are a few key takeaways from the event.

Server-to-Server is top of mind

Throughout our conversations with both publishers and other technology companies, there was significant demand for more Server-to-Server (S2S) integrations. Many publishers in attendance had already integrated with a S2S partner and were seeing a positive impact including reduced latency and improved performance. At 33Across, we’re seeing similar momentum behind our own S2S offering and expect this to continue through 2019.

Data remains a hot topic
Better capitalizing on audience data is a topic that is still a priority for publishers. Most are currently leveraging both 1st and 3rd party data to maximize revenue and maintain an engaged audience. That said, GDPR continues to impact the use of data throughout the advertising ecosystem and increasingly forces the industry to look at the end user as a person instead of just an ID. People-based marketing has become increasingly important to publishers as they use the data to target users across devices and formats, including OTT and linear video.

Diversify, diversify, diversify
In the past, over-reliance on specific revenue streams caused a lot of turmoil for some publishers. Therefore, it was good to hear many discussions on the topic of diversifying revenue streams among attendees. These new revenue streams include subscriptions, e-commerce, and audio ads, as well as new forms of native and video placements to supplement legacy advertising revenue.

The Friday before DPS, we also launched AttentionX, the first viewable only exchange. Publishers were excited to learn that buyers can now target their spend toward inventory that better meets the brands’ viewability KPIs. Attendees also saw the potential of the platform to better ensure they were receiving fair value for the quality of the audience attention they were delivering.

Overall, we left this DPS event excited about the breadth of new opportunities for publishers to maximize the value of their audience and streamline operations. We’re looking forward to continuing these conversations in the months ahead.