The ad buyers who will be hurt by the adoption of Ads.txt aren’t giving up without a fight. Publishers are being deluged with emails from “agencies” and “digital marketing solutions” companies threatening to stop buying inventory unless they’re added to the Ads.txt file. The New York Times, Wenner Media, Intermarkets and LittleThings all confirmed to […]
Purch, publisher of LiveScience and TopTenReviews, added three layers of defense to its anti-fraud system in October. In addition to pre-screening for bots twice, Purch now detects bots, malware and ad quality in real time. “Better-quality traffic means higher ad performance and higher CPMs,” said Purch CTO John Potter. “This is a trend. Demand sources […]
Publishers still struggle to make enough video content and inventory. Text-to-video platform Wibbitz, which announced its $20 million Series C on Tuesday, aims to help them meet that need with technology that automates creation. The round, led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments with participation from The Weather Channel TV network, the Associated Press, existing investor […]
The idea of accomplishing more together than apart sounds like a tagline for a social justice organization, but that’s what Upworthy and Good say happened after they merged 10 months ago to form Good Worldwide. The two publications cater to corporations and nonprofits that want to align their brands with social causes and change. Good […]
As Facebook grabs more mobile and video dollars from the ecosystem, premium publishers are looking for viable ways to compete. For storied publisher Time Inc., one solution is to bring its own mobile-optimized video solutions to market. Using Google’s native framework, Time created a mobile, in-feed video solution dubbed Adapt that is customized to its […]
Texting and messaging friends tends to bring out our inner foodies, and the Food Network has used a Facebook Messenger bot to join that conversation. Food Network has invested in its chatbot since it first launched in November 2016, even after the initial hype dropped off. While other brands and publishers had difficulties being conversational […]
With header bidding enabled, the open marketplace works just fine for Advance Local. While many publishers and buyers are moving to closed, curated programmatic environments due to brand safety, fraud and viewability concerns, Advance Local is focused on driving yield in the open marketplace. That strategy means improving viewability and giving buyers transparent URL information […]
Google on Tuesday unveiled its Insights Engine Project – including six products for data visualization, integration and insights – and promised that exchange bidding will be generally available in early 2018. Read the release. For the first time, Google, via an Insights Engine product, will give publishers the types of user demographic and content consumption […]
Axel Springer joined the Coalition for Better Ads on Wednesday partially because it didn’t want Google, a member of the coalition, to have an outsize say in what counted as a better ad experience. Despite being a dominant European publisher, Axel Springer is worried about US platforms like Google dictating industry standards or positioning to […]
Slideshows have been hurt by growing demand for viewable inventory, as readers rarely scroll down and often click to the next slide before ads load. Topix, which buys traffic to slideshows that rack up tons of page views, was affected by this shift. Four months ago, the site’s viewability hovered around 40%, so programmatic buyers […]
Spanish-language broadcaster Univision hopes to offset declines in local TV ad revenue by doubling down on its digital ad business. It was an early adapter of Facebook Watch, Snapchat Discover and Snapchat Live Stories to reach its audience of millennial Hispanics, but Univision is emphasizing multiplatform campaigns to boost digital revenue. (Univision’s digital ad revenue […]
Taste of Home amassed almost 6 million followers on its Facebook pages, where readers actively commented and shared posts – without ever hiring anyone to run audience development. That raw engagement attracted Kari Hodes to join in January as Trusted Media Brands’ (which owns Taste of Home) VP of digital content and audience development. Hodes […]
Engaged readers make for loyal subscribers. The New York Times’ mobile app, which the publisher once feared would cannibalize its desktop subscriber rate, has proven to be the watering hole where many of the Times’ young, engaged readers hang out. Readers within the app rank among the most loyal and committed, in terms of the […]
Publishers paying to promote content on social platforms need to determine the return on their ad spend, just like marketers. The sites Tickld, Clipd and Knowable, part of the “Pulse” division at publishing company Gateway Blend, rely on social platforms to distribute content. Gateway Blend used to optimize the ad campaigns for Pulse content with […]
When CEO Alicia Navarro started Skimlinks 10 years ago, affiliate marketing was a transactional game. Drive the last click before a sale, scoop up the credit. But that scenario didn’t reflect that content producers tend to bring value higher up the funnel. “Affiliate is very good at rewarding and incentivizing last-click behavior,” she said. “But […]
Until recently, “programmatic” meant “remnant” at Motorsport Network, a digital media and broadcast company geared toward motorsport enthusiasts. “One of the main concerns our salespeople had was that, when inventory becomes available to buy programmatically, it immediately has the stigma that it’s remnant or somehow lower in quality,” said Mark Fragoulias, global director of ad […]
IBM-owned pub The Weather Co. is working to tap into people-based marketing budgets that would normally go to Facebook or Google by using LiveRamp’s IdentityLink product. Marketers and publishers alike onboard their data to LiveRamp’s huge online identity graph to kick off the process. Because LiveRamp can identify many more users than a marketer or […]
As branded content becomes a bigger part of media budgets, marketers need to show how content is driving results for their brands. They want to prove that content can create not just awareness, but also purchase consideration and sales. To help marketers achieve those objectives, Refinery29 rolled out a product Monday dubbed Converge to connect […]
Because 30-50% of direct campaigns on Business Insider transact on a viewable CPM, getting those campaigns to deliver the contracted amount without wasting inventory helps the publisher’s bottom line. Making sure campaigns deliver within those stringent requirements – including 100% viewability – is one of the jobs of Marc Boswell, SVP of revenue operations and […]
Granite Media, which is launching its first site, Work and Money, this week, wants to prove that a publication can run profitably with 100% programmatic ads and still turn out quality content. “There are very few digital only, programmatic-only companies that are actually profitable,” said Granite Media CEO Danny Khatib. “That’s the problem we are […]
By Sarah Sluis, Kelly Liyakasa and Alison Weissbrot Some publishers excel in programmatic in ways that make buyers take notice. The best way to stand out in programmatic is by integrating sales teams so it’s easy to buy programmatically and direct with a single conversation. Smart publishers don’t create incentives that make salespeople push direct […]
The Guardian UK is taking ownership of its ad stack. “Publishers have given away control of our digital businesses through programmatic. And we have all been disintermediated,” said Danny Spears, programmatic director of Guardian News and Media. Programmatic accounts for 85% of the Guardian UK’s display advertising business, Spears said: “And as programmatic becomes a […]
Removing a bad ad unit can mean that publishers take a big revenue hit. The most intrusive ad units often please advertisers and drive large amounts of revenue. And a heavy ad load brings in more revenue per page view. So how do publishers balance the two? And when do they decide to pull the […]
It’s never a surprise to hear a high-end digital publisher lampoon the chaotic digital ad environment, but a sharp invective delivered yesterday by Mark Thompson, CEO of The New York Times, went beyond the usual sniping. “The world of digital advertising is a nightmarish joke,” he said during a panel hosted by Omnicom Group agency […]
NBC News wanted to mix up its news coverage to include more “near news”: content someone reads after they get their fix of breaking news and politics – or as a relief from it. Two pop-up sites, future-oriented “Mach” and self-improvement site “Better,”officially launched May 31 with a fresh web design to test the content […]
When the Flashpocalypse comes in July, CNN aims to offer advertisers space in its fallout shelter. The video-heavy publisher moved early to transition its video platform from Flash to HTML5 during Q1 of this year. CNN averages over 464 million video starts a month, so it knew it needed to get in front of the […]
While header bidding can increase publisher CPMs and revenue, the growing complexity of the implementations makes it harder to differentiate vendor partners. Ancient History Encyclopedia, for instance, saw CPMs rise 75% after adding header bidding a year ago. The online encyclopedia operates as a nonprofit and relies on advertising for the majority of its revenue. […]
Bots are to web traffic what broken turnstiles are to amusement parks – they make it impossible to get an accurate read on how many people are coming through the door, and that messes with optimization. But at least in the case of a physical location, the visitors are human. On Thursday, bot detection company Distil […]
Google wants to clean up where it places ads, but it also doesn’t want to hurt its publishers’ revenue. So instead of kicking out an entire site that violates a Google policy, Google will remove individual pages from a publisher’s site that violate Google policies. AdSense publishers will receive emails when content violates Google policies, […]
Time Inc. had a lousy Q1 as print revenue plunged 21% and the company struggled with a sales reorganization. Total advertising revenue declined 8% to $360 million. The stock declined 14% in the wake of the earnings, putting its share price well below the $18 a share three different buyers offered. The bright spot is […]
