Yahoo! talks to publishers about managing multiple sales channels

Yahoo!’s Professional Services team is everywhere these days. Last week we blogged about several events Yahoo! would be participating in, an IAB Professional Development class about Managing Multiple Sales Channels being one of them. The class, led by Marc Grabowski, senior director of network sales, and Jeanne Hwang, director of consulting, helped publishers and networks set up their sales teams to develop ad packages that cross sales channels and maximize their inventory. Luckily for me the class was in San Francisco: No travel required!

Within the first few minutes we heard why attendees had given up three hours of their day to be there. The reasons the attendees gave ranged from getting a handle on yield management to developing streams of new ad revenue to dealing with channel conflict. With this industry changing as quickly as it is, I understood where these people were coming from. Luckily, Jeanne and Marc had a few tricks up their sleeves to deal with these issues. The three biggest takeaways were:

Times, they are a changin’
The industry is undergoing a dramatic shift. Marketers are becoming savvier; they have fewer ad dollars to spend but have more metrics at their fingers than ever before, and they want results. Over the last few years we’ve seen a shift in ad dollars from brand to performance. Roll in agencies’ demand for more transparency, and you can see how this is causing a pain point that publishers and networks must address. Bottom line:Publishers and networks must become savvy sellers of performance advertising.

Just say no
Successful sales teams work with marketers to identify the goals of a campaign but, more importantly, they help determine if the campaign is likely to see success on their site or network. Is the marketer looking for clicks or conversions, and what are those worth? Who is their target audience?Does the creative have a clear call to action?Is the conversion path short?Does it require minimal registration information that is easily provided (Such as a zip code as opposed to a social security number)?Bottom line:If the answers to the previous questions point to a bad campaign, sales teams must learn to just say no.

Differentiate to survive
How do you avoid conflict among channels that are selling the exact same inventory?You don’t—it’s inevitable. If marketers are able to access the same inventory from multiple sales outlets, they can take the lowest price, ultimately degrading the value of your inventory. You can fight slipping CPMs by allowing different channels to sell different slices of inventory determined by targeting, frequencies, properties, and so on. Bottom line:Differentiate what sales channels are able to sell to help avoid conflict.

—Megan Bergtholdt, Engagement Manager