Publishers

In early February, Facebook announced that it is planning to shut down the mobile web and desktop arm of its Audience Network on April 11th, 2020 (note: support for Instant Articles will remain). To truly understand what this means for the industry, and our publishers, we spoke with Freestar’s Sr. Director of Revenue Operations, Matt [...]

The Issue: CPMs Are Down Year Over Year 2019 has unfortunately been a very soft year compared to 2018. Industry-wide, CPMs have been down over 10%, year-over-year, and in some verticals significantly lower than that. We see that in aggregate numbers for the sites that we manage and are hearing the same in many industry [...]

A question that sometimes is discussed is whether first or second price auctions are better for selling ad inventory. A little bit of auction theory is necessary to understand why first price auctions are the best bet for network partners in the header. These results are proven rigorously elsewhere, here we state just what is [...]

This post will be a first in a series on how publishers can improve their site's performance. It's no secret a faster loading site equals happier users and a more seamless site experience. Happier users can lead to more page visits, more traffic, and ultimately more revenue. But what can be elusive is getting your site [...]

The General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR, takes effect May 25, changing the laws around data privacy in the European Union. The scope of GDPR is as complex as it is extensive and will have long-standing effects on how publishers and advertising companies interact with European users. With just over a month left until [...]

Price floors have been around since the inception of programmatic advertising. Publishers and their ad operations teams put price floors in place to increase revenue for highly viewable inventory, increase competition between bidders, and help mitigate ad fraud. Using price floors to combat fraud, however, goes hand-in-hand with the long-held belief that ad fraud is perpetrated mostly [...]