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.
When Vice needed to diversify its distribution beyond Facebook and YouTube, it didn’t look to other digital platforms. Instead, said CEO Shane Smith, Vice partnered with HBO and hatched plans for a TV network. “We realized we couldn’t be hostage to Facebook and YouTube. We had to go off-platform,” he told WPP head Martin Sorrell […]
Let’s be honest: A/B testing is boring, but what about A/B testing on steroids? Vox Media is juicing up its testing with “creative intelligence” released Thursday at the DMEXCO conference in Cologne, Germany. The feature lets it test thousands of ad variants against certain audiences. “It can tell you if a creative is working better […]
BuzzFeed set its stake in branded content back when display was king. Today, as publications derive an increasing share of their revenue from branded content, Chief Revenue Officer Lee Brown sees that competition creating a market. “More awareness and education in the marketplace creates more opportunity for everyone,” Brown said. “We’re excited about our share […]
The fast-moving space of sponsored content has already gone through three different metrics. First, brands paid a CPM to show article snippets. Now cost per view dominates. When Medium launched its sponsored content program in April, it took the currency one step further. It charges for “total time read” (TTR), a metric that bets that […]
AccuWeather knew the CPMs it garnered from advertisers varied widely, a reflection of today’s programmatic audience-buying tactics. Like most publishers, the company relied mostly on intuition to match high CPMs to reader behaviors. One reason AccuWeather had limited insight was because its data was disconnected. DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP), its advertising platform, analyzed ad revenue. […]
When Jason Wagenheim joined Fusion in May as its head of revenue, the Univision-owned pub was regrouping after a tumultuous year. ABC had handled ad sales until the joint venture with Univision split in April. In addition to the partner’s exit, Fusion dealt last year with reports of dismal traffic numbers. But Fusion has steadily […]
Data management platform Krux is joining the header-bidding fray. Krux built a header bidder because it wants marketers to buy both data and media in one place. Header bidding is the best mechanism to facilitate that transaction. By rolling out the tech, Krux adds a media-buying capability to Krux Link, the data exchange bazaar it’s […]
Business Insider’s sales team sells everything from programmatic to sponsored content and sponsorships. “One meeting will be focused on content creation, tentpole sponsorships and really big executions with lots of creative services layered in,” said CRO Pete Spande. “The next conversation might be about how their DMP [data management platform] connects to our DMP, and […]
HotelTonight, the five-year-old booking app, spends all its marketing budget on mobile. For CMO Ray Elias, who joined nine weeks ago after a decade at StubHub, being mobile-only gives HotelTonight an edge over its desktop-first competitors in the online travel agency space. “We exist in an elite group of customer experiences that really only work […]
When Thrillist’s branded video of a fake grandpa weightlifting on Muscle Beach tallied more than 50 million Facebook views in 48 hours, it seemed to validate the pub’s 2015 decision to expand its editorial and sponsored video operations. But Thrillist CoLab, the branded content arm of Thrillist, wanted to test if the viral hit actually […]
If AppNexus Chief Economist Gabriel Weintraub could go back in time to the beginning of real-time bidding (RTB), he would have designed a different type of auction. “Because you are targeting so finely, you are creating thin markets. So the question is, how do you create rules that alleviate that issue, especially from the publisher […]
Facebook just showed up to the header bidding party. Facebook confirmed it’s “exploring header bidding with a small set of publishers.” Those partners may include USA Today and Hearst, according to The Information, which was first to report the news. For Facebook, the move could mark a significant expansion of its Audience Network platform, expanding […]
When publishing content via social media, the biggest hits don’t always follow conventional wisdom. One of Scripps Networks Interactive’s most popular videos on social media featured best practices for storing fresh vegetables, according to Vikki Neil, the company’s SVP and GM of digital. Counterintuitively, the video performed much better on its HGTV channel than on […]
Auto shopping publisher Edmunds built an agency-like service designed to help auto dealers reach in-market car buyers on Facebook and Instagram. Car dealers set a budget and campaign parameters and an Edmunds sales rep enters the details into a Salesforce CRM system. That information gets sent to Facebook via API and the campaign goes live […]
While many marketers prioritize reaching Hispanic audiences, they have trouble finding them online. That’s a problem Batanga hopes to address. The Hispanic-focused publisher of sites like iMujer, Vix and BolsaDeMulher attracts 1 million to 4 million US cross-platform uniques per month, according to comScore, and 14 million desktop uniques worldwide, mainly in Latin America. Batanga, […]
Native is a big deal to The Atlantic, where sponsored content will comprise 75% of digital revenue this year. It employs a 30-person team, dubbed Atlantic Re:think, to create campaigns for clients like Porsche, TIAA and Cathay Pacific. The team operates with the philosophy that “engagement is an art and science,” said Michael Monroe, the […]
A number of ad tech companies posted enough growth to make Inc. Magazine’s annual 500/5000 revenue survey released Wednesday, while others fell off after making the 2015 list. The survey tracks three-year revenue growth of independent companies, though the results aren’t audited and may include media costs, which can drive up gross revenue. Advertising and […]
Morgan Auto Group spends 60% of its budget on digital advertising to support its 11 north Florida car dealerships. That percentage has steadily increased over the past five years, according to Tom Moore, SVP of Morgan Auto Group. It tracks with changing consumer behavior as shoppers first research online or contact dealers via phone or […]
As publishers embraced header bidding, many programmatic buyers observed the trend from the sidelines. Since header bidding boosts yield for publishers by increasing competition, it follows that buyers may be paying more. But buyers wouldn’t necessarily know if that’s the case, since SSPs don’t note whether the impression comes through a header or not. If […]
Local TV and print magazines don’t share much in common. But as local TV’s digital business grows, and as Meredith’s digital properties need more video expertise, the two disciplines are converging. Tom Harty, who became Meredith’s COO and president on Thursday, is identifying where the local and national media group can collaborate by “figuring out […]
ComScore replaced its CEO and rearranged its leadership team Wednesday amid an internal investigation of its accounting practices that started shortly after comScore and Rentrak completed their merger in February. Because of the ongoing investigation, which is being conducted with the help of independent counsel, comScore hasn’t reported Q1 or Q2 revenue. Co-founder Gian Fulgoni […]
The Street CEO David Callaway wants to transform the financial news and analysis publication into a “data-driven news business.” Callaway, who was hired in June, says he will use a data trove assembled through recent acquisitions like BoardEx (a LinkedIn for company board members) to publish exclusive, high-value content for The Street and thus revive […]
In under two years, CarGurus transformed its display revenue strategy from one built on ad networks to one focused on high-value programmatic deals. The auto shopping site, which attracts 12.4 million uniques a month, according to comScore, used to sell search listings and upfront sponsorships with auto manufacturers and dealers. CarGurus farmed out its display […]
Header bidding is changing the industry and creating a new set of winners and losers. After a dismal earnings call, Rubicon Project’s stock fell 32% and lost $200 million in value Wednesday. Rubicon CEO Frank Addante said the company failed to respond quickly to the header bidding trend, sending its desktop revenue into decline. […]
For most of Imgur’s history, the bootstrapped company sold ads programmatically. And with 150 million unique visitors and 6 billion page views globally, the media company had enough scale to do well, even if CPMs skewed lower than direct. But that approach left money on the table. Imgur’s millennial male, geek culture-focused community is highly […]
Mike Finnegan will speak at AdExchanger’s Omni.Digital conference in Chicago on September 8. Live Nation is coining a new term to describe how it’s enabling data-driven marketing for festival advertisers: festech. Festivalgoers register their RFID [radio frequency identification] wristbands via email or Facebook and use them for entry and payment. They can also tap their bands at advertisers’ […]
Rubicon Project CEO Frank Addante told investors on Tuesday that the company was slow to recognize the importance of header bidding to its publisher customers. As a result, desktop managed revenue declined 2% in Q2. That unexpected drop led Rubicon to lower its revenue guidance for the year. Rubicon’s FastLane header bidding product did not enter the […]
Youth smoking stands at a record low of 7%. The rate was more than triple that number when Truth Initiative, the nonprofit aimed at stopping teens from taking up smoking, was founded in 2000 with money from the US’s settlement with tobacco companies. The nonprofit was among the first to use data in the way that […]
Behind every piece of PopSugar viral content, there’s data. The lifestyle pub’s recipe and video for Fruity Pebbles No-Bake Cheesecake has attracted 9.4 million video views and 238,000 shares on Facebook since it went live in June. Landing on the winning recipe required sifting through audience insights and constant tweaking so it would resonate with […]
Many teens on Kik love J-14’s celebrity-focused trivia games, returning every week to take its interactive, emoji-filled quizzes with questions like, “Which family member does Justin Bieber have a rocky relationship with?” This has pushed J-14 Celeb Quizzes to first place for weekly active users in Kik’s bot shop, which launched this spring. The shop […]
