We’re not talking about kings when we use the term abdicator at PubWise. We’re talking about one of the three monetization approaches we see in digital publishing.
An abdicator typically lets machines do it all (machine learning, AI). If the goal is maximizing profit, a publisher might conclude that this low-cost approach could pay off, even if it delivered suboptimal results.
However, there are risks to be considered.
- Products that are asking you to abdicate often take over DNS, don’t let you use your own demand relationships and/or don’t let you run your own Google Ad Manager.
- This approach fails to leverage the hard-won instincts and insights of your team, which may make those employees harder to retain over time.
- Mistakes, when they happen, might lead to costly cleanup efforts that wipe out the savings.
- This approach provides no observability. When a tactic works, you won’t know why and you may not be able to repeat it. When a tactic fails, you won’t know why and you won’t know how to avoid repeating the mistake.
The approach of the Optimizers is the most successful approach to monetization. Human-machine teams have been proven to routinely outperform humans or machines alone.
