Simply put, content monetization is the process of earning money through written content. There are a couple main ways to monetize your content—you can earn money by either selling actual content or by using certain content-monetizing procedures.

With the first method, content purchasers can be anyone from a publisher to a news editor to an artist. You simply produce content to sell and collect a lump sum. When writing for a newspaper, for example, you need to write the article in a way that can attract your reader’s attention. You earn the money by writing a compelling piece that the editors of the specific paper want to pay you for. The content typically needs to be an interesting, engaging article so that the publication can earn from its happy advertisers, business partners, and ultimately readers.

The second way to earn money from content is to use some of the many opportunities available through the Internet that allow you to collect earnings that the content actually creates. Examples of these opportunities are consultation, small business advertising and Google’s AdSense.

If you are in the market of selling your business ideas, you need to focus the content of the ideas. This enables your customers to see your solid ideas and get accustomed to them, which in turn makes you money. If you are an advertiser, you need to design your content according to your specific market, as you goal is to make potential customers of your product or services know the qualities of the product and convince them to buy it. If you own or manage a website, you can raise your website’s generated income significantly by advertising with the help of marketing tools such as Google’s AdSense, paid posts and link insertion.

And to the bloggers that don’t think much of generating income from your website, I ask: Why not earn money from your posts? If you are already writing them, why not turn them into income-earners?

Easy-to-use link insertion can be used as a tool for content monetization of your blog, easily boosting your website’s income. You simply need to insert some java script code and your site automatically starts to monetize the content you already created. Software uses words and phrases from you’re your blog and link them to relevant, effective advertisements. According to a study by Frank N. Magid Associates, respondents who regularly used newspaper and magazine apps had more positive associations with ads than negative, as 46% felt that ads were relevant, unique and interesting, while only 28% felt them annoying.

An easy-to-use and useful tool for this type of embedded advertising is INTENTclick , which provides an alternative to manual link insertion. This tool is especially useful for text-rich content created specifically for advertising products or services.

More details regarding these helpful Internet advertisement techniques are available in the recently published E-book, “INTENTclick” : In-Text Advertising Secrets, which is now available.

That’s the goal. But what we’re finding is that people are still getting their heads around some of the basics. Based on the best practices we’re seeing, here’s my recommendation for sequencing the steps toward a completely integrated data platform that makes a real audience-centric approach measurably effective.

1. Make sure you fully leverage your digital data as the first step.

What’s surprising is the great online data marketers already have that they don’t fully leverage. People think about capturing data from their own sites, which is good.

But think about the complete set of digital capabilities for data — why wouldn’t you integrate data from your email or advertising campaigns? Why not create a data feedback loop from your mobile and social programs? How about using data from your partners’ sites and programs?

Marketers spend a lot of money on advertising and get little insight in return. That’s a shame. You should get campaign performance, as well as the insights, from all your online programs.

2. Think about offline and online integration with respect to privacy.

First, when on-lining offline data, be sure to separate personally identifiable information (PII) and non-PII data in separate databases. It is easy enough to link such sources through a hashed, encrypted key.

Also, if you’re going through the effort to integrate offline data, start by testing the performance of your most valuable and unique offline data. For instance, only you have access to your customer loyalty and transaction data, whereas any third-party can tell you who is male or female, so your unique data will give you the greater advantage.

For example, in order to achieve ultimate success for a credit card marketer, we needed to utilize offline transaction data within our data management platform to develop the ideal audience model – so they could target not just people who signed up but who would use the card a lot.

This is a simple example, but the point is that it’s not as hard as you think to make the connection from offline to online. Through site registration and your email programs, even a little bit of data can provide a meaningful boost when you do predictive and look-alike modeling. Another approach to consider is matching services, but always be “privacy wary” of any service that is based on an email append model.

3. Properly manage the use of supplemental third-party data.

Third-party sources of data continue to come online, especially as offline data companies bring their own data online using the same techniques as in bullet 2. Recognize that the quality of each data source changes – much more in online than offline world.

There is constant flux with data and match partners ( i.e. the sites that let data providers collect data) especially in response to privacy pressures. So, as sources change, quality will change. Instead of assuming any provider will have consistent performance, you’ll need to assess third-party data on an ongoing basis to make sure it’s providing value.

4. Protect again data theft.

Often, marketers focus on making data actionable without having enough sensitivity to securing their wonderful asset. You would never give someone access to your customer database without approval and restrictions, so why would you let someone place tags on your digital properties and collect your data without control?

Make sure you know what data is being collected off your properties and that it adheres to your desires and policies. Better yet, don’t fall for the “use our free tools” trap because in the end, you may be better served with paying for your tools and not devaluing your data.

Whether you build or buy a data management platform, the end game should be to leverage the data from all your customer-facing channels — online and offline — and to optimize all your channels in a continuous cycle in order to create a true data advantage.

The video advertising platform — and the video advertising space — has changed a great deal since Kadambi was last CEO three years ago. Now serving 1.5 billion ad impressions a month, this year alone the company has gained a presence in Europe through the acquisition of Appealing Media, partnered with digital radio service Slacker and significantly upgraded the publisher side of its offerings.

We stole some time with Kadambi to ask what inspired him to take the helm again and what this move signifies for the direction of YuMe.

ADOTAS: Why did you decide to take the reins as CEO again? Was there a particular moment when you knew you should make the move?

KADAMBI: YuMe is doing great, we hit triple digit revenue growth for three consecutive years, far outpacing the industry, assembled a great management team, and have an industry leading video infrastructure platform of products and services. YuMe’s Board of Directors looked at our business and the stage of the company and felt my technology and product background was needed to place a heightened focus on our video infrastructure solutions.

Stay tuned because we will have some exciting developments to announce in the coming months as it relates to our technology and product offerings.

Is this a temporary change or an ideally long-term move?

This is not a temporary change; I am in it for the long-run.

How will your role in the company’s day-to-day actions change? What does the change-up mean for YuMe’s directions and goals?

The key change is that I will now have more time to focus on the company’s overall strategic direction. YuMe’s overall direction and goals however remain the same — to provide leading SaaS video ad management solutions for publishers and with our Connected Audience Network, provide agencies and marketers a means to reach audiences at scale across all screens, whether it is on a PC, mobile device or TV.

Why did you decide to step back from the CEO chair before?

At the time, I felt we needed someone with a strong ad sales background to really help build the ad network side of YuMe’s business. Michael was the ideal choice and did an amazing job, we look forward to continuing to collaborate with him about the ongoing success of the business. But with our push this year into mobile and connected TV, our board felt a renewed focus on our technology and SaaS solutions was needed.

How has YuMe changed since your switch? How about the video space as a whole?

The market is now much larger, but the core competencies required remain the same. I have an amazing management team supporting me and ensuring we execute and deliver against our goals. We feel very lucky to be in the video space. The industry is at an exciting point with the growth of connected devices in the marketplace and in consumer’s viewership of video. To be at the center of this growth, developing technology products that help publishers monetize audiences and advertisers reach them is truly exciting.

Have you missed being CEO? What do you think will be different about this go-round?

I am excited to be back in this role. What will be different is hard to say, but I do know that I have an amazing team in the U.S., U.K. and India and that we are positioned to dominate the video ad technology space and continue our growth trajectory.

Unfortunately, we all know that it’s just not that easy, and that there are many variables that play important roles in determining success or failure. Having overseen hundreds of ad campaigns, we’ve observed several key advertiser behaviors that seem to correlate with the winners.

Although some of this may seem rudimentary, basic or obvious, from where I sit — these points are overlooked more often than you would expect. Here are five key ways advertisers can get more from working with ad networks.

1. Find someone on the inside that can, and is willing, or motivated to help you. Account manager, account executive, ad ops, etc… These are the people that will help make your campaign a success.

A good network representative can be just as valuable as your in-house colleagues — if you let them. Once you have found that person, work with them, not against them. Each ad network is slightly different and each will have a different set of standard rules for how success is best achieved based on your campaign goals.

2. Be honest about your campaign goals. This might sound crazy and maybe even seem obvious, but the more information that you can share with your ad network point of contact, the better your possibility of a good campaign outcome.

If your goal is a $20 CPA, the worst thing you can do is tell your contact that your goal is $10. It may seem like a great way to produce a better performing campaign, but if the real number is $20 and $10 is all but impossible to hit, the ad network will think they are not able to produce a successful campaign for you. Then nobody wins.

Remember it’s in the ad network’s best interest to produce the highest ROI possible. So, if your stated goal is $20 and they are actually coming in at $10, everyone will be happy.

3. Be realistic in your expectations. Unless you are paying someone on a CPA/CPL basis, campaign performance will always vary — hour-to-hour, day-to-day. As I like to say, “It’s not a vending machine.” Every time you put a quarter in, you are not going to get a snickers bar. Be prepared to ride the waves and evaluate performance on many different levels.

Cheap clicks or impressions do not always mean a bargain. Consider where the media is running as well as back-end ROI metrics. If you are buying cheap traffic with cheap clicks, but all of your leads are gibberish, you really haven’t achieved much. Sometimes you really do get what you pay for. Also, if it makes sense for your business, consider the lifetime value of a customer, not just the immediate action or reaction of a click to convert.

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for special considerations, especially if you are the key person buying media for a major brand. For example, maybe there is something that worked well at another network that could easily be repeated. The ad network may have some non-standard targeting capabilities or ad units that you could benefit from. You can even ask for something that wasn’t mentioned in an initial call.

Ad networks love to put together special deals for desirable clients. You may not always get a “yes,” but it never hurts to ask.

5. Constant communication is crucial, especially in the early stages of your ad network campaign. It may take some heavy lifting to get things up and running smoothly. However, once you reach cruising speed and performance stabilizes – you can scale down to more infrequent communication.

Working with ad networks can be a powerful and profitable strategy. However one size does not fit all and you may need to focus some initial extra energy to discover how best to partner with each Ad Network that you work with.

Do a little math and you figure that tag-loading can potentially add 1.25 to 1.75 seconds to page loads (or even as high as five seconds). Unacceptable in our impatient digital age — research from the Aberdeen Group suggests that just a one-second delay in load time can result in a 7% loss of conversions.

It seems pretty clear: tags are revenue leeches! Rip them off now, publishers, before they suck all your blood!

Or take a look at the just-released third version of TagMan’s tag management system, which features what the company calls Smart Tag Loading. This feature rounds up third-party tags and replaces them with a single smart tag that manages pixel dispersal. When a page is loaded, the tag instantly determines the pertinent tags and eschews unnecessary ones that would simply weigh down a site with their load time.

The tags are then loaded independently and simultaneously rather than one by one; clients can make a rule canceling tags that load too slowly. The shorter tag load times allow publishers to put the smart tag at the top of page, loading before the content, to enhance the accuracy of data collection.

For those of the visual persuasion, here’s a cute animated video that explains the problem and solution:

The aforementioned survey suggests tag loading trouble is a bigger issue than most people realize, with 36% of respondents witnessing tags “break” a website during loading. In addition, 37% reported passing on a new marketing technology due to the strain of tag implementation while 19% cited the same reason for halting a new campaign.

BrandShield 2.0′s real-time ad-blocking solution can be customized based on both black and white lists of domains, but also at the page level via 75 inappropriate content categories (such as natural disasters, aviation, accidents and financial crises). An ad blocked from one inappropriate page can be redirected to a compliant page on the same domain. Finally, ad-blocking can be further fine-tuned at the geo-level.

The precision of page-level ad-blocking is beneficial to the entire ecosystem. During a six-week test run with three advertisers stretching 244 million impressions, DoubleVerify noted that publishers added 25% more inventory when page-level blocking was used versus domain-level blocking. One entertainment site served 600,000 impressions that would have been blocked by a domain-level service.

“Page level ad blocking will provide advertisers with the highest level of brand safety and compliance, even on sites that contain a mix of different content types, while allowing ad networks and publishers to better monetize ad inventory,” said DoubleVerify CEO Oren Netzer. “To boost transparency and accountability in the industry, we’ve built our solution to specifically address this problem.”

OpenX will put the funds toward OpenX Enterprise, the enterprise publisher revenue-monetizing platform introduced in February. Through combining an ad server and an ad exchange, the platform allows pubs to manage exclusive, guaranteed, non-guaranteed and real-time inventory on a single dashboard. Notable publishers on board include Groupon, Excite Japan and Buisiness Insider

The company will also use the investor cash to build its international presence, so far buoyed by OpenX Market partnerships with Dentsu-cci in Japan and Orange-France Telecom in Europe. On the demand side, OpenX Market revenue is up 600% over the past year.

“We believe that OpenX will become an industry-defining platform in this rapidly growing sector,” said Nino Marakovic, managing director of SAP Ventures. “In addition to our investment, we also plan to leverage our relationships to help OpenX expand its reach.”

With its new Engage service, NuCaptcha has just added self-serve platforms for both publishers and advertisers. Pubs can easily switch out their current CAPTCHA service with NuCaptcha’s video technology and drive easy revenue, while advertisers need only to upload their current video ads into NuCaptcha’s ad server.

Here’s a cute video that explains the service with the help of a narrator borrowed from National Geographic:

NuCaptcha Engage from Christopher Bailey on Vimeo.

Nice, nice, NuCaptcha, but Solve Media already had self-service platforms for publishers and advertisers– CEO and cofounder Ari Jacoby told us that publisher implementation takes a mere 30 minutes. Last week, the company introduced Solve Media Premier for larger publishers (100,000 CAPTCHA solves a month or 1 million uniques) that promises to facilitate ad management and optimize targeting and creative.

While both companies swear that their technology improves CAPTCHA security, Solve might have a leg up by using brand slogans to solve CAPTCHAs, bumping up user recall.

AdJuggler’s new Exchange Media Program (EMP), powered by supply side platform and private exchange operator Admeld, is an extension of its ad server that hooks up publishers and networks with access to 30 audience-based RTB sources for optimizing unsold, non-guaranteed inventory.

EMP promises to eliminate individual network agreements while optimizing non-premium inventory with minimal effort. Publishers will be able to create price floors and exclude advertisers. Finally, EPM offers reporting on not just eCPMs, but also top performing advertisers and audience segments.

Initial testing with media networks such as CGI and Fidelity Media recently concluded — audience-based buys through EMP improved CPMs for remnant inventory by 56% to 104%, with results varying among segments. RTB sources outperformed traditional channel buys by nearly 40%

“AdJuggler is one of the first technology companies to directly embed Admeld’s RTB bidding directly into its ad server and enable optimization across direct-sold, RTB and network sources,” commented Admeld cofounder and CRO Ben Barokas. “This provides a simple way for AdJuggler’s customers to access the exchanges — overnight.”

Also the leader of Lotame’s previous $13 million round of investment, Emergence was joined by existing investors Hillcrest, Battery Ventures and Pinnacle Ventures. In addition, Lotame secured a line of growth capital funding from Pinnacle. Lotame has received $34 million in funding.

The latest round of funds will primarily go toward building a Platform Sales Group that will assist publishers in selling audience data beyond their own sites. Bolstering this effort are two new hire: Bruce Budkofsky, vice president of sales, and Andrew Bradway. Budkofky previously held the position of sales director for Comcast Interactive while Bradway was senior sales leader at MetaCafe. Lotame CMO Eric Porres is also transferring to the new department to serve as vice president of business development.

One of several companies singled out by The Wall Street Journal’s headache-inducing “What They Know” series on online data collection, Lotame is also a launch partner of the Open Data Partnership by the Better Advertising Project, alongside 33Across, Bizo, BlueKai, Demdex, eXelate, SafeCount and Turn.