I was at an AOP (Association of Online Publishers) conference in October listening to publishers and agencies talk about the issues they face.

While hearing all the different perspectives, I began to see a structure for thinking about the different problems online publishers face and who was trying to address those problems. The structure groups the problems into 3 broad areas with each having one typical type of business attempting to solve that problem area. These worked out to be:

In my view, the online publisher industry is maturing at speed. Proof of this is in the attitude and openness of experts in the field. A great a example of this is when a bunch of prominent online publishers informally congregated in New York recently, to discuss why publishers are integrating their technologies and how. These were some of the outcomes.

This week alone we’ve seen some very interesting milestones being achieved. Firstly LinkedIn reached more than 100 million users , I remember singing up for LinkedIn in 2006 and subscribing by 2007. Yes, I’ve been paying up and was one of the first million UK members, this was all in 2007. What is most impressive about LinkedIn is how they’ve managed user data and privacy.

The business impact of data leakage depends on the publisher’s business model. On the one hand, giving your data to 3rd parties enables you to monetise inventory that you may not be able to monetise yourself. On the other hand, it erodes the value of any premium inventory you sell and can have impacts like increased pricing pressure (where buyers can reach your visitor profile on other sites), the loss of your data and the erosion of your uniqueness.

Publishers have traditionally not been good at utilising the user data they have at their disposal. Instead advertisers have reaped the benefits that can come from understanding and profiling a site’s users. Consequently publishers have fallen seriously behind the ad guys, missing out on the opportunity to optimise and monetise their websites. How can publishers redress this balance, uncover the true value of their users, realise greater levels of engagement and increase revenue?

Sometimes you attend exhibitions and they’re great. You feel inspired by them. Other times you walk away having expected a little more. That’s how I felt about ad:tech this year. It seemed busier than last year, but then again it was also much smaller, so it would.

Wearing my SEM hat firmly pulled down upon my head I began to test Google Instant.  There are already quite a few questions regarding how it will affect our day to day tasks and I feel that tracking the progression of each search as it occurs will have a large effect on the placement of ads at the correct time.  Simply allowing for a keyword phrase to drive traffic as it always has before will no longer work once your competitor changes strategies to get their advert displayed before the searcher has completed the phrase they’re typing.  Suddenly you find yourself in a race t

Google’s new search feature “Google Instant” was launched yesterday, see: Google Instant

In a nutshell, your search results are displayed immediately as you type each letter in the search box.  At the time of writing, this feature is still being trialed on Google.com, so you will need to log into your Google Account to use.

My worry is that the ads are constantly being swapped out. Here is Google’s impression criteria:

As the ‘paid content’ war continues publishers are faced with yet another digital challenge: that of justifying the revenue that content is bringing into the business.

The concept is known as measuring the ‘return on content’ (ROC). It is also a fairly new territory for publishers to navigate; but it could also arguably be regarded as the dream asset to have as it helps them manage their balance sheets – much like Coca Cola’s secret recipe.