NY Times Subscriptions; BuzzFeed Partners with Mindshare

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.

Yield Times

In a short feature article, The NY Times covers its own latest subscription offerings as well as native advertising initiatives (“branded content”) in mobile. Times executives continue to spin the “yield” dials. The NYT’s Denise Warren says that “the pricing for the new subscription options was calibrated to avoid cannibalizing existing subscribers.” Read it. And read more about app ads in TechCrunch.

Agency Native

Last May, BuzzFeed partnered with Vayner Media and in August it teamed up with Horizon Media and Interpublic Group. Now, the new media hub has announced a new alliance with WPP’s Mindshare. The partnership will afford Mindshare more direct access to BuzzFeed’s proprietary app, Fre.sh, than any other agency. Mo’ native. BuzzFeed exec Jonathan Perelman told Ad Age, “What it comes down to is finding innovative ways of using the data we have about sharing and how we can drive insights for the advertisers that are using this product.” Read it.

Acxiom On The Rock Bill

While Axicom CEO Scott Howe supports increased regulation in the consumer data space, he is not a fan of the Rockefeller Data Bill. Howe is principally concerned that the bill in its current form approves legislation that has not yet been written and, furthermore, “grants the government the ability to create a centralized consumer data portal whereby all permissions are granted,” according to Ad Age. Howe went so far as to deem the complications of creating such a portal as akin to the failings of the Affordable Care Act. Read the full story.

Not-So-Real-Time

In an op-ed on Marketing Land, Chango’s Dax Hamman opines on what is and is not real-time in display advertising these days. He sees a potential disconnect between the use of media in real-time and data, and writes, “The data being used to determine which impressions to commit to, and at what price to pay, is mostly slow-time at best, and even worse, is often generically grouped based on broad segments that offer little value.” Read it.

In The DSP Beginning

Former Optimal CEO Rob Leathern provides a nostalgic look back at the iterations of his company, which was eventually sold to Brand Networks in 2013 for $35 million. Leathern remembers (ripple dissolve) “being called a ‘DSP’. Or ‘Demand Side Platform’. Yahoo! coined this term and conveyed it to us in a partner update meeting we had with them. They’d been looking for a name for tech companies who were somewhere in between an agency and an ad network model. It stuck.” Read more ripple.

We Created A Monster

“Fraud is the new black,” says Doug Weaver in his latest addition to The Drift. Amidst a media cycle obsessed with advertising fraud, are we exonerating ourselves? “We’re the ones who have turned a blind eye to the situation,” Weaver writes, “the ones who politely avoided the hard questions.” Read more.

Mobile Trends

Mobile app analytics firm App Annie surveyed approximately 2,500 app developers on mobile monetization trends in a joint study with IDC. Among the survey’s findings, the majority (about 80%) of developers sell in-app ads through ad networks, followed by directly selling to advertisers (21%), mediation platforms (19%), agencies (10%) and RTB exchanges (5%). Approximately 58% of the developers, however, did not sell ad space. Read more.

But Wait. There’s More!