Local TV and print magazines don’t share much in common. But as local TV’s digital business grows, and as Meredith’s digital properties need more video expertise, the two disciplines are converging. Tom Harty, who became Meredith’s COO and president on Thursday, is identifying where the local and national media group can collaborate by “figuring out […]
The Street CEO David Callaway wants to transform the financial news and analysis publication into a “data-driven news business.” Callaway, who was hired in June, says he will use a data trove assembled through recent acquisitions like BoardEx (a LinkedIn for company board members) to publish exclusive, high-value content for The Street and thus revive […]
In under two years, CarGurus transformed its display revenue strategy from one built on ad networks to one focused on high-value programmatic deals. The auto shopping site, which attracts 12.4 million uniques a month, according to comScore, used to sell search listings and upfront sponsorships with auto manufacturers and dealers. CarGurus farmed out its display […]
Many in the US digital media industry have cherished hope of a day in court against ad blockers. It’s a movement that began with a series of IAB summits last summer and which today is slipping along the spectrum from possibility to fantasy. A year ago, the most likely legal route focused on copyright infringement. […]
Malicious bots are getting more sophisticated and bot blocking companies are raising more cash – the arms race is in full swing. One such company, Distil Networks, announced $21 million in Series C funding on Tuesday as part of its bid to keep combating what CEO Rami Essaid called “a growing problem.” The round, led by […]
Behind every piece of PopSugar viral content, there’s data. The lifestyle pub’s recipe and video for Fruity Pebbles No-Bake Cheesecake has attracted 9.4 million video views and 238,000 shares on Facebook since it went live in June. Landing on the winning recipe required sifting through audience insights and constant tweaking so it would resonate with […]
Many teens on Kik love J-14’s celebrity-focused trivia games, returning every week to take its interactive, emoji-filled quizzes with questions like, “Which family member does Justin Bieber have a rocky relationship with?” This has pushed J-14 Celeb Quizzes to first place for weekly active users in Kik’s bot shop, which launched this spring. The shop […]
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) turned on video header bidding with Index Exchange. The broadcaster and publisher requested that Index Exchange develop the feature because it wanted “to make more data-rich inventory available to [private exchange buyers],” said Jeff MacPherson, director of monetization platforms and services at CBC. The move will also boost yield for […]
To get millennials talking about their money issues, the well-financed fintech company SoFi sponsored this week’s launch of Mic’s MoneyMic section. “It’s the last big taboo,” said Meg Ciarallo, SoFi’s VP of brand marketing. “Trojan made it OK to talk about sex, Tampax made it OK to talk about periods. But people are uncomfortable talking […]
When building a content-commerce brand, content comes first. More readers will lead to more shoppers, according to home decor brand Domino. The company has appointed Nathan Coyle, an EVP at Refinery29, as its CEO to supercharge Domino’s online audience growth. “The belief amongst the board was that among our three channels – the print publication, […]
Hearst doesn’t view itself a media company, but rather as a technology company. “We have been making a concerted effort to transform from a media company that used great technology to a technology company,” said Allen Duan, Hearst’s head of corporate technology. Hearst’s technology team builds tech for a world where content is distributed on […]
Facebook’s recent courtship of publishers – like its attempt to move them onto Instant Articles, paying them to produce Facebook Live videos and allowing the posting of sponsored posts on their feeds – hasn’t insulated publishers from Facebook’s algorithm adjustments. On Wednesday, Facebook said it will change its algorithm to focus its news feed on […]
If publishers allow programmatic to compete with direct-sold impressions within their ad server, they needn’t bother with header bidding. French ecommerce site Rue du Commerce saw a sizable boost in yield when it did just that. It belongs to a family of ecommerce sites, Régie E-Commerce (REC), which together attract 14 million uniques a month. […]
How do you crush it with organic views and shares in a sea of paid content? Raw humor and parody seem to be doing the trick for Someecards, the e-card site founded by former MRM and Avenue A/Razorfish creative VPs in 2007. As the self-described antithesis of the Hallmark greeting card, Someecards started out creating […]
After a string of court losses, Axel Springer finally landed a blow on Eyeo’s Adblock Plus (ABP). On Friday, a German court granted the German publishing giant a partial victory in its appeal of a previous decision. In question was ABP’s Acceptable Ads initiative, an open source ad-block revenue channel (meaning other ad blockers can […]
Investopedia launched in the dot-com era as an online dictionary of investment terms. Its financial audience attracted advertisers, and the glossary format drove traffic from Google searches. But times have changed. Investopedia needed to conquer social, which has supplanted search as a dominant traffic driver for many publishers. And reaching investors at the beginning of […]
Creating real-time content is a challenge for any brand – but for brands operating in highly regulated industries, it’s a potential compliance risk. There isn’t a federal regulator out there that doesn’t have rules around misleading, deceptive or unfair practices, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. And […]
When people sign up for sweepstakes, they leave the right address. Publishers Clearing House’s (PCH) Liquid division was acquired in 2012 and uses its parent’s deterministic data sets to power media campaigns. This value prop is becoming more attractive as agency trading desks move to buying through private marketplaces and evaluating success through benchmarks like […]
Admiral, a performance marketing solution designed to help publishers reacquire and monetize audiences who use ad blockers, launched Monday with a $2.5 million seed round. Admiral identifies audiences with ad blockers turned on, works to re-establish those users (by opting in to a lightened ad experience, say, or asking to be whitelisted) and then makes a […]
Edmunds.com is revving up its audience data strategy through an exclusive hookup with Oracle Data Cloud. The partnership, announced Thursday, gives the car shopping info site the ability to scale its efforts around audience-based buys, said Jennifer Dodez, Edmund’s executive director of programmatic and data solutions. “We’ve had a lot of demand for our data […]
Impressions don’t impress – “Attention is the key, not just being on the screen,” said Moat CEO and co-founder Jonah Goodhart at an event Wednesday about time-based metrics hosted by Parsec (formerly Sled Mobile). That’s part of why advertisers buy TV – it’s a viewable playground for branding. But viewability, after all, is just a baseline for just […]
The dander was up at AdExchanger’s Clean Ads IO in New York on Tuesday as the CEOs of two ad blockers engaged in a contentious debate with two prominent adversaries about the rock-and-hard-place situation publishers presently find themselves in. “It might be ironic that an ad blocker can really play a very important role in […]
Publishers are still working out journalism on mobile devices. While basic responsive design is usually a given today, mobile article formats haven’t dramatically changed. Most innovation happens on platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Snapchat Discover – not on owned-and-operated sites. Which is why Quartz’s app, a conversational news app launched in February, is a […]
When tech site Softonic was at its peak roughly three years ago, it attracted 120 million global uniques searching for downloadable computer software. But when mobile app stores took over the role of software search and review, Softonic and its peers got into the toolbar downloading business, accepting huge bounties from toolbar creators to push […]
Playboy’s first NewFront is Friday and the publisher is treating the event as a “multi-platform” coming-out party. Following its recent rebrand as a safe-for-work men’s lifestyle media option, Playboy wants to attract more millennial males. The publisher’s first no-nude print issue in Playboy history ran in March. The rebrand is a key moment. Despite Playboy’s position […]
Because Seeking Alpha attracts a financially savvy audience, financial services advertisers want to be there. But often, those advertisers want to reach even finer slices of Seeking Alpha’s audience. One of the most coveted demos on the site is financial advisers, who make decisions about vast amounts of other people’s money. Seeking Alpha needed a […]
When Gawker Media first started selling ads programmatically in late 2014, it only sold through private marketplaces (PMPs). Since then, the publisher behind Gawker, Jezebel, Lifehacker, Gizmodo and other sites has expanded its programmatic offerings. First it added an open marketplace option and then it implemented header bidding. Programmatic revenue has grown by triple-digit percentages […]
Time Inc. on Thursday reported its best quarter in two years: It grew revenue 1%. For a Facebook or Google, those results would be alarmingly bad, but for a traditional media company trying to grow digital revenue as its large print and subscription businesses decline slowly year after year – well, that isn’t so bad. […]
Conversational UI is hot right now, and Playbuzz is hopping aboard the trend with a static content format that’s designed to mimic the layout of an SMS text conversation, including emoji, images and GIFs. Dubbed Convo, the main purpose of the unit is to spice up editorial, improve engagement and generate more time spent. That’s […]
Four years ago, Hollywood trade pub Variety Magazine was aging and under threat. A paywall pushed Variety.com’s traffic dip to fewer than 1 million uniques. A revamped Hollywood Reporter and industry blogs like The Wrap and Deadline.com created new competition for advertising dollars. Its then-parent company, Reed Business Information, had stopped investing in Variety and […]
