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.
On April 1, the newspaper assets of the E.W. Scripps Company will go to Journal Media Group – publisher of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In exchange, Scripps will receive Journal Communications’ local broadcast, radio and digital holdings, giving the media conglomerate a total of 33 broadcast properties, 34 radio properties and 150 different digital properties […]
The most-cited reason Cosmopolitan, CNN, People, Yahoo News, Food Network and National Geographic jumped to participate in Snapchat Discover: access to millennials in a mobile platform with high engagement. Discover also has an environment pleasing to advertisers, enabling messaging via text, images or video in a section of a popular app curated by premium publishers. […]
Ozone Media is changing its name to Adadyn and expanding into the US market. The company, which started out as an ad network for India and the Asia-Pacific region, retired that business last year. It provides programmatic solutions to medium-size buyers. “There are a number of agencies that don’t have access to these tools and […]
South African buyers and sellers knew from looking at their peers in the US and UK that they needed to develop a programmatic strategy. But publishers were initially reluctant because of the cost of programmatic tech and the old fear that buying in an RTB environment devalued inventory. This concern led WPP to help create […]
IBT Media – publisher of International Business Times, Latin Times and Newsweek – plans to grow programmatic revenue from 30% to 60% by the end of this year. It first started selling programmatically last May and plans to fuel growth by adding programmatic direct to the mix through Rubicon and Sonobi. Buyers can purchase through […]
PlayBuzz, the user-generated quiz and article site, revealed Wednesday it had raised $16 million in Series B financing, bringing its total funding to almost $20 million. It’s the latest win for the Israeli publisher, which surpassed The Huffington Post three months ago to become the most-shared publisher on Facebook. Investors liked PlayBuzz’s growth potential and […]
The Guardian, CNN International, the Financial Times and Reuters have banded together to sell inventory programmatically through a program called Pangaea. The Economist also will sell inventory through Pangaea but is not a founding publisher. Pangaea gives publishers something they don’t have on their own; scale. It marries that scale with the member publishers’ first-party […]
Five of the biggest media players in France banded together to create a joint venture, La Place Media, to grow their programmatic revenues through a data-sharing arrangement. Between its first and second year in operation, the cooperative’s programmatic CPMs jumped 70%. It’s a trend that will continue as La Place Media closes out its third […]
Major League Gaming is changing up its strategy, focusing on programmatic sales over direct. “We have consciously made the decision to focus 90% of our energies on programmatic for the year of 2015,” explained Don Reilley, EVP of MLG. “We can focus heavily on the programmatic side of things, and then layer two, three, four […]
To power native placements, Condé Nast’s Food Innovation Group selected TripleLift as a technology provider. It will sell native placements directly and through private native marketplaces. In-feed article previews for branded content, such as a recipe, will appear across the Food Innovation Group’s sites. The group reaches 50 million uniques a month across its portfolio, […]
All of La Quinta Inns & Suites’ 2015 insertion orders specify that it will pay for human traffic only. “As a brand that strives to do the most with our resources, and as a challenger brand in the space, it matters when our media dollars aren’t going to real people,” La Quinta director of media […]
For CPG companies like ConAgra, buying media using sales data from retailers like Walmart offers a way to finally close the loop between media spend and sales. But some are concerned about the lack of transparency that comes with using the Walmart Exchange. “Walmart has more data than we do,” said Fernando Arriola, VP of […]
Agencies are not transparent about their actions. Agencies recommend media that is off-strategy when it works for their gain. Agencies accrue media earned by advertisers’ spending and resell it to other advertisers. Agencies demand pay-for-play from vendors in order to be recommended, and cross the line in partnership relationships. These are among the claims made […]
Programmatic ad buying is an inexorable and positive progression for the marketing industry, according to Global Marketing Officer Marc Pritchard of Procter & Gamble, the world’s largest advertiser. “[Programmatic] is inevitable, and we’re definitely interested,” Pritchard told AdExchanger on Thursday. “It enables you to more precisely target, and do it at a very valuable price, and […]
Being a programmatic salesperson today means tacking between technical and personal considerations. At BBC Worldwide Americas, where programmatic sales channels comprise a full third of ad revenues, the technical end means experimenting with tactics like varying price floors per advertiser in order to maximize yield. “If an advertiser is consistently bidding $20 on our inventory, […]
Sports content consumption fluctuates – down in the offseason, then surging around major sporting events. How can a publisher manage? Gannett-owned USA Today Sports Media Group uses programmatic to pick up the slack. “Programmatic has allowed us to ride those ups and downs of premium sales,” explained Chris Pirrone, the general manager of Sports Digital […]
More automation is in the cards for Rubicon Project, which revealed its short-term goals around guaranteed orders at its Automation Summit in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., on Thursday. The company launched an updated product that powers direct, guaranteed orders. “Digital advertising is a $62 billion opportunity,” CEO Frank Addante told attendees. “The largest part, premium, […]
The first step for Travel Alberta, in its goal to grow tourism from $7.4 billion to $10.3 billion by 2020, is to help Americans figure out where Alberta is. Step two involves telling them why they should go there. The steps involve a marketing strategy steeped in digital content, said Jasmine Thompson, director of consumer […]
Sharing financial performance figures for the first time Thursday, PubMatic said its annualized net revenue run rate is now above $130 million, based on year-end figures. From 2013 to 2014, the publisher platform company said GAAP net revenue grew 90%. PubMatic did not disclose net income, but revealed it had turned a small profit for the past […]
Edmunds used to keep its car shopper and owner data close to its chest. But at the beginning of this year, Edmunds opened its audience segments to its most valued car advertisers. The company used to sell inventory based on context, but now it’s shifting to an audience model, said Edmunds CEO Avi Steinlauf. This […]
Rubicon Project’s focus on premium inventory, international expansion and new products looks to be paying off. CEO Frank Addante said during the company’s Q4 earnings call – in which it posted quarterly revenue of $41.8 million, up 49% YoY – that Rubicon had avoided low-quality sellers that would have boosted short-term revenue while hurting its […]
There’s an updated standard in town: OpenRTB 2.3. The latest version incorporates guidelines for native advertising creative within a real-time bidding environment, accounting for metadata like headline, content URL, description text and images. The standard should mean more native advertising will flow through more exchanges with fewer hiccups, right? Well, not exactly. AdExchanger asked industry […]
LiveFyre revealed Thursday it had raised $32 million in strategic investments from Salesforce Ventures and Adobe as part of a Series D round, in addition to $15 million in C2 financing in 2014. LiveFyre, which started out as a commenting platform, now markets itself as a hub of user-generated content for brands and publishers. The […]
If racking up Twitter and Facebook followers were easy, there wouldn’t be so many scammers promising to sell them. But there are ways to create authentic audiences: paid amplification not through a tech platform, but through influencers. Turner-owned cable news network HLN worked with social media agency theAudience to build an engaged audience for the […]
Criteo, which began as a retargeter of online display, expanded on its product roadmap during the company’s Q4 and FY 2014 earnings call Wednesday. Criteo’s focus is “leveraging the huge momentum in mobile commerce,” said CEO Jean-Baptiste Rudelle by emphasizing its multi-screen solution and cross-device ID. “Converting customers across multiple marketing channels is critical for CMOs. […]
What if someone talked you into buying a mattress without letting you lie on it first? That’s exactly what online-only mattress startup Casper is doing. Casper wants to use the strength of its reviews and website (along with its generous return policy) to convince people to go from online research to unpacking a bed in a […]
Jewelry and flower brands who briefly ramp up ad spend for Valentine’s Day love their private marketplaces. In early February, they set up private marketplaces with publishers who can provide the right audience and context. They test which sites yield conversions in the weeks before Cupid’s holiday and dial up the spend the final week […]
Advertisers’ demand for viewability is frustrating for publishers, who must contend with new contracts, new billing structures and new ways to value inventory, all while ensuring meeting viewability standards doesn’t erode ad revenue. During a town hall at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in Phoenix, about half the publishers in the packed room said they had […]
The crowd at the IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting looked about the same as ever – composed of many publishers and tech companies – but with one big difference from last year. As of September, tech companies are now voting members of the IAB. Some at the meeting barely registered the change, since tech companies have […]
After going digital-only in June 2013, The Onion had to decide how to earn money without print ad sales. It found a partial answer in Onion Labs, its in-house agency that has found success with big advertisers. “We thought, are we going to go down the programmatic path or the content path?” said Kurt Mueller, […]
