Wall St Journal Case Study_Letter - Rubicon Project

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began in October 2012 with the launch of Audex, its ... ensure competition between direct campaigns and those ... so far
CASE STUDY

G L OBAL SCALE

E FFIC IE N C Y

AC C U R ACY

About The Wall Street Journal

First Party Data and Direct Orders

The Wall Street Journal is America’s largest newspaper by paid circulation with more than 2.2 million customers.

The Wall Street Journal currently has 25 audience segments available on the Rubicon Project technology platform.

In recent years, it has expanded its core content offering to include coverage of the arts, culture, lifestyle, sports, and personal health, building on its heritage as the leading source of business and financial news.

WSJ sees 1st party data as increasingly important within automated advertising – after all, everyone can access third party data, but 1st party data is scarce, therefore buyers are prepared to pay a premium to access it.

Published by Dow Jones, one of the world’s largest news gathering operations with nearly 2,000 journalists in more than 80 bureaus, The Wall Street Journal now spans 12 editions in nine languages, engaging readers across newspapers, websites, magazines, social media, and video. It holds 35 Pulitzer Prizes for outstanding journalism.

As a publisher with a paid content model, this offering becomes even more compelling when you add subscription data into the mix.

Data Security Data security and privacy are a critical part of the trust and relationship The Wall Street Journal has with its audience.

Background The Wall Street Journal’s automated advertising story began in October 2012 with the launch of Audex, its audience exchange. As WSJ began to test the waters of programmatic, its first aim was to monetize unsold inventory, and capitalize on the growing trend towards automated advertising on the part of ad agencies and their trading desks. Since WSJ typically has a high sell–through rate, the initial approach was a conservative one. It elected to launch with a whitelist, meaning all advertisers were blocked by default, until access was granted to each individually. Nevertheless, it began to gather insights and revenue through real-time bidding, from advertisers that had previously not been covered by its direct sales team. As buyers’ attentions shifted towards direct orders in Q1 2013, it likewise began to focus more on these one–to–one agreements. The increasing prominence of direct orders brought premium media businesses like WSJ higher yields and even more granular pricing controls.

This is why each trading desk buying WSJ’s inventory must first sign up to its data policy.

Advice for Buyers on Direct Orders Details, Details, Details Offer as much campaign detail (e.g. targets, objectives, budget) pre–launch so publishers can overcome internal roadblocks or fears of cannibalization. Open Lines of Communication Deal IDs are malleable and transparency is key to campaign success. If there are issues hitting your target, clearing floors, or scaling, immediately review together to work towards a solution.

www.rubiconproject.com | @rubiconproject Los Angeles | New York | Seattle | San Francisco | Chicago | London | Paris | Hamburg | Sydney Corporate Headquarters: +1.310.207.0272 North America Sales: +1.415.590.4670

UK: +44.20.3206.2400 France: +33.1.80.96.36.73

Europe: +44.20.3206.2400 Asia-Pacific: +61.2.947.54461

CASE STUDY

Direct Orders: Use Cases for Publishers

Predictions for 2014

Many publishers are using direct orders as leverage to secure direct budget and drive incremental spend from core direct advertisers. Examples of this could be:

The growth rate of automated advertising speaks for itself, and The Wall Street Journal believes its strategy so far puts it in a great position for 2014:

• Offering buyers additional granularity on a segment of inventory or audience through a preferred price floor • Providing access via direct order on a segment of inventory to an advertiser that has spent a large sum directly • Offering a direct buyer private access to an exclusive piece of inventory via direct order, perhaps to secure a larger share of plan • Allowing private access to selected buyers only. These could be significant direct spenders or those with trading agreements in place. This ‘scarcity’ of access is used to persuade buyers to spend at higher prices. • Additionally, publishers are creating new targeted inventory placements to zones within their ad server and managing these orders at a higher priority with higher floor prices. These could form part of a tiered pricing strategy to ensure competition between direct campaigns and those from automated trading.

Both to hold onto the value of its direct deals, as well as capitalizing on the increased demand for direct orders through the programmatic channel. The other big trend The Wall Street Journal sees alongside the growth of automated advertising is the increasing shift of news and media consumption to mobile devices. While WSJ’s tablet inventory is already well monetized, it is currently scoping out the best options around selling inventory across mobile web and app traffic. Another significant trend it has observed is in the number of advertisers using a combination of automated advertising and direct buying within a single campaign. To take one example: pushing high impact formats through direct sales, and combining those with direct orders, traded programmatically. It expects to see many more examples of this dual approach in the coming year.

“At The Wall Street Journal, protecting our users and their data has always been paramount. After shopping around, it became clear to us that Rubicon Project provides the highest levels of publisher controls in the market. That hasn’t changed since we started working together.” “Additionally, the customer service Rubicon Project provides is top notch. I couldn’t imagine a better team being at hand for us, as they are 24/7, all year around.”

Brendan Cleary Programmatic Sales Executive The Wall Street Journal

www.rubiconproject.com | @rubiconproject Los Angeles | New York | Seattle | San Francisco | Chicago | London | Paris | Hamburg | Sydney Corporate Headquarters: +1.310.207.0272 North America Sales: +1.415.590.4670

UK: +44.20.3206.2400 France: +33.1.80.96.36.73

Europe: +44.20.3206.2400 Asia-Pacific: +61.2.947.54461