NEW WAY

UCLA Offers Advertisers A New Way To Buy Traditional Media

A 2018 AdExchanger feature describes UCLA adopting flytedesk to centralize campus media inventory for national advertisers. Flytedesk pools digital, print, out-of-home, and radio inventory from about 2,300 US universities to offer consolidated buying opportunities. The platform provides a campus-demographic planning tool, a demand-side platform for digital placement, and workflows for uploading creative, payments, and verification. UCLA is among flytedesk’s largest clients, with the Daily Bruin and other campus outlets benefiting as print volumes and online page views are highlighted. The effort aims to scale out-of-home inventory and has attracted $5 million in funding from ad-tech figures, including the founders of SpotX and Eric Roza, head of Oracle Data Cloud. Kronman estimates roughly $7 billion of existing campus media inventory nationwide. Advertisers mentioned include Trojan condoms and the Adult Swim show Dream Corp LLC.

Yieldbot Hands Publishers A New Way to Leverage Their First-Party Data

Yieldbot is expanding its platform to help publishers monetize first-party data by analyzing clickstream and search data to gauge purchase likelihood. The company appointed Scott Portugal as GM of publisher platforms to integrate Yieldbot into direct sales offerings. It plans to launch ads.ai, a self-serve platform for publishers' ad ops teams, in late September 2014 with two beta clients, enabling direct inventory sales while retaining the existing managed model. Yieldbot’s approach has historically delivered CPMs higher than the open exchange (ranging from $1 to above $6–$7), attracting mid-tier publishers like Meredith, BlogHer, and Rodale. The firm reports strong momentum, including 700% growth in the past year and CPC campaigns with eight of the top 10 SEMs. Yieldbot raised $18 million in a June 2014 Series B to fund its expansion.

Value Per Customer – A New Way To View Publisher Value

Data-Driven Thinking's Scott Portugal outlines Value Per Customer (VPC), a hybrid pricing model for publishers and buyers in real-time audience buying. VPC treats the page as a value-creating unit, priced by the on-site value of its visitors using data such as time on site, pages viewed, bookmarks, shares, comments, visitation paths, and registration data to guide targeting. Publishers could sell inventory at the page level by value tier (High, Medium, Low) and tailor ads to individual user value. The piece contrasts existing buys—custom placements for $50K, sports-section targeting $15K, and ROS against registration data $10K—with a VPC example: 1M impressions at $15 CPM ($15K), 5M at $10 CPM ($50K), and 10M at $1 CPM ($10K). The model aims to boost ROAS and reduce waste, with YieldX cited as a tool to assess ad calls and margins.