Publishers

What are Publishers?

The term “Publisher” can refer to a variety of things. It can refer to the company the publishes the musical album of a singer or songwriter. It can refer to a company that publishes books for writers. But in the world of ad tech, publishers refer to those individuals or companies that create digital content which online visitors can consume. The publisher is the ultimate end goal for brands. Advertisers go through the many loops that are agencies, DSPs, SSPs, ad exchanges, etc. just to get to the publishers. Whereas brands want to get the biggest bang for their advertising dollars by spending on the best quality publishers and targeting the right user at the right time, publishers are interested in maximizing yield while maintaining site quality.

Goals of a Publisher

• Maximize revenue yield for the given amount of site visitors in a given amount of time.
• Show ads that are not harmful to the user experience. Harmful ads include:
  • Drugs, alcohol, violence, suggestive images, terrorism, etc.
  • Ads that slow down the user’s browser.
  • Auto – sound on ads are generally frowned upon.
  • Ads that deal with politics or other controversial subjects.

Below are the top 50 properties in terms of unique visitors, courtesy of comScore.

Rankings – comScore, Inc

# Property Unique Visitors/Viewers (000)

1 Google Sites 242,375
2 Microsoft Sites 211,156
3 Oath 209,875
4 Facebook 209,519
5 Amazon Sites 198,651
6 Comcast NBCUniversal 165,424
7 CBS Interactive 158,476
8 Twitter 151,918
9 Apple Inc. 151,203
10 PayPal 148,026
11 Turner Digital 138,757
12 The Walt Disney Company 137,311
13 Meredith Digital 134,123
14 Hearst 133,573
15 Snapchat, Inc 132,972
16 Wikimedia Foundation Sites 128,341
17 Weather Company, The 121,975
18 Linkedin 121,706
19 Wal-Mart 121,379
20 USA TODAY Network 119,792
21 Conde Nast Digital 115,726
22 Pinterest 110,748
23 CafeMedia 109,217
24 Yelp 106,243
25 Zillow Group 104,834
26 eBay 103,520
27 Penske Media Corp (PMC) 101,702
28 Netflix Inc. 95,858
29 TripAdvisor Inc. 95,253
30 Fox News Digital Network 90,773
31 PANDORA.COM 85,236
32 Reddit 81,680
33 New York Times Digital 79,514
34 Vox Media 78,456
35 Insider Inc. 78,105
36 Spotify 76,878
37 WebMD Health 76,512
38 Freestar Media 76,461
39 WASHINGTONPOST.COM 72,925
40 Discovery Inc 71,536
41 VICE Media 69,681
42 Expedia Inc 68,565
43 tronc 66,699
44 Fusion Media Group 65,967
45 Dropbox Sites 65,323
46 NYPost Network 63,273
47 Forbes Digital 63,222
48 Dotdash 62,719
49 BBC Sites 61,753
50 Verizon Communications Corporation 61,163

Sources

• https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Rankings

Action is character.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald