Publishers need to collaborate to protect ad revenues

Tue, 7 Jul 2009 | By Suzanne Bearne

There was speculation earlier last week that publishers such as News International, Telegraph Media Group and Bauer are in talks with WPP to pool their inventory to sell direct to agencies.

As much as premium publishers like CondéNet, The FT and Guardian News & Media are competing to grab advertising from luxury brands, they’re far from enemies. Their monthly meetings, events and research with the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) show there’s a common goal and that they face the same issues.

Publishers have been increasingly vocal about the struggle to sway media agencies to continue to pay high prices to advertise across their sites when ad networks and social media sites continue to offer rock bottom prices. Rival publishers should join forces to sell their inventory together. They’ve managed to slightly maintain rates but this is bound to capture agencies’ attention. If it’s more attractive for a trading director to target men across premium publishers, they could do a buy across sites such as Autotrader, FHM and Nuts, then these talks need to move on.

Apparently, it’s just Group M/WPP looking at this, but I bet other agencies would be interested.

Such an interesting proposition is not unprecedented. It sounds similar to publishers working together on the behavioural targeting front. There are ongoing talks between publishers with Audience Science to create a closed network. But after 20 months, why is it taking so long?

These talks about pooling inventory are in early stages, but the AOP needs to take a lead to help move them forward. This doesn’t sound like something that’s going to make waves this year but let’s not wait for 2012 for this to kick off.

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