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.
Publishers seeking to create more competition and access for programmatic buyers have embraced header bidding over the past year. AppNexus first brought header bidding technology to market in 2009, back when RTB first started, but not many of its customers used it. Now it’s seeing increased demand from publishers adding its header bidding (or pre-bid) […]
After launching programmatic print in February, Time Inc. on Friday unveiled a new phase of the sales initiative. It adds 12 audience categories to the original half dozen. Media planners can purchase new audience segments across 18 of Time Inc.’s US brands, including sport enthusiasts, travelers, fashion followers, moms and foodies. By doing so they […]
Publishers, users and advertisers hate in-banner video. It creates a poor user experience and, for advertisers, it doesn’t even drive ROI like pre-roll video. “If you want the entire video to be viewed and have complete attention, in-stream works best,” said Anush Prabhu, chief channel planning and investment officer for ad agency Deutsch Inc. In-banner […]
Mobile gaming company Gameloft removed all ad networks from its apps last year and hired a direct sales team. The company sees its future in advertising revenue, not from users making in-app purchases. And that means taking control of what will be its primary source of revenue. Gameloft is one of the biggies in the […]
Rubicon Project branched out into new areas in a strong Q2 that saw revenue grow 88% to $53 million. Managed revenue grew 48% to $227.2 million. Rubicon increased its cut of managed revenue, with take rate going up from 18.4% from last year to 21.4% this year. (Read the full earnings release here.) The company closed […]
Publishers are going to be shouldering the bulk of the burden of the user consent policy Google announced Monday. Google, in an effort to proactively comply with upcoming EU data protection legislation, outlined a user consent policy requiring publishers using AdSense, DoubleClick Ad Exchange or DoubleClick for Publishers to add cookie notifications across desktop, mobile […]
Sometimes it takes a few bad dates before you find the one. So it would seem to be with Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who after some less than ideal pairings with sales execs may have found her perfect match in Lisa Utzschneider. Just nine months after her initial hire as head of sales for Yahoo […]
A year after Yahoo’s disastrous Q2, the company reported year over year revenue growth of 15%, or $159 million, its best in nearly nine years. Yahoo saw Q2 revenue of $1.24 billion. So-called “Mavens” revenue (mobile, video, native and social) grew 60% to $399 million from $249 million during the same time last year. Yahoo CEO Marissa […]
The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), which is uniting industry players to root out criminal activity in digital advertising, has unveiled a pilot program to block fraudulent traffic coming from data centers. Google proposed the data center project and is leading the pilot program, which will see member companies sharing intelligence about fraudulent data centers. The companies […]
Technorati on Monday released SmartWrapper, a SaaS-based product that helps publishers run multiple header bidding partners by bringing all demand partners into one place. For publishers juggling multiple partners, SmartWrapper helps manage implementation page latency and gives publishers more unified analytics. With the product release, Technorati enters a different market. “We see this continuing down […]
Publishers selling programmatic need trained “digital media operators” who can speak the language of buyers. That’s how Intermarkets, which owns or represents media properties like Drudge Report, CNSNews.com and The Political Insider, aims to differentiate itself in a crowded field of sellers: speaking the language of programmatic to buyers, and setting up its technological stack […]
PowerInbox is bringing content recommendation engines to email via its RevenueStripe product. Think Outbrain meets LiveIntent. Beta-launched last summer and brought to the general market in January, RevenueStripe is gaining traction. It now appears in 1.5 billion emails a month. It’s attracted 60 publishers, like Ziff Davis, Prime Publishing and Hearst, which inserts RevenueStripe into […]
Since The Enthusiast Network (TEN), which owns 60 automotive and outdoor sports publications, hired Dana Caputo as its director of programmatic in December, it’s gotten its programmatic house in order. “I came on board to do yield optimization and also empower the sales team to sell programmatic,” Caputo said. Before hiring Caputo, TEN didn’t have […]
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 […]
