Publishers

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Mouse Money Disney’s 2019-2020 upfront was the biggest in the company’s history, with sales up 5% thanks in part to its acquisition of 21st Century Fox. Digital revenue and revenue from addressable TV were both up 50%, a sign of a growing appetite among […]

If all goes according to plan, America’s two largest newspaper chains will become one by the end of the year. Earlier this week, New Media Investment Group, parent company of GateHouse Media, announced its intention to buy USA Today publisher Gannett in a deal valued at $1.4 billion. If antitrust regulators approve the merger, GateHouse […]

You haven’t seen any marketing for Disney+ yet, but you’re about to. Disney is on the verge of a marketing blitz for its direct-to-consumer streaming service. The campaign will kick off in late August and run across traditional, digital and Disney owned-and-operated channels leading up to the service’s planned launch date on Nov. 12. It’s […]

Over the past two years, connected TV (CTV) has gone from a niche rounding out linear TV audiences to a core component of premium video publisher’s inventory supply. That evolution has paid off for supply-side platform (SSP) Telaria, which recently shifted its focus away from desktop and mobile video to enable publishers to monetize their […]

Kroger is spending more on connected TV and it’s just a “natural evolution,” says Kendra Clune, associate media director at the grocery retailer. “Ratings are dwindling on traditional television, and where are those viewers going?” she said. “We saw that our buys were skewing older and older, and we knew we needed to capture more […]

The Sizmek bankruptcy auction officially closed on Thursday with the announcement that Peer39, the company’s contextual targeting unit, was sold to the private equity firm O3 Industries for $18 million. The Trade Desk and Zefr, a contextual targeting company primarily for YouTube, also submitted bids for the final Peer39 auction last week, according to sources […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Christopher Guenther, senior vice president, global head of programmatic, at News Corp. One of the oldest tenets of business has been to put the customer first – and it holds especially true for media. Publishers […]

NBC News, whose portfolio includes Today.com, CNBC and MSNBC, doubled the clickthrough rate (CTR) on its branded content when it used tech that fine-tuned distribution of the content on its sites. The branded content tech, Polar, automatically tested different pairings of headlines and images, optimizing how it pulls readers into a story, and automating more […]

Hearst is building a self-serve ad platform so advertisers can overlay their audience data against Hearst’s to reach readers across sites like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle and Car and Driver. Designed for smaller advertisers, the platform – dubbed Hearst Audience Select – is slated to launch in time for Q4 ad campaigns. Audience Select will also […]

Creative automation is proving to be just the ticket as StubHub earmarks more of its marketing budget for video. Historically, StubHub has spent a lot of money successfully on lower-funnel tactics, such as paid search and retargeting, to encourage ticket sales. But there’s a lot more to performance than simply pointing in the direction of […]

Digitally native companies made nearly $1 billion in commitments during this year’s upfront, making them the biggest advertiser category in NBCUniversal’s $7 billion upfront, the company said during its Q2 earnings Thursday. The digitally native category includes the “FAANG” companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) as well as direct-to-consumer companies like Peloton, NBCU’s CEO Steve […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here WhoTube? As Google prepares to report second quarter earnings Thursday, investors and analysts are fed up with the company’s secrecy around YouTube. The streaming hub, which generates an estimated $16 billion to $25 billion in annual revenue, would be a Fortune 500 business on […]

Slow-loading ads are still a perennial problem for publishers. Wise Publishing, a Toronto-based publisher of personal finance content with around 5 million monthly unique visitors, acquires a significant portion of its traffic through paid channels. But if an ad loads slowly and a visitor leaves, so does that monetization opportunity. “Dealing with latency is incredibly […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here Game On  Amazon is making a big push into game advertising, if recent job postings spotted by Business Insider are any indication. “We’re looking for the right hands-on engineer to work on a disruptive advertising system set to revolutionize customer acquisition for gamers,” according […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Holding your breath on ads coming to Netflix? Time to let it out. There will be no advertising on Netflix anytime soon if ever, the company said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday in advance of its second quarter earnings call. “We, like HBO, are advertising free. That remains a deep part of our […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Lightning Strikes The Washington Post introed a first-party data ad targeting tool called Zeus Insights that can work without third-party cookies and target across display, video and native ads, reports Digiday. Zeus, which can be used in both direct deals and programmatically, looks at […]

Pity the OTT ad buyer, who must manage reach and frequency goals while finding inventory across a fragmented TV landscape. Often, the same inventory is available from multiple sellers – from networks like NBC, Fox and ABC to the actual OTT platforms, like Roku, Samsung or Amazon. And networks and platforms offer different strengths and […]

WarnerMedia’s announcement Wednesday that three of its top sales executives would leave as part of a reorg reflects changing times in the business of network TV. Donna Speciale, president of ad sales, Dan Riess, EVP of Turner Ignite, and Frank Sgrizzi, EVP of portfolio sales and client partnerships, are leaving WarnerMedia one year after its […]

It’s hard enough to develop features that work well for one app or site – let alone more than 100. But that’s the task at hand for Kara Chiles, senior director of product development at USA Today Network, a national news service that shares content and resources between USA Today and Gannett-owned local properties across the […]

Updated 8:00 PM EST to reflect a statement from WarnerMedia CRO Gerhard Zeiler WarnerMedia’s president of ad sales, Donna Speciale, is leaving the company as part of a broader ad sales reorg. The Information first reported the development. Speciale, who has been president of Turner’s ad sales business for seven years, took on the role […]

CalMatters reports nonpartisan, in-depth stories about California state politics on a nonprofit budget – and it needed a tech stack to fuel that vision. The site is shifting this week to use a suite of publisher tools bundled together by The News Project. Founded last year, The News Project wants to serve the wave of […]

The IAB Tech Lab on Thursday released a new standardization system for third-party audience data and an auditing and credentialing program for data sellers. The effort to bring transparency to third-party data segments has “had a few lives” within the IAB, said Dennis Buchheim, the Tech Lab’s general manager. The longtime problem is that when […]

If you own a smart TV, chances are its integrated automated content recognition (ACR) technology tracks everything you watch. What started out as a niche technology tracking viewership in high-end smart TVs has spread to the masses: Forty-seven percent of the United States’ 120 million homes own smart TVs, up from 39% a year ago, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Global Transparency Facebook started rolling out transparency tools for political ads in 2018 – now it’s pushing those tools out globally. These tools include an authorization process, where Facebook confirms a political advertiser’s identity, and the party responsible for the ad will appear on […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Snap, Mon Ami Snap is starting to tone down its too-cool-for-school vibe. The company has been known to operate with a certain level of hauteur in relation to advertisers, agencies and the press. But Snap is making a concerted effort to be less secretive […]

At Disney, no one messes with the Mouse. The brand is extremely protective of its reputation among consumers, one largely built on trust. At the same time, Disney is a data-driven publisher with an epic amount of O&O. There’s ABC, ESPN, Fox, Hulu, movies, hotel resorts, cruises, theme parks and everything else that formed the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Watch And Learn Facebook really wants those TV ad dollars – but it’s going to take more than simply showing up at the upfronts. The first thing Facebook needs to do is prove that its video service, Watch, is a hit with audiences. Facebook […]

Two years ago, Disney’s presence at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity focused on social inventory within the Disney Digital Network. This year, Disney has a lot more to pitch, with its refined data strategy, audiences available across all of its different properties, theme parks included, the acquisitions of Fox assets like National Geographic […]

The destructive dreck on social platforms has brought the advertising industry to a breaking point. And so top brands, media agencies, industry associations and the platforms themselves are banding together to form the Global Alliance For Responsible Media. The organization, which launched Tuesday, will focus on making media sustainable and a force for good in […]