“New” guys know the readers better than the publishers

Publishers’ advertising revenue is being lost to all kinds of middlemen and to Google.

"The 'new' guys know the readers better than the publishers themselves," says Marco Billeter, CEO of Premium Publisher Network Switzerland.

The same picture can be seen all around the world, he explains. Agencies have become publishers, and publishers are a passive traffic distributor. Advertisers are doing all the cherry picking.

"There are a lot of companies on your site that you don’t know, but you can be sure they are taking information from your site," Billeter says.

You might also experience, that a small ad is put on a newspaper site and a bigger part of the ad is behind the curtain, on an unpopular site, for example. Ads are also published on “wrong” or “weird” sites, for example a French ad on a German website.

So Premium Publisher Network Switzerland is selling packages with a user profile: "We are coming close to what TV advertisers say they can analyze of the customer."

Selling directly with targeted information has meant a huge growth in revenue to them.  "We are trying to build a global network against Google and others," Billeter said.