For website owners with an abundant supply of traffic, effectively monetizing each ad impression can be an increasing challenge. Many webmasters start off with Google AdSense as a handy catch-all that pays on both a Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM) basis.
As traffic grows, webmasters look for additional advertising exchanges and ad networks to make more money with their ad space, known as increasing yield or yield management.
In the past two years, several companies have arisen to provide webmasters the ability to increase their yield in return for a license to use their proprietary software through an ASP model or through a cut of revenues.
Yield optimization companies include Rubicon Project started by Frank Addante, Amar Goel's Pubmatic and AdMeld begun by Ben Barokas and Brian Adams.
What does a yield optimization company do?
Each company basically does the same thing. They look at a variety of advertising exchanges and ad networks and determine in real-time which network or exchange will make the most money for an ad impression served on a website.
Implementation for the webmaster can be as simple as installing ad tags in each of the ad placements throughout a website. The yield optimization company does the rest.
Currently, Pubmatic and Rubicon Project have targeted their services to smaller websites but are reaching out to larger sites. AdMeld, on the other hand, has targeted only large sites such as Dallas Morning News and USA Today.
Webmasters aren't the only ones realizing the opportunity these companies can provide as unsold inventory swells on website and, consequently
ad exchanges and ad networks. Venture capitals have taken large positions in companies like
Rubicon Project and
AdMeld in hopes of capitalizing on this growing trend.
Currently, it's difficult to say who is providing the biggest bang for the ad optimization buck. Compete.com shows that each company is handling similar amounts of unique traffic (nearing 10 million as of November 2008) each month. The only way to truly understand which of these companies work best for the webmaster is to test.
