Case Study | DFP Small Business

Paperblog boosts ad serving reliability and AdSense revenue thanks to DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business Overview Paperblog is a participative media website founded in 2006. The site works in partnership with individuals who write quality articles about their hobbies or expertise, and its mission is to provide the best reading to a large target audience by organising content thematically and hierarchically. About Paperblog • www.paperblog.fr • Paris, France • Participative media website

Goals • Monetise site with efficient and problem-free ad serving

Approach • Served 80% of ad impressions through DFP Small Business • Used DFP Small Business with integrated AdSense features to optimise revenue • Enabled real-time competition between Google AdSense, third-party ad networks and other non-guaranteed advertisers across inventory

Results • 100% of total business revenue comes from online advertising • 40% of online advertising revenue comes from Google AdSense • Seamless optimisation of AdSense revenue • Improved AdSense CPMs • Solution scales along with growing traffic and markets • Peace of mind through Google’s fast and reliable infrastructure

Initially launched for French users, Paperblog has since expanded into the Spanish, Italian, German, and Portuguese markets, with English and Russian versions in development. Altogether, Paperblog has partnered with 20,000 bloggers and is visited by approximately 8 millions readers each month. Keep it simple With 100% of Paperblog’s business revenue derived from online advertising, the need for efficient and problem-free ad serving has increased as the company has grown. “We were previously using an ad server which was hard to configure and became infected easily,” explains Paperblog founder and CEO Nicolas Verdier. While researching an alternative, the company came across DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business, Google’s free hosted ad serving solution that provides a complete toolkit to help publishers maximise revenue across directly-sold advertising, AdSense and other ad networks. “Two main reasons made us change to DFP Small Business,” reports Nicolas. “Firstly, the ability to optimise AdSense revenue, and secondly, the well-known Google expertise in making things simple.”

“Since implementing DFP Small Business, our company is growing fast, and our online revenue with it.” —Nicolas Verdier, CEO and founder, Paperblog

Up and running Once the decision was made, Paperblog was quick to set up their new ad serving system. “Learning to use the basic functions of DFP Small Business was quite fast and simple compared to other ad servers,” Nicolas reveals. “Training someone to use it would take half a day.” While DFP Small Business is designed to be intuitive, Nicolas and his team were also able to resolve any issues with instant help in the user interface. They then started to appreciate the features right away. “We don’t need to download any software in order to manage the inventory and therefore we are able to manage it from wherever we are.”

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About DFP Small Business DFP Small Business is a free, hosted ad serving solution that helps you manage and grow your online advertising business. For more information visit: www.google.com/dfp/sb

DFP Small Business includes a wide variety of powerful tools that simplify and improve Paperblog’s ad trafficking, delivery, forecasting and reporting efforts. The most impressive features so far however have been in the area of revenue optimisation. DFP Small Business enables real-time competition between Google AdSense, third-party ad networks and other non-guaranteed advertisers for any inventory on a website. For Paperblog, this means that Google AdWords advertisers can bid for space on the site, and the highest paying ads are automatically selected through DFP Small Business. Bigger and better The ability to enable AdSense in DFP Small Business and optimise ad inventory has had a significant impact on Paperblog’s profitability. Today 40% of Paperblog’s online advertising revenue is from Google AdSense, and since implementing DFP Small Business, “the AdSense CPM is definitely much better”. With the company’s target audience continuing to grow across multiple languages and diverse regions, Nicolas has found the ease of DFP Small Business a huge benefit. “DFP Small Business is robust and simple to use, and it allows us to manage our international inventory.” By using an ad serving solution that’s underpinned by Google’s fast and reliable infrastructure, Paperblog gains considerable peace of mind too. “We can sleep well, knowing that DFP won’t crash during the night.” And what about its impact on Paperblog’s overall bottom line? “We use DFP Small Business essentially to manage unsold inventory,” Nicolas reports, “and 80% of our ad impressions are served thanks to DFP Small Business. It is much easier to manage the non-guaranteed inventory and to optimise it. Since implementing DFP Small Business, our company is growing fast, and our online revenue with it.”

© 2011 Google Inc. All rights reserved. Google, DoubleClick, the Google logo, and the DoubleClick logo are trademarks of Google Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

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