Publishers

BuzzFeed hopes its investments in trendy tech like generative AI and short-form vertical video, with a bigger focus on commerce, will eventually pay dividends.

Publishers, such as The Arena Group, are now partnering directly with brand safety solution providers to lower their block rates for direct-sold inventory.

American City Business Journals earns about 90% of its revenue from direct sales. So it is looking to invest in technology that can streamline its direct business as much as possible.

While cookies are still in play, publishers are using first-party data products to draw business from advertisers eager to test cookie alternatives, even as ad spending retracts due to persistent fears of an upcoming recession. Here’s a snapshot of how Vox Media, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Trusted Media Brands evolved their first-party data strategy in 2022 and their plans for the coming year.

UK-based publisher LADbible Group is testing post-cookie alternatives and building its contextual targeting capabilities. But the social-first publisher has yet to be convinced that any of these alternatives will be a truly viable replacement for the much-maligned – and yet still widely used – third-party cookie.

The most commonly cited rationale for publisher staffing cuts has been marketers’ hesitance to spend on advertising amid persistent economic uncertainty. But publishers’ latest pivot to video and increased competition among digital channels is also likely to blame.

Thanks to signal loss, recession fears and the “ad tech tax,” publishers of all sizes are seeing their ad revenue suffer. But the problem is more pronounced among local news publishers, many of which were barely getting by before platform privacy changes roiled the digital advertising industry. The Local Media Consortium (LMC) shares how it’s helping its members mitigate these headwinds.

As BuzzFeed struggles with advertiser uncertainty and a drop in user engagement, it reported flat Q3 ad revenue. Advertising revenue was $50 million, matching last year’s Q3. Ad revenue growth decelerated compared to Q2, “driven by ongoing price compression and uncertainty around consumer demand,” said BuzzFeed CFO Felicia DellaFortuna.

Turns out 2022 was a bad year to merge two large media companies into one massive media company. Both Dotdash and Meredith experienced headwinds throughout the year. Traffic was soft compared with the rise in consumption during the pandemic, and the digital advertising market was unexpectedly weak. And next year isn’t looking rosy.

SmartNews uses the first-party data it gathers from its users to create more intelligent content recommendations and serve more relevant ads. It’s also investing in its own ad stack so it can activate its first-party data by creating contextual audience segments that it can sell programmatically on the open web and as part of its new direct sales offering.