Why do the best demand partners work with us?

Quality is a key, foundational component to the success of our publishers on so many levels. I’m excited to talk about how having quality, amazing publishers helps to find and cultivate quality demand partners.

So while our publishers focus on producing high-caliber quality content, the programmatic team focuses on finding the best quality ad partners to bring the highest incremental revenues and best CPMs, and those all continue to fuel each other in the best kind of positive feedback loop. 

The players in the programmatic space know the reputation of our publishers – they know they’re getting unique and fresh content that’s brand-safe and comes with a loyal, engaged audience. Our site vetting process is stringent, and we’re careful about the publishers we accept. We see the fruits of those efforts when partners come to us and want to bring their advertisers to our huge group of amazing publishers. The programmatic team has a similar rigorous vetting process for any new ad tech partner that wants to work with us. We look for unique demand, ad quality, financial stability, solid industry reputation, and many other factors before we allow them into our ad stack. 

With all of this in mind, I want to dive into more details about how this comes together to bring our publishers more revenue. [Spoiler: there will be more talk of feedback loops below!]

Unique and exclusive ad tech partnerships

Great partners want to work with great partners – and it shows when they want to work exclusively with AdThrive. With the high standards we require and the level at which our publishers perform, we’ve been able to secure exclusive demand partnerships not available to any other ad management firm. 

TRUSTX is well-known to advertisers as the best of the best. They are one of the most exclusive ad exchanges in the space and only work with top-tier publishers on the internet. Until last year, they worked with all the largest premium publishers out there – and only with them. Still, they were missing the highest quality small and mid-size publishers. Enter CafeMedia/AdThrive. We connected our top quality, highly viewable inventory with TRUSTX’s top advertisers, bringing our publishers deals and campaigns they can’t get anywhere else. TRUSTX is unavailable to small- and mid-size publishers with any other ad management firm.

We also secured a preferred partnership with Kargo, the leader in mobile advertising. Kargo creates innovative campaigns and looks to deliver quality ad experiences in premium environments through an invite-only marketplace. Our publishers fit the bill perfectly with scale and brand-safe environments where advertisers feel safe running their campaigns. Kargo’s unique ad units garner high CPMs and standout creatives, and again, we are the only ad management firm with access to these quality experiences. 

First to market / Early mover and shaker

We are a trusted and respected presence in the industry. From Paul Bannister and Don Marti on the W3C and the IAB to Patrick McCann as the Prebid.js Chair, we are integral in driving standards that support our publishers and the interests of publishers across the programmatic ecosystem. We were even recently the only ad management firm named to AdExchanger’s Power Players 2022 list!

Because of that profile, and the deep relationships we’ve cultivated, many partners come to us with brand new opportunities. Whether it’s to get feedback as they are building new products or to ask us to be the first to test, we’re their first call. Pair all of that with our industry-leading ad code and engineering teams, and we’re able to execute on first-to-market opportunities for our publishers. We were the first publisher to be live on The Trade Desk’s OpenPath integration, an alpha partner in testing Google’s Header Bidding Manager product, and have worked closely with Amazon Publisher Services to build out their outstream video solution. With the established success of our partnership with TRUSTX, we’re going to be among the first to pilot a unique new system to reach targetable users on Safari. We collaborated closely with Sharethrough through their merger to bring efficient, new technology and revenue opportunities to our ad stack.

All of these successes keep us top of mind with our partners – to test and work together on new products and ideas, fueling another positive feedback loop for innovation and progress. 

Data-driven experimentation 

We love, love, love data. It helps us make informed decisions, investigate what’s working, what’s not, and why, and find new and thoughtful solutions to complicated issues. Our partners know we have robust, granular data and can get the info they need when doing experimentation. When they come to us with alpha and beta opportunities, such as testing new products from large SSPs like Magnite and TripleLift, both sides of the equation can run various experiments, compare data, and improve products and features. 

Partners also know they’re on the hook to be the best. We run constant a/b test experiments that evaluate how much incremental revenue a particular bidder provides to our publishers. Meaning they don’t just need to bring revenue; we look at the whole experience to ensure they bring unique and positive yield to the ad stack too. The team constantly looks at this data, along with a variety of other health metrics to ensure our partners are performing at the highest level for our publishers.

To wrap this all up, quality is the name of the game. With all of the components above working together, combined with top content, our unique partnerships secure nearly 10% of unique revenue our publishers can’t get anywhere else. 

Shobha Doshi, Senior Vice President of Programmatic Strategy and Operations

In her role, she and her team focus on connecting our publishers to the best advertising technology partners (also known as SSPs or supply-side partners) and securing the best opportunities from those relationships to grow revenue and increase CPMs. They work to discover untapped sources of demand, integrate them and make sure they run smoothly, and then dig in more to see what else we can do together.