For the Daily Mail, the best way to foster advertiser trust is to work directly with brands.
The publication still makes most of its on-site digital revenue from programmatic. But it’s doubling down on direct-sold custom content, especially when it comes to video and social media, said Daily Mail’s managing director, digital, Hannah Buitekant.
That close collaboration with advertisers is also paying off on the programmatic side of the business. The company is applying its first-party audience data to build custom targeting segments tailored to brands, then selling those segments through private marketplaces (PMPs) and programmatic guaranteed deals.
Partnering directly with brands has also proven effective at working around their brand safety concerns, Buitekant added.
Buitekant and Linda Villani, chief revenue officer, US, for Daily Mail, spoke to AdExchanger.
AdExchanger: Give us an overview of your monetization strategy.
HANNAH BUITEKANT: We’re focused on omnichannel delivery. Given the diversification of news media and how consumers are engaging across different platforms, we want to ensure tailored content experiences on each of those platforms. And then comes monetization, which is about providing effective advertising solutions in the same way we do content.
What media channels stand out right now? What are your strongest revenue streams?
LINDA VILLANI: Our strongest revenue streams are entertainment and sports, and the custom content we’re pushing out on TikTok and across social platforms. A lot of our revenue still comes from display. Video and display revenue are comparable. [On our site] the split between programmatic and direct is 60/40.
Because of the loss of third-party audience signals, programmatic advertisers are shifting from targeting audiences to targeting content. But advertisers also want to enhance content-based targeting using publishers’ first-party audience data. How are you leaning into this?
BUITEKANT: More frequently now, we’re seeing big reach with first-party data assigned to it, which is brilliant for PMP, programmatic guaranteed, retargeting or always-on activation.
We use a data management platform, Permutive, that creates targetable cohorts based on interest. Say you run a takeover targeting wide reach. All of the insights from that takeover – views, shares, interactions – create another cohort of intent-driven users. And we have affiliate partnerships, so every click, purchase and acquisition feeds into intent signals. We package all that up into a seller-defined audience [SDA].
One of the common SDA talking points is that buyers aren’t sure they can trust how publishers are packaging inventory. Is there buy-side reticence around SDA?
BUITEKANT: We’re using a standard taxonomy: sports for sports, maybe getting into [more granular categories] like football, rugby, etc. We can’t really blur the lines on that. And the proof’s in the measurement.
VILLANI: We’ll also talk to a brand, and if we don’t have the segments [they want] defined or built, we’ll add them, monitor them, and every week, give the brand an idea of what that segment looks like. That builds trust, because they can see a percentage increase from week one to week four. You can’t promise to reach a million people in the first week with a brand-new segment.
What’s your reaction to Google backing away from its plans to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome? Has it changed your priorities?
BUITEKANT: We’re still full steam ahead, and we hope the market doesn’t slow down working on cookie-free research. We’re testing ID providers to make sure our media is available at scale.
We had concerns around the Privacy Sandbox. Measurement needs to be improved. The value difference between cookies and the Sandbox needs to be improved. But we welcome the initiative. We started testing the minute that 1% [cookieless audience] was available, and we’ll continue to collaborate with Google. [But Chrome] is not the entire browsing market. Safari has considerable reach, and that needs to be made addressable.
The Daily Mail recently rolled out a new slate of video programming. Are you going to be selling this inventory directly, or will some of it be sold programmatically?
VILLANI: Right now, we’re focusing on direct-sold. We’re looking to bring it to our sponsored content partners and keep it custom.
The new video content you’re producing will live on YouTube, which fits the IAB Tech Lab’s updated standards for instream video. Are you leaning into instream video to appeal to advertisers?
BUITEKANT: We have pockets of inventory in each of the classifications. YouTube is instream, click to play, user-initiated. We already had significant scale in instream, but [the new video content] advances that. And it advances it off-platform rather than being dependent on our own, and for a new audience we wouldn’t have reached before.
Has brand safety been a problem for the Daily Mail’s monetization? How are you working with buyers to overcome any brand safety concerns?
BUITEKANT: Across the open market, it’s a challenge for all news media. We work with advertisers to understand their blocking mechanics. We’ll run their monitoring tags and integrate in line with their requirements, usually at a keyword level. And what we’ll find is sometimes they’ll be quite harsh, and not really relevant for news media. For example, [blocking words like] shoot, attack, shootout, is really impactful for our sports content, especially around the Euros.
Brand safety tools are evolving to include sentiment. That’s not as harsh as keyword blocklists. But it’s something we have to work towards.
We’ve seen publishers like The New York Times roll out expanded sports coverage or games as a brand safe alternative to news. Is Daily Mail considering similar?
VILLANI: We have a new editor starting in September in the US. There’s going to be some changes to our sports channel, and we’re constantly talking about how to build out the health and wellness sector.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
