AOL rolls out price floor tool AlephD for publishers
AOL Platforms Asia has rolled out its dynamic price floor optimisation tool, AlephD as part of the One by AOL: Publisher suite. The launch follows the acquisition and integration by AOL earlier last year of the Paris-based company that developed the software. Early studies in the South East Asia region, in September and October of this year, indicate that the tool can increase performance yields for publishers by between 10 and 40 per cent.
AlephD resolves one of the biggest quandaries for publishers: how to ensure they are getting fair value for their display and video inventory without losing out on sales. To ensure advertising is not sold too low, publishers set a price floor. The problem is, if the price floor is set too high it can prevent ads being placed and remove the revenue opportunity. Rather than relying on a single ‘hard floor’ price, AlephD makes predicative adjustments pre-bid in real time based on a multitude of factors/criteria including historical data and trending moments. Hence, if demand is peaking a higher price floor will be maintained; optimising to drive higher floor prices and capture higher bids..
“Programmatic trading is often criticised for being biased in favour of the advertiser. The roll out of AlephD is a significant milestone in AOL’s continued efforts to build and enhance tools that help publishers manage and monetise their assets better. This strikes a balance. It gives publishers the control to optimise their sales based on the wealth of data they amass, ensuring they never sell below where they need to, and better enables advertisers to make decisions in real time based on market demand,” says Alex Khan, Managing Director for AOL Asia.
AOL tested the application on its own significant online properties, including those covered under the recent 10-year strategic partnership with Microsoft. By implementing a varied price-floor mechanism using AlephD, the average advertising yield increased on each property by at least 10 percent, and in many cases as high as 40 percent.
AlephD is now available for Asia-based users of AOL’s programmatic trading platform ONE by AOL: Publishers. It supplements a continually expanding range of capabilities, providing monetisation solutions across display, video, in-app and outstream.
Mr Khan concluded, “There are some publishers still concerned that real time bidding reduces their control and hits their revenues. I see AlephD as removing that obstacle and we can expect to see many more finally making the move to programmatic selling of their inventories.”
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