Advertisers understandably seek to protect themselves from fraud, awkward placements and inadvertently funding misinformation, but in doing so rely on overzealous or blunt brand-safety filters that steer them away from news and diverse content.
Mergers and acquisitions, the industry’s slow-motion pivot away from third-party data and the expansion of commerce-based business dominated the headlines for media and sell-side ad tech in 2021. What does the industry predict for 2022? More of the same as these trends continue to play out in the year ahead. First-party first In 2022 and […]
The Vox Media/Group Nine deal is only the most recent example of the consolidation trend in digital media. Publishers have been turning to M&A as a method to grow their audiences and increase their ad revenue, in addition to boosting their valuation for further deals down the road.
Future PLC wrapped up a strong year for its advertising business that was fueled largely by the growth of its ecommerce offerings, its first-party data innovations and some recent acquisitions. Hoping to continue its momentum in the new year, Future announced Horizon, a new video ad unit for mobile platforms, on Monday. Jason Webby, Future’s […]
Gannett’s current president of sales development, Kelly Andresen, has been promoted to president of USA TODAY, national sales. Andresen will assume her new role at the start of 2022. Andresen will lead Gannett’s national sales division, including the USA TODAY network, which encompasses the company’s inventory across its portfolio of local and national sites. She […]
Ad management solutions provider Freestar announced Wednesday that it acquired UK-based Google AMP monetization company Triple13. Terms of the deal were not made public. However, in a conversation with AdExchanger, Freestar CEO Kurt Donnell disclosed that the deal was fully funded from Freestar’s balance sheet. Freestar will be adding all 15 of Triple13’s employees to […]
Content recommendation doesn’t have the best reputation. It’s primarily known for spammy clickbait around the web. But it doesn’t have to be that way, said Alon Rosenthal, CEO and founder of WhizzCo, a startup that allows multiple content recommendation vendors to compete for native inventory so publishers can maximize their yield. Typically, publishers only work […]
Programmatic and privacy don’t have to be mutually exclusive, even though they’re often treated that way, according to Joe Root, CEO and co-founder of London-based publisher technology startup Permutive. “A privacy-first web is about removing the data leakage that’s inherent in programmatic,” Root said. Permutive aims to stop that leakage with technology infrastructure to preserve […]
First-price auctions are coming to Google AdSense. The change will go into effect later this year, Google shared in a blog post on Thursday. Google Ad Manager and AdMob have already switched to a first-price auction. Though not nearly as momentous as when Google flipped the switch for Ad Manager, the AdSense change signals that […]
Sustainable digital media business models exist – just look at Dotdash. Dotdash acquired Meredith at a $2.7 billion valuation Wednesday to form a new media business to be called Dotdash Meredith. At first glance, the two entities coming together feels like a marriage of opposites: a century-old magazine media company and a digital native. But […]
The ad management space is consolidating. Freestar acquired Sortable Wednesday in a deal that expands Freestar’s inventory by 30% and increases its staff from 90 to 130 people. Freestar, which is profitable, self-funded the acquisition. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is “completely additive” on multiple fronts, Freestar CEO Kurt Donnell said. […]
Google’s AdX is a primary demand source for many small- and mid-size publishers. But the way they access that demand is about to change as Google gears up to revamp the partner program that smaller ad sellers use to access AdX. Pubs need a direct integration with Google in order to tap into AdX. Because […]
The third-party cookie is halfway out the door, so CafeMedia is already ushering in its replacement: email-based IDs. The ad management firm started working with LiveRamp ATS (Authenticated Traffic Solution) eight months ago. ATS scrambles an email address and puts the user’s identity in a secure envelope for SSPs to open and resolve. Buyers then […]
When the ad tech company Minute Media acquired the publication Players’ Tribune in 2019, the deal underscored how consolidation is creating unlikely portfolios. “For years, we thought it would be difficult long term to be a standalone publisher, which was why we focused on being a standalone tech platform,” said Asaf Peled, CEO of Minute […]
The Gist co-founder Ellen Hyslop believes women care about sports news – they just don’t care for the way it’s presented. When Hyslop captivated her friends with her account of the Toronto Maple Leafs making it to the NHL playoffs, they all realized they had stumbled onto a winning idea. More women deserved to hear […]
Consider 2021 the age of consent. The end of third-party cookies is pushing nearly everyone in the supply chain to try to figure out how to get consumers to opt in – including a growing number of ad tech companies that are attempting to create their own consumer-facing consent mechanisms. It’s a new and largely […]
The end of the third-party cookie won’t happen for nearly a year, but thanks to GDPR, Axel Springer was prepared for the shift: the publisher hasn’t used third-party data in the ad campaigns it sells since the end of 2018. Instead, it’s shored up its technology, working to create scalable first-party data. The German news […]
Even though The Weather Channel’s advertising business remained strong during the pandemic, relying on advertising alone is risky for a media company, even one that specializes in unique data and tech. “We’re at an inflection point. With all the changes happening in advertising with privacy, and identifiers and cookies being eliminated by the big tech […]
When BuzzFeed ramped up its affiliate business recently, one group of products consistently popped up in its top ten: sex toys. Though some might blush, BuzzFeed was proud of its nuanced, sex-positive coverage of sex toy product recommendations. BuzzFeed wasn’t trying to sensationalize, but to be inclusive of all sexual orientations and body types in […]
Food52 is taking the lid off its first-party data platform. The hybrid publisher-retailer concluded it needed to improve ad buyers’ access to its data, said Matt Greenberg, SVP of brand partnerships at Food52. Advertisers were asking Food52 about its data, so the demand was already there. And publishers are building first-party data solutions left and […]
The majority of BuzzFeed’s ad deals – 65% – now use its first-party data to target ads. And the publisher also provides data matching, insights and optimization powered by data from its 104 million monthly users. To make these data capabilities easier for advertisers to access, BuzzFeed is collecting them into one product, dubbed Lighthouse. […]
Digital ads that use The New York Times’ first-party data accounted more than 20% of the Times’ core ad revenue in Q4 of 2020. The year before, revenue from ads with first-party data totaled just 7%. Overall, digital ad revenue fell 2% from the year before, to $90.1 million. Q4 revenue overall rose .2% to […]
After Microsoft determined that using the Verizon Media supply-side platform (SSP) for its display inventory increased CPMs in September, it officially switched – the companies said Thursday – making Verizon Media its primary SSP for MSN and Outlook inventory across nine markets, including the United States. The switch validates the work Verizon Media has done […]
SHE Media is seeing an uptick in programmatic buyers interested in showing their ads in places with niche appeal. Instead of showing ads on health-related content, they’re contextually targeting articles about colds and flus, seasonal allergies or diabetes. But the infrastructure to set up these deals has traditionally been lacking. “That data is passed through […]
The Washington Post said Wednesday that it will adopt the Unified ID 2.0 framework – the first publisher to do so after a string of ad tech companies have tossed their hats into the ring over the past few months. The Post will allow advertisers to transact using the ID on its own site and will […]
Ad verification company DoubleVerify has been busy. It followed up its $350 million investment deal last month with a new tool designed to help advertisers take a more nuanced approach to brand suitability. And last week, DoubleVerify – long associated with the buy side – launched the DV Publisher Suite, which aggregates data on one […]
It’s supply-side platform week for Unified ID 2.0. On Tuesday, PubMatic signed onto the initiative, one day after Magnite and Index Exchange signaled their support for the open source project. The goal of Unified ID 2.0 is to create a standard identifier for the ad industry using hashed emails as a replacement for third-party cookies. […]
#TFW you know tons of people are engaging with your video content on social media, but you have no way to measure deduplicated reach and minutes watched per unique viewer across platforms. On Tuesday, social video analytics platform Tubular Labs released an audience ratings product that helps publishers validate their digital video audiences using a […]
After a disappointing debut in June, Google released an updated version of its sellers.json file Thursday afternoon. Sellers.json is a mechanism developed by the IAB Tech Lab that buyers can use to verify which exchanges and SSPs are authorized to sell a publisher’s inventory. Google’s expanded file now includes information for 1.2 million publishers, and […]
Group Nine Media, which publishes Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo, Seeker and PopSugar, unveiled a direct response solution called G9 Direct on Monday at AdExchanger’s Programmatic.IO digital event. G9 Direct lets DTCs tap into Group Nine’s first-party data trove. Those clients can design their own ad creative or let the publisher’s branded content studio Brandshop design […]
