Whoever said that the best things in life are free wasn’t talking about great content. In a world where someone has to pay the bills, advertisers are more than happy to help fund your website — assuming, of course, that your great content generates great traffic.

Publishers can’t just hang their hats on quality content and hope to thrive. Almost all publishers have to figure out a way to drive and monetize traffic that their content produces.

Operating a website is an extremely competitive endeavor, so publishers should develop an aggressive approach to properly monetize content and use the traffic they have to keep their website funded.

Click here for the four ways you can more effectively drive, maintain and monetize content as a publisher.

When most marketers and advertisers hear the term real-time bidding, they likely think of auction houses, not lucrative business strategies.

Many publishers are in the dark about real-time bidding, even though it’s a growing and highly profitable method of reaching consumers.

Until recently, companies would pay publishers a flat rate for a bulk number of ad impressions.

Real-time bidding allows them to pay for individual impressions at rates that reflect what they’re actually worth at any given point in time.

Marketers and advertisers target their ads—and ad dollars—to the most qualified prospects. Publishers earn more money as competing brands drive up the value of the ad spot.

But real-time bidding still intimidates a lot of would-be vendors and bidders. They struggle to understand how these advertising decisions can be made at a moment’s notice. But the theory behind real-time bidding is exactly the same as traditional advertising.

Read the rest of the article here. 

Internet technology has come a long way since the AOL dial-up days, and that includes advancements in online advertising. Unfortunately, with all this change, one of the most staple online tactics — banner ads — just couldn’t survive the rising tide.

The fall of the banner ad is unsurprising to most. After all, it was born out of necessity. Online publishers needed a consistent way to monetize the web in the early days, but what made banner ads so attractive in the first place — their standardize size — was ultimately their downfall.

Banner ads were everywhere, but they also looked the same on every website, and they continue to look the same even 20 years after their launch. The uniformity of online advertising made internet users numb to the 1,707 banner ads they saw per month — a phenomenon that became known as banner blindness. Many companies attempted to solve banner blindness with animation, expanded sizes, pop-ups, pop-unders, interstitials, and more. — but to no avail.

However, the dying banner ad has given way to a more purposeful and effective form of online marketing: the native ad.

To find out more why native advertising will prevail read more here.

Have you ever had an acquaintance strike up a seemingly friendly conversation about skin care or cooking — only to find yourself invited to her Avon or Pampered Chef party five minutes later?

It’s more than irritating; it’s disingenuous and rude.

Think of native advertising the same way. It’s not that readers are disinterested in your product or content; they just want to know who’s talking to them and the motives behind the conversation.

All native advertising needs to carry some form of disclosure, but it’s the nature of the disclosure that makes all the difference.

Want to learn more about what is the best type of disclosure to use in a Native Advertising campaign? Click here to learn more.

“Native advertising tricks readers!”

“Native advertising is ruining journalism!”

“Native advertising is the worst digital invention ever!”

As someone who has worked in native advertising since its early days, I’ve heard just about every possible negative opinion of it. But despite the naysayers, native advertising continues to grow exponentially.

Publications love it because it produces great content and helps pay the bills. Advertisers love it because native ad engagement is much higher than banner ad engagement. But for some reason, the negative banter regarding native advertising persists.

To learn about three of the most common myths that need to be debunked, read the full article here.

Last month, Google rolled out a new algorithm with far-reaching effects. It’s big news for anyone who uses the Internet. The update heavily favors mobile-friendly websites, and as a result, sites that aren’t optimized for mobile use have dropped in mobile search rankings and have lost big in organic search traffic.

But Mobilegeddon isn’t necessarily bad news for native advertisers. Given that Americans spend almost three hours per day on mobile devices, the new algorithm can translate to higher traffic and click-through rates for advertisers whose content is mobile-friendly.

However, the new algorithm means publishers and advertisers need to rethink their approach. Read the full article here.

March 19, 2015–Adblade, the largest content-style native ad exchange on the web, is announcing a partnership with IBM (NYSE: IBM), in which Adblade has become a certified partner on IBM’s Digital Data Exchange (DDX).

Effective immediately, publishers who are integrated with IBM’s tag management system, Digital Data Exchange, can manage all of their Adblade tags as well as other tags associated with their websites from one central dashboard. IBM’s solution simplifies the management of publishers’ tags, enabling clients to deploy and maintain their tags with ease and flexibility– all without IT involvement.

“We saw the partnership with IBM as an opportunity to make it easier for our publishers’ to do business. Once we made the decision to integrate, we knew it would be one less issue our publishers had to deal with when making the decision to use native advertising. We sought to work with a company, such as IBM, because of their quality solutions that are simple and secure. This integration reflects the growing realities of today’s demanding marketplace,” said Ash Nashed, CEO of Adblade.

Adblade’s publishers will benefit from the tag management technology that allows them to streamline the task of tagging their sites, lighten up their webpages from having to process dozens of data collection tags that often slow down the user experience and reduce the complexity of making changes to tags. As data-driven marketing continues to transforms the advertising industry, Adblade knows the importance of providing its publishers with the latest solutions in managing their websites.

Ultimately the goal of this partnership is to make it easier for Adblade publishers to manage their tags and acknowledges their growing native advertising needs. This integration marks an important moment in the Native Advertising industry, as it recognizes that companies require more integrated digital solutions to meet their data-driven marketing needs.

Learn more about what this partnership can mean for publishers.

Jan. 29, 2015— Adiant, owner of Adblade and IndustryBrains, the largest content-style native ad platform on the web, today announced the launch of AdSolutions. In recognizing the challenges that exist in the industry, Adblade has developed a suite of products and services which allow serious online marketers to execute native advertising campaigns faster, easier and with more flexibility.

Having worked with top agencies and brands for many years, Adblade sees the enormous pressure online marketers feel to deliver successful campaign results to both internal and external stakeholders. AdSolutions is designed to support an agency or brand in the process of creating successful campaigns from inception and execution to optimizing and final reporting.

“There was a gap in the marketplace for providing marketers with a true turnkey native advertising campaign solution,” says Ash Nashed CEO of Adiant. “We have been carefully tracking issues many companies were running up against and saw a real opportunity to address their needs.”  Included in the suite of solutions is a DMP (Data Management Platform) which taps into Adiant’s massive premium in content native inventory reaching over 550M uniques per month globally and also includes the recent integration with LiveRamp, which offers CRM (Customer Relationship Management) data integration.

AdSolutions also includes everything from specialized daily account optimization and management, flexible ad units, robust reporting, built in fraud protection, multiple targeting options and competitive pricing.

Adblade has remained a leader in the native advertising industry for many years by continuing to address challenges in the marketplace and providing industry leading solutions to publishers and advertisers. AdSolutions is designed to help agencies and brands meet deadlines, achieve goals, meet budgets and deliver great ROI.