This Ad Platform Will Help Publishers With Margin-Shaving

This morning the American City Business Journal, a countrywide network of 44 newsweeklies, announced the launch of its newest software product, AdBookPortal, an offering designed to help smaller publishers improve their profit margins by streamlining the ad management process. The platform, which was created in partnership with ad-tech firm FatTail, allows ACBJ and its advertising partners to communicate about creative assets directly, eliminating the tedium of back-and-forth exchanges over email. It also lets clients pay invoices through the portal and track the performance of their campaign, which frees up time for ACBJ account executives to focus on offering high-touch client services and reduces operational inefficiencies. The product pares down the steps required to purchase ads directly, but it does not automate the process; however, ACBJ does hope to introduce electronic-buying capabilities next year, said svp Ryan Whittington. In ACBJ's five-month period of beta testing the software with more than 500 clients, the publisher generated $1 million in revenue and yielded an approximate 10% time savings for its client services team, according to Whittington. ACBJ is rolling out the product across its network today, and the two companies plan to license the technology in the future. “One of the main goals is to get our internal teams less focused on administrative tasks and more focused on actually helping our clients reach their goals,” Whittington told Adweek. “We want to be less worried about pixels and click URLs and more focused on achieving high-value tasks for our clients, which makes a more satisfied client.” New York Times Audio Could Spur a Realignment of the Podcasting Landscape Preserving margins and staff For publishers like ACBJ, for whom local businesses make up nearly 90% of its advertising clientele, improving its deal-making efficiencies on already low-ticket campaigns provides critical padding to the profits of its advertising business. Advertising makes up 50% of ACBJ’s overall revenue, with the other half coming from its base of more than 500,000 subscribers and its sales of other services. The publisher declined to provide specific financial figures. ACBJ, like publishers of all sizes, has struggled with employee retention in the wake of the pandemic, losing around 33% of its team to turnover, Whittington said. In addition to improving the profit margins of its transactions, AdBookPortal aims to quicken the buying process, freeing up execs from “creative chasing” to give its sales team more opportunities to focus on higher-value services, such as branded content and virtual events. AdBookPortal details ACBJ has used AdBook+, the advertising platform from FatTail, for 16 years, said FatTail CEO Doug Huntington. So when ACBJ began trying to improve the efficiency of its ad sales operation, the publisher invited FatTail to develop a solution together. “In having built a few different software companies, there needs to be a partnership between the people that live the problem and the people that build the software,” Huntington said. “Ryan lives the problem, and that brings a lot of value to the solution we built.” The product offers three primary features: it expedites the process of delivering ad creative by providing a dedicated communications platform; it allows advertisers to pay invoices online; and it provides clients with a transparent dashboard with which it can track the success of its campaigns. The ability to pay online, common amongst premium publishers, is less ubiquitous for smaller media companies; some of the advertisers ACBJ works with pay invoices using snail mail. But when the pandemic hit, it forced media companies and their clientele to evolve rapidly, and 80% of business-focused buyers and sellers now prefer the new digital reality, according to a 2020 report from consulting firm McKinsey. So far, ACBJ has faced little pushback in encouraging its advertising clients to use the platform. Whittington hopes to have between 30% and 40% of ACJB customers using the product by June of next year and anticipates overall adoption of between 60% and 80%. “With cookies going away and everything else happening, there’s going to be a pendulum swing,” Huntington said, “where the balance of power shifts back to publishers of all sizes that have premium inventory and good journalism. Those things are going to get more fairly monetized going forward.”

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This Self-Serve Ad Platform Will Help Publishers Guard Against Margin-Shaving

ACBJ’s AdBookPortal generated over $1 million in revenue in beta

Mark Stenberg

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Mark Stenberg