Publisher

Mapendo Team
April 20, 2022

PUBLISHER

Publishers are at the bottom of the supply chain in the mobile marketing ecosystem, as opposed to advertisers, who represent the demand side. Like advertisers, publishers are an indispensable part of the mobile app marketing world.

What is the Publisher?

While advertisers provide the content to be promoted, publishers are in charge of bringing traffic to the promoted product or service, which is a mobile app in the case of app marketing and app install campaigns. Publishers are all the websites and mobile apps where the ads promoting the advertisers’ apps are shown to users. Publishers are not responsible for producing ads and creatives but they only show them to the end-consumers.

In the context of app install campaigns, there are many ways publishers can sell their ad placements, namely digital spaces where the ads will be shown to users and which will thus become impressions. 

For instance, they can negotiate the selling of their ad inventory directly with advertisers and get paid on a per impression basis. Prices can vary based on the targeted audience, the size of the ads and other factors. Private negotiations between advertisers and publishers ensure exclusivity to advertisers and a fixed revenue stream for publishers. 

However, they may take a lot of time and not fulfill the potential of both the parties involved in terms of reach and monetization. That’s why publishers combine private deals with other app marketing activities such as programmatic advertising and real time bidding auctions. 

In order to fully capitalize on the potential of programmatic advertising, publishers often rely on Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs), which operate on their behalf within Ad Exchanges and Real Time Bidding Platforms. Supply-Side Platforms collect ad placements from multiple publishers and sell them in real time auctions within Ad Exchanges.

Why is it important?

Publishers represent the supply side of the mobile app marketing world, and they provide advertisers with traffic and potential users for their apps. Advertisers need publishers’ ad inventory in order to show their ads to potential new users.

Therefore, Ad Networks and mobile Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs) acquire ad placements from publishers for their app install campaigns. When app install campaigns are run through Programmatic Ad Exchanges, full transparency is granted to advertisers, who are able to know where their ads are shown.

They are able to see publishers’ app names along with many other information collected in order to adjust the bid based on targeting criteria for the app install campaigns. 

What you need to know about the Publisher?

  • Publishers are the supply side of mobile app marketing world;
  • Advertisers buy publishers’ ad spaces in order to show their ads to users;
  • Publishers provide advertisers with traffic and users;
  • Publishers sell their ad placements in app install campaigns;
  • Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) collect ad spaces from multiple publishers and sell them in Ad Exchanges.