Paul Smith, Global Publishing Director at SmartFrame Technologies, talks to us about his career, his current role, and his views on the global digital publishing industry
Talk us through your career in the digital advertising and publishing industry
I started in the industry at a digital ad sales house called Eyconomy about 26 years ago as an account manager. This grew into a sales role, which led to me being a sales director and, ultimately, the managing director. We sold the company about 10 years after I started, at which point I left and did some consultancy work.
Around six months later, I joined another company called JustPremium, which was a Netherlands-based organization that at the time didn’t have an office or an offering in the UK.
I met the managing director at an event and after overhearing what they were talking about, I asked them if they wanted to launch in the UK. They said yes, so we did a deal and I launched JustPremium in the UK about nine years ago. I was the number four in a team of around 150 globally when we sold the company to GumGum in 2021.
What do you love about the startup environment?
What I like about startups is the hunt. It’s about penetrating the market. It’s about educating the industry on what it is we do, how we do it, and how it will benefit the advertiser, the agency, and the publisher.
It’s about building a whole team around what the industry needs and turning a $10k test campaign into a multi-million-dollar, always-on advertiser that loves your tech because it produces results.
Starting from a relatively low base and then building something big – for me, that’s the fun part.
What’s your role as a publishing director?
My role is to introduce publishers to SmartFrame and show them how they can benefit from our technology. Publishers are only really interested in talking to you when a) you have money to bring to them or b) you can enhance the user experience. I believe we have the ability to deliver on both counts.
My objective is to show how the technology can bring in consistent revenue, increase dwell time, and offer publishers the ability to really take control of their images. Right now, the images they are either licensing or paying their own photographers to take can be effectively stolen and posted across the internet two minutes later. SmartFrame can help to prevent that.
Once publishers can see that their images are safe and it makes financial sense for them to use SmartFrame’s technology, it’s hard to find a reason not to get started.
How have things changed for publishers during your time in the industry?
Things have changed massively. I’ve been in the industry for around 20 years and it’s a lot more grown-up now than it was before everything became trackable.
For example, there are now many more questions being asked with regard to margins. Greater clarity is required around who’s taking what, what percentage of the advertiser spend gets to the publisher, and what value has been added in between.
With this level of transparency, you have to be able to deliver value – otherwise, you just won’t last. SmartFrame has the ability to demonstrate value and that becomes clear very quickly once we start working with a publisher.
Also, advertisers now have a better understanding of digital than they did in the past. This means they can take a lot more control over their own digital spend because they have the ability to do so.
They no longer have to hand over $20m to an agency. With the right tools, they can buy the inventory themselves. Tech has allowed them to almost be their own agency, which gives them a better understanding of where they’re spending, what’s working, and what’s not working.
That’s another reason why SmartFrame is so well received; it has close relationships with both publishers and advertisers.
“My objective is to show how the technology can bring in consistent revenue, increase dwell time, and offer publishers the ability to really take control of their images.”
What are the challenges for publishers?
With the growth of programmatic, many would argue that publishers have less control over their inventory than they did before. However, you can flip that on its head and say that they actually now have more control than ever.
They have ads.txt to tell them who’s representing them globally, they set the floor prices for their own inventory, and they have the ability to enrich their impressions by adding first-party data – and nobody knows more about their audience than they do. So I think, on the whole, this has actually brought more opportunities than challenges.
Having said that, we have a cookie-less world coming to us soon, so how can publishers understand more about their audiences? Will they have login data that they’re going to be reselling or will they be using identifiers?
There is a lot that still needs to be sorted out, but one thing I do know about this industry is that we always overcome. We may leave it to the last minute, but we always come up with a plan.
How is the industry going to evolve in the coming years?
I think there will be subtle changes in the shorter term that may result in significant changes in a few years to come.
Connected TV is going to make a huge difference. The way we consume digital media is changing and I think that short-form media will become more popular as the younger generation consumes media very differently to older generations.
I have four teenagers in my house who very rarely watch TV, but they are constantly on their mobile phones watching very short-form pieces of content on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok.
Advertisers and publishers both need to be able to adjust so they can talk to that audience in a way they feel comfortable.
What’s your advice for success as a publishing manager?
I think the most important ingredient is to listen to what the publishers are feeding back to you. There’s no point ramming a product down their throat that they’re not going to use.
I always feel that being in digital means being led by the market. It’s understanding what the market wants and why it wants it, then putting it together and delivering it.
I’ve seen too many organizations come up with what they believe is a great product, only to fail by trying to take it to market without sufficient research.
So, my first three to four months in this role are for gaining a full understanding of the product that we have and whether it is what publishers are looking for. If it isn’t, I’ll be asking how we can change or diversify it slightly to turn it into a product that they want to integrate.
“In my experience it’s about testing new technologies, finding out what works, and building on that.”
How can publishers prevail in the challenging digital world?
I think publishers need to be brave enough to try things. Try new technologies, listen to what’s happening within the industry, and be open-minded, because you never know what piece of technology you take on board will make that big difference.
And sometimes it doesn’t have to be a huge change – even the slightest increments can have a big influence on your bottom line. If you can increase page yield by just 5%, you’ve done a good job. If you can increase user engagement, you’ll have better KPIs and therefore your CPMs will go up.
I don’t see one piece of technology completely changing the way publishers work, but small percentages of lift in CPMs and viewability make a huge difference. In my experience it’s about testing new technologies, finding out what works, and building on that.
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