Trust is a magical thing, but we now live in a world where it is increasingly difficult to trust anything. Publishers must learn to accept that trust must be earned each and every time with each interaction. This applies to our audiences and our advertisers.

Our competition for eyeballs and ad budgets doesn’t need to earn trust, but we do… but then we don’t act accordingly… but we have to.

This leads to the inevitable conclusion that we must change our ways. Publishing has been built on assumed trustworthiness, and it is collapsing.

If publishing matters to you, you can participate in the necessary change. Think of it this way: no low-hanging fruit is left to generate easy money. Everything going forward is just going to be hard work. So why not focus on doing it the right way?

Re-establish trust with your core audiences. Engage them in new, meaningful ways. Bring them closer. Make a deal with your audience so they understand your value. In the process, you’ll lose people. They weren’t yours anyway. Build off the people who care. Carefully bring this audience to your advertisers. Don’t betray your audience in the process. Build from there. The numbers will be smaller, but it may be enough to build a good business. Otherwise, all you are doing is trying to be just trustworthy enough to do what you’ve been doing and slowly failing. 

I think it’s the only way. Trust me?

While I have you….

• The new interactive publisher salary survey is available!
• We published some new content on dynamic take rates and ad quality at the DSP level! 
• October’s Camp•Fire went very well, and the recording is now available online for our partners and for publishers in our community.
  
• The next Camp•Fire is November 21st at noon ET. It’s just for our pubs and existing partners, though. Topics: TBD.
• Beeler.Tech has the opportunity to pitch someone a really big project. We could use a project manager. We’re talking about someone who gets people to get things done. This would be contract work to start. Know of anyone?