As Executive Editor, Sarah oversees AdExchanger’s news and feature coverage and event content. Sarah has written extensively about publishers, sell-side technology and Google. Understanding and explaining the business implications of technically complex topics is her forte. Over her years at AdExchanger, she’s documented the rise and maturity of programmatic tech, as data-driven advertising has spread far and wide in its marketing applications.
Women hold two-thirds of the student loans in the United States, but they are far less likely to refinance those loans to save money. One possible reason is that ads for loan refinancing use “one note” messaging that doesn’t feel inclusive to women, according to CommonBond creative VP Cara Phillips. CommonBond saw an opportunity to […]
A successful article at HuffPost doesn’t have the most traffic – it has the most traffic from loyal readers with the highest engagement time. HuffPost overhauled its audience strategy last year to super-serve its most faithful readers and increase their numbers. The publisher is also diversifying its revenue through subscriptions. In April, it soft-launched a […]
The Washington Post’s former chief revenue officer, Jed Hartman, has landed at Channel Factory, which uses video AI to help brands curate their YouTube buys for better brand safety and contextual relevance. For Hartman – whose departure from the Post was left unexplained – the new role as chief commercial and strategy officer fulfills a […]
Unlike competing browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome has to strengthen user privacy without undermining online advertising. Chrome walked that razor’s edge when it revealed plans to create a “privacy sandbox” that will increase protections to user privacy without breaking programmatic advertising that funds publisher content. To bolster its position, Google claimed […]
When Remedy Health acquired Vertical Health in April, a key reason was the health site’s expertise in using data and targeting. Remedy Health, which didn’t run programmatic ads before, is now adopting Vertical Health’s in-house data platform for its sites, including HealthCentral and HIV management site TheBody. Vertical Health’s portfolio focuses on information for people […]
NBC News, whose portfolio includes Today.com, CNBC and MSNBC, doubled the clickthrough rate (CTR) on its branded content when it used tech that fine-tuned distribution of the content on its sites. The branded content tech, Polar, automatically tested different pairings of headlines and images, optimizing how it pulls readers into a story, and automating more […]
Digital media brands are course-correcting to focus on profitability – and PopSugar is no exception. The media brand has been profitable for a year by following the playbook of diversifying revenue and improving the margin on existing revenue. Offline, the millennial women-focused publication is cashing in on the generation’s obsession with experiences, throwing a signature […]
Hearst is building a self-serve ad platform so advertisers can overlay their audience data against Hearst’s to reach readers across sites like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle and Car and Driver. Designed for smaller advertisers, the platform – dubbed Hearst Audience Select – is slated to launch in time for Q4 ad campaigns. Audience Select will also […]
Uncertainty around government regulation or challenges around monitoring user-generated content didn’t slow down Google as its ad revenue hit $32.6 billion in Q2, up 16% YoY. (Its parent company Alphabet’s revenue rose 19% YoY to $38.9 billion in Q2.) YouTube was the No. 2 driver of revenue growth in both Q2 and Q1, CFO Ruth […]
Digitally native companies made nearly $1 billion in commitments during this year’s upfront, making them the biggest advertiser category in NBCUniversal’s $7 billion upfront, the company said during its Q2 earnings Thursday. The digitally native category includes the “FAANG” companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) as well as direct-to-consumer companies like Peloton, NBCU’s CEO Steve […]
There’s yet another content streaming service joining the fray: AT&T TV will enter beta testing in Q3, offering viewers an internet delivered TV option, the company said during its Q2 earnings call today. If AT&T TV’s service takes off, it will open up a new pool of OTT inventory for buyers. IP TV services can […]
Consequence of Sound prides itself on its independent coverage of the music and film industries. But it doesn’t have the mass reach and recognition that easily entices buyers to go direct. On the open marketplace, it kills: Over 1,500 advertisers spend more than $100 per month on the open exchange with Consequence of Sound. As […]
Horizon Media is the first agency to use Nielsen Advanced Audience, a linear TV product designed to make measuring granular audience segments like “new parents” as easy as measuring age and gender with C3 and C7 ratings. Advanced Audience allows agencies to find viewers in narrower segments than age and demographic and do post-campaign measurement. […]
How does a smaller DSP survive, as the largest buying platforms command more of the marketplace? For Dstillery, the answer is to become a data company. Dstillery officially shut down its bidder and stopped operating a DSP on July 1. Its focus now is selling custom audience segments through the buyer’s DSP of choice. Since […]
The Trade Desk and Google are locking horns on pending industry specifications designed to bring transparency to programmatic buying. Why? The Trade Desk, rather than Google, is the one throwing its weight around for a change. As one of the originators of the Open RTB SupplyChain object spec, The Trade Desk has been gunning to […]
Linear TV may provide massive reach, but WD-40 had a particular audience in mind for its most recent campaign: a subset of millennial workers with jobs in hands-on industries. And so WD-40 turned to connected TV, focusing on a branding message celebrating “doers.” Executing its branding campaign programmatically allowed WD-40 to target that high-level message […]
Even though three-quarters of consumers already use a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service, they are open to adding more – for the right content. Viewers are willing to add an average of 1.6 more SVOD services to their current lineup, according to the 2019 Manatt, Vorhaus Digital Strategy Study. Since Disney, WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal, Apple and Discovery […]
Optimera increases site viewability solely from a publisher’s point of view. The tech optimizes campaigns toward the most viewable placements in real time – key in an era where buyers demand highly viewable ads, but publishers lack the technology to meet these demands in a way that’s sustainable for their businesses. “The market has failed […]
Amazon Publisher Services shot up in the rankings in the 2019 Advertiser Perceptions supply-side platform (SSP) report, emerging as a challenger to Google. The survey evaluated 18 exchanges via a poll of 155 sales and ops staffers from sites with at least 3 million monthly uniques. Amazon’s sell-side ad tech business rose from eighth last […]
Jason Bigler, who has headed up Google’s sell-side business since April following Jonathan Bellack’s exit, wants publishers to know that Google Ad Manager isn’t going to be a black box anymore. Bigler will prioritize sharing more information with publishers about the Google Ad Manager team’s decision-making process. “With every change we make, we are providing […]
The French ad-tech company Pubstack said Wednesday it raised $2.3 million in seed funding from two VC firms and a handful of angel investors, including Criteo co-founder Romain Niccoli. Pubstack’s tech is designed to make it easier for publishers to monitor their programmatic partners in real time, and it connects monetization data with what happened […]
Yelp is moving from targeting your local corner restaurant to businesses with hundreds or thousands of locations. Tom Foran, Yelp’s SVP of national sales, is leading this effort. It’s working. National sales grew 22% in the past year. Revenue for its top 100 customers soared 50%. His 250-person team is focused on Yelp’s “multi-location segment” […]
CalMatters reports nonpartisan, in-depth stories about California state politics on a nonprofit budget – and it needed a tech stack to fuel that vision. The site is shifting this week to use a suite of publisher tools bundled together by The News Project. Founded last year, The News Project wants to serve the wave of […]
Facebook is putting out the welcome mat for professional content creators by diversifying the ways they can earn revenue on the platform. Creators can pursue up to four different revenue streams. They can set up subscriber-only paid groups, receive “stars” as tips from fans, rent their audience to their branded content partners and share in […]
The lowest priced ads don’t always deliver the best results – especially for digital branding campaigns – so ad buyers are re-calculating CPM to a quality CPM (qCPM). The qCPM only counts impressions that are viewable, with on-target delivery, optimal frequency and in brand-safe environments. By looking at performance factors beyond cost, ad buyers can […]
Twitch streamers will sling products during two 12-hour streams on July 15 and July 16 to drive Amazon Prime Day sales. The Twitch Presents channel will be taken over by different streaming celebrities selling products ranging from electronics and gaming to kitchenware and kitsch. It’s QVC, but with gamers making the sale. The close alignment […]
If you own a smart TV, chances are its integrated automated content recognition (ACR) technology tracks everything you watch. What started out as a niche technology tracking viewership in high-end smart TVs has spread to the masses: Forty-seven percent of the United States’ 120 million homes own smart TVs, up from 39% a year ago, […]
If you picture the traditional audience for consumer financial services, you likely see a silver-haired man or woman looking to plan for retirement and shore up their financial future. But that mental image overlooks a younger, digital-savvy generation of consumers who aren’t thinking about retirement, and aren’t accustomed to working closely with financial advisers. So […]
Luggage that tracks you – it’s a thing. Eagle Creek’s new luggage line includes a near-field communication (NFC) chip that allows its travelers to keep track of where they go and how many miles they’ve gone with their luggage. In order to take full advantage of the smart luggage, travelers place their phone within a few […]
Serious runners wear Saucony, the Boston-based footwear brand. But there are also many runners who don’t define themselves as hardcore. Rather, they’re attracted to what running enables them to do: Stay fit, enjoy good food or run for a cause. Saucony is tapping into that mentality through its Run for Good campaign, an Instagram-based relay […]
