Anthony Vargas ( anthony@adexchanger.com ) covers publisher news and sell-side technology, with a particular focus on the rise of alternative datasets to replace those derived from third-party cookies. He also covers the gaming, digital audio and digital out of home markets. His previous B2B publishing experience includes covering the commercial audiovisual and music retail industries. He also has a background in literary publishing.
Tostitos recently implemented sonic branding and a new sonic logo into its cross-channel media campaigns and has been spending more on streaming audio channels. Audio now makes up between 30% and 40% of any given Tostitos campaign – or more, depending on the KPI.
Turns out 2022 was a bad year to merge two large media companies into one massive media company. Both Dotdash and Meredith experienced headwinds throughout the year. Traffic was soft compared with the rise in consumption during the pandemic, and the digital advertising market was unexpectedly weak. And next year isn’t looking rosy.
PubMatic’s total Q3 revenue grew 11% to $64.5 million despite an industry-wide downturn, but the company doesn’t have high hopes for the rest of the year. It expects that ad spend will continue to trend down in Q4. But although spending is decelerating due to recession fears, PubMatic is planning to capitalize on the eventual rebound by focusing on video, retail media and particularly CTV, which continues to grow.
SmartNews uses the first-party data it gathers from its users to create more intelligent content recommendations and serve more relevant ads. It’s also investing in its own ad stack so it can activate its first-party data by creating contextual audience segments that it can sell programmatically on the open web and as part of its new direct sales offering.
Axios eclipsed its overall 2021 revenue as of Q3 this year thanks to its expansion of local-news-focused newsletters. It also added display banners to its onsite inventory in September and launched its Axios Pro paid subscription in February. The long-term goal is for Axios to have about 50% of its revenue come from ads and the other half from subscriptions.
Musk’s promises to overhaul Twitter’s content moderation and user verification policies have caused brands and agencies to rethink their budgetary commitments to the platform. Plus, Musk’s seemingly disingenuous tone shift on advertising and his tweeting of fake news may make brands more inclined to pull budgets from a platform that was never seen as a must-buy anyway.
The New York Times’s subscription-focused strategy seems to be paying off amid a downturn in ad revenue. The Times reported 8% YoY revenue growth for Q3 2022, “with subscription revenue growth more than making up for a slight decline in overall advertising,” said President and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien.
Commerce data platform Klover raised $25 million in Series B funding and changed its parent company name to Attain. The newly branded Attain will use the funding to launch what it’s calling a software-as-a-service (SaaS) commerce data platform for marketers.
Kubota Tractor Corporation has plenty of first-party data on customers who are likely to need its line of residential tractors and lawnmowers – namely, people who live on properties with a lot of land. But to capitalize on the trend of people moving from cities to rural locales during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kubota needed to be able to reach people who were actively looking to make such a move. That’s where Realtor.com’s first-party data came into play.
Publishers covet business from big brands, but working with small to mid-size businesses (SMBs) can be a major source of revenue growth. That’s why Reddit is shoring up its ad offering for SMB and mid-market clients by improving its onboarding process and launching an advertising API.
Meta reported $27.2 billion in ad revenue in its Q3 earnings report on Wednesday. That represents a 4% drop year-over-year (YoY). Net income for Q3 was $4.4 billion, down 52% YoY. And Meta is projecting another revenue dip for Q4. As a result, the company will implement layoffs and hiring freezes throughout 2023.
“The personalized targeting data points we’ve gotten used to are under examination,” said Jeremy Hlavacek, CCO of data services provider Experian. “Advertisers want better identity data, better segments and better understanding of consumer behavior. So they’re going to shift to higher-quality, more precise, more accurate, more trusted data sets.”
With a recession looming and even more signal loss on the way, publishers need to experiment to find the best mix of revenue-generating solutions and approaches. Bloomberg’s Julia Beizer, Blavity’s Jeff Nelson and Dotdash Meredith’s Daniel Papalia offered insights into their revenue strategies at AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O event in New York City.
Google isn’t bluffing about quitting its third-party cookie habit. That’s because consumer concerns about data privacy and pressure from regulators around the globe have left Google with no choice but to discontinue third-party cookie usage in Chrome, said Dan Taylor, VP of global ads at Google, at AdExchanger Programmatic I/O conference in New York City on Monday.
Getting cozy with agencies wasn’t always a priority for Criteo, which has direct relationships with more than 20,000 clients. But now that Criteo has commerce and retail media aspirations, it needs to strike agency partnerships, says its CRO Brian Gleason.
One emerging alternative to the use of third-party cookies is predictive modeling that optimizes targeting using privacy-compliant data signals, such as weather and time of day. Mercedes-Benz recently worked with Merkley + Partners to test this type of cookieless targeting solution against both cookie-based targeting and contextual targeting.
A new campaign from Bombay Sapphire, which launched on Wednesday with spokesperson and “Elvis” director Baz Luhrmann, combines influencer-led social media interactions with the goal of building a loyal customer base that’s (hopefully) willing to share personal information. Bombay Sapphire is looking to generate the kind of lift in brand awareness and affinity that can lead users to intentionally opt into future promotional efforts.
My Code, a publisher network that specializes in multicultural media, manages display and video inventory across nearly 800 sites under its umbrella. Because of the complexity of programmatic sales across such a diverse portfolio of sites, including a mix of owned and third-party clients, My Code has relied on PubMatic’s OpenWrap unified bidding solution for the past two years.
While brands want to be active in video games, on influencer-driven streaming video platforms like Twitch and in metaverse-like online games like Roblox, it can be hard for marketers to measure ROI in these spaces. However, for Invisalign, like with other early-adopter brands, the opportunity in new gaming and metaverse channels has more to do with driving awareness than increasing incremental sales.
US political ad spending is exploding in the runup to the 2022 midterm elections, with an estimated $8 billion to $13 billion up for grabs this election cycle. But, while CTV and streaming video are seeing an infusion of political ad cash this year, local news publishers aren’t seeing a dramatic change in their bottom lines.
On Monday, Fandom snapped up GameSpot, Metacritic, TV Guide, GameFAQs, Giant Bomb, Cord Cutters News and Comic Vine from Red Ventures. The acquisition improves Fandom’s reach among fan communities, which will supplement its offering for marketers throughout their journey through the marketing funnel, said Fandom CEO Perkins Miller.
You can’t have supply path optimization (SPO) without supply chain transparency. The ads.txt version 1.1 update released in April added OWNERDOMAIN and MANAGERDOMAIN variables that allow publishers to label a site’s parent company and the intermediary that is selling a site’s ad inventory. The IAB Tech Lab’s Jill Wittkopp spoke to AdExchanger about how these supply chain transparency tools relate to the industry’s pursuit of SPO.
Forget the post-cookie future. For Dailymotion, user-based targeting is already a thing of the past. Hamza Kourimate, VP and global head of sales marketing and data solutions at Dailymotion, spoke to AdExchanger on how the video platform is using its first-party data trove to build a contextual framework for video.
After two years of lost revenues, travel-focused publishers are eager to maximize a post-pandemic recovery. BoardingArea, a publisher network that includes more than 60 travel blogs, isn’t just banking on a return to normal, said its founder Randy Petersen. After weathering the pandemic, BoardingArea is betting on revenue diversification and a revamped programmatic tech stack for its future growth.
First-party data will be indispensable in a world without third-party-cookies. But before publishers can monetize that data, they need to respect it, said Karthic Bala, executive vice president of data, product and technology at CNET, a Red Ventures-owned publisher that covers tech and consumer electronics.
Ecommerce momentum has tailed off since last year, but global ecommerce and retail media still have plenty of room for growth, according to GroupM’s 2022 Ecommerce and Retail Media Forecast. Total global retail media spend will hit $160 billion by 2027, which represents a 60% growth rate over five years, GroupM predicts.
What exactly does “premium” mean? It seems the definition varies depending on who’s using it – that “premium” is in the eye of the beholder. But there are some areas of agreement. And the industry isn’t setting the premium bar as high as you might think.
For the most part, metaverse early adopters say they’re just exploring the possibilities rather than trying to really demonstrate ROI. And while hugely popular online games like Roblox and Fortnite are lumped in with metaverse platforms, they’re really Web 2.0 gaming without the decentralized interoperability promised by Web 3.0 and blockchain technology. The few actual metaverse environments in market, such as Decentraland and The Sandbox, don’t offer the audience reach advertisers crave.
New York Times-owned sports publisher The Athletic introduced display ads on its site and in its app on Monday – but don’t expect to be able to buy these ads on the open web. The goal is to make The Athletic profitable within three years.
Mobile game developer Zynga closed its acquisition of ASO provider Storemaven on Monday. Zynga, which declined to share the terms of the deal, is acquiring all of Storemaven’s IP and technology, and it will add Storemaven’s staff of 50 to its current headcount of 2,900. Storemaven founder and CEO Gad Maor will continue to lead the Storemaven team.
