Most online publishers (61 percent) refrained from reducing the price on their advertising rate cards, despite the ad downturn and rising web inventory, according to a new survey.
Sixty-one percent of publishers held rates steady in the year to September and 22 percent increased rates, according to Econsultancy’s Online Publishers Survey Report, a poll of 150 publishers and advertisers.
But, after a couple of years of trying, it seems publishers still aren’t maximising the overseas commercial opportunity to its fullest – though 28 percent of their traffic is from outside the UK, just 17 percent of their revenue is.
Econsultancy’s research director Linus Gregoradis says that leaves “definite room for improvement” but the overall feedback on rates suggests the market is “buoyant”, credited to “better targeting, which has increased the value of inventory“.
Some 81 percent of the publishers polled use targeting – 49 percent of them contextual targeting and a fifth behavioural targeting.
Targeting is kind of a no-brainer, since this is the web, and, it seems, offering advertisers high accuracy-to-eyeballs could yet lead publishers out of the doldrums…
Econsultancy’s research was sponsored by Project Rubicon.