Do mobile ad networks deliver for premium publishers? I do not believe so. Remember not that long ago the talk of $40 CPMs from mobile advertising? Forget about it.  Today, it is more like $1 to $5 CPMs for premium inventory. Mobile ad networks have failed to deliver value for premium publishers.

• They have driven CPMs down and devalued publishers' inventory.
• They have broken their covenant with publishers by allowing advertisers to pick where they run at below market rates.
• They have turned premium inventory into remnant.

On the Web, many premium publishers have been making a clear distinction between premium inventory they sell and remnant inventory they might give ad networks sell. In mobile, practically speaking, all inventory is treated as lowly remnant. On the Web, many premium publishers have stopped using ad networks altogether because of damaging channel conflict, invariably bad ads, and unwanted second rate advertisers.

The law of supply and demand is immutable. The scarcity of inventory drives the prices higher and the abundance does the opposite. Except for publisher’s inertia, I cannot fathom why publishers with sales staff already trained in selling online still give their inventory to ad networks to sell as part of a huge pool of generally lower quality inventory. The results are predictable. I am hopeful that for premium publishers using ad networks is a short term solution. They are waiting for traffic to grow, the economy to improve, and mobile to become even more pervasive. It is a mistake to wait. Advertisers get conditioned to the trend that your mobile inventory is cheap.

Premium publishers need to stop relying on mobile ad networks to monetize their mobile inventory.  Instead of relegating ad sales to non-performing ad networks or using mobile as a value-add, premium publishers need to take control of their inventory and start selling. The fact is that publishers can achieve high sell-through in mobile; since traffic levels are still below desktop, so it only takes a handful of advertisers to fill the inventory.  The key is delivering an engaging, beyond-the-banner experience and making it painless for the buyer.