LittleThings, which collects uplifting stories and DIY tips, went from 8 million monthly unique visitors in November 2014 to 31.5 million last June, making it part of the comScore 100. But though it’s the third most shared publisher on Facebook according to Newswhip, LittleThings suffers from low brand recognition. That’s something LittleThings is trying to […]
The New York Times’ digital business grew both in subscriptions and ad revenue in Q2. Digital revenue grew 14% to $48.3 million because of “mobile, paid posts and programmatic,” CEO Mark Thompson said. Digital subscriptions grew 19% to 990,000 and, by the time of the earnings call, had passed 1 million subscribers. Growing the scale […]
The New York Times hopes to address mobile advertising problems with a customizable native in-stream ad unit called Mobile Moments, set for a mid-September launch. The publisher built the unit in-house using insights from its editorial team. It will be available both on apps and the mobile web, and a few advertisers have already signed […]
After launching programmatic print in February, Time Inc. on Friday unveiled a new phase of the sales initiative. It adds 12 audience categories to the original half dozen. Media planners can purchase new audience segments across 18 of Time Inc.’s US brands, including sport enthusiasts, travelers, fashion followers, moms and foodies. By doing so they […]
Publishers are going to be shouldering the bulk of the burden of the user consent policy Google announced Monday. Google, in an effort to proactively comply with upcoming EU data protection legislation, outlined a user consent policy requiring publishers using AdSense, DoubleClick Ad Exchange or DoubleClick for Publishers to add cookie notifications across desktop, mobile […]
A year after Yahoo’s disastrous Q2, the company reported year over year revenue growth of 15%, or $159 million, its best in nearly nine years. Yahoo saw Q2 revenue of $1.24 billion. So-called “Mavens” revenue (mobile, video, native and social) grew 60% to $399 million from $249 million during the same time last year. Yahoo CEO Marissa […]
Publishers selling programmatic need trained “digital media operators” who can speak the language of buyers. That’s how Intermarkets, which owns or represents media properties like Drudge Report, CNSNews.com and The Political Insider, aims to differentiate itself in a crowded field of sellers: speaking the language of programmatic to buyers, and setting up its technological stack […]
When Ellen Pao stepped down from her post as CEO of Reddit on Friday – ceding the spot to Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman – it left Reddit’s monetization situation murkier than ever. In a question and answer session on Reddit’s popular AMA (Ask Me Anything) section, Huffman wrote, “Reddit has a lot of cash. Monetization […]
Recipe publishers have realized they can tap into shopper marketing budgets by making their recipes shoppable. Matching brands and stores to relevant recipes requires technology, and the arms race is on. Meredith Digital on Monday acquired Grocery Server, which provides technology to make recipes shoppable. Separately, Reader’s Digest-owned Taste of Home, once a customer of […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jeremy Hlavacek, vice president of programmatic at The Weather Company. Why aren’t more marketers moving budgets to mobile? Two recent articles caught my attention because they resonated personally and professionally, illustrating that we have […]
Zealot Networks acquired viral news site ViralNova Thursday, citing its audience and underlying technology. The deal valued ViralNova close to $100 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. Zealot Networks declined to name the exact figure, but said the acquisition is the biggest of the 15 it’s made so far. Formed 18 months ago by the […]
While some publishers – like BuzzFeed – are going the native-only route, Salon thinks the the best way to serve advertisers is by combining custom native programs with scaled options like programmatic. The highbrow news organization creates bespoke native content for clients like Mercedes Maybach, Glenlivet scotch, Panera and HBO. Eighty-five percent of the advertisers […]
Imagine native advertising with a buy button. Or, a stunning travel story that ends with the option for the reader to go on the same trip. Switzerland Tourism sought to turn these scenarios into realities when it teamed with travel publication Afar Magazine to create the custom native program Afar Journeys, running from June to […]
Turn on ad blocking and in most cases you’ll have a better user experience, a fact readily acknowledged by Sourcepoint COO and co-founder Brian Kane. Sourcepoint focuses on circumventing ad-blocking software. But rather than the problem itself, Kane views ad blocking as the surface manifestation of a deeper issue: “The value exchange between publishers and […]
Like all programmatic buyers, Xaxis faces a challenge – and that’s securing the best and most inventory for its clients. In a publisher waterfall, ad servers generally prioritize programmatic below direct-sold campaigns, prompting other buyers and exchanges to start asking publishers to implement a practice known as header bidding. But Xaxis, WPP’s trading desk (or, […]
Horizon Media had done plenty of direct-to-publisher native campaigns to promote shows for its entertainment clients, including The History Channel. But the campaigns lacked scale. “Curating these experiences in a way where we can impact scale is vitally important when we’re trying to drive a [Nielsen] ratings number,” said Joe Hadari, SVP and managing director […]
When Better Homes and Gardens refreshed its site last week, it did so with mobile in mind. About 50% of site visits to the Meredith Corp.-owned property happen on mobile devices, which made creating a better consumer and advertising experience on mobile a priority. But desktop got attention too, with both mobile and desktop redesigned […]
CafeMom has long seen programmatic sailing along the horizon. “Over the past few years, we saw the programmatic boat coming, and have been trying to figure out what to do,” said Paul Bannister, EVP of CafeMom, which includes mom-oriented sites The Stir and MamásLatinas. Now, the ship is in port. Programmatic revenue is growing significantly […]
Data-based buying requires data-based selling, a theme that ran through the Association of Magazine Media’s Programmania conference Thursday. Magazine publishers have an advantage over digital-only publishers. Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith and Bloomberg Media have all strengthened their first-party data by creating insights and segments within data-management platforms and offering them to advertisers. “Not only do […]
The traditional publisher waterfall, where impressions are exposed to sales channels in descending order of the perceived value of each channel, has always stuck in the craw of yield-obsessed media sellers. At its worst, the model ignores pockets of high-value inventory and reduces competition, and thus artificially caps a publisher’s revenue. Publishers have by […]
The Economist is still mulling the particulars around how it’s going to monetize its just-launched video initiative, Economist Films, but one thing is sure – native advertising will have nothing to do with it. “There will never be a native element to our films because they have to stand alongside the newspaper as a purely […]
Most publisher sites are not oversubscribed – not by a long shot, said Amiad Solomon, chairman and co-founder of Komoona, a company that bills itself as an “RTB router.” Solomon put it bluntly: “Publishers are bleeding.” A lot of that has to do with the CPMs most publishers are able to attract for their non-direct programmatically […]
When Reddit revealed it would produce original video, code for “more premium content,” it was right in line with its pitch to brand advertisers – as well as more tools for publishers – through features like embeddable comment threads. That said, the last thing it will compromise is a solid user experience in its community […]
Publishers taking the role of an ad agency by creating content for marketers should make sure they’re not creating misleading native advertising: The Federal Trade Commission will hold publishers responsible. “For us, the concern is whether consumers recognize what they’re seeing is advertising or not,” Mary Engle, the FTC’s associate director of advertising practices, told […]
Since Denmark’s third-largest media house, Jysk Fynske Medier, started bringing in programmatic demand, CPMs for non-direct sold inventory have risen more than 300%. Its portfolio of sites, which includes everything from local news to classifieds to daily deals, attracts 3 million uniques and 500 million page views per month. Though small, Denmark has a highly […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Dave Marquard, director of product management, publisher products, at Integral Ad Science. Now that the MRC has defined that for a digital display ad to be viewable, half of the creative must be in […]
Professional food bloggers have long relied on ad networks to monetize their audience. A few million page views or more can be enough to earn a living. But these long-tail content creators are also feeling the effects of programmatic, viewability and the shift to mobile. One example: Food blog Pinch of Yum, run by a […]
The salespeople at Business Insider had a problem. Some potential advertisers wanted to buy directly with the publication, but due to minimums implemented in mid-2014, their budgets were below the minimum spend and CPM required for a direct buy. That would make them candidates for programmatic sales, but these clients didn’t have DSPs. Some were […]
Beliefnet attracts a niche audience (about 5 million to 7 million uniques per month) of all faiths who come to read content about religion. But while its readers believe in a greater power, Beliefnet wasn’t always sure they had the same faith in ads. Even though advertisers began to prioritize viewability, the publication, which fielded […]
Facebook has confirmed it will begin displaying publishers’ articles natively in the Facebook mobile app, naming nine initial media partners for the program. (Read the blog post.) Participating publishers are The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild. “We’ve been comfortable with experimenting with a variety of storytelling platforms over the past […]
