How to qualify a publisher before the first email

Most of the time lost in publisher acquisition is lost before the first reply: letters to sites that were never a fit, follow-ups to an address nobody reads, a call to a publisher already working with a partner you cannot beat. Five checks, done before the first email, remove most of it.

1. Traffic: is the site big enough to matter?

Set a minimum and apply it to every site. Below a certain number of monthly visits, the revenue will not cover the work of onboarding, for you or for the publisher. Public sources give an estimate, not a measurement, so use them as a filter, not a forecast.

When a source has no data for a site, record exactly that. An unmeasured site is not a site with zero visitors. Mixing the two hides good small sites and makes weak ones look certain.

2. ads.txt: is the site already monetized programmatically?

Open /ads.txt on the site’s root domain. If the file exists, the site already sells programmatic inventory: the publisher knows the model, and the conversation is about doing it better. If it does not exist, the site may be new to advertising, which means more explanation and a longer onboarding. Neither is bad. They are different conversations.

3. Partners: who is already there?

Each line of ads.txt names an advertising system, an account ID and whether the relationship is DIRECT or RESELLER. Matching the account IDs against Google’s sellers.json tells you which companies stand behind them. A site with several certified partners already selling its inventory needs a different pitch from a site that runs only Google directly. We explain how to read the file in Reading ads.txt.

4. Contacts: who will read the email?

Look for addresses on the site itself: the contact page, the imprint, the advertising page. A role address such as advertising@ or editor@ often reaches the right person faster than a guessed personal address, and it is the address the publisher chose to publish. Note phone numbers as well; some publishers answer the phone long before they answer email.

5. Language and ownership: who are you writing to?

Write in the publisher’s language. Then check whether the site belongs to an owner you already talk to. Publishers often run several sites, and one letter to the owner beats five letters to the same inbox.

Put the checks in the pipeline, not in your head

These checks are mechanical, which is exactly why they get skipped when they are done by hand on a busy day. In PUBSONAR, discovery applies the traffic and ads.txt checks before a site becomes a lead, and research fills in partners, contacts, language and shop detection as soon as a site arrives. The person who writes the first letter starts with the facts.