Before you can start, it’s better to realise that no matter how diverse your audience is, either geographically or by age, all interaction boils down to two things: Needs and desires. Needs are something you absolutely need to survive, the basics if you will, while desires are things you don’t necessarily need, but you feel will significantly enhance your life.

Stephane Pere at the Economists niche ad network sums it up nicely:

What can niche publications do to show agencies they’re worth their time?
The natural path for them is to go down custom executions, generate ideas that have integrated solutions. Branded content is a great way to have a conversation. If we just focus on the display side, it’s hard to get in front of buyers. One solution is to build an alliance with like minded pubs. It goes to the threshold of reach, the cornerstone of how buyers buy. Align with other publications that can compete on the reach side of the buy. There are different ways to do that: An alliance can be based on common demographics or profiles; it could be a mindset or topic-oriented — let’s say publishers all covering sport or science. I think in order to tap into display advertising, small and medium-sized publishers need to merge together to offer a cohesive product for marketers.

We agree! :)

We are thrilled to announce our strategic partnership with Handpicked Media. When we first met Krista, Debbie and the rest of the team, we immediately recognised that we were both aligned in terms of our mission to help independent publishers. HPM bring not only their network of top lifestyle blogs and sites, but also a seasoned capability to plan and execute social activation campaigns that we in turn can offer our clients. By the same token, we are excited to be exclusively taking HPM to our agency partners and to offering our platform and tools to increase the reach of HPM and their partner sites.

Lucy Tesseras interviews Ben Wolin, CEO of Everyday Health, about our recent partnership:

The sites will be monetised through advertising and sponsorship and RollUp Media will provide a dedicated sales force in the UK, which will focus particularly on FMCG brands.

A team of ten to 15 people, made up of staff from Everyday Health and RollUp Media, will work on the project initially, but the company will be looking to expand that geographically into Germany and France over time as well as establishing separate teams for different titles as things develop.

Everyday Health will also work in conjunction with RollUp Media to promote the UK versions of its brands as it looks to extend its reach, using both traditional and digital media to market the sites.

“We will rely a tremendous amount on search and social to get the word out and will then be looking to expand the base audience that is already there,” added Wolin.

So says NMA’s Lucy Tesseras in her latest column on media. She goes on to say:

It’s a view shared by Donald Hamilton, chief revenue officer of sell side platform Improve Digital, who said at yesterday’s AOP forum, “If we agree that the market is about audience, reach and content, the bit most publishers miss is the reach piece. Publishers need to collaborate more with other publishers to own their space.”

It’s an interesting point and one that could spark controversy among some who are still fiercely competitive with their rivals. But it is a model that can work.

The Economist, for example, is working with fellow publishers through Ideas People Media, the ad network it set up in the US two years ago after asking its readers which other publications they liked and trusted.

We couldn’t agree more and that’s very much a part of the RUM vision. Watch this space for more news on that front…

It’s humbling that Everyday Health chose to partner with our us so deeply to take them to the UK, Australia and beyond. We finally made it official yesterday, although it had been a while in the making. We’ve been having fun getting to know and working with the EH team and really excited about the opportunity. Onwards!

Rick Webb at Barbarian Group and now Tumblr lays out the ‘native vs banner dichotomy’ nicely. Put simply, we believe there’s a place for both.

The pendulum is swinging back to creative, to native, to emotional brand advertising on the Web. Just a bit, but that’s where things are headed now. The banner can be a part of it. Most of the hatred of banners comes because of their poor fit for metric- and direct- driven advertising — in that they don’t work because no one clicks on them. We just need to use them differently. Banners have always sort of been miscast. They are a great brand vehicle — just like a wild posting or a billboard or a magazine ad — but they were sold as something that we could measure and drive traffic with. That doesn’t especially work, and people don’t really click on banners. But they still see them. Eventually, I think they’ll be used pretty much exclusively for branding. The clicks will be ancillary.