• by October 31, 2008

....I think the most important thing the Publishers need to do: forget the ad network daisy chains -- the policy that ad networks essentially have the inventory on contingency, and they can pass you back defaults.

Defaults encourage the ad network salespeople to race towards the bottom in pricing ... they don't have a floor, because all of the inventory they have is essentially bought on contingency.

At our company, we have a policy that any network who works with us must guarantee 100% fill -- no cherry picking just the inventory they want, and passing us back the bowl of pits. If the salespeople at the networks start to realize they have to make at least $1.50 CPM in aggregate, they will no longer be able to price their inventory down at 50 cents each.

Of the six networks we work with, four were willing to shift to this model. (They will typically require freqquency caps).