Sales data is an invaluable resource in advertising sales, providing valuable insights that can be utilised in various ways. It helps predict future ad sales and enables performance comparison, pricing strategy optimisation, and identification of potential advertiser clients.
In this text, we delve deeper into how you, as a publisher, can benefit from data in advertising sales.
How to forecast advertising sales?
Forecasting is crucial to advertising sales, and sales data provides a solid foundation for future planning. Analysis of past sales data and trends can identify seasonal variations, customer behaviour patterns, and other factors influencing sales. This enables more accurate forecasts and better preparation for sales.
In most cases, advertising sales professionals need to be able to forecast sales for budgeting purposes. For example, imagine a situation where you are responsible for advertising sales and must create a budget for the next quarter. By analysing data, you can identify how different advertisers have purchased ad inventory during similar periods in the past and what kind of campaigns they have run. Based on this information, you can forecast future sales revenue and adjust the budget accordingly. Forecasting becomes more manageable with a tool that automatically calculates forecasts using data.
How to compare advertising sales performance?
Comparing advertising sales performance is crucial for business development. Year-over-year comparisons quickly explain how sales have evolved compared to the previous year. For example, as someone responsible for advertising sales, it's essential to know whether sales are performing better or worse than the same time last year.
Additionally, it's essential to examine where any changes originate - direct sales, deals, or programmatic advertising - and how the proportions of these components have changed from year to year. The comparison can also be expanded to the SSP and site levels, allowing for a more detailed view of advertising sales performance. For instance, you can analyse fluctuations in fill rate at different periods to determine whether the change is due to increased inventory or if the sales rate is abnormal compared to the reference period. With this information, you can identify strengths and weaknesses in advertising sales performance and make necessary changes to strategies and practices.
How to optimise pricing strategies?
Sales data provides an opportunity to examine past prices and their impact on sales. Suppose you are responsible for optimising advertising sales for a digital media company. By leveraging sales data, you can analyse how pricing strategies have affected sales and customer behaviour.
For example, you can analyse the average eCPM prices of programmatic sales at the same time last year and compare them to the current situation. With this information, you can determine floor prices at an optimal level that attracts customers while maximising sales revenue. Additionally, sales data reveals price fluctuations in different market conditions and customer segments, allowing pricing to adjust to various situations flexibly.
For instance, you may notice that in certain market conditions, customers are willing to pay more for specific ad spaces, allowing you to optimise your pricing strategy and maximise revenue.
How to find the most potential advertiser clients?
Utilising sales data allows for the identification of the most potential advertiser clients. You can determine which clients and market segments have generated the best results by analysing past advertising sales data and campaign implementations. This helps to target sales efforts more efficiently towards clients with the most significant potential to add value and increase sales.
For example, sales teams can examine whether their advertiser clients have made purchases (direct, programmatic, deals) compared to previous years and whether it would be sensible to approach some of these advertisers to launch a new campaign.
Additionally, sales data helps identify trends according to different seasons and changes in customer behaviour. This allows sales to proactively reach out to advertisers in their industry, for example, for whom campaigns typically start in the fall. Sales data enables the creation of proactive strategies and better preparation for the future.
Utilising Sales Data with Relevant Yield
Leveraging sales data requires efficient data collection, analysis, and visualisation tools. We provide SAAS solutions for publishers and advertising sales networks and utilise them in our operations.
We asked our CEO, Petri Kokkonen, to share how he utilises Relevant Yield's data in his daily work:
"Overall, Relevant Yield provides me with a clear and comprehensive view of the advertising sales situation and performance. From a year-to-year perspective, I quickly grasped how advertising sales are performing. By tracking growth percentages, I can monitor sales trends and compare the shares of different sales channels, such as direct sales, deals, and programmatic advertising. Additionally, site- and SSP-specific performance is visible, making detecting and addressing deviations easier.
Moreover, any changes, such as new Prebid version updates, can be noted down, allowing me to assess the potential impact of the change on sales quickly. With the visual representation, I can quickly identify if a site is losing its sales and requires action to rectify the situation.
Advertiser investments are also visible in reports, providing me with valuable insights into how different industries are purchasing advertising. For example, the return of the travel industry is evident in the current situation. If I were in sales management, I would leverage the valuable information provided by Relevant Yield on both my clients and their competitors' purchasing behaviour. This information would be invaluable in evaluating team performance and supporting sales."
How can you personally leverage sales data in advertising sales?
Delve deeper into the opportunities offered by Relevant Yield to enhance the utilisation of sales data, monetisation of inventory, and reporting levels. We are eagerly supporting your success. If you want to learn more, feel free to reach out!
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