Destructive Ad Tech and Practical Solutions

Destructive Ad Tech and Practical Solutions

Ben Ilfeld
WordCamp for Publishers 2017

For better or worse, advertising is the lifeblood of the modern media ecosystem. Yet ads increasingly: 1) undermine publisher values and audience trust (advertorial native ads); 2) interrupt, compromise, and abuse our audiences (interstitials, mal-advertising, autoplay videos). Yet an overhaul is financially impractical for publishers at scale. In this session, you’ll learn about two strategies for us to change tack. Plus, you’ll learn how to leverage new capabilities to implement these strategies with WordPress. First, you will learn how to increase the value of direct sold advertising with content sponsorship opportunities using taxonomies in WordPress and “native styles” ads in DoubleClick for Publishers. Second, you’ll learn how to leverage custom post types in WordPress to build a successful, scalable and manageable affiliate link program. It is our responsibility to build better solutions and improve the media ecosystem.