Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.
SP-Oh, It’s On
Call it supply-path optimization, transparency or premium publisher marketplaces. Whichever you choose, Digiday writes, it “amounts to disintermediation.”
In recent years, DSPs have leapfrogged SSPs to establish direct connections with media companies. The marketers are interested in media, after all, not the SSP.
The Trade Desk’s OpenPath program, NBCUniversal’s FreeWheel, Roku, Amazon and others have collapsed the SSP, exchange and DSP.
But the supply chain goes two ways. Magnite, a pure-play SSP, has been signing direct commercial deals with media-buying agencies, a service it calls its “media facilitator,” Digiday reports (a keen reminder that the SSP, not DSPs like TTD, has publisher relationships).
“If DSPs are going to say they can bypass SSPs, then two can play that game,” says one publisher exec.
The SSP category has been bruised recently.
The old Verizon single pipeline, now Yahoo, shuttered its SSP in February. Xandr, the one-time indie SSP head honcho, is AWOL. District M and Sharethrough merged two years ago as the specter of SPO loomed.
But the question for SSPs is: Can you be a pure-play SSP in a world where supply-path optimization is raging? Or are SSPs like Yahoo the canary in the coal mine for the category?
Hanging On Your Every Wordle
Wordle is a subscription driver for The New York Times and a traffic driver all over.
Mashable, Newsweek, PC Gamer, NME, Screen Rant and Digital Trends monetize the game with shockingly popular daily Wordle guides, Slate reports.
Digital Trends editor Sam Hill has penned almost 650 Wordle posts. Even the USA Today sports section has a daily Wordle helper.
Pop culture websites capitulated to the idea that guides for things like the daily Wordle or Times crossword (as well as walkthroughs for longer games) drive the gaming vertical, at least in terms of high-margin traffic. Daily Wordle guides are among the top-performing articles every month for many midsize game sites.
Gaming guides have a strong appeal to people – and to search-based publishers – because they “provide an objective answer to a common question,” says Nerium Strom, an editor at games website Fanbyte.
Hill speculates that the Wordle SEO bubble is partly due to the Times’ decision to display people’s streaks.
Nobody familiar with the game needs a guide. This ain’t the crossword, people.
But with one guess left and the Wordle streak staring them down, people Google it (probably in incognito mode).
Boxed Out
The ecommerce boom-and-bust cycle since the pandemic has created a ghost town of empty retailer site URLs, as online bulk retailer and delivery service Boxed filed for bankruptcy.
Boxed thrived in 2020 and 2021, when it went public via a SPAC deal. That turned out to be an omen of doom for companies flying high in 2021.
Boxed’s creditors will sell its marketing and ecommerce analytics software, Spresso, but that’s pretty much it, Bloomberg reports.
Boxed has been trying to negotiate a sale the past year, but with $90 million more in liabilities than total assets and an unprofitable business with no clear path, they will fold shop instead.
The consumer pitch for Boxed was that it’s not a membership program, whereas Costco, Amazon Prime and Walmart Plus all have the subscription barrier.
On the other side, though, investors soured on Boxed without a “plus” of its own (subscriptions are all the rage). And potential acquirers would have been interested in a membership program.
Without the subscription anchor, Boxed also had no advertising in-roads, which has helped companies like Instacart and Gopuff stay afloat.
But Wait, There’s More!
Publishers are boiling with frustration about ad tech companies scraping data from news sites to package as contextual segments. [Adweek]
How Twitch lost its grip on the streaming community. [Digiday]
SourceKnowledge, a cost-per-click ad network, is acquired by PE-backed commerce ad company mrge. [release]
As Disney exits the [meta]space, why are brands still investing in the metaverse? [The Drum]
An ode to Netflix with ads. [Slate]
Financial Times acquires a majority stake in Endpoints News, a biopharma industry publication. [release]
You’re Hired!
The agency MERGE taps Stacey Hawes as chief performance and data officer. [release]
