Today we’re talking about how to understand the online advertising landscape for bloggers and publishers.
Host 0:04
Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.
Jillian Leslie 0:11
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Blogger Genius.
Before I get started with today’s episode, I wanted to announce that on my Facebook group, which is called The MiloTree Mastermind group, every Monday at 3pm eastern time, I’m doing a recap of the episode where I am pointing out the points that I think are most salient, where I’m learning the most, that the points that I think need repeating and going deeper into.
So please, I welcome you to join me. Like please pause this right now. Go to Facebook. Go in the search box. Find The MiloTree Mastermind group, and please join it and join me. I have this vision of it being a really rich conversation.
Right now I just started so it’s a little crickity over there. I really welcome you to come and ask your questions and share what is most important for you in this episode. A lot of times, I’m a huge podcast listener, but a lot of times, I hear something, let’s say, I’m driving, and I go, “Oh, my God, that’s such a good point.” I’ll totally remember it.
And then I come home, and I don’t remember it. For my own learning, I have found that when I can really summarize, and really pull out those points that could accelerate my business, I need to be doing that. So I actually take notes when I am interviewing a guest, but then I’m not really doing anything with those notes.
This way, I want to have a real conversation about it because it’s those little gems that I think can accelerate all of our businesses. So, this is my long winded way of saying please, please go right now and join The MiloTree Mastermind group.
And then, I would love it if you showed up on Monday at 3pm or even just watch the replay. But I really envision a place where we can all discuss what we’re dealing with and how this episode impacted you and what your takeaways were.
I want us all to learn from each other. I want you to get to know me, for me to get to know you. So please go do that.
Okay. For today’s episode, I am interviewing Paul Bannister. Paul is the Executive Vice President of Cafe Media. Now, Cafe Media is kind of like one side of AdThrive. Cafe Media is the side that goes to brands and says, “Come advertise on our network.” AdThrive is the side that faces publishers, bloggers, that kind of thing. It puts ads on our blog.
We use AdThrive for Catch My Party and we really like them. I have to say that the ad business can be somewhat inscrutable. It’s difficult to really understand how that ad is being served on your site and what kind of ad and how best to create content that will give you serious ad revenue, even if you are just starting out or you don’t have that much traffic.
What I think is interesting about Paul in my discussion is how to think about the content you make to attract eyeballs, to grow your traffic, to be able to work with a premium ad network, so that you can continue. What’s great about ad revenue? It’s passive income. I want everybody to be making as much passive income as they can.
And so, this is a way to really think about how to create content that will grow your traffic even faster. Also, you know, we get into some of the technology. We talked about privacy issues. We talked about how the ad business has changed over the years. We’ve been at this a long time. We’ve seen a lot of change.
The main takeaway, one of them, is how it’s continuing to evolve. We all don’t know how it’s going to continue to evolve. So it’s really good for you to be up on new trends.
Okay. So without further ado, here is my interview with Paul Bannister.
Paul, welcome to the show. It’s great to have you here.
Paul Bannister 4:44
Hi, Jillian! Thanks very much for having me.
Jillian Leslie 4:46
So we met in Atlanta at an AdThrive get together. You work at AdThrive. And AdThrive is… Well, here. I’m going to ask you. What is AdThrive and what do you do there?
Paul Bannister 5:02
AdThrive is the premier ad network for professional bloggers. I work primarily actually with advertisers and advertising technology companies. So I actually don’t work with publishers a ton. But I try to be kind of somebody who knows the advertising side and try to kind of bring that knowledge and expertise that we built out to publishers at large.
Jillian Leslie 5:24
Okay. So publishers or bloggers, people who create content.
Paul Bannister 5:27
Yeah, exactly.
Jillian Leslie 5:28
And for you guys, there are really two sides to your business. There is the side where you deal with publishers, like Catch My Party, and lots of other you know. And I would say that you have some of the best blogs as part of your ad network. Like you guys really think a lot about quality.
Paul Bannister 5:45
We are kind of a little crazy about quality and really try to be super picky and super careful. We think we’ve done a really good job so far of keeping the quality level high, and we feel that it’s our responsibility for all the existing AdThrive customers that we work with, to make sure that anybody knew that we ever bring in kind of lose up to that level of quality.
Jillian Leslie 6:07
Right. Okay. And then there’s the other side of the business, which is you are then going to advertisers like, say Target, or Clorox, or Procter and Gamble, those kinds of things. And you are saying to them, “Hey, advertise on our network.”
Paul Bannister 6:23
Exactly. Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 6:24
Okay. And so, you deal more with the sales side, is that right? Because there are different pieces. There’s the technology, there’s the sales, there’s the publishers.
Paul Bannister 6:36
Yeah. It all blends together a little bit. In a funny way, the technology kind of weaves through all of it because so much of digital advertising today is kind of built on technology. But it’s really pretty important to know the guts of how things work on both sides, on the publisher side and on the kind of advertising sales side.
So, you know, I try as best I can to stay really up to date on the trends particularly affecting advertisers in digital advertising.
Jillian Leslie 7:03
Got it. Okay. So let’s go back for a second and talk about quality, which you were alluding to in terms of the publishers that you guys work with. When you say quality, what does that mean?
Paul Bannister 7:14
That’s a great question. We’ve actually been talking about that internally. What really does it mean? Sometimes I feel like, you know, the not great answer, but sometimes it’s true is kind of you know it when you see it.
We want people with original content. We want people who’s site looks nice. Nothing is a pure bar of quality per se, but we want people who are blogging or publishing in general. It’s not just a hobby for them. It’s something that they take seriously, and it’s something that is really a bigger part of their life.
And I think, again, that’s not totally quality, but I think it’s connected to quality. We want to make sure that the site has kind of a good history, whether that’s from the kinds of content that’s on the site, as well as kind of the way that advertising works on the site currently.
And just make sure the site feels good. But it’s a great question and we’re actually spending time thinking about really, how do you really crisply define what quality means.
Jillian Leslie 8:11
Isn’t there a page view thresholds to even get consider for AdThrive?
Paul Bannister 8:16
There is. We have a minimum monthly page views of 100,000. And that definitely gets into the realm of, again, what I was saying before, like, when you’re at 100,000 page views a month, I think for almost anybody at that level, this is something that is turned into more than a hobby for you and more of a profession. Even if it’s like your full time focus.
Jillian Leslie 8:41
Exactly. Okay. So, can you then walk me through? I will say we’ve been at this with Catch My Party for gosh, 10 years. We’ve watched the advertising business change over those 10 years. Could you explain? It’s very complicated. For somebody who’s been in it and kind of understands technology, it can be complicated. Can you break it down? How does it work?
Paul Bannister 9:10
It’s complicated.
Jillian Leslie 9:12
But in terms of like, even let’s start with you guys go to Target and and say, “Hey, buy some advertising.”
Paul Bannister 9:20
We do. That’s definitely a big part of what we do. It may almost be worth talking for a minute about the concept of an ad network. Because to some level there are different kinds of ad networks. There are ones like us that sort of are like connectors that are trying to really connect as many publishers with as many advertisers.
But then there are also lots of specialized ad networks too. For example, there’s one that focuses only on healthcare advertisers. There are ones that focus only on certain kinds of high impact advertising. We also work with those sorts of companies and try to bring in deals they might have that we might not have.
Like they might have a great relationship with Intel. And we don’t happen to have as much of a relationship with Intel as an example. So we might work with somebody who’s already got that great relationship or bring that demand through them. And those are typically kind of other ad networks or these kind of advertising technology companies.
In addition to advertiser direct, we also liaise with all these other kind of networks and technology companies. Our job is to maximize the value of every impression for a publisher. We feel that to do that we’ve got to work with lots and lots of companies of different kinds to bring in that kind of maximum demand.
Jillian Leslie 10:32
Got it? Okay. And then, can you explain, usually when a blogger starts, they start putting Google ads on their site, like Google AdSense. And so, how are you guys different from that or similar or that kind of thing.
Paul Bannister 10:43
I think we’re different in a couple of ways. One is that kind of diversity of advertising on demand. When you’re working with Google AdSense, you’re really just working with the demand that Google is bringing to you, which obviously is a huge amount because Google, you know, is Google. But we are then going beyond Google and working with dozens of other companies, probably hundreds of other companies across kind of the industry to bring in more demand than Google can on that road.
So I think that’s kind of where the big step up comes from is us kind of working with a much more diverse pool of advertisers and bring more demand through. We also try to make it more kind of like full service for a publisher. Whereas, I think in a lot of cases, AdSense will basically say like, “Here’s an ad tag, put it on your page.”
Whereas, we will be much more consultative and say, “Here are what we think are the best locations for ads. Let us figure out how this template works for you, and how can video be a part of your experience.” And then, kind of go through the whole kind of end to end process rather than just you know, here’s an ad tag,
Jillian Leslie 11:42
Right. And I would say that in our experience with Catch My Party, we have always felt like you guys were our partners, and you have helped us tremendously increase our RPM, which means revenue per page, because you’ve come to us and said, “You know what you could do? If you move this here in your layout, we could put an ad here. And we’re like, “Oh, that’s interesting.”
So I feel like it’s a win-win, which is, you know, you’re making money and we’re making money. So it’s in both of our interest to figure out how best to optimize our site.
Paul Bannister 12:20
Well, I appreciate the kind words. And definitely, that’s how we like to try to operate. We’re trying to figure out things that are… Ultimately, we try to make all of our decisions in terms of like what is best for the publisher. We have the benefit that most of the time it’s also great for us, but we always try to really make sure that we’re doing the right thing for the publisher first.
Jillian Leslie 12:37
Yes. And I will say this too which is I think you are very sensitive to the publisher. So, if I am a publisher, and I go, “You know what? Just load up my site with ads.” You’ll do it. But if you if I say, “No. You know what? I just want a couple ads on my page.” You’ll do that.
Paul Bannister 12:52
Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 12:52
You are very flexible.
Paul Bannister 12:54
For sure. We’re very flexible. We have parameters. You are at the high end. If somebody said, “Hey, I want you to put 40 ads on my page.” We would say no because we know that that is… It’s bad for that site but it also reflects poorly when we talk to advertisers.
The advertisers also want to know that the sites we’re working with are quality. Part of that is having a really good… and it doesn’t need to be conservative per se, but like, you know, realistic ad layout. That is not too much.
Neither publishers nor advertisers want to bombard consumers at the end of the day, because they’re the most important group of people here, and your readers, your audience. So we want to make sure that the layout really works for them at the end of the day.
Jillian Leslie 13:32
Yeah. And I have to say, it’s always a balancing act.
Paul Bannister 13:34
Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 13:36
David, my husband and partner, and I always debate this because he always wants fewer ads. And again, there is this fine line and it is a balancing act.
Paul Bannister 13:47
It really is. It is figuring out that balance between revenue, and consumer experience, and what advertisers need. It’s definitely a balancing act.
Jillian Leslie 13:58
Definitely. Okay. Let’s say, I have 100,000 page views a month. Could I expect to make a living just with ads? Or do you feel like that’s a supplemental part and I need to monetize in other ways as well.
Paul Bannister 14:18
I think at that level you have to monetize in other ways as well. I mean, I think realistically, almost everybody, almost every publisher we work with wants to and we think should diversify their revenue streams.
Ads can be a big part of bringing value to a publisher but we think it’s always good to diversify. It’s good to look at other options. I think at 100,000, most people are definitely gonna want to have a few other revenue streams and figure out ways that they can monetize their audience and their social reach and other components of what they built up using other channels.
Jillian Leslie 14:51
Got it. In working with other publishers, what would you say some of the main ways publishers are monetizing today?
Paul Bannister 15:01
One of the interesting things is sort of like, we do see some similarities by vertical.
Jillian Leslie 15:07
Oh, interesting.
Paul Bannister 15:08
Like people who are in the travel space do really well, obviously people do kind of travel agency work or like affiliate programs for booking resorts and things like that. Personal finance is sort of similar because it’s like, you know, sign up for credit card and they get a commission from that. So those are kind of worlds where the affiliate world works pretty well.
Whereas in food, home decor, parenting, we definitely see kind of sponsored content. Something that more people do, although, we definitely heard some negativity about that more recently.
Jillian Leslie 15:42
Oh, wait. We have to stop. What is the negativity that you’ve been hearing?
Paul Bannister 15:45
That sponsored content can be… And we don’t do sponsored content, or do very little of it so it’s not our per view, per se, but that it’s complicated for the the amount of money that you make. A lot of advertisers want very custom programs and they aren’t always willing to pay for it. Which is one of the reasons that we think kind of standard, you know, banner advertising and video advertising can be great because it’s much more turnkey. It’s much easier for the publisher and also for the advertiser.
Jillian Leslie 16:11
Wait. Stop. What do you mean by that? That video. Go back.
Paul Bannister 16:18
So you know, video. If you have a video player on your site and you’ve got your own videos, putting just 30 second video ads against that is a nice, easy way to make extra money versus, again, making sponsored content for an advertiser.
Jillian Leslie 16:33
Okay. And let me just break that down for people who don’t know what that means, which is with AdThrive, they have a special… It looks kind of like if you’ve embedded a YouTube video on your page, but it is a way to run ads around your video content.
So that way I can put up my own video. Let’s say that I didn’t make for a brand, I made for myself. And because of this unit ad unit, I can monetize that unit.
Paul Bannister 17:03
Exactly. Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 17:04
Okay. And I would agree with you and I’ve heard this on the podcast and reaching out to other bloggers, which is, back in the day, we did a ton of sponsored content, and it was the Wild West. The brand would come to us and say, “Hey, you know.”
When you hear this thing is sponsored content. And, “Why don’t you just use our product and just make a recipe with it?” And we’d be like, “Cool.” And we’d go make a recipe, and we put it up on our blog. Maybe Facebook was around back then, maybe Twitter.
We would make a recipe and we’d show it to them. We would share it on Facebook and Twitter. We’d send them the links, and they would send us a check. They’d be like, “Great” and send us a check.
And then over time, brands got “smarter”. I put “smarter” in quotes because I’m not sure how much more impactful it became for them, but then they started to ask for more things, and ask for reshoots, or ask to show the brand, show the product in a certain way, or who knows.
It definitely has become more onerous over time. I think that’s kind of what you were alluding to.
Paul Bannister 18:15
Exactly. Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 18:18
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Okay. Now, in terms of growing traffic, because again, the more traffic we get at Catch My Party, the more we both benefit. When you think about that, what would you say your tips are for bloggers to grow their traffic? Where is traffic easy to find, if that’s possible?
Paul Bannister 20:47
Probably nothing that easy. I think, again, diversification is a big component here. I think also like trying to pick your battles and be great at something before you’re great at everything, probably is a good way to think about it.
Are you really good at Pinterest and growing traffic from there? Or have you built a really compelling email newsletter program that you can sign people up for and drive traffic from? Have you really optimized your site well for SEO? What are those channels? What are you great at already?
Kind of double down on that and get really good at something. Whereas, I feel like if you’re not good at any of them, and you try to kind of do all of it, it might be really complicated. So I think focus probably helps in terms of each person knowing what they’re best at and knowing where to focus their attention, particularly in the beginning.
Jillian Leslie 21:37
And also to figure out where your audience is and show up for them there.
Paul Bannister 21:40
Exactly. Totally makes sense.
Jillian Leslie 21:42
Okay. So if I’m out now optimizing my blog, I know this, but you know, rumor has it that site speed matters. Could you talk a little bit about what that means and how ads play a role in that?
Paul Bannister 21:57
Site speed definitely matters, particularly for SEO and for any kind of traffic. We spend a lot of time really focused on how can we do more on the outside. Site speed matters in the sense also that anything you put on a page has an impact on site speed.
If you have an article that’s 10 paragraphs versus an article with 20 paragraphs, like the 20 paragraph one will be slightly slower, because you just got more paragraphs on the page and you got more text. Obviously, it’s a minor impact but it has something.
So I think there’s always this overarching kind of view a publisher should have of what is on my page, and what purpose is it serving. Is it really helping serve my audience better? Whether that’s ads, whether that’s social widgets or other kind of plugins and components of the page. Whether it’s images.
Like, what is the purpose of this? Does my audience care and want this? And making that balance. And again, to the point earlier, we’re talking about trade off. It’s sort of the same thing here. Like, what is the trade off between adding a new social widget or adding a new app or something else? And how does that counterbalance against site speed?
Yeah, it’s just finding that kind of trade off point, that balancing point where you as a publisher feel good about where you are in that perspective.
Jillian Leslie 23:14
Totally. When we were starting with Catch My Party, I would just upload photos into our back end WordPress. And my partner is my husband, David, and he’s the technologist. He one day looked at me and he goes, “What are you doing? You’re putting huge photos up on WordPress. Do you know what this does to our site speed?” He was so pissed.
We also create this widget called MiloTree and we use it on Catch My Party. So you better believe we optimize the heck out of it because the last thing we want to do is impact our own site speed or somebody else’s site speed. But a lot of plugins, a lot of WordPress plugins, can really bog your site down.
And so again, think about your photos and how big they are. Do you really need to show such a big photo? I know that’s where I got schooled to think about… I like what you said, which is everything you are adding to your site could be affecting site speed. You really pay attention to that.
Paul Bannister 24:21
Exactly. And you don’t know how those plugin developers are focused on site speed. It’s incumbent on each publisher to say, to your point, like, “What am I using that’s truly valuable?” And then making sure the ones that you are using are really optimized.
Jillian Leslie 24:36
Is it because Google wants the searcher to have a good experience? So if they end up on a site and it’s slow to load, that person is going to bounce.
Paul Bannister 24:49
Exactly.
Jillian Leslie 24:49
Is that the bottom line, what the deal is?
Paul Bannister 24:52
For sure. I mean Google wants searchers to be satisfied with the results. And satisfaction has a lot of different components to it. Speed is definitely one of them. I mean Google has said that it’s not the biggest ranking factor.
We’ve done some research around that also shows it’s not the biggest. But that said, you kind of want to put your best foot forward. If site speed is a component, you want to make sure that’s great. And we’re focused on making it great, too.
Jillian Leslie 25:18
If you look at all of our attention spans, I don’t know about you, but I go to a site and it’s slow, boom, I’m out.
Paul Bannister 25:23
Exactly. It makes a big difference in the experience for the user. That’s the most critical thing.
Jillian Leslie 25:27
Now, tell me again about ads. If I want to put ads up on my site, do I need to be aware, like, does each ad slow my site down?
Paul Bannister 25:37
Each ad definitely has some impact. I would say like the sheer function of running ads at all, going from zero to one is probably the biggest jump, because there’s a certain amount of just kind of foundational code that needs to be there to support ads. That’s kind of the first step.
Once you’re adding units, there’s definitely an impact but it’s not quite as large anymore. We’re working on a lot of things on our site to even mitigate that. There’s different technologies we’re using to kind of bundle us together.
So like for ads, you know, go out together, and they really only use the code of what previously was one. So a lot of things that we’re trying to do to optimize those things and make them better.
But you know, ads definitely do have an impact. It is a little bit that binary choice of if I have ads, it’s going to have some impact, and how do you work with your ad network to really minimize them?
Jillian Leslie 26:24
I don’t know if you could do this but I find it fascinating. If I go to a site, how does that ad load? How does it know it’s me? How many places does that, like, does that information bounce before that ad is served?
Paul Bannister 26:41
That’s a big question right now. If you’re reading the news, there’s these antitrust investigations into Google and Facebook and other things. They’re the biggest companies in this space but there’s a lot of parties involved in the process of getting an ad up on a site.
Jillian Leslie 26:53
Like it’s shocking. You know, you think, “Oh, there’s an ad but you…” Like split… not even a second. I mean it’s just like hundreds of a second or thousands of a second. It’s just like data is traveling all over the place.
Paul Bannister 27:09
Exactly. And it’s like data to your point that knows that it’s you, and then know certain things about you. And then a whole bunch of advertisers are bidding and saying, “I want to show this ad. I want to show this ad.”
The amount of things that happen in under a second and many of the elements, to your point are milliseconds, is really pretty unbelievable.
Jillian Leslie 27:28
Yeah. And then your Zappos ad shows up with the same shoes that you were just looking at.
Paul Bannister 27:33
And probably about a week ago or something.
Jillian Leslie 27:34
Exactly. And it’s creepy, but it’s weird. Yeah, I saw a diagram. I don’t know if you guys showed it but it’s like what happens when you go to a website and that ad is going to be served and how that information is traveling all over the internet to serve you that specific ad. It’s shocking.
Paul Bannister 27:54
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. There’s a tremendous number of [unclear]. And you know, there’s positives and negatives all about it. I mean I think the more company, to the point I said before like the more companies that somebody works with, the better chances of kind of getting a really well paying ad for a given slot and showing a relevant ad to a user versus the less that are out there probably the less relevant and the less you know, demand there is ultimately.
But there’s a lot of momentum in the industry of trying to clean things up and make it so. It’s not necessarily there are fewer parties. At least that those parties that we know and can trust all of them, and we know they’re operating in a good and legitimate way and using the data in the right ways.
Jillian Leslie 28:34
Got it. Okay. So if I were looking for an ad network, let’s say, if I have over 100,000. This is just my little plug for you guys. I definitely recommend people reach out to you guys. But overall, what would you look for in an ad network? What tells you, “Oh, these guys are legit. These guys have my back.”
Paul Bannister 28:55
I think there’s definitely a lot of reviews out there with people talking about different ad networks. I appreciate your little mini review of us there, which is great. So I think it’s reading about what people are saying about the ad networks.
I think it’s a good idea to look at some of the other sites that an ad network is running. There’s a really cool tool called Builtwith. It’s a Chrome browser plugin, that will show you for any given site, like what plugins are running, but also show you what ad network it runs.
So when you’re on some of your favorite sites that you look at, you can just click the Builtwith button and you can see what ad network they’re running with, and just get an idea of, you know, do I feel comfortable with the amount of ads that is on this site? Would I feel okay, if if these ads were on my site, and just thinking through those sort of things.
So I do think it’s a little bit about diligence of like, what is this ad network doing? And do I feel that that’s a fit for what I want to be doing?
Jillian Leslie 29:43
I like that. I like that. Again, you know, we take our businesses really seriously and your ad network really matters.
Paul Bannister 29:53
It’s a big revenue stream for a lot of publishers. Also, it’s a big part of the user experience. You want to make sure that all those parts are great.
Jillian Leslie 30:01
Yes. And as I said, like my partner, David is a technologist. I think he really feels very comfortable with what you guys are doing. So, you know, you get brownie points from him too.
Paul Bannister 30:15
Thank you.
Jillian Leslie 30:21
Bloggers have so many hats that they wear. If they want to build a business on the internet, where would you have them focus?
Paul Bannister 30:36
I think, a little bit what I was saying before, like, it is picking the focus that you’re great at. It’s hard to generalize for many people. What content are you great at creating? What content have you found that audience for that you understand?
Again, what traffic source can you be great at optimizing for? What are the things that you’ve just got the right DNA for? We see publishers that are phenomenal at social but not so great at SEO. That can be a fine combination. Or the reverse can be true, amazing at SEO and can’t get social traffic. Again, that can be fine.
So I think it is knowing yourself, knowing what you’re good at, and knowing what motivates you, is probably the most important thing because if you’re motivated, and you feel good about it, and you are doing well there, like, success will reinforce itself.
Jillian Leslie 31:27
Tell me your thoughts on video.
Paul Bannister 31:30
I think video is huge. I mean it’s more and more what consumers want. I think it’s something that any publisher should really try even in a small way to produce some video content and try it out.
Different people react differently to different kinds of content. And there are different times when different types of content are necessary.
I remember a couple of years ago. I’m not a big video watcher myself, but I remember a couple of years ago, I was cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I was the assigned family member so I was cooking Thanksgiving for 20 people or something.
And I was going to do a butterfly Turkey, which is like cutting the backbone out and all this complicated stuff. I watched 25 videos about how to do this because I really wanted to know the process and get it right.
And that’s where video content was great for something like that. So I think it’s thinking about what does your audience want and what do they want in that particular scenario? And video can be a big part of really getting the right content for your audience.
Jillian Leslie 32:24
That’s cool. Okay. What about AdThrive right now are you excited about? Or what’s coming down the pike in the future of ads, like in advertising, and especially too with all of these shifts. And, you know, like, is Google going to be broken up? You know, that kind of thing. How is this all impacting the future of ads? Are you positive on the future?
Paul Bannister 32:44
I am positive. And I think we are doing a lot of great things to get ready. We really try to make it a piece of our DNA to be focused on the future and really thinking about what’s coming next. And next means three months from now, six months from now, three years from now.
And really looking at those things that are further afield to make sure that we are future proofing kind of what we do for our publishers. So that’s really a big focus of ours. There’s a lot of flux in the online ad industry right now.
We talked about antitrust, that’s a big thing that’s happening that could have positive or negative effects for publishers. You’ve probably seen recently, Firefox started blocking a lot of tracking. Just like Safari has done for a couple of years now.
That’s going to have a slightly negative impact for some things, although we’re working on things to mitigate that. There’s a lot of questions about what will happen to cookies in general. And how that tracking that we talked about earlier, how that will work.
So we’re building a lot of things to kind of make the tracking better where it makes sense to mitigate with different kinds of advertising and targeting, and figuring out more things we can do to really get ahead of these trends before they happen. So again, so we can protect our publishers whether times are good or times are bad.
Jillian Leslie 33:55
I love that. Okay, Paul, if anybody in my audience, let’s say has some questions, how can they reach out to you?
Paul Bannister 34:02
Best thing for us probably is to reach out to our general mailbox because then it can be directed to the right people for everything, which is info@AdThrive.com. And then, if I’m the right person, I’m happy to be a part of the conversation.
But there are a lot of things that I don’t know the most about. There are people in lots of areas that can that can help people out.
Jillian Leslie 34:20
Awesome. Well, Paul, thank you so much for being on the show.
Paul Bannister 34:24
Thank you, Jillian. It was great.
Jillian Leslie 34:25
I hope you guys liked my interview with Paul. And remember, please, right now, this is the perfect time if you hadn’t, if you were driving or you were busy. Right now, please go to Facebook, in the search box search MiloTree Mastermind group and please join.
And join me on Mondays for my Facebook Live 3pm eastern Time. Let’s discuss this. I have this whole vision and I really hope that you guys can help make it a reality. I’m really excited to talk with you.
Okay. So hopefully I will see you on Monday, 3pm eastern time. MiloTree Mastermind group. I don’t know how many more times I can say that. I will see you here again next week.
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