Publishers

As the value of publisher data surges, Adam Harris, VP of data products at Hearst Magazines Digital Media, is tasked with maximizing its opportunities. When Harris joined in May, he looked at how Hearst data can be used to create experiences that drive sales, which performance-focused advertisers demand from their digital media. The work builds […]

Conde Nast wants to quickly build up its data science practice, so it acquired Lighthouse Datalab on Monday. In so doing, it added three people to its data science team who will enhance the machine-learning and AI capabilities of Spire, its data platform. Lighthouse Datalab founder Sriram Subramanian will serve as head of data science […]

TBS and TNT’s new CMO, Michael Engleman, is on a mission to make the networks’ brand marketing engine much more agile. Engleman, who helped rebrand the Sci Fi Channel as SyFy during his time at NBCUniversal, thinks broadcasters will be forced to adapt as new content producers and channels compete for consumer attention. For years, […]

Netflix will inevitably need ads, predicted Jo Ann Ross, CBS’ president and chief advertising revenue officer, during a fireside chat at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview on Thursday. “Maybe they’ll offer a lower-cost version of their service [or a different model],” she said, “but if they’re spending that much money [on content], they will look for ways […]

Advertisers for the first time can tap Roku’s first-party data via a managed service measurement system called Ad Insights, released on Wednesday. The Ad Insights platform builds on Roku’s support of third-party measurement partners like existing partner Nielsen, Kantar Millward Brown, Oracle, Placed and Experian. “This launch was really the result of us stepping back […]

In-app header bidding is coming to MoPub. On Tuesday, the Twitter-owned mobile ad exchange started testing an advanced bidding solution to replace the app ads waterfall with a unified auction. Roughly a dozen publishers are testing the solution. The closed alpha test does not have a set end date. Until now, advertisers could buy MoPub […]

Although connected TV buyers have become pretty sophisticated at targeting and delivering an ad to individual users, managing frequency across video providers is a work in progress. But despite the industry’s recognition that consumers demand better ad experiences, many viewers find themselves bombarded with the same ad. Worse, those ads sometimes run within the same […]

The global health and wellness industry is on the fast track to growth, and upstart publisher Well+Good is reaping the benefits. Well+Good began in April 2010 with only 69 subscribers and today, its reach is well over 10 million uniques across digital, social and email, according to Tyler Del Vento, SVP of sales and marketing […]

Mobile ad network and Indian unicorn InMobi paid $90 million for mobile video monetization platform AerServ in a bid to build a header bidding solution for apps. The deal, announced Wednesday, will bring together their respective programmatic exchanges to create “fair auction dynamics for in the in-app space,” said Abhay Singhal, InMobi’s CRO and co-founder. […]

Hulu closed 2017 on a high note. Hulu’s advertising revenue crossed $1 billion for the first time in 2017, the company revealed Tuesday. Underpinning its ad momentum was the growth of Hulu’s subscriber base, which increased 40% year over year from 12 million paid subscribers in 2016 to 17 million in 2017. Those figures include […]

Brad Bender will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on Jan. 17-18, 2018, at the Grand Hyatt New York. Google’s rallying cry for 2018? Better and possibly fewer ads. While that theory may seem counterintuitive for a company whose revenues come almost exclusively from advertising, rethinking the ad experience may mean recutting standard formats or reducing […]

Condé Nast has long distinguished itself for having the right context to buy ads against. But these days, it’s also focusing on helping advertisers reach new audiences when they buy ads alongside its content with its Spire platform. Condé Nast allows advertisers to use its own data signals to build lookalike audiences and reach more […]

In recent years, enterprise giants like Salesforce, Oracle, IBM and Adobe monopolized M&A activity as each marketing cloud raced to buy their way into ad tech. That tide has turned. These days, strategic acquisitions are more about expanding access to content, audiences and new means of distribution. Just look to media company team-ups like Disney-21st […]

Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. CafeMedia, operator of CafeMom, MamasLatinas and other sites, is a technology-first media company. It employs seven developers who do nothing but manage pre-bid implementations, upgrade bidders, monitor code on-page and so on. “The delivery of programmatic media is what we do,” says EVP for Strategy […]

Although cable operators used to be the primary keepers of TV’s distribution and data pipes, the pendulum is swinging toward programmers and smart-TV providers. Addressable inventory is increasing, driven by a surge in smart-TV OEMs licensing their data directly and local TV companies adding data and automation to their sales mixes. Sorenson Media, which is […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is by Paul Bannister, co-founder and executive vice president at CafeMedia. Contextual targeting is one of the original forms of targeted marketing, hearkening back to the days when Chevrolet might have run an ad next to a local newspaper’s feature story on […]

Brand safety and transparency were top-of-the-agenda items for advertisers in 2017. But if this was the year of faux pas, mea culpas and the start of a move toward better controls, 2018 will be about buckling down. “The billions of ad dollars pulled off platforms in 2017 was a clarion wake-up call,” said Bill Marino, […]

In India, the media company behind its biggest news websites – Times of India, The Economic Times and the Mumbai Mirror – also offers apps and sites where users can make restaurant reservations, study for a test, stream music, buy stocks or track cricket scores. By building its own ad tech stack and developing mobile-heavy […]

In 2017, many online publications realized that data and revenue diversification could drive success. And not being diversified enough could hurt their business. While many publishers tout their branded content businesses, programmatic provides a reliable, easily scalable revenue stream. Publishers that were programmatic holdouts, avoiding the main way advertisers do data-driven buying, course-corrected this year […]

The New York Times acquired Wirecutter last year because its Consumer Reports-like product coverage mirrored the Times’ aspirations to expand into service journalism. “The Wirecutter was doing what the Times would have done if we were to start from scratch,” said David Perpich, Wirecutter’s president and general manager. Buying Wirecutter helped the Times diversify its […]

Twitter is gunning to become publishers’ platform partner of choice, and it’s leveraging live video as a way to capture content – and dollars – currently flowing to the duopoly. This week, Bloomberg debuted its 24/7 global news network TicToc on Twitter after reaching nearly 8 million people during Bloomberg TV’s live stream of three […]

After weeks of buildup, Disney has finally pulled the trigger and will acquire several major assets from 21st Century Fox in a $52.4 billion all stock deal, announced Thursday. Those assets include 20th Century Fox’s film and TV studios, cable networks like FX and National Geographic, stake in foreign networks Star India and UK-based pay […]

Many digital publishers have had nothing but bad news to share this Q4 – from golden child BuzzFeed laying off staff to Mashable being sold for a bargain-basement price. But The New York Times is telling an upbeat story about its business with a new storyteller at the helm: Sebastian Tomich. Tomich, the company’s former […]

When ads show up next to questionable content, consumers are far from impressed. Sixty-four percent of adult consumers say a brand’s reputation is at risk if its media appears next to hateful or derogatory content, according to research released Wednesday by Omnicom media agency Hearts & Science, which surveyed roughly 1,500 consumers ages 22-45 across […]

Ads.txt research released Tuesday shines a new light on the extent of the harm done to major publishers by inventory resellers and lax supply chain standards. A joint study from Google, Amobee and Quantcast that examined Ads.txt data found rampant counterfeit inventory available to DSPs that seemingly came from 16 media companies, including Turner, The […]

CPG advertisers running on Conde Nast properties will be able to target, optimize and measure campaigns using purchase data from Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) beginning in Q1 next year. The publisher wants to marry its expertise in creative development and sponsored content with an attention to attribution and the bottom line. “If you are not […]

Wine brand Josh Cellars doesn’t have a taste for traditional media. “We made a choice to stay away from broadcast TV and cable, at least for now,” said Renato Reyes, CMO of Josh Cellars’ parent company, Deutsch Family Wine and Spirits, whose portfolio also includes more household names. Deutsch is the US distributor of Yellow […]

Publishers are getting ensnared in the filters used by many advertisers to combat the YouTube brand safety crisis. Earlier this year, many brands found their ads running next to offensive content on the video platform, prompting marketers and their agencies to enlist third-party monitoring. Now publishers as a whole are feeling the effects. The filters […]

That teens have no attention span is a fallacy. Just ask Wattpad, a platform where people can write and share stories that they’ve written and solicit feedback from their community. The storytelling platform boasts a community of 60 million monthly active users, mainly teens, young adults and millennials under 30, who spend more than 15 […]

Both the adoption of Ads.txt and commercialization of blockchain solutions have the IAB optimistic about the prospects for Ads.cert, a follow-up to Ads.txt that uses cryptographic security measures to authenticate inventory. While Ads.txt helps authorize inventory sources, it doesn’t solve the authentication problem, said Neal Richter, CTO of Rakuten Marketing and co-chair of the IAB’s […]