AdTech is getting more commoditised: Arjun Satya, M360

The ongoing pandemic has created several challenges for digital publishers as monetisation and technology become extremely important. The choices in both these categories definitely increase the number of complexities in this sector.

The pandemic has also shifted the decision making process. Strategies used in pre-COVID might not create the ROI needed during this time and publishers have been trying to adopt new ways to sustain and grow.

Following the launch of M360 Suite by Times Internet, Arjun Satya, who co-founded M360 Suite, speaks to Adgully about the company, the tools available for publishers, lockdown strategies and his post forecasts for the post- pandemic scenario.

Tell us about the tools leveraged to drive growth for publishers. During the lockdown, has there been innovation in this space? Has the process of leveraging tech changed during the pandemic due to change in user behaviour?

M360 is proving to be a great solution during the pandemic, where publishers have to pay a small subscription fee instead of incurring in-house engineering or IT costs. Publishers on M360 just have to focus on writing engaging content for their users and leave everything else to M360. Furthermore, publishers leverage M360’s engaging ad formats – Banner, Rich Media, Native, Video – to place ads directly sourced by them, giving them full control of their revenues. As a result, our publishers are seeing page CPM lift between 30-160 per cent, while their overall costs have dropped by 50-60 per cent.

In the ever-evolving digital publishing ecosystem, M360’s objective is to provide digital publishers with the platform that only large companies have resources to build continuously. Consequently, every digital publisher will now have equal opportunity to sustain, grow, and compete in their own domains.

M360 is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, hence it charges a small subscription fee along with revenue share on ads sourced by M360. Revenue on ads placed by Publishers is kept completely by them.

What are the strategies adopted during this time to drive growth? What are the key learnings according to you in terms of user behaviour and leveraging apt strategies during the pandemic?

First-Party and PII data: The importance of first party and personally identifiable information (PII) data is talked about a lot and now become a hackneyed subject. While publisher 1st party data is no match to robust audience targeting and re-targeting capabilities on walled gardens, first-party data on demographics and spending behaviours of users can definitely offer something different to advertisers to target.

Contextual: Unlike social media with UGC, digital publishers usually have curated and newsroom-led content, making the “value” of content more than an individual’s choice. Therefore, putting a contextually relevant ad on an editorial piece will definitely be an edge.

Activate “new” media: Unlike social media, publishers have the liberty to choose their forms of media for publishing their content and furthermore the format of advertising that can be pushed through regular digital publishers. Podcast Mentions, Product Reviews and Comparison, Rich Media Innovations, and even Sponsored posts through digital publishers are a few ways through which digital publishers are creating an alternative set of offerings that social media with standard formats cannot.

Bang for the buck is a policy for all during the pandemic. What are the challenges during this time to leverage AdTech for maximum ROI? According to you, what are the solutions for these challenges and how are publishers leveraging it?

AdTech is getting more commoditised. Publishers are looking for cost-effective solutions, but are looking for impact in their revenues and engagement with their advertisers, agencies and networks. For instance, if a publisher is evaluating an AdTech company offering Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO), they would rather want a suitable DSP also plugged-in their inventory along with DCO to get the full value of the technology. AdTech vendors with full-stack approach will have the advantage.

Talking about our own platform, M360, publishers get all tools and services, required to run a modern digital publishing business for a small subscription fees. This way, publishers don’t have to pay hosting and subscription fees to individual 3rd party vendors, thereby significantly reducing their operating costs. The onus of publishers getting ROI through our platform comes on us, which, in turn, frees the publisher to focus on other aspects.

Balancing quality content and UI have always been a challenge. How has this balance changed during this time and what's the impact on publishers and AdTech?

It is totally understandable from the publisher’s POV to incorporate all possible avenues to diversity revenues. But more often than not they end up cluttering UI and slow down their websites and apps which in turn reduces their page yield, search ranking and leads to pure user experience.

There is a balance that has to be achieved and it is totally dependent on picking trust-worthy partners that have experience in running digital publishing businesses during lean business cycles.

AdTech’s role has to be more full-stack in supporting the digital publishing industry. There is a need to empathise with publishers in terms of ROI for any associated vendor costs. While there are a lot of technologies out there to bounce back in revenues, AdTech vendors will have to be wary of the fact that their usual pricing models may not work unless they bring in the publisher’s direct benefit into the mix.

How are publishers retaining their current user base and also expanding to newer markets? What’s the role of AdTech here? Any tools that you would like to point out?

During this pandemic, publishers are experimenting with all options to sustain their user base and build readership loyalty. There are a lot of avenues to retain user base: newsletters, push notifications, virtual events and diversifying to different content verticals.

Digital Publishers usually have much deeper connection with their audience through newsletters, SMSs and WhatsApp/ telegram/ slack groups. Through their preferred AdTech stack, publishers are natively pushing branding ads through their user engagement channels for developing a clear edge over other publishers for developing strong revenue sources.

What are your post pandemic forecasts for publishers? How do you see this space change along with AdTech both in the near future and post pandemic?

Post-pandemic, we will see ad spends bouncing back in a few categories, which will lead to CPM lifts for publishers. Publishers will have to prepare their ad strategy beforehand to reap in full benefits of the ad spends increase. AdTech will continue to support publishers in both near future and post-pandemic where near-term can be more skewed towards programmatic ads-based monetisation, while post-pandemic publishers should be looking to leverage the full-scale capabilities of directs ads placement on their websites and application to keep larger share of revenues.