Advertising Digital Publishing
2 mins read

“Opportune time for digital publishers”: Ad rates at an unprecedented high

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As advertisers move budgets away from the traditional mediums like radio, TV, and print, it was expected that the investments in digital media would rise to some extent in 2018. After all, the change has been a long time coming, and it was only last year that digital ad spending finally beat TV.

But it appears that the trend is more pronounced than originally projected by ad industry experts. According to Ezoic—a machine learning platform for online publishers—there is a record-breaking upward trend in digital ad rates.

Ezoic’s popular Ad Revenue Index highlights an unprecedented, and consistent, growth in ad rates since the start of the year.

Ezoic’s popular Ad Revenue Index reflects a record rise in digital ad rates for publishers. 

As marketers shift their investments from traditional formats to digital, there’s increased competition for the digital ad inventory, which is a factor in driving up prices.

The Ezoic Index data is also in-line with eMarketer research findings, i.e., programmatic ad prices have been steadily going up over the past 1 year across desktop, mobile, apps and video, sometimes increasing to more than 10%.

“We are seeing a really opportune time for digital publishers,” said Tyler Bishop, Ezoic’s head of marketing. “Ad rates are really in a prime spot for those that know how to capitalize on the increased competition in the marketplace.”  

We see even more information internally that points to 2018 being a record-breaking time for digital advertising.

Tyler also shared that even independent publishers, like HomeSnacks and RoadSnacks, were included in The Ad Revenue Index, and are seeing record uplifts in their monthly earnings.

This year, the Index has been on a tear, setting a record high in May, then again in June. In earlier years, the Index only saw records broken during Black Friday (late November) — a time when ad rates generally peak for the year.

“I expect 2018 to continue this trend,” Bishop mentioned. “I think we’ll see this record rise in ad rates continue through the end of the year.”

It’s a really good time to be a publisher if you have infrastructure and technology in place to capitalize on this unique time in advertising history.

Record-breaking digital ad rates is obviously good news for publishers, and it also signals advertisers are spending more to ensure transparency. With the recent changes in government regulations and Facebook/Google algorithms, digital transparency is high on the agenda for advertisers as they increase their digital ad spend.