Most publishers worth their salt are attracting audiences from outside their home market.  This creates some unique challenges to monetization. If you are a truly global publisher, you may have direct sales people in a few of the largest markets or perhaps you've hired a sales representative to supplement your own internal efforts. However, unlike print or broadcast, where distribution is controlled and you can be certain that your product is only made available where you have sales representation, digital content is open to the world. 

So what is a publisher to do in digital media where people from anywhere can seek out your product, consume it happily, and create costs that are difficult to recoup? Here are a few options that, if done well, can be very profitable:

1) Sales Reps – A common practice in print and broadcast media, hiring sales representatives in your high traffic markets who can represent your specialized products, can be an effective means of expanding your sales team. Choose your rep carefully.  It’s important that your brand is portrayed both appropriately and aggressively and that your rep is not also selling for your competitors.    

2) Ad Network – Yes, Ad Networks still exist! And many still have large sales forces around the world who are attracting global clients. An Ad Network can efficiently complement the efforts of both an in house sales team and the work of sales reps. The network can handle unsold inventory and target key non-endemic clients that your rep is likely to never see due to lack of scale. 

3) Programmatic Sales - This may be my favorite option. As RTB purchasing is taking off in every major market and leapfrogging other methods in emerging markets, like Turkey and India, publishers can strategically list unique inventory with little risk or sales cost while extracting very profitable revenue from these markets. The benefit to the seller is instant revenue from emerging markets with new and exciting growth opportunities.

Publishers need to remember that any revenue earned from countries that are not a primary target   should be considered pure bonus. Today these emerging markets should not be viewed as a cost for publishers, but as an asset in a publisher’s ability to participate in a truly global economy. What do you think?

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