Broadstreet Launches SideStreet — A New Programmatic Revenue Solution

November 13, 2020

In the eight years Broadstreet has been serving the hyperlocal publishing community, one question has come up more than anything else. Hyperlocal publishers want to know when Broadstreet will start providing advertising for spaces they haven’t sold on their sites. The answer, finally, is today.

Broadstreet has launched a brand new programmatic offering to our customers. We’re calling it SideStreet, and it’s developed based on the feedback we’ve received directly from our publisher clients.

You might be wondering what SideStreet is and how we expect this new offering to help hyperlocal news publishers generate substantially more revenue from unfilled inventory.

What Is SideStreet?

SideStreet is a programmatic solution for publishers who want to generate revenue from unsold space on their websites. For the first time in Broadstreet’s history, we’re able to provide family-friendly advertising to fill those spaces. We’ll be facilitating digital advertising buys in the spots that publishers select, with a return that is better than competitors like Google AdSense are offerings, which means more direct revenue for our publisher clients. 

The demand for a feature like this has always been there, but it’s grown greater over the past nine months. While many publishers saw an increase in website traffic at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, their income from advertiser accounts didn’t grow at the same pace. We’re looking to turn that around. SideStreet is being offered as a way to help publishers generate revenue anytime traffic is easier to come by than paid advertising — whether we’re in a pandemic, or not.

How SideStreet Works

SideStreet is completely opt-in and opt-out, so there’s no long term commitment. Our advertising is heavily vetted for family-friendly content, and in most cases it can be run alongside AdSense and other networks that publishers may already be using. We’re giving publishers the flexibility to select which ad units they want to enable and we’re allowing for blocklists to prevent individual local advertisers from slipping into slots that should be reserved for national brands.

Apply to the Program
Publishers complete a short application and Broadstreet reviews the information provided and the publisher’s website to determine eligibility.

Review the Agreement
Once approved, you’ll receive an agreement from Broadstreet outlining payout information and terms. We will then submit sites for approval to large “demand” partners

Launch!
After approval, Broadstreet sets up the publisher’s Broadstreet account with the correct settings and within 24 hours of the code being added to your site, unsold ad spaces will likely start to fill.

Previously, we used to refer our publisher clients to ad networks when they were looking for ads to fill unsold spaces. Although there are some ad networks that provide those types of services, they usually have minimum traffic requirements that prevent small publishers from being able to access the highest quality buyers. Niche publishers haven’t typically qualified for anything apart from Google AdSense. With the launch of SideStreet, we’re ready for that to change.

Going forward, we intend to provide SideStreet as a built-in service to select publishers. Our vision is to build out the best possible platform for local publishers and give the local media community access to high-quality national advertisers, and this fits well into that vision. 

Whether you’re interested in learning a bit more about SideStreet or you’re ready to jump on board right away, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to our team so we can help you get set up running family-friendly advertising in your unfilled ad spots today.