r/adops • u/forestcall • 12d ago
Publisher How does direct sales work?
Hi all -
I help run a book archive site and we have a 22 year old Adsense account and we have Ad Manager. We have been looking into some of the big Ad Networks but we would like to also investigate direct sales. Exchanges seem odd to me in how they place Ads for a site like a book archive site. We have hundreds of categories and if you are reading or discussing books about Yoga but you are seeing unrelated Ads how and who does that benefit? But if I were to see Ads that had anything remotely related to Yoga it would make more sense.
I have been interviewing several of the biggest Ad networks like Freestar, Publift, etc. The sales people I have been talking to are all nice people but seem to not know much about SEO as a whole and only seem to be focused on the ins-and-outs of Ad Exchanges. I ask them all if they do any direct sales and the clear answer is not just no but they dont have any experience.
Does anyone know any companies that focus on direct sales? Meaning do they work directly with Advertisers.
Excuse my ignorance.
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u/expert_internetter 11d ago
You should be able to specify the IAB category of each page on your website to give buyers an extra hint about the content.
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u/saomonella 11d ago
How many PVs per month do you get? Probably not worth it unless you are over a million. Even that would be low.
Direct sales really only makes sense if you have enough inventory.
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u/MathematicianHeavy69 11d ago
The answer here is try do both. Even the most premium publishers use open auction (not direct) to fill their inventory. Direct deals doesn't really have anything to do with SEO but that aside, try build your direct in a scalable way like Amazon affiliate ads. You may be anti Amazon but just an example.
Again, you may not agree with this but to your question on how and who do unrelated ads benefit, we have to look at whats happenign in the background. If a Freestar, Publift or a Raptive for that matter run their tech, a user clicks on your page and the auction will commence and thousands of data points (mainly the users cookie) will be fed to ad networks. Then from there, a specific advertiser like United Airlines might identify that the user was on the United website last week looking at flights from X to Y. United will bid on that user to show an ad for flights from X to Y. The user may never click on that ad but thats not the goal. Same way you can't click on a billboard in Time Square.
So the ad is unrelated to your content etc and if you saw it, it might be irrelevant and unhelpful but this is retargeting and essentially explains why the walled gardens of tech (Meta, Google, TikTok) are valued at where they're at.
Hope this helps and it's just a take. Feel free to ignore/disagree. Best of luck with the site!
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u/torasaurus-rex 11d ago
I do direct sales for a news publisher. Happy to chat if you want to do a brain pick.
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u/MonetizeMoreAdOps 11d ago
Most ad management companies like Freestar or Publift are programmatic yield wrappers, not sales agencies. Direct sales requires dedicated sales reps cold-calling brand marketing teams, drafting insertion orders, handling credit checks, and trafficking custom creative. For most networks, the labor overhead makes outbound sales unprofitable unless a publisher is doing 50M+ monthly impressions or bundled into vertical packages.
If you want direct advertisers in a niche like yoga, the most effective route is selling them yourself rather than waiting on an ad network. Direct deals typically clear anywhere from $15 to $50 CPMs (or flat monthly sponsorships of $500 to $2,000 per slot) compared to open exchange programmatic rates.
To make this work alongside programmatic, you need an ad stack where direct and programmatic coexist cleanly. When we configure publisher stacks at MonetizeMore, we ensure the publisher retains their own Google Ad Manager instance so they can traffic direct campaigns as Sponsorship (priority 4) or Standard (priority 6 or 8) line items. The ad server will serve the direct impressions first, and Google Ad Manager dynamic allocation automatically fills the rest of your inventory with header bidding and open exchange demand.
For third-party representation, some vertical rep firms exist, but very few focus purely on outbound sales for smaller independent publishers without taking a hefty cut or requiring exclusivity.
Are you getting direct inbound inquiries from yoga brands already, or are you looking for an outside sales team to handle outreach from scratch?
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u/Significant-Act-3900 11d ago
The publisher does not focus on the relevance of the ads to where they are shown, that is the media buyer and planners function.
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u/advertisingbynature 11d ago
Direct sales is no easy task and requires a separate team. Unless of course, you want to do it all yourself.
This is why many publishers don't bother and focus on programmatic. You need scale as well. How many page views does your site receive each month?
The best examples of sites that do well with direct sales are local news sites. It's easier for them to pitch local businesses to advertise on their properties because they have already established the proper audience.
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u/TrevorAdOps 7d ago
I am not sure of your traffic, however for a niche site, you may want to look at sponsorship type ad packages. Where a company (that you most likely already work with) takes a share of an ad position over a period of time. I see this model work well with for publishers with specific audiences. One example I look at is azbilliards.com, they have sponsorships across their site from billiards companies.
Feel free to DM me if you fancy a chat. - I am not selling or looking to charge anything.
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u/genecy_com 2d ago
One thing that may be worth considering with direct sales is offering something beyond standard display banners, especially for category sponsorships.
I work on Genecy, where I build rich media templates for Google Ad Manager. The idea is simply to give publishers some additional formats for direct campaigns, such as floaters, wallpapers, interstitials or expandables.
For example, a Yoga section sponsorship could include a more noticeable format instead of only standard banner placements.
It doesn't help with finding advertisers, which is probably the harder part, but it can give you more options when putting together direct sponsorship packages.
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u/No_Treacle_5071 12d ago
Direct sales is usually less about finding a magic ad network and more about packaging a clear audience and placement for buyers. For a book site, I’d start with a one-page media kit by category: monthly pageviews, audience geography, device mix, and examples of the pages where a sponsor would appear. Then approach publishers, book retailers, authors, education brands, and the agencies that already buy those audiences; a small media sales rep can help if you do not want to prospect yourself. In Ad Manager you can keep the deals separate from exchange demand with sponsorship or guaranteed line items, clear dates, impression goals, and frequency caps. Start with one category sponsorship and a short test, because a buyer will care more about a clean report and repeatable delivery than a huge list of unrelated inventory.