With 21 million users a month, TV Guide.com is the top TV and entertainment site on the web. And right before the holidays it made a big revenue move by signing PubMatic to monetize non-guaranteed ad inventory. Josh Wetzel, VP, Publisher Services at PubMatic, says it was a big win, one which was justified at TV Guide within 45 days of its implementation in terms of increased monetization and the resulting better use of internal sales resources. We caught up with Wetzel last week.
Digiday: There’s a lot of competition in the digital publishing monetization space. How would you say Pubmatic is different?
Wetzel: We focus on what we call the second channel of non-guaranteed inventory. We’re a publisher advocate for including this inventory in their advertising agreements so they can make the most money from their total effort. I think we build on the exchange model, and we definitely approach the inventory issue from a publisher standpoint more than most exchanges do.
Digiday: I’m interested in this concept of non-guaranteed inventory. How is it different from what other companies will call remnant inventory?
Wetzel: It addresses the inventory issue from a publisher’s point of view. Everybody has millions of impressions they will guarantee in an online ad deal, but nobody really addresses all this other inventory that’s available but not guaranteed in the deal. A lot of inventory goes wasted because of that. We’re able to be a hybrid in a hybrid world. We address the guaranteed impressions and we know how to find and price the non-guaranteed inventory.
Digiday: Tell us about your biz dev priorities this year.
Wetzel: We’re focused on the top 150 internet publishers. We’re active with almost all of the top 20, and I would say we’ve reached the point where all of the top 150 have realized they need to try out some kind of inventory monetization solution. As this year plays out I expect we’ll see massive adoption of internal teams that adopt some kind of solution and we’re going to argue that we’re the most effective.
Digiday: Does it concern you when you see announcements such as the one CBS Interactive made recently that seem to shut out networks and other third party ad partners?
Wetzel: It doesn’t concern me too much. I have a friend at one of those companies, not CBS, and I think publishers may want to limit the third parties they work with, but they’ll always want to work with a reputable company that creates opportunities for them, makes them more money, and doesn’t expose them to brand problems down the road. We’re one of those companies. We protect a brand’s existing values by bringing solid opportunities.
Digiday: Are you bullish on overall Internet ad spending this year?
Wetzel: Steady progress, in my opinion. It won’t be the year in which Coke breaks out 30 percent of its overall budget for the Internet. But we will continue to grow. I’ve seen a lot of progress in taking more of direct response budgets, but I don’t think it’s about stealing budget share. We will allow publishers to take non-guaranteed inventory off their sale people’s to do list. That frees up valuable resources.
