REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 18, 2014) - With the growth of programmatic solutions that enable publishers to use their valuable first party data to monetize their audiences beyond their owned and operated sites, publishers are expanding their ad offering with audience extension. According to survey results released today by media company Digiday and Audience Accelerator, a business unit within Rocket Fuel , (
Audience Accelerator and Digiday's "The Value of Digital Publisher's Audiences" survey questioned 226 senior level publishers and agency and brand professionals. The insights in the study highlight shifts on both the publisher and buyer sides over the past year and anticipated future shifts. Key findings from the study include:
Publishers are looking to audience extension solutions to increase their revenue through greater reach:
- More than half of publishers (52%) are offering audience extension to their advertising partners, an increase from last year's results.
- Publishers offering audience extension are leveraging it more often, with one third (33%) of publishers saying that they offer audience extension solutions on either "most" or "all" of their campaign proposals to advertisers, a 31% increase from 2013.
- Most (73%) publishers offering audience extension say they include extension on a proposal when they need additional reach to deliver on advertiser goals, an increase of more than 55% from the 2013 survey.
- Publishers are seeing more benefits overall, primarily when it comes to meeting goals for clients -- two thirds of publishers (67%) say that audience extension has allowed them to meet client goals that would have otherwise not been met, nearly double the number one year ago.
- Audience extension is generating up to 10% of practicing publishers' revenue. 36% of publishers report that they plan for it to account for between 11% and 20% of advertising revenue over the next 12 months.
Publishers are more sophisticated than they were a year ago, with a greater understanding of the benefits of extension:
- Publishers are 23% more likely to say that they are "very familiar" with audience extension than they were a year ago, with more than 3 out of 4 (77%) claiming this level of familiarity.
Publishers looking to the future want better reporting tools and more transparency from audience extension platforms:
- A direct consequence of greater levels of familiarity and sophistication is a greater understanding of the benefits a publisher can receive from audience extension.
- Publishers state Transparency (14%) and Easier Access to the Platform (14%) as the top two items they would prefer to see in the future development of audience extension.
"At Digiday we know just how fast digital publishing is changing, not just because we write about it, but because we're a part of it," said Nick Friese, Digiday CEO. "Publishers are under pressure to deliver large, quality audiences and this Industry Leader's study explores just how they're expanding those audiences to meet demand. We'll be listening to the findings and insights revealed by this study just as eagerly as anyone in the DPS audience this month."
"Audience Accelerator is deeply vested in helping the market make informed decisions regarding audience extension," said Paul Wenz, Audience Accelerator General Manager. "By partnering with Digiday, we are able to keep our fingers on the pulse of the market, retrieving unbiased responses for how publishers, buyers and brands value publishers' first party data and in particular the practice of audience extension."
For more information and to review the full report, please visit http://rocketfuel.com/audiencevalue .
Methodology A sample of 226 publishers, and agency and brand professionals -- at the director level or higher -- responded to this survey as part of the Digiday Executive Forum. The survey was fielded between August 13th and September 5th. Publishers involved in the Executive Forum range in audience size from less than 250,000 uniques per month to more than 50 million uniques per month.
About Audience Accelerator Rocket Fuel's Audience Accelerator business unit provides an unparalleled full-service audience extension platform, exclusively servicing sites, networks and data companies. We help our partners leverage their data to effortlessly scale their audiences with outstanding results. Powered by our proven artificial intelligence technology, we enable our partners to model their unique audiences and extend reach to up to 99% of the online universe in the United States. Audience Accelerator's full-service team handles set up, training, and execution. We provide access to industry experts; RFP responses; and detailed, actionable campaign analysis -- saving technology, staff, and infrastructure investment.
About Rocket Fuel Rocket Fuel delivers a leading programmatic media-buying platform at Big Data scale that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve marketing ROI in digital media across web, mobile, video, and social channels. Rocket Fuel powers digital advertising and marketing programs globally for customers in North America, Europe, and APAC. Customers trust Rocket Fuel's Advertising That Learns® platform to achieve brand and direct-response objectives in diverse industries from luxury cars to financial services to retail. Rocket Fuel currently operates in more than 20 offices worldwide and trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the ticker symbol "FUEL." For more information, please visit http://www.rocketfuel.com or call 1-888-717-8873.
Media Contact: Kenya Hayes khayes@rocketfuel.com 650-481-6178
