Publishers

On the opening day of advertiser NewFronts, BuzzFeed and Bloomberg Media were clear about their intentions: They’re pursuing video. Aggressively. At its Monday event in New York, BuzzFeed said it will release by the year’s end a proprietary tool called Pound, designed to show advertisers how BuzzFeed stories and video content travel across the web. […]

Polyvore, a site where fashionistas make product recommendations, on Monday rolled out Promoted Trends, a native ad package purchased on a per-day basis. This structure contrasts with the CPC pricing of the company’s Promoted Products, which integrates ads into Polyvore’s news feed. Since its launch in 2013, Promoted Products has more than 300 advertisers, including etailer […]

The $45 billion Comcast-Time Warner Cable (TWC) deal is officially kaput. If the merger had materialized, it would have created an unsurpassable media and cable conglomerate with massive audience reach. From day one, regulators were wary about one company controlling too much broadband access, resulting in Comcast terminating the deal Friday. “Today, we move on,” […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Peter Spande, chief revenue officer at Business Insider. While we love stories of disruption in business, actual disruption of your personal life and work is a lot less fun. At this moment, any advertising […]

Advertisers are no longer interested in hitting demo targets alone and, leading into upfronts, media companies are baking behavioral and audience-based guarantees into their sales pitches. Buy- and sell-side parties want to link TV programs with purchase propensity to determine whether a media exposure helped loosen purse strings. “We’re seeing more demand to bring together business […]

It’s not enough anymore that Scripps Networks’ channels are, according to its Wednesday upfront presentation, “naturally optimized.” While CPGs know to find food lovers on the Food Network or Cooking Channel, and home improvement brands gravitate toward HGTV or the DIY Network, the broadcaster is working on providing more data to advertisers to enable purchase-based […]

Pangia Games doesn’t have money to waste. What app developer does? Monetization and user acquisition are tricky for anyone – although it certainly helps to have extra cash to throw at the problem. But the smaller devs out there, like Pangia, need to get creative. “We’re a team of two,” said Nick Barbato, managing partner at […]

It’s a tough road for a stand-alone second-screen app. Beamly, the social TV network formerly known as Zeebox, would appear well positioned to help publishers engage millennial audiences across all platforms. Its install base grew from 2 million monthly active users in 2011 to 10.5 million today, and Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Viacom have a joint […]

This story is part of a series on publisher coalitions and co-ops around the world. Read our earlier pieces on Pangaea and the Association of Online Publishers in the UK, La Place Média in France, SouthernX in Africa, Project Agora in Greece and Romania, Apex in Australia and CPAX in Canada. The problem with programmatic in Israel was that there weren’t many options. Google and […]

On April 21, Google will begin instituting a change to its mobile search algorithm that will take a site’s mobile-friendliness into account when ranking results. Indexed apps will also start showing up among organic search results. The update applies to mobile search only. In somewhat un-Google-like fashion, Google, which normally makes its search algorithm changes […]

Quizzes perform. They’ve set traffic records at publications like Slate and The New York Times and given rise to platforms like PlayBuzz and sites like Zimbio. That’s why Refinery29 was eager to partner with quiz platform Hone to create quizzes that have the look and feel of Refinery29 articles along with the incredible engagement that […]

Banners weren’t cutting it for Vaibhav Gupta, CEO and founder of Bidstalk, a Singapore-based company that provides a white-label mobile and video DSP platform for advertisers and publishers. But the alternative – native – presented its own attendant complications. “Marketers are ready to experiment with newer mobile-focused ad formats, but such traffic is still limited,” Gupta said. […]

When Rich Sutton became Reader’s Digest Association’s CRO in January, his top priority was to extract more revenue from the advertisers accessing its audience of 53 million monthly uniques. “We’re moving to a mix that’s more video, native and high-impact, because those are the formats that are commanding the high CPMs,” Sutton said. “I’m not […]

Google’s plan to rival Netflix and Hulu by introducing its own ad-free subscription service has left some questioning as to whether it will restrict content creators enough to move elsewhere. Although YouTube creators will receive a 55% cut of paid subscription revenue for their videos, which is equal to the percentage they earn for pre-roll […]

This story is part of a series on publisher coalitions and co-ops around the world. Read our earlier pieces on Pangaea and the Association of Online Publishers in the UK, La Place Media in France, SouthernX in Africa, Project Agora in Greece and Romania and Apex in Australia. One year ago, the Canadian Premium Audience Exchange (CPAX), a publisher coalition comprising […]

“Brand Aware” explores the data-driven digital ad ecosystem from the marketer’s point of view. Today’s column is by Tony Ralph, director of advertising technology at Netflix. Over the last year, I’ve spoken with at least a dozen representatives from brands both large and small that are looking for advice on first steps as they consider […]

The McClatchy Company’s programmatic strategy didn’t look good when it played second to direct sales. CPMs were low and block lists barred big advertisers. With the support of McClatchy leadership, Tobias Bennett, the digital display revenue manager, removed block lists and implemented Google’s dynamic allocation tool, designed to let all impressions compete with each other. […]

Viewability is stressing publishers out. Brands want more for less. Sites need to be redesigned. Every vendor brings different numbers to the equation. But some publishers, like Condé Nast and Tribune Media, are reaping the benefits of “embracing viewability.” “We’ve seen our yields increase,” said Brad Agens, SVP of digital sales for Tribune Media, who […]

Many publishers don’t know – or don’t want to know – what kind of fraud occurs on their sites. But it’s a reaction not dissimilar to how brands approached fraud before shocking numbers – like the 17% of programmatic ads and 23% of video ads determined fraudulent in the ANA/White Ops study last year – […]

Kids – they love apps, they’re highly engaged, they’ve got no money and you’re not allowed to collect their data. But targeting and mobile monetization aren’t an impossible dream for kid content developers and publishers, said Dylan Collins, CEO of SuperAwesome, a UK-based ad network specifically designed with COPPA compliance in mind. On Wednesday, the 2-year-old […]

This story is part of a series on publisher coalitions and co-ops around the world. Read our earlier pieces on Pangaea and the Association of Online Publishers in the UK, La Place Media in France, SouthernX in Africa and Project Agora in Greece and Romania. Australian media giants Fairfax and Nine Entertainment Co. wanted to create a coalition with truly unique […]

This story is part of a series on publisher coalitions and co-ops around the world. Read our earlier pieces on Pangaea and the Association of Online Publishers in the UK, La Place Media in France and SouthernX in Africa. In Greece and Romania, online publishers seeking an alternative to Google joined Project Agora, a publisher […]

Soon, UK buyers will have two premium publisher coalitions to choose from. On the heels of the announcement of Pangaea, the UK trade association AOP (Association of Online Publishers) revealed on Tuesday its plans to create a consortium set to make its debut in six to eight weeks, after the publishers involved implement AppNexus technology […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Chris Kuist, vice president of insights and innovation at The Weather Company. As consumers’ interactions with media and media brands evolve at an unprecedented speed, questions arise over how to measure and ultimately monetize those […]

On April 1, the newspaper assets of the E.W. Scripps Company will go to Journal Media Group – publisher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In exchange, Scripps will receive Journal Communications’ local broadcast, radio and digital holdings, giving the media conglomerate a total of 33 broadcast properties, 34 radio properties and 150 different digital properties […]

The most-cited reason Cosmopolitan, CNN, People, Yahoo News, Food Network and National Geographic jumped to participate in Snapchat Discover: access to millennials in a mobile platform with high engagement. Discover also has an environment pleasing to advertisers, enabling messaging via text, images or video in a section of a popular app curated by premium publishers. […]

AOL is building on its foray into long-form content, which it first announced at last year’s newfronts, by distributing the pilot of its documentary series, “Connected,” on Roku devices. Although AOL Video has content distribution agreements with 17 different Internet-streaming and over-the-top devices, including Amazon Fire and Chromecast, “Connected” – produced by Morgan Spurlock and […]

South African buyers and sellers knew from looking at their peers in the US and UK that they needed to develop a programmatic strategy. But publishers were initially reluctant because of the cost of programmatic tech and the old fear that buying in an RTB environment devalued inventory. This concern led WPP to help create […]

IBT Media – publisher of International Business Times, Latin Times and Newsweek – plans to grow programmatic revenue from 30% to 60% by the end of this year. It first started selling programmatically last May and plans to fuel growth by adding programmatic direct to the mix through Rubicon and Sonobi. Buyers can purchase through […]

AppNexus has acquired Yieldex, whose platform provides publishers with analytics, forecasting and sales management tools. The deal might help strengthen AppNexus’ relationships with media sellers at a time when direct deals between marketers and publishers represent a growing portion of the programmatic ad pie. The Wall Street Journal placed the deal’s value at approximately $100 million in cash and […]