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.
What works better for publishers: Snapchat or Instagram Stories? Both platforms are quickly gaining ground as ways for publishers to distribute their content to wider audiences. Snapchat made its public offering Thursday, and Instagram Stories launched last year with a competitive, video-focused offering. While each platform claims more than 150 million daily users, Snapchat and […]
The New York Times has added a new sales channel for its video inventory: programmatic. At the beginning of February, the Times opened its video inventory for the first time to programmatic buyers. Those buyers can access desktop and mobile web ad space, with mobile in-app to come. The move was in response to requests […]
This post is not sponsored. Thirty-seven percent of publishers fail to properly label their sponsored content to comply with the FTC enforcement policy issued in December 2015, according to MediaRadar. The ad sales intelligence firm scanned sponsored content ads from 12,000 brands over the course of 2016. The numbers may look bad, but they actually […]
Millennials in search of a side gig read The Penny Hoarder to find ways to make extra money and save. The site earned $20.8 million last year by focusing on native, affiliate marketing. It earns 95% of its revenue from affiliate and performance campaigns, and less than 5% from display advertising. And it expects to […]
Integrated sales teams are in vogue. Print sellers usually handle digital these days, and IO-focused digital sellers pitch in on programmatic. But Forbes, which integrated its sales team in 2009, switched back to separate lanes for separate mediums at the beginning of this year. “All of this was motivated by what we were seeing when […]
Rubicon Project has slashed its senior ranks, and the casualties include longtime president Greg Raifman. Is a sale to private equity next? Raifman and six other executives have been shown the door, according to two 8-Ks filed late Tuesday. Most of the departing executives had joined to build Rubicon’s buy-side business, which it’s now steering […]
The internet is ravenous for food content, illustrated by the rise of food bloggers, “hands-and-pans” videos, Tastemade and Extra Crispy, a bespoke food publication from Time Inc. Food52’s strategy isn’t to go broad, as many of its competitors do, but deep. It serves up content for food nerds and obsessives who are hungry for vegan […]
Getting ad-blocking users to change their tune and opt into ads isn’t impossible. In fact, for Dennis Publishing, it has worked as much as 57% of the time. The UK-based publisher of The Week, Carbuyer.co.uk, Alphr.com and other sites conducted a six-month test of Sourcepoint’s Dialogue tech, which allows publishers to send different messages to […]
Bad ads have their run of the internet. Twenty-eight percent of ads fail at least one of five key quality issues that slow down web pages and detract from the user experience, according to Ad Lightning. Ad Lightning, which helps publishers find and report bad ads, analyzed 605,000 pieces of ad creative across 60 websites […]
When Bloomberg writes a story about a public company or commodity, it’s bringing market information dynamically into the adjacent ad. Bloomberg is packaging up this programmatic creative as a new ad unit, which it’s calling DataLock. Bank of Montreal and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group this quarter agreed to be the first advertisers to use it. DataLock is designed to reduce […]
Time Inc. is bullish on digital, even as its print business deflates. The company – which has lately been the object of acquisitive interest from Meredith and other suitors – expects $600 million in digital revenue next year. “We see a path to $1 billion over [our strategic] plan,” said CEO Rich Battista during Time’s […]
Turner’s revenue analytics team wasn’t always quickly able to answer questions like whether the presidential inauguration affected advertising revenue. The publisher couldn’t collate data more than weekly or monthly because it worked with more than a dozen programmatic partners, each with their own user interfaces, which supplied ads across Turner’s multiple sites – from CNN […]
News Corp. is shifting allegiance from Rubicon Project to AppNexus. News Corp. offloaded its entire 8% investment in Rubicon Project, or 3.9 million shares, according to an SEC filing on Friday. Last September, News Corp. invested $10 million in AppNexus. It also signed a master services agreement, enabling its publications to switch over to AppNexus […]
Martin Kihn, Research VP at Gartner, will speak about the state of mar tech and ad tech at Programmatic IO on April 5 in San Francisco. Ad tech and mar tech may not converge after all. Two years ago, Gartner analyst Marty Kihn predicted that owned media (mar tech) and paid media (ad tech) technologies would come […]
Traditional magazine companies believe they have weathered the storm of disruption over their business. They’re now ready to look ahead and use their subscription data to drive results for advertisers. “I think the businesses that got disrupted first are in a good position,” David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, said Wednesday during a panel at […]
Former Right Media President Christine Hunsicker founded apparel company Gwynnie Bee in 2012 because she wanted to move to an industry that hadn’t yet been disrupted by data and technology. Gwynnie Bee, which lets women wearing sizes 10-32 rent and return apparel, required efficient data use to run a balanced marketplace with supply and demand […]
If programmatic advertising has reduced readers to commodities, then Topix wants to be the ultimate trader. The site focuses on slideshows, the best way to get readers to cycle through multiple page views and earn more revenue per user. Topix’s most successful slideshow in 2016 earned $400,000. But getting that $400,000 required buying about $200,000 […]
Bustle has raised $38.5 million in venture capital to create content that speaks to female millennials. And it’s beginning to see its efforts bear fruit. It earned $30 million in 2016, up from just $10 million the year before. But competition for this prized demographic is tough. The space is crowded with other digital startups, […]
Last year, the New York Daily News created a new advertising product to give clients a simple way to tap into the benefits of its data management platform (DMP). When clients opt in to the product, dubbed AdLift, the Daily News uses insights from the DMP to target and optimize their campaigns. Six months after […]
TripleLift is throwing its hat into the server-side header bidding ring. On Tuesday, it rolled out its wrapper, Apex, which lets publishers bring in demand for their in-feed native ad placements. TripleLift will run a first-price auction among all participating partners, a shift from the OpenRTB spec of a second-price auction that could result in […]
Television viewing data is sensitive. And because consumers don’t expect such data to be collected, smart-TV manufacturer Vizio was penalized for doing so without an opt-in. Vizio paid the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) $2.2 million to settle charges over its data collection practices on Monday. The settlement requires that Vizio delete its old data and […]
The New York Times saw its highest subscriber increase since 2011, the year the publication introduced digital subscriptions, following the November presidential election. It added 296,000 digital subscribers in the fourth quarter, up 19% from the previous quarter and a 45.9% increase year over year. CEO Mark Thompson said digital subscriptions had accelerated even prior […]
When Russell Wager joined Mazda North America four years ago as its vice president of marketing, one thing was immediately clear: Digital spend was way too low. The car marketing vet, who previously worked on the agency side, upped spend from 10% to 25%, then 30%. Digital now commands 40% of overall marketing spend. To […]
Year-old video news startup Cheddar is shaking up the current media model in two ways. On the content side, Cheddar wants to be the CNBC for millennials, quickly offering business news about the companies they care about. On the business side, Cheddar doesn’t see advertising as a main revenue driver. Instead, it’s struck deals with […]
The IAB creates standards for its industry but is running into a problem: The digital media ecosystem isn’t embracing those standards. Agencies and advertisers have set viewability definitions that are all over the map. Publishers must run slow, tag-ridden ads because buyers don’t follow the IAB’s LEAN spec. Platforms advocate for alternative standards that apply […]
P&G isn’t going to give digital a free pass anymore. Its agencies, ad tech partners and publishers must enable viewability and third-party measurement and root out fraud. Contracts must be transparent. And if they don’t? P&G will pull media spend. According to its 2016 financial report, P&G spent $7.2 billion on advertising last year. “We […]
Publishers contemplating a switch to server-side header bidding now have two more options. They can use AppNexus’ Prebid server-side wrapper, which will tap into Index Exchange’s demand. Or they can put Index Exchange’s wrapper on their page, which will make a server-side call out to AppNexus. “We are giving publishers choice, and a flexible, transparent solution,” […]
Advertisers will focus less on quantity and more on quality over the next five years. That shift in how they spend their marketing budgets will change the role programmatic – and media agencies – play in the marketing ecosystem. “The days of buying volume are going to reach a point of obsolescence,” said Forrester principal […]
Snapchat’s ads API works. And the ad platform is hitting product development milestones earlier than other social platforms, according to buyers participating in the API’s beta. It’s the benefit of last-mover advantage, said Noah Mallin of MEC Global. “They’ve seen all the pitfalls and all the successes.” The Ins And Outs Of Snapchat’s Programmatic Platform […]
Although selling ad inventory programmatically offers the promise of automation, the reality is often quite different. “There is still a lot of high-touch in programmatic,” said Reuters Solutions VP John Toth. While Toth wants the market to become more efficient and automated, Reuters realized that adding people, tech and service to programmatic spend yields the […]
