Thrillist And JackThreads Split; Hearst's David Katz On Programmatic

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Stay In Your Lane

The Thrillist and JackThreads combo was one of the first to merge editorial and commerce. Now it’s goodbye to all that, as the two companies make arrangements to split up and raise funds ($54 million combined), Re/code’s Jason Del Rey reports. Among Thrillist’s investors is Axel Springer, the acquisitive German publisher who just bought Business Insider. We’ll see if the many editorial outlets that followed Thrillist into the commerce biz hit the same wall. More.

Getting Smart On Smartphones

Ad Age’s Kate Kaye catches up with David Katz, who runs Hearst’s programmatic solutions. Asked what is the most important technology Hearst has developed to improve its ad offering, Katz says, “Cross-device targeting and analytics. … It’s important to discuss all devices from an attribution perspective on the same user.” Read on.

Pandora’s Set-Top Box

Gerry Smith reports for Bloomberg that the “broad demographics” of TV audiences – long considered superior for brand advertising – are losing out to the “surgical” strikes of digital. But while digital tech has worked hard to achieve TV’s scale and market, TV is only now figuring out it has targeting capabilities of its own. What’s more, to address viewability and internet quality concerns, ad tech has developed tools to measure viewership (Did the user scroll past autoplay? How many pixels were in view?), but TV is just now discovering it should know the same about commercials. Read on.

The Mobile Epoch

Facebook may have a billion users per day and a market cap around $245 billion, but according to Ben Thompson of Stratechery, now might be the time buy low on the advertising giant. Thompson tracks three tech epochs: Microsoft’s PC dominance, Google’s Internet dominance and now Facebook’s time in the mobile age. It isn’t just the fundamentals of mobile usership driving Facebook up (though Microsoft’s “computer in every home and office” looks quaint compared to mobile’s ubiquity). The platform also benefits more than Google (a search/DR specialist) from the shift in brand advertising dollars from TV to digital. Check it out.

Native RTB

Programmatic native – it’s a thing. Sharethrough is hooking up with AppNexus to make native ads available programmatically. Native advertising has been floated – most recently by Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer – as a potential antidote to ad blocking. But scale has been an issue. “If you’re Ford and you want to buy car ads all over the Web, you’re not going to create custom ad units for every individual publisher out there that has their own native unit,” Pat McCarthy, SVP of marketing at AppNexus, told Adweek. Sharethrough’s clients include Forbes, People, Men’s Health and USA Today Sports.

Social Pub Adds Data Smarts

Audience Partners CEO Dave Helmreich has jumped to “social-first” news publisher Independent Journal (IJ.com), where he’ll be COO. Helmreich was previously at data management companies Targus and Neustar. “With over 30 million monthly unique users and having only been founded three years ago, we have a great team and a ton of opportunity ahead of us,” he tells AdExchanger.

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