Channel Intelligence Blog

What is a publisher?

This is something I am often asked.  Not usually in the office or professionally, but frequently when I am among friends and family.  It happens , for example, when I start explaining the economic models behind the comparison shopping sites that people use.  I explain that some publishers use cost-per-click (CPC) and explain that the publisher gets paid for the “click” they send to the advertiser (retailer).   I then start to explain that some publishers use cost-per-action (CPA) as well, or a combination of CPA and CPC and blah, blah, blah...   That ‘s when I get the “what is a publisher, again?”.

Wikipedia defines publishing as - the process of production and dissemination of literature or information – the activity of making information available for public view.

Generally, I think of a publisher as any organization or individual that creates and posts content on a Web site.  I tend to focus on the online publishers that are doing it in an effort to generate revenue through their mostly product-centric content, but all publishers have something to share.   Comparison Shopping Engines are publishers that organize information about products and where to buy them, manufacturers are publishers that display information about their specific products.  Publishers are also blogs, review sites, manufacturer Web sites and other content aggregators. 

Some of the topics we will address in the coming weeks are traffic monetization and how different publishers gather and leverage the content they generate.  Whether their content is used for search engine optimization, search engine marketing or to provide value-added services directly to users, publishers vary widely in their efficiencies and success. 

Feed the hot shooter

As the NBA playoff roles through the final round, I am reminded of the old basketball adage, “always feed the hot shooter.”  The idea is that when a player is shooting well, you will score more points by going to the hot hand than by arbitrarily passing scoring opportunities around the entire team.

This adage is also valuable advice for publishers as they consider a product linking service.  One thing a publisher should internalize is that not all retailers shoot the same percentage.  Measuring retailers by the sales dollars they generate per lead, the simple truth is that some retailers are many multiples more productive that even their closest competitors.   There are a number of issues that likely drive this difference; including price, availability, selection, and service but that is a subject for another post.  In short, the best retailers have created a formula that better meets the customer’s needs and customers respond with their wallet.

Regardless of the reason, this state of affairs has a number for implications for publishers:

·         For publishers with a vested interest in generating product sales, where you send your traffic impacts your top line.   Any product linking decision which does not use sales per lead as a key component of determining the order in which to render retailers, costs you sales.   If you purposely or accidently bury your hot merchants for too long, it could cost you the ballgame.   Organizations may choose to accept this cost but they should do so with eyes wide open as to the very real and immediate impact of such decisions. 

·         For publishers who focus on their end-user’s experience, the implication is similar.   Like fans attending a game, customers show support with their purchases.  A high sales value per lead over time reflects the retailer’s winning formula.  Rendering winning retailers higher on the page helps ensure that a publisher’s end-users will have a positive buying experience.

Feed the hot retailer or be ready to end the game with fewer sales and less satisfied users.

The Delivery Person...

Imagine a hypothetical delivery man. He has a parcel he has to deliver and a document that specifies how it is to be delivered. The document describes where to delivery it, who to deliver it to, whether it has to be signed for or not and so on.

Our hypothetical deliveryman arrives at the address specified on the document. He sees that the name on the office door corresponds to the person who is supposed to be receiving the parcel. The person isn’t there. What does the deliver man do? He looks at the document and sees that it says the parcel has to be signed for but doesn’t say who has to sign it, so he goes to the office next door and says, “Do you mind signing for this? It’s for so-and-so next door. Great thanks. I’ll just leave it on his chair.”

The point of the story is that the deliveryman did not literally do what the document, said which was to deliver the parcel to so-and-so at some address. Instead, he left it for so-and-so and got someone else to sign for it. This is a perfectly normal human process. Everything we do by way of following an instruction of some sort involves interpretation. We mediate between the abstractions represented by the instructions and what actually happens in the world around us.

What is on the deliveryman’s document is data, the mediation process is information. If you prefer, information is interpreted data, or putting it another way, information is data that has consequences.

Let’s look at this in the context of people buying and selling goods. In a traditional store, the customer can see and touch the goods being bought. There is eye contact, speech, and tangible, physical presence between the customer and the merchant. This presence provides a context for the experience that results in an immediate understanding of what is being offered and what is being asked. It is the basis for a rich information exchange involving the customer and the merchant, and the customer and the general environment in which the interaction occurs. There are many dimensions to this but, for example, recent studies have indicated there are regions in the brain that react to the presence of others by an internal mimicking process that involves a literal replaying of the other’s actions involving the same neural processes as though the observer were doing the action themselves. This profound influence between physically present participants in an exchange is very difficult to replace in situations involving distance learning, remote working and contractual interactions carried out where the participants are not physically present.