I greatly enjoyed my recent talk with Bob Regular, CEO of Infolinks Media. Bob has been involved with digital publishing for several decades and has seen the digital space evolve greatly in that time, having founded and built digital businesses that have exceeded $1 billion in total revenue to date.
Our talk begins with a discussion of the evolution of Infolinks Media, which initially focused on contextual advertising before pivoting to direct publisher integrations to enhance ad performance and publisher yield. Bob highlights the serious challenges faced by web-based publishers today, including the challenges of brand safety, particularly for news publishers, and the impact of ad density on both user experience and SEO.
While many of these challenges are daunting, Bob remains optimistic about the future of publishing and advertising on the web and sees a maturation of the web advertising space to better compete with walled gardens like Facebook.
Discussion points include:
- Bob’s philosophy of emphasizing the importance of high-quality, curated ad placements over quantity, aiming for a “boutique” approach.
- How 80% of performance comes from 20% of publisher ad units, making it challenging to find high-performing placements.
- The high intent of search advertising and its similarities to contextual advertising.
- Bob’s controversial view that the tracking cookie is not the problem but rather the system built around it.
- The limitations of contextual advertising and the potential of AI tools to blend identity and contextualization.
- The negative impact of brand safety filters on news publishers’ yields and editorial independence.
- The vicious cycle of publishers adding more ads to earn more money, which ultimately decreases ad value.
- The importance of relevance and performance in advertising, especially in the context of walled gardens like Facebook and TikTok.
