Increase Efficiency and Transparency with Placements Marketplace

Rakuten Marketing’s Placements Marketplace was developed to expedite all steps in the paid placements selling process in a neatly organized, consolidated location. We sat down with our Director of Paid Placements, Ivan Pena, to find out more about the Placements Marketplace and its benefits.

Q: What does Placements Marketplace do?

A: The short answer: it helps advertisers and publishers reduce email clutter and speed up paid placement deals. It is a feature within the Advertiser and Publisher Dashboards that allows users to request, communicate and negotiate proposals directly with publishers.

Q: How does it work and how can it be used?

A: If you have the “Marketplace” tab enabled in your Advertiser or Publisher dashboard, then you can take advantage of this tool. From there, advertisers can request proposals through the Discover search engine and publishers can add inventory to share with their advertisers. What’s more, publishers can send proposals and generate insertion orders directly from the dashboard. The feature was designed with speed of communication in mind, so getting started is easy.

Q: What are the latest updates?

A: This quarter we are focusing on Global Expansion and releasing translations in French, German and Spanish. We have been running a beta in the UK since April and are close to launching in Australia, Germany and France. Also, we are working on the first version of the Matchmaking algorithm. In addition to those marquee features, we are making tweaks based on beta publisher and early adopter feedback.

Q: What makes Placements Marketplace unique?

A: It is the only feature of its kind in our dashboard, as it will leverage historical network performance to recommend new opportunities. Also, the focus on the sales process instead of data management is a unique feature compared to our competitors. Publishers often exclaim how much less data they have to manage in our solution over other networks. Plus, the vision is to provide publishers a proposal management solution for ALL their advertisers, not just Rakuten Marketing.

Q: How do advertisers benefit?

A: Advertisers benefit from having listings of available inventory for placements on hand. Also, they benefit from not having to manage placements using spreadsheets or by saving email threads in folders. And not to mention they will benefit from the Matchmaking recommendations generated by the tool to help them improve their program performance. In summary, less tedious and time-consuming work, more time to grow programs!

Q: How do publishers benefit?

A: Publishers benefit from reducing incoming repetitive email communications asking for rate cards and available placements during specific shopping events. Also, they benefit from having access to more advertisers that normally don’t buy placements from them. And in conjunction with the Paid Placements Insights tool, Publishers will be able to have full visibility into when advertisers are paying out placement invoices. Plus, by removing the manual bonusing of payments when invoices come out, advertisers won’t miss publisher payments, which will make publishers happy as well.

Interested in learning more?

Talk to your account manager or email rm-paidplacements@mail.rakuten.com today!