The change is gonna be terrific, for now, we’re just at an initial phase here in Italy.

For most publishers in Europe, is most digital advertising purchased through direct ad buying (directly calling the publisher), private marketplaces, or through other means like RTB?

For the moment, our main source of digital advertising’s revenues come from direct buying, but we’re looking forward to a more automatic and efficient way to sell it.

It was recently announced that Shine Technologies, an Israeli ad blocker, cut a carrier-level deal with Three, a UK telco. What currently is the ad blocking situation in Europe as a whole?

Percentage of users surfing the web with an ad-blocking service active are, in our case, 15% of the total userbase. We use a pop-up message to dissuade them in every page, and I’d say ita has been very effective in the long-run. In general, we think that the ad-blocking problem can only be solved with native advertising and targeting technologies.

Consumer privacy in Europe is taken much more seriously than in the United States, as can be seen by the new data protection regulations recently passed to give Europeans greater control over how their data is collected and stored. How does this affect both digital advertisers and publishers selling advertising?

EU legislations give much more responsibilities to all the sides involved in this market, but I don’t think this should scare anyone. A better privacy regulation is also an easier way to not disturb or annoy the userbase.

To the extent that you can reveal, what do you think is the breakout of revenue between direct ad sales and ad networks or exchanges, for European web publishers?

I’m still not able to draw conclusions about this, as we’re just starting to deal with something different than direct ad sales.

What is your opinion of native advertising, and sponsored posts?

Tha’s our main source of ad revenues, and I think advertising is moving in that direction. The more the users are annoyed by display ads, the more native ads will gain value and effectiveness.

Facebook recently announced that they would open up Instant Articles to all publishers come April. What effect do you think this will have on the web publishing business, and do you have any plans internally to adopt this new publishing channel?

We’re still thinking about it, and probably it will be inevitable to get involved. Anyway, as for Google AMP, it’s quite clear that big companies have a long-term view to “embed the internet”, using contents produced by others, especially mobile contents; and this is a bit scary.

Lastly, what is your take on the future of monetization for web publishers in Europe?

I think native advertising and a closer partnership between publisher and ad companies will be the keys to the future of monetization, of course, all with particular attention to mobile.

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