Based in Los Angeles, California, and with offices in Ukraine, Vietnam, Russia, and India, MGID is a global pioneer in native advertising that aims to “drive revenue growth for publishers and performance for advertisers” via one integrated platform. WNIP contacted Sergii Denysenko, Chief Executive Officer, MGID Global to find out more…
Can you give us some background about your company?
MGID.com was launched in New York City in 2008, based on the first modern native advertising technology created by Stanislav Telyatnikov in 2004. Since then the company has established itself as an innovative native recommendations platform providing audience development and customer acquisition services for advertisers all over the world, as well as helping quality publishers to monetize their users.
We deliver tailored solutions to meet the individual needs of publishers, advertisers, affiliate marketers, online stores, webmasters, web marketers, brand managers, and performance-driven media buyers via our integrated platform. This platform targets 850 million unique with 165 billion recommendations each month, helps publishers retain audiences, monetize traffic, and drives performance and awareness for brands by connecting them to unique audiences, at the right time, with the right content.
What business problem is your company addressing?
Publishers are currently striving to balance seemingly conflicting goals. They need to earn money from their content to run sustainable businesses, which is increasingly complex in a world of ad blockers and data regulation. But they also need to deliver a high quality user experience to retain their existing audience and attract new visitors. Many of the monetization options currently available, such as disruptive advertising, risk alienating visitors so publishers need a solution that addresses user retention and acquisition, as well as serving monetization goals.
What is your core product addressing this problem?
MGID’s native monetization solution enables publishers to integrate sponsored content or recommended products into the user’s natural activity stream in a way that is consistent with platform behavior, without disrupting the user experience.
Recommendation widgets that are entirely cohesive with website design can combine both paid and owned content, allowing publishers to achieve multiple goals. They can increase revenue through sponsored content while also driving user retention through internal content recirculation driving engagement to the articles visitors are most interested in.
Powered by a patent-pending, artificial intelligence-based algorithm, MGID Smart Widget automatically creates the ideal combination of formats to reach the publisher’s goals. Data, collected from numerous campaigns launched within the MGID native platform is used to predict the best compilation of placements, which are seamlessly integrated into the website content. MGID Smart Widget is an all-in-one solution that can deliver an infinite combination of formats to most effectively monetize the existing audience, acquire new visitors and retain users.
Can you give some examples of publishers successfully using your solution?
Both global and U.S. publishers are successfully using the MGID native platform as well as MGID Smart Widget. These include International Business Times, Inquisitr, Insider Monkey, Investing.com, Metro USA, Newsweek, MoneyControl, and all properties of TownNews. In total, MGID’s network comprises of 31,560+ publishing partners.
Pricing?
MGID takes a revenue percentage, so there are no upfront costs for publishers to use the platform. Given monetization is embedded into the solution, publishers will earn (not spend) with MGID, even if the majority of its content is internal recirculation rather than paid content.
What are other people doing in the space and why?
There are other native advertising solutions that allow publishers to monetize their content but these tend to rely too heavily on extensive formats, sometimes jeopardizing user experience by taking up to much space, and depriving publishers of incremental revenue coming from other monetization tools. There are also some questionable practices around disclosure which has created the misperception native is misleading, but MGID always ensures clear and prominent disclosure.
There are also other combination solutions that offer a mix of monetization and user retention, but the main competitive advantage of MGID Smart Widget is it creates a bespoke model for every individual website, analyzing the user activity, matching the model with data from previously launched widgets on all websites, and creating the most effective format to meet the publisher’s goals.
MGID allows its publishers unprecedented levels of customization such as layout, content targeting and filtering options. By changing widget settings, publishers can increase their revenue streams or promote their own content to fulfil quotas.
How you do view the future?
The digital publishing industry is constantly changing, challenging technology providers to develop more advanced and efficient solutions. Keeping the user’s interests in focus, MGID will be developing and launching products that will improve monetization for the supply side without sacrificing engagement and the user experience.
Native is the future of digital advertising; with eMarketer predicting nearly two-thirds of display budgets will be spent on native advertising next year, though it remains relatively underdeveloped outside of the duopoly and lacks the automation and scalability already available in the display and video programmatic ecosystem.
The industry is still working on developing best practices for agencies, clients, and media buyers in the native display space, which will soon become the common standard in a brands campaign strategy. By participating in the IAB’s social, native, and content committee MGID has contributed to the IAB’s Native Advertising Playbook 2.0 which has reflected industry changes since the previous version was adopted in 2013.
Major content recommendation ad networks, including MGID, initially heavily relied on contextual targeting, which was ineffective for publisher monetization. However, with demand now more diverse we have seen an increase in performance when using more elaborate targeting practices both on the demand and supply side.
