Sports publishers: traffic spikes and live-event yield

Cup final night. Five times the traffic, sold at an ordinary price.

A sponsorship line item books a share of impressions, not a fixed count.

On sports.example, the live blog slot serves a hundred thousand impressions on a normal day. On final night, five hundred thousand. A standard line item booked for a hundred thousand takes its share and stops. The other four hundred thousand go to the open auction, say at a dollar fifty. Now sell a sponsor all of that slot on match nights, at a six dollar CPM. In Ad Manager, that goal is a percentage, so the ad follows the crowd, and all five hundred thousand serve at the agreed price. Agree the matches and price before kick-off.

Before your next big match, check each live-page line item. Is its goal a count, or a share?

Next, finance publishers, high CPMs and strict brand safety.