Publishers’ Q1 ad revenue was better than forecasts, but not by much

For most of January, many publishers shared the very bleak experience of being behind 10-25% in their ad forecasts for the quarter. Now that March is over, publishers are surveying their wounds and finding that while ad revenue was indeed down, the numbers aren’t as bad as once predicted.

One publisher who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they ended the quarter down by a mid- to high-single-digit percentage, though they wouldn’t disclose an exact number. Another publisher told Digiday anonymously that they too saw a decrease in ad revenue year-over-year, but wouldn’t disclose the official drop. However, they added that “the last three months have been better than the preceding three months. And so, in aggregate, we’re moving, albeit somewhat slowly, in the right direction overall.”

The first quarter ended up being pretty on par with expectations, and didn’t end up being “catastrophic by any stretch of the imagination,” according to Sean Griffey, CEO and co-founder of Industry Dive, though he declined to disclose hard revenue numbers or what his initial prediction was. He did say, however, that it was during the last couple weeks of the quarter that several “material” deals ended up being finalized, though he wouldn’t define this term from a dollar standpoint.

Griffey wasn’t alone in experiencing a significant thaw in March. Insider’s head of global sales, Orlando Reece, entered a video interview with Digiday on March 30 saying that for whatever reason, that week had an explosion of deals coming in and he’d been bouncing from meeting to meeting with different advertisers.

“We saw a flattening-out in March, which was a very welcome sign because the last nine months have been brutal, comparing on a year-on-year basis,” said one publisher who participated in a town hall session at the Digiday Publishing Summit at the end of last month, which was held under Chatham House rules, granting participants anonymity.

Last-minute deals

The in-quarter selling strategy that publishers used to try and level out the fourth quarter of 2022 didn’t seem to have the same make-up effect in Q1, however.

Deals that come in this late stage in the quarter can’t be earmarked as Q1 revenue, but instead are considered revenue for the second or third quarters when the campaigns can actually be executed, Griffey explained. Rather than dealing with advertisers running out remaining advertising budgets in quick-hit campaigns like they did during the fourth quarter, advertisers seemed to be waiting on budget approval for weeks, if not months, into the first quarter, leaving RFPs …read more

Source:: Digiday