When AOL agreed in June to bring Microsoft’s sales organization into AOL, nearly doubling the amount of front-line salespeople to a total of 1,000, head of sales Jim Norton saw an opportunity. AOL knew there were a number of ways it could improve its sales force to better align with the organization’s structure: custom solutions […]
If ad blocking is war, long-tail publishers will likely be its earliest casualties. “Ad blocking is a threat to the whole industry, but it has an especially high impact for the small publishers who make up so much of the rich fabric that is the digital experience,” said Randall Rothenberg, CEO of the Interactive Advertising […]
Axel Springer will acquire Business Insider in a deal that values the publisher at $390 million, the companies said Tuesday. The German media company bought 9% of BI back in January, and the new $343 million deal will bring its total stake to 97%. That earlier deal placed the value of BI at $200 million, so the sale price […]
With ad blockers increasingly available on mobile devices and adoption increasing, especially among millennials, publishers can’t ignore the issue anymore. But what, exactly, are their options? First, publishers must figure out the extent ad blocking happens on their site – which varies dramatically based on audience composition and the type of site. Gaming sites, for […]
As private marketplaces have taken off, buyers and sellers have struggled to figure out exactly how to negotiate deals and, once a campaign is live, how to optimize so it actually delivers the expected value. None of the existing models quite work. Traditionally, sellers optimize direct-sold deals and buyers control programmatic ones. With private marketplaces, […]
Imagine adorning a Crest branding video with a custom call-to-action that tells the viewer she can buy the toothpaste on sale at a local Target or Walmart for $3.99. To achieve this, Tegna-owned companies PointRoll and ShopLocal are combining their capabilities under a new entity called Cofactor. If the name Tegna sounds unfamiliar, that’s because […]
Publishers distributing their content on Facebook have discovered a way to buy traffic on Facebook – but it isn’t through amplifying their posts. Instead, publishers place their content on Facebook pages that already have millions of engaged followers, such as “I Love Halloween,” George Takei, Lil Wayne or (perplexingly) “Music for Deep Meditation,” giving it […]
The stereotype of parents being behind the times didn’t hold true at “Take Your Parents To Work Day,” an event held in New York on Thursday at data-driven agency Kepler. The program explained to parents how their kids plan targeted advertising campaigns. It also gave parents a better idea about just why that pair of […]
Programmatic advertising makes it difficult for publishers like Hearst Newspapers to ensure that users enjoy fast-loading pages and quality ad experiences. Hearst closely monitors its site templates, optimizing for fast load times and ad viewability. But once it starts letting third parties run scripts on its website – aka programmatic advertisers – that can slow […]
Media General will acquire Meredith Corp. for $2.4 billion, combining the two companies’ TV and digital assets to create greater reach and efficiency. The new company, Meredith Media General, will own 88 TV stations in 54 markets, making it the third-largest owner of network affiliates. On the digital side, it will reach 200 million monthly unique […]
Visitors to Allrecipes’ redesigned mobile and desktop sites, which launched Tuesday, will find what looks like a personalized Pinterest page, complete with social elements including like button variants and the ability to follow other cooks and food brands. Founded in 1997 as a place for home cooks to find and share recipes, Allrecipes needed to […]
Some publishers believe programmatic creates a “race to the bottom” for its inventory. Purch, whose portfolio includes TopTenReviews and Tom’s Guide, is taking the opposite approach by using programmatic to establish the baseline value of its media. This effort, called Purch RAMP (revenue and advertising management platform), will help it create premium, custom advertising opportunities. […]
The Washington Post’s revamped home page, unveiled Wednesday, purports to bring average desktop load time to less than one second – meaning better reader experiences and more ads viewed, since visitors won’t bounce. The fresh home page completes the Post’s sitewide reboot, which started in the middle of last year with its article pages. Content […]
While Imgur has 150 million monthly active users, many of them use ad-blocking software and access the site on mobile, where banners go for lower CPMs. The image-sharing community is strongly tied to Reddit, hosting much of its image content. And like Reddit, Imgur’s audience is filled with tech-savvy male millennials suspicious of advertising. Native, done […]
WhoSay is one of the more undefinable companies in the advertising and marketing landscape. It’s a celebrity news site, a HootSuite-like social media platform for celebrities, and it also functions as an influencer marketing agency in that it accepts RFPs from brands, builds campaigns with celebrity spokespeople and distributes those campaigns using the power of […]
IDG Communications, publisher of more than 1,000 tech websites including PCWorld, TechHive and CIO.com, is launching a native platform Wednesday. The platform will span across all its properties and include contextual placements such as in-feed video or links to branded content created by IDG’s team. IDG is embracing native because it better aligns with how […]
After Gannett CRO Kevin Gentzel reads his hometown newspaper, the Pensacola News Journal, he puts on his sales hat. Local papers are a “powerful environment” and Gentzel’s first order of business, as Gannett’s new sales chief, is to harness that power with branded content. If he has his way, that content will appear not just […]
LifeZette, a lifestyle site created by conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, launched in April and is quickly scaling up its video production. Moving fast will allow the fledgling site to grab some of the projected $1 billion in digital ad spend for the 2016 election. Ten percent of that spend will go to online video, according […]
LittleThings, which collects uplifting stories and DIY tips, went from 8 million monthly unique visitors in November 2014 to 31.5 million last June, making it part of the comScore 100. But though it’s the third most shared publisher on Facebook according to Newswhip, LittleThings suffers from low brand recognition. That’s something LittleThings is trying to […]
The New York Times’ digital business grew both in subscriptions and ad revenue in Q2. Digital revenue grew 14% to $48.3 million because of “mobile, paid posts and programmatic,” CEO Mark Thompson said. Digital subscriptions grew 19% to 990,000 and, by the time of the earnings call, had passed 1 million subscribers. Growing the scale […]
The New York Times hopes to address mobile advertising problems with a customizable native in-stream ad unit called Mobile Moments, set for a mid-September launch. The publisher built the unit in-house using insights from its editorial team. It will be available both on apps and the mobile web, and a few advertisers have already signed […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
When Ellen Pao stepped down from her post as CEO of Reddit on Friday – ceding the spot to Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman – it left Reddit’s monetization situation murkier than ever. In a question and answer session on Reddit’s popular AMA (Ask Me Anything) section, Huffman wrote, “Reddit has a lot of cash. Monetization […]
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 […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jeremy Hlavacek, vice president of programmatic at The Weather Company. Why aren’t more marketers moving budgets to mobile? Two recent articles caught my attention because they resonated personally and professionally, illustrating that we have […]
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 […]
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 […]
