Part I: How Publishers Can Use Audience Data to Secure Larger Ad Budgets

Publishers are finding more and more opportunities to use their audience data to not only target ads on their own sites, but target ads to customers on other sites on the web. One way to make this possible is to use a data management platform (DMP), centralized software systems that gather first-party data, integrating with third-party data and applying this data to advertising. DMPs are giving publishers and their advertisers more clarity abut audiences and their interests.

Although publisher ad inventory is getting more and more commoditized, first-party audience data is still holding its value and is a unique differentiator. A publisher’s core strength is knowing its own audience and knowing how that audience (and ones similar to it) behaves. Publishers know what the audience reads, clicks on, buys, etc. Using this information to target ads on a publishers’ own sites is great, but it also empowers a publisher to target that audience (or ones that are like them) elsewhere on the web.

However, simply having deep intelligence about audiences doesn’t make the data actionable. While a DMP helps publishers understand data, a programmatic ad buying platform, also known as demand-side platform (DSP), is necessary to take action on it. By using a DSP to target audiences or “look-a-like” pools of publishers’ audience across other sites, publishers can show advertisers a unique value proposition that combines first-party audience data and wide reach anywhere on the web. This leads to more fruitful conversations with marketers that can lead to winning larger portions of ad budgets.