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.
For the past three years, Ancestry has used content to drive sales, writing and promoting blog posts like “Do You Have Royal Blood?” to encourage people to buy its product. This strategy goes against conventional wisdom, in which banners are typically meant for driving sales and content to drive awareness. “Every piece [of content] we […]
AskMen is firmly in the pro-platform camp among publishers. The men’s website, born during the dot-com boom, now looks to platforms, not SEO, as a way to gain audience and increase recognition. The king of those platforms is Facebook, where video posts earn the publisher millions of views. AskMen, which is owned by Ziff Davis, […]
Have you looked at The Washington Post’s website lately? The storied publication is enjoying a breakout year. In October, it posted 66.9 million unique visitors, according to comScore. That boosted its total audience by 59%, while page views soared 95% year over year, reaching nearly 770 million. Those monthly uniques put the Post ahead of […]
Could it be that we’re entering the second generation of sponsored content? Nativo CEO Justin Choi thinks so. His case in point: US News & World Report, which started its sponsored content studio, BrandFuse, in 2012. “Publishers are shifting from the first gear of native, which was adoption and seeing if they could find success […]
LiveRail and AppNexus removing resellers from their respective platforms last week were two more nails in the ad network coffin. If any publishers were upset, AdExchanger couldn’t find them. Just the opposite, in fact. While some publishers still use ad networks, most have significantly pared back in recent years, and those that still work with […]
The prospect of a viewable CPM (vCPM) standard for digital media buying had publishers running scared a year ago. Now, many are embracing the pricing model, but transacting this way is not without its hurdles. Publishers not only need to defend the value of their inventory to buyers when 20 to 50% of the ads […]
A truck manufacturer recently discovered it had an untapped market: women in the Midwest who loved to drive and own trucks. The source of that data wasn’t a focus group but rather Facebook topic data, a PII-free way to deliver what people are talking about on Facebook to the brands that care about it. An […]
Since the beginning of the year, the Financial Times has been selling time-based ads, where the advertiser pays only for ads that have spent five seconds in view. It charges based on cost per hour (CPH). The Times decided to charge for an ad after five seconds because data from its viewability provider, Chartbeat, showed […]
The Canadian publisher coalition CPAX officially added four new publishers (Metroland Media, Winnipeg Free Press, St. Joseph Media and Blue Ant Media) on Monday, bringing the publisher total to 18 and expanding CPAX’s presence on the West Coast. Impression volume has also doubled since Index Exchange helped relaunch it last year: One billion impressions flowed […]
For branded content to be a success, it must hurdle two key challenges. First, it must be authentic, entertaining and relevant, and second, it must be distributed effectively. Via a partnership with Guardian Labs, website design company Squarespace is attempting to do just that. The 39-part series “Side Hustle,” unfolding over Q4 2015 and Q1 […]
Adding a different advertising partner on desktop can be as easy as adding a tag. But for the mobile web and apps, assuming such flexibility is a recipe for disaster. Since mobile is so complex, publishers must think about a slew of factors at the very beginning, when they are formulating their mobile strategy. The […]
Mic CEO Chris Altchek looks at digital publishing and sees opportunity. His goal: to reach every college-educated millennial in the US – all 40 million of them. In the past year, Mic has grown from 9.5 million to 14.5 million uniques, according to comScore. But that growth transpired in the most modern of ways: Mobile […]
AppNexus unveiled a publisher suite Wednesday designed to offer an alternative to DoubleClick for Publishers [DFP], the dominant solution in the market. The AppNexus Publisher Suite includes an ad server, completely rebuilt after its acquisition of OAS [Open AdStream] in September 2014, and supercharged with forecasting from its acquisition of Yieldex in March. Publishers can […]
The Washington Post on Tuesday released a video product called FlexPlay that loads videos faster in diverse environments and customizes them to extract more engagement. Advertisers can use FlexPlay for video ads that run on the Post’s website, as well as those that run offsite, in exchange for a premium on the CPM. The idea […]
Google is beta testing a solution within DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) that will allow publishers to bring in high-value impressions before reserved inventory in their ad server. Jonathan Bellack, Google’s director of product management, made the announcement at the IAB Ad Operations Summit on Monday during a discussion about header bidding that pitted Google (anti-header […]
Making sure branded content is seen by an advertiser’s target audience is a common problem for publishers. Some redesign their sites to surface sponsored content more often, while others fulfill campaigns by turning to social media, Facebook ads, Taboola and Outbrain. Modern Healthcare, which delivers business news to C-suite health professionals, often runs sponsored content […]
JC Penney knows what part of every programmatic dollar goes to the media seller, ad server, anti-fraud and viewability vendors, data providers and agency trading desk – and it’s still enthusiastic about programmatic. “Accuen has recognized that we can’t not be transparent with where costs are going,” said Rose Sumrall, the senior marketing manager for […]
Content sequencing is going omnichannel. OneSpot, whose tech sequences content across paid media, unveiled an expansion of its Content Sequencing platform Wednesday that brings the capabilities to owned media as well. Launch partner Delta Faucet implemented OneSpot OnSite, designed for brands’ owned sites, last month on its “Inspired Living” section. Located beneath articles about home […]
Mobile now makes up more than a quarter of Rubicon Project’s revenue, according to the company’s Q3 earnings report Tuesday. Twenty-six percent of revenue comes from mobile, and 74% from desktop. That’s up from 22% last quarter and single digits in years past. President Greg Raifman called that channel growth the “tip of the iceberg.” […]
Turns out the best way to reach the IT department and C-suite executives online is to put a video on Yelp just before their lunch hour. Konica Minolta Business Solutions, an office technology and services company, traditionally reached its B2B audience at conferences, through print advertising in industry magazines or by sponsoring events like the […]
Mobile apps are way faster than the mobile web, and that’s a serious problem for publishers. “I work really hard to make the mobile web load as quickly as possible, but it still takes about five seconds,” said Free Reyes, the co-founder, editor and COO of movie site GeekTyrant. Fifty-five percent of its traffic comes […]
Independent trading desk Accordant Media is holding strong to its bundled offering of services plus technology, even as others like Dstillery, ChoiceStream and Adadyn, roll out self-service options. But technology is still a big deal, particularly when it comes to buying across channels, which is why the company hired former Crisp Media exec Nathan Carver […]
Buyers looking for 15- and 30-second pre-roll spots on online business publication Quartz are out of luck. There aren’t any for sale. Instead, it created its own custom video advertising solution, which it launched on Monday with Lincoln Motor Company. In the bottom right corner of the video player is a small, animated button with […]
Despite the triple threat of ad blocking, fraud and viewability that have laid siege to digital media this year, spending on the channel is growing faster than at any time since 2011. Revenue for January through June topped $27.5 billion, a 19% increase, according to IAB’s ad revenue report. That’s the best growth rate since […]
Last year, Remedy Health Media sites added video-heavy, multimedia content that explored life with chronic or life-threatening diseases. The sights and sounds of the patients evoked emotion in a way that articles couldn’t, which was the goal of these inspirational pieces. But with digital, the delivery method counts. Remedy Health started big, with a short-form […]
Time Inc.’s purchase of Zooey Deschanel-founded HelloGiggles, a site geared to young women, had its roots in a strategic relationship the companies put in place earlier this year. That partnership saw Time Inc. and HelloGiggles partner to create integrated advertising programs. About 15 dual programs ran with retail, beauty and tech advertisers, mainly with display […]
Adadyn wants to get small marketing teams who play around with Google AdSense to realize they can get similar results by doing programmatic themselves. Adadyn released Monday a self-serve programmatic platform designed for businesses making less than $50 million annually. It’s the first major move for the Indian company since it rebranded from Ozone Media […]
As digital video sellers angle for TV dollars, here’s something everyone should remember: People hate ads on their smartphone or laptop a lot more than they do on TV. People have 50% negativity toward smartphone video ads, according to Millward Brown’s latest AdReaction: Video Creative In A Digital World study, with computers and tablets trailing […]
It’s a problem that’s familiar to many agency buyers: start geotargeting, and soon, a campaign’s scale whittles to nothing. The same problem exists for publishers. If a local newspaper starts selling moms reading the auto section, the audience might be too small to be worthwhile to advertisers. The Local Media Consortium (LMC), a partnership of […]
Managing multiple programmatic partners gets really complicated. It’s even more complicated when you’re a conglomerate of dating sites, such as The Match Group, owner of Match.com, Tinder, OKCupid, BlackPeopleMeet and three dozen other dating platforms. You’re likely working with a good portion of the LUMAscape. When Match.com senior manager of yield ops Konica Ghosh isn’t […]
