The Beginning
Recently I have been working on building an in-house premium online display ad sales unit within PeekYou. We’re slowly approaching 10mm monthly visits, and as a result, are looking towards new channels to monetize our traffic beyond simple Google display ads and direct text link deal partnerships. Whereas just a few years ago, major brand name advertisers were content spending big ad budgets for pure volume-based CPM campaigns, many advertisers are now looking for very specific audience buys and targeted display campaigns. It is for this reason that we integrated our DFP ad server with Quantcast’s Audience Segment API.

I have the space, you bring the campaign
As we have learned the hard way, getting in touch with advertisers in order to sell our inventory direct to them is proving to be extremely difficult. There are numerous websites out there (such as sellercrowd.com) that help online ad sales reps by anonymously connecting them within a forum-style Q&A site, in order to make sure that the sell side is able to monetize their inventory. Gone are the days where a publisher can simply integrate audience data, and sell premium display.

Next steps
I am 100% sure everyone on the sell side (and buy side for that matter) has had the exact same feeling towards the entire industry and the fragmented nature of advertising online. I recently came across a great article that focused on bringing small businesses online and into the display advertising world (most small businesses focus on products like Google AdWords/SEM to market their wares online since they don’t always have the resources to create an effective display ad campaign like some of the bigger advertisers out there). Perhaps publishers within our tier of traffic (anywhere between 5mm to 15mm monthly visits) should be looking to target these mid-level advertisers to better monetize their inventory, rather than going after the agency-supported advertising clients? Until publishers can get a fair shot at pitching their inventory direct, online media sales will continue to be a fragmented, disjointed marketplace.