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.
Recipe publishers have realized they can tap into shopper marketing budgets by making their recipes shoppable. Matching brands and stores to relevant recipes requires technology, and the arms race is on. Meredith Digital on Monday acquired Grocery Server, which provides technology to make recipes shoppable. Separately, Reader’s Digest-owned Taste of Home, once a customer of […]
Zealot Networks acquired viral news site ViralNova Thursday, citing its audience and underlying technology. The deal valued ViralNova close to $100 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. Zealot Networks declined to name the exact figure, but said the acquisition is the biggest of the 15 it’s made so far. Formed 18 months ago by the […]
After signing up 150 publishers for its self-service DSP, Centro officially launched the platform Thursday. The publishers managing reach extension internally come from opposite ends of the spectrum: McClatchy, a local media company with roots in more than two dozen markets, and PureWow, a small, national lifestyle publisher. They’ve come to the same decision. “It’s increasingly […]
While some publishers – like BuzzFeed – are going the native-only route, Salon thinks the the best way to serve advertisers is by combining custom native programs with scaled options like programmatic. The highbrow news organization creates bespoke native content for clients like Mercedes Maybach, Glenlivet scotch, Panera and HBO. Eighty-five percent of the advertisers […]
Zipcar traditionally messaged its members through email and social media. But those efforts didn’t reach all members. “Not everyone follows us on social channels or through email, but everyone is on the web,” said Millie Park, Zipcar’s senior director of member marketing. “We wanted to find ways to communicate with them through appropriate targeted messaging.” […]
Connexity, owner of shopping sites like Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, Bizrate and Retrevo, is building up a private marketplace offering powered by Index Exchange. The company projects 30% of its display advertising business will come from programmatic connections, compared to two years ago when it sold about 90% of its display inventory directly. Programmatic will “be the […]
Mike Zaneis, the interim CEO of an industry group formed last year to coordinate industry’s response to fraud and other supply chain issues, will take the reins permanently. Zaneis stepped in in March to oversee the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) after the sudden exit of founding CEO Linda Woolley. He will leave his role as EVP […]
Imagine native advertising with a buy button. Or, a stunning travel story that ends with the option for the reader to go on the same trip. Switzerland Tourism sought to turn these scenarios into realities when it teamed with travel publication Afar Magazine to create the custom native program Afar Journeys, running from June to […]
B2B vendors have a wealth of white papers and other content marketing materials, but often struggle to find the right readers. Distributing B2B content usually requires direct deals with individual publishers, which can limit scale for advertisers when those publishers have small footprints. To address this issue, B2B content marketing company NetLine created a marketplace […]
Like all programmatic buyers, Xaxis faces a challenge – and that’s securing the best and most inventory for its clients. In a publisher waterfall, ad servers generally prioritize programmatic below direct-sold campaigns, prompting other buyers and exchanges to start asking publishers to implement a practice known as header bidding. But Xaxis, WPP’s trading desk (or, […]
Horizon Media had done plenty of direct-to-publisher native campaigns to promote shows for its entertainment clients, including The History Channel. But the campaigns lacked scale. “Curating these experiences in a way where we can impact scale is vitally important when we’re trying to drive a [Nielsen] ratings number,” said Joe Hadari, SVP and managing director […]
When Better Homes and Gardens refreshed its site last week, it did so with mobile in mind. About 50% of site visits to the Meredith Corp.-owned property happen on mobile devices, which made creating a better consumer and advertising experience on mobile a priority. But desktop got attention too, with both mobile and desktop redesigned […]
CafeMom has long seen programmatic sailing along the horizon. “Over the past few years, we saw the programmatic boat coming, and have been trying to figure out what to do,” said Paul Bannister, EVP of CafeMom, which includes mom-oriented sites The Stir and MamásLatinas. Now, the ship is in port. Programmatic revenue is growing significantly […]
Data-based buying requires data-based selling, a theme that ran through the Association of Magazine Media’s Programmania conference Thursday. Magazine publishers have an advantage over digital-only publishers. Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith and Bloomberg Media have all strengthened their first-party data by creating insights and segments within data-management platforms and offering them to advertisers. “Not only do […]
The traditional publisher waterfall, where impressions are exposed to sales channels in descending order of the perceived value of each channel, has always stuck in the craw of yield-obsessed media sellers. At its worst, the model ignores pockets of high-value inventory and reduces competition, and thus artificially caps a publisher’s revenue. Publishers have by […]
Ben Barokas – whose company AdMeld was purchased by Google in 2011 – unveiled his latest venture Thursday: Sourcepoint. The company, through which publishers can ask their audience to support the content either through general advertising, interest-based advertising or subscription, also raised a $10 Million Series A round Thursday, led by Spark Capital and Foundry […]
As audiences increasingly find and engage with content on Facebook, publishers face two choices: Keep trying to monetize that audience off of Facebook, or find a way to sell their Facebook audiences to advertisers. Deseret Digital Media is going the latter route, using posts in its FamilyShare Facebook feed as part of the native advertising […]
TripleLift closed $10.5 million in Series B funding Thursday, led by Edison Partners. The in-feed native advertising company will use the funds to double its workforce from 50 to 100 employees and expand internationally, starting in Europe with the UK. The company will also devote a portion to research and development. “My hope is that […]
Havas unveiled a tool Monday designed to measure inventory quality holistically by assessing fraud, viewability, ad clutter and brand context. The tool, called a meta-quality barometer, provides a quality score for publishers or inventory providers. “We need to help media vendors and tech partners to better guarantee the quality of the inventory,” said Dominique Delport, global […]
Agencies and publishers alike have jumped into private marketplaces. Rocket Fuel, known for its performance-driven campaigns in open marketplaces, has lately begun pitching an offering of its own. For the past six months, it’s partnered with agencies and publishers to enable performance-driven campaigns in premium environments, building on technology put in place by [x+1], which […]
Outbrain will allow publishers to sell native in-feed placements via their direct sales channels. In beta testing with four publishers, publishers can offer the units on a CPC or CPM basis. “Over the last six months, we’ve had more and more publishers dipping their toe into native ads,” said Matt Crenshaw, Outbrain’s VP of product […]
Datasift’s hookup with Facebook is gaining steam. It’s a good thing for the social media data provider, which got cut off from Twitter’s firehose in April, one month after announcing its non-exclusive Facebook partnership. On Wednesday, social analytics platform Pulsar became one of the first Datasift clients to benefit from this connection – it will […]
Publishers taking the role of an ad agency by creating content for marketers should make sure they’re not creating misleading native advertising: The Federal Trade Commission will hold publishers responsible. “For us, the concern is whether consumers recognize what they’re seeing is advertising or not,” Mary Engle, the FTC’s associate director of advertising practices, told […]
Publishers often talk about wanting to “help the buyer however it wants to buy,” embracing methods like private marketplaces, direct sales or automated guaranteed. But a big part of how buyers want to buy today is with data. Tribune Publishing wants to create more data-focused advertising opportunities throughout the organization – which includes the Los […]
How can consumers opt out of cross-device tracking if they don’t even know it exists? “When people are surprised, that can have negative consequences on trust, a brand and enforcement,” FTC commissioner Terrell McSweeney said to a crowd of 150 people in the advertising community – many of them lawyers – at the Digital Advertising […]
Cxense, a Norwegian provider of publisher-focused ad tech, on Monday acquired Maxifier, whose technology optimizes direct sold campaigns, for $3.56 million in stock. “Our ability to understand customer behavior and data will be injected into Maxifier’s extremely rich ability to forecast and optimize advertising campaigns, and vice versa,” said Geraldo Maroniene, Cxense’s EVP of corporate […]
When Google announced last month its ad networks would move to HTTPS by June 30, it marked another Internet giant adding security features that benefit the user – but that also inconvenience publishers and advertisers. HTTPS makes websites more secure by authenticating websites and web servers and by encrypting client-server communications. In the past, adapting […]
Since Denmark’s third-largest media house, Jysk Fynske Medier, started bringing in programmatic demand, CPMs for non-direct sold inventory have risen more than 300%. Its portfolio of sites, which includes everything from local news to classifieds to daily deals, attracts 3 million uniques and 500 million page views per month. Though small, Denmark has a highly […]
Professional food bloggers have long relied on ad networks to monetize their audience. A few million page views or more can be enough to earn a living. But these long-tail content creators are also feeling the effects of programmatic, viewability and the shift to mobile. One example: Food blog Pinch of Yum, run by a […]
Magnetic and MyBuys announced Wednesday they will merge, creating a company with a combined gross revenue of $100 million spanning ad tech and marketing tech. With their dual capabilities, they will be able to leverage first-party and third-party data to inform their 700 clients’ advertising spend and marketing efforts throughout the customer life cycle. At the same […]
