Long Tail of Advertising

As blogs become more and more common, new companies are increasingly popping up to meet the needs of these small companies and their desire for revenue through advertising. Today, TechCrunch profiles RightMedia, a company whose system provides web site publishers with the means to participate in multiple ad networks and automatically display ads from the network that pays the highest price per impression for their ad space in real time bidding. RightMedia partners with eight networks currently with more on the way, I’m sure.

Companies like RightMedia are helping to match advertisers who target the "Long Tail" of publishers with bloggers and other small publishers. These small publishers typically address a specific topic such as technology or sports and as a result, provide advertisers the niche audiences at which they can point very specific advertising.

While Google is a major player in this space and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, there are many others such as Text Link Ads and AdBrite who have found a way to work with smaller sites. Even Feedburner, known more for its ability to help bloggers with their RSS feeds, has an advertising network.

However, systems like RightMedia appear to be the wave of the future. By providing web site owners with the opportunity to work with multiple advertising networks in one system (think a system in which Text Link Ads, AdBrite and Feedburner are all in one system), they not only provide these small sites with the means to make money, but they also provide them with the tools to optimize their ad revenue.

So What? Of course, as with any advertising, the value of the ad comes down to the size and makeup of the audience the ads will reach and advertisers seek to reach these audiences as cheaply as possible.

For the little guy without competition for the ad "impressions" on their sites, they have no leverage by which to achieve better rates. But advertising networks and specifically ad-network auctioning companies promote competition and thus, better prices for the small guy. The technology allows the publisher to receive bids from multiple ad networks and their advertisers. As a result they receive better prices for their ad slots.

And there in lies the beauty of employing companies like RightMedia. By pairing advertisers with small, more targeted sites, both parties win. Advertisers achieve their goals of reaching targeted audiences and web site publishers earn greater rates than they might on their own.

Tags: Advertising, RightMedia, Text Link Ads, AdBrite, Feedburner, Google

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