Like many web publishers, Tickle regarded non-premium inventory as leftover: it never seemed valuable enough to warrant taking time away from premium sales. Accordingly, they had no real strategy for managing non-premium inventory, choosing instead to offload it to a few ad networks and monetize it as best as they could. If they made a few pennies off it, it was better than making nothing. Without adding management resources, it was a difficult business to scale.
Tickle’s perspective changed when they realized how valuable their non-premium inventory really was: direct response advertisers are spending more money than ever on remnant impressions, and Tickle and its partner sites have billions of them. With that understanding, they went looking for a solution to manage that piece of their business more effectively.
They found one solution on the market: Publisher Media Exchange (PMX). With an automated system that allows buyers to openly compete for every non-premium impression in real-time, Tickle scaled their business without taxing resources and increased non-premium revenue by 771%.
Situation
Tickle used its rules-based ad server to allocate non-premium impressions in bulk to a chain of ad networks.
Much of whatever those networks could monetize was undersold because the highest-paying buyer for a given impression couldn’t always access it.
Approach
Tickle trafficked all of their direct response deals and redirected all of their unsold inventory to their own auction platform. They created their own open media exchange for non-premium inventory across all of the Tickle Grapevine sites. This gave all of their buyers open, direct access to—and the ability to compete for—every impression. The system automatically allocated each impression to the advertiser or network that could pay the most for it.
Result
With an automated, auction-based system to manage and optimize inventory, Tickle:
- scaled its business easily, adding sites such as Monster, Piczo and Tickle UK to the Tickle Grapevine of sites
- added new demand/buyers as a result
- let competition drive up the value of each impression and increased overall eCPM
- started serving the highest-paying deal to each impression, increasing non-premium revenue by 771%
Tickle accomplished this without having to add people or other resources, allowing them to remain fully focused on premium sales.
Impact of creating their own media exchange on Tickle Grapevine’s ability to scale their non-premium inventory business
| February 2005 before PMX | August 2005 | July 2006 | |
| Sites managed | 3 | 6 | 12 |
| Advertisers managed | 3 | 17 | 66 |
| Impressions managed | 80MM | 238MM | 3.3B |
| Sales & ops staff | 0.2 | 1.2 | 1.2 |
About Tickle
Tickle has been a leading publisher of viral marketing products since 1999. Tickle also formed a community of like-minded innovators who share the same passion -- developing interesting and viral consumer products. As a co-op of Internet leaders and friends, Tickle Grapevine partners share experiences and knowledge of viral best practices so that they are all constantly changing and improving. Through their experiences, they have created many unique advertising and consumer products and made them repeatedly viral.
For more information on fostering competition to drive more revenue, contact us.