Content MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS)

Once upon a time, developing a website and making any subsequent changes to it fell to coders. This made making updates to everything from functionality to content a slower going process. Not an ideal situation for media companies looking to update news and articles daily, if not hourly. This situation led to the rise of the CMS, software that enables anyone from journalists to editors to marketers to manage website content without having to learn code.

CMS is short for Content Management System, a tool that enables users to access a library of templates, extensions and widgets via an easy-to-use dashboard. Most CMS programs can also host a website, providing simple setup of a domain along with services to enhance search engine optimization, social posting and even advertising. If you’ve heard of Wordpress or SquareSpace or even set up a wedding website on The Knot, you’ve encountered a CMS. 

How does a CMS work?

A CMS cuts out the middleman—the coders. (Don’t worry, they don’t mind. They want to innovate more than update.) Where once you needed colleagues who knew HTML, CSS and Javascript, the CMS opens up web management to anyone who can drag and drop. As users shift content blocks, add videos and even interactive features, the CMS handles all the coding behind the scenes. 

Because a CMS streamlines your whole editorial and marketing process. Here are a few of the key advantages for publishers:

• SEO

  • Search engines have strict criteria when it comes to the pages they’ll present in response to a query, and where they’ll rank in the results. A good CMS has Search Engine Optimization built-in to optimize your features and content to boost search ranking.

• Extensions & Plugins

  • A CMS simplifies the process of layering in key marketing tools such as surveys, forms, ad tracking code, videos, etc. There are even web specific plugins to add some cool features to your website! 

• Collaboration

  • The CMS allows you to set up multiple users with permissions to access the website. This means that they can make updates to your website at the same time without causing any issues. 

• Templates

  • The beautiful thing about a CMS is the flexibility it gives users. Most feature an entire suite of predesigned templates tailored to your field or web goals. Looking to build an ecommerce store? You can choose templates specifically designed for check out. The templates themselves can be edited or customized to support your brand.

• Content Management

  • As the name suggests, a CMS is all about streamlining editorial flow and managing the constant updates to images, videos, and web pages. Upload an article, unpublish it to make a quick edit, restore it—all with just a few clicks.

As great as the CMS is for managing the editorial side of a business, it’s not set up with monetization in mind. Most simply don’t play well with all the ad tech necessary to fund that content. This stems from the age-old church-and-state division media companies have maintained between editorial and ad sales to assure journalistic integrity. But having that dichotomy translated into technology creates friction that hampers the consumer experience, impacts ad quality and, really, requires publishers to spend almost more time troubleshooting than content creating. The biggest issues:

• Bad Design

  • Sites optimized for content sometimes result in ad placements that pile up in one spot or even block content. Ugly sites don’t bring users back for more.

• Latency

  • Poorly designed pages that have poor integration with ad tech tend to get heavy and load slowly—this makes for a bad consumer experience which of course impacts both the advertiser and publisher.

• High Bounce Rates

  • Studies show that most users won’t wait more than two seconds for a page to load before they simply click away to a new site. Two seconds is shorter than the time it took you to read that last sentence.

• Under-Monetization

  • Poorly designed ad placements don’t work for consumers, so they don’t work for advertisers either. Continually low ad performance leads to less bids and less revenue.

There is a fix

CMS and ad tech plugins can get along. Publishers who’ve brought these systems closer together have experienced:

• Improved User Experiences

  • Consumers will increase their average time spent on site, and site viewability will improve dramatically.

• Enhanced Search Rankings

  • Search engines favor faster loading sites with a better UI, which leads to higher rankings and more clicks.

• Increased Revenue

  • The right solution eliminates the need for plugins or outside vendors, providing improved monetization and efficiency.

• A Return To What They Do Best

  • With fewer CMS headaches, publishers can invest more where it matters—bringing in more talent, introducing new site features, and measuring customer experience and yield more holistically.

Sounds too good to miss, right? But before you begin to integrate your CMS and ad tech, take a quick CMS Fitness Test to surface key areas in need of improvement:

• How many third parties are plugged into your page?

  • Think about which technologies and partnerships will change once third party cookies and mobile IDs are gone. Make a list of partners to talk to about new solutions that are future-proof and more efficient.

• How many companies are bidding on each individual ad your site serves?

  • Think about how this is affecting your site performance, such as creating site load lags and ad timeouts.

• Who is taking a bite out of your earnings?

  • Dig into where your demand is coming from and see where you can shorten the supply path to increase ROI and build closer relationships with buyers.

• How hard is it to configure custom ad experiences for your advertisers?

  • Ideally, you should be able to create customizable pages that are beautiful, fast loading and contextual.

• What are your options for improvement and growth?

  • Do a “build or buy” comparison. Is it more efficient to build your own CMS or buy one that’s turnkey.

That last hurdle is a crucial one. Building from scratch is a big, expensive undertaking that takes time and money upfront along with a staff and budget to keep it aligned with fast-moving innovations in operating systems and devices. That’s probably why the publishing industry continues to try to force their CMS and ad tech to get along. 

But Kargo rose to the challenge. With our deep expertise in both publishing and advertising, we built Fabrik, the first CMS built to serve publishers, advertisers and consumers equally well. It’s currently in beta with quite a few publishers now, and we’ll be sharing more about its efficacy in the months ahead. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more, give us a shout.

Suggested Articles

For more information regarding Content Management System’s, please reference the following:

• The CMS Is Holding Publishers Back From Delivering Better Digital Ad Experiences

• Publishers Have A Window Of Opportunity To Change Google And Facebook

• How Your CMS Is Killing Your ROI (Webinar)