As Editorial Director, 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.
Rubicon’s CEO Michael Barrett will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming Industry Preview conference on January 17 – 18, 2018 at the Grand Hyatt New York. Rubicon Project is in the midst of a risky move – one that CEO Michael Barrett thought he could avoid when he joined nine months ago. Because of customer outcry, the company stopped charging […]
Many digital publishers have had nothing but bad news to share this Q4 – from golden child BuzzFeed laying off staff to Mashable being sold for a bargain-basement price. But The New York Times is telling an upbeat story about its business with a new storyteller at the helm: Sebastian Tomich. Tomich, the company’s former […]
CPG advertisers running on Conde Nast properties will be able to target, optimize and measure campaigns using purchase data from Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) beginning in Q1 next year. The publisher wants to marry its expertise in creative development and sponsored content with an attention to attribution and the bottom line. “If you are not […]
Publishers are getting ensnared in the filters used by many advertisers to combat the YouTube brand safety crisis. Earlier this year, many brands found their ads running next to offensive content on the video platform, prompting marketers and their agencies to enlist third-party monitoring. Now publishers as a whole are feeling the effects. The filters […]
If understanding a customer’s long-term value were easy, every marketer would do it. But measuring LTV (long-term or lifetime value, referred to in some circles as customer lifetime value or CLV) is extremely tough. Brands must be able to identify and track customers over time, and they must work for companies that care about retaining […]
What if your media agency made your creative agency obsolete? Spark Foundry, which formed this year when Publicis Media retired the Mediavest Spark brand, is blurring the line between media and creative to give its clients a better chance of success. With the rise of sponsored content and social media, it makes sense for media and […]
BuzzFeed laid off 8% of its domestic workforce, or 100 people, Wednesday as the company diversifies beyond native advertising. Recode first reported the cuts. With 25% of revenue in 2017 coming from programmatic, affiliate links, commerce and non-native ads, many staffers working on the branded content side are being let go. Despite building a nine-figure revenue […]
When Al Jazeera pulled its cable channel from the American market a few years ago, it saw one bright spot: social media. While the cable channel failed, Al Jazeera saw promise in AJ+, its social media arm focused on Facebook and YouTube distribution. The brand operates with a more youthful vibe, taking a personal tone that appeals to millennials. The English-language […]
Sometimes it’s a good thing to put your customers in a box. Boxed, a four-year-old ecommerce startup focused on bulk buying, wanted to make its customer acquisition efforts smarter. Boxed customers buy in bulk for very different reasons. Some are busy working parents, while others are urban millennials without a car. Boxed’s new CMO, Jackson […]
The question-and-answer site Quora considers itself a unique hybrid of search and social. Since neither of those platforms open themselves up to programmatic demand, Quora decided it wouldn’t go that route either. Quora’s ads platform officially went live in May with 300 advertisers on board, who could only purchase ads through Quora’s Facebook-like self-serve ad […]
New York Life is in the insurance business – but the brand also has to protect itself. Marketers today have several metrics to juggle in their digital buys: Fraud, viewability and context top the list. But it’s not enough to monitor these metrics; brands need to take action. Natan Cohen, New York Life’s corporate VP of […]
There’s no point in targeting people with app-install ads if they’ve already downloaded the app. But that’s exactly what SeatGeek found itself doing. In the mobile app world, audience suppression often requires extensive manual work. Although Facebook – a huge beneficiary of mobile media dollars – makes audience suppression easy, newer platforms like Snapchat don’t […]
The rise of digital advertising has been tough on local news. Not only have legacy operations, like local newspapers, struggled to survive in the era of Craigslist, Google and Facebook, digital ones haven’t found it easy to gain a perch. Most recently, the owner of Gothamist and DNAinfo shut down the sites in early November […]
If an agency spends $100 programmatically for its client, how much money actually ends up with the publisher? Agencies and marketers want to know – especially GroupM. As awareness of hidden fees continues to rise, GroupM is doing more than just tracking where media spend ends up. It’s pulling and rerouting spend to take advantage […]
Unlike the Hilton or DoubleTree brands, Hilton’s Curio Collection features independent hotels – like the historic Hotel del Coronado in San Diego – that don’t carry the Hilton name prominently. To reach people who like to stay in these hotels, Hilton knew it needed to connect not with a demographic, but with travelers who sought […]
Yieldbot founder and CEO Jonathan Mendez has vacated that role. “Jonathan and the board came to a mutual understanding,” a company spokesperson confirmed to AdExchanger on Friday. The change was effective in early October, but Mendez is keeping his board seat. Yieldbot has had a tough year. It laid off a third of its staff […]
AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley has been waiting 10 years for ad tech to become transparent. Less than a week after Rubicon Project slashed its take rate in half, to 10% to 12%, by doing away with buy-side fees, AppNexus said its fees are even lower. The company revealed it charges an 8.5% average to the […]
The push for ad tech fee transparency is in full swing. Last week, Rubicon Project got rid of its buy-side fees, which will cut its take rate in half. While removing buy-side fees will help Rubicon’s reputation with publishers (The Guardian sued Rubicon over the fees) and buyers, the real drive for transparency comes from […]
The complexity of programmatic and the media supply chain can stump even the most sophisticated marketer. So, in September, Bayer hired Josh Palau to the new role of VP of digital and omnichannel marketing to figure out how to connect consumer touchpoints in a fragmented world. His remit is to figure out how Bayer can […]
Rubicon Project eliminated its buy-side fees Wednesday. “This ties directly to the commitment I made when I joined the company earlier this year to normalize our pricing and bring a higher level of transparency to everything we do,” CEO Michael Barrett said in a blog post released just prior to Rubicon’s Q3 earnings Thursday. Removing […]
The ad buyers who will be hurt by the adoption of Ads.txt aren’t giving up without a fight. Publishers are being deluged with emails from “agencies” and “digital marketing solutions” companies threatening to stop buying inventory unless they’re added to the Ads.txt file. The New York Times, Wenner Media, Intermarkets and LittleThings all confirmed to […]
With high demand and short supply of pre-roll video ads, many publishers are creating more video content that can be monetized with pre-roll ads. But not Bleacher Report. “Pre-roll is not the future of online advertising,” said Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Marketing Officer Howard Mittman, who joined the sports publication from Condé Nast in […]
Purch, publisher of LiveScience and TopTenReviews, added three layers of defense to its anti-fraud system in October. In addition to pre-screening for bots twice, Purch now detects bots, malware and ad quality in real time. “Better-quality traffic means higher ad performance and higher CPMs,” said Purch CTO John Potter. “This is a trend. Demand sources […]
Even as many advertisers embrace audience-based buying, context remains a key performance driver in many verticals. Take finance, a category in which advertisers often sell sophisticated products to niche audiences. Third-party data can be expensive, with iffy quality, so it’s often better to reach audiences while they’re reading about finance and business. Dianomi, a profitable […]
This is the second in a series on demystifying the best practices in media today. Read the first on audience suppression. Frequency management, which first emerged when advertisers tried to calculate reach and media impact of their traditional TV buys, is tricky even for the most sophisticated marketers. And it’s gotten trickier with the advent […]
As print publishers figure out how to remake themselves for digital, Time Out has come up with an unusual solution: Borrow the revenue model – and former CMO and president – of TripAdvisor. Time Out once recommended events, hotels and restaurants to readers, but it no longer stops there. Now the publisher allows readers to […]
The idea of accomplishing more together than apart sounds like a tagline for a social justice organization, but that’s what Upworthy and Good say happened after they merged 10 months ago to form Good Worldwide. The two publications cater to corporations and nonprofits that want to align their brands with social causes and change. Good […]
As Facebook grabs more mobile and video dollars from the ecosystem, premium publishers are looking for viable ways to compete. For storied publisher Time Inc., one solution is to bring its own mobile-optimized video solutions to market. Using Google’s native framework, Time created a mobile, in-feed video solution dubbed Adapt that is customized to its […]
Santander Bank is using content marketing to become relevant to millennials, which is why it launched its Prosper and Thrive website – designed to provide financial guidance – last November. Prosper and Thrive’s articles cover small decisions, like how much to spend on a wedding gift, as well as big ones, like tips for first-time […]
Texting and messaging friends tends to bring out our inner foodies, and the Food Network has used a Facebook Messenger bot to join that conversation. Food Network has invested in its chatbot since it first launched in November 2016, even after the initial hype dropped off. While other brands and publishers had difficulties being conversational […]
