Publishers

AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Dotdash is among the oldest continuously operating digital publishers. In its previous incarnation as About.com, the company employed legions of “experts” on topics as varied as saving for retirement, diabetes and the Middle East. Later, under the ownership of IAC, it rebranded as Dotdash and structured […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Who To Antitrust? There’s mounting pressure on the Department of Justice to investigate alleged antitrust violations by Comcast-NBCU. The American Cable Association (ACA) published a letter to Makan Delrahim, the DOJ antitrust chief, that said Comcast poses “a much greater threat to competition” than […]

For Julie DeTraglia, what started as an after-school habit watching re-runs of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Rhoda,” “All in the Family” and “The Carol Burnett Show” turned into a career in network and streaming TV. “It didn’t take long for me to understand that Hulu is the perfect place for me to have landed,” […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is by Mark Cullinane, senior vice president and general manager of digital at Publishers Clearing House. Advertisers know that engagement metrics matter most when establishing ROI on digital ad spend. But engagement metrics themselves are still relatively nascent. Publishers have started to […]

The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) released a study on Thursday that found an 84% drop in fraud compared to the industry average when all members in the supply chain are vigilant, badged and on the level. TAG analyzed 75 billion display and video impressions across desktop, mobile web and in-app channels to look for sophisticated […]

Of the $70 billion in national TV ad spend, Roku’s Q3 cut was $100 million. But the over-the-top (OTT) platform and device manufacturer is gunning for more, using its relatively new measurement program to convince advertisers to divert linear spend to OTT. Roku touted that $100 million milestone on Wednesday, noting that its platform business, […]

Two years ago, the Timehop app – which aggregates and resurfaces old social media photos – was running on the remaining fumes of its VC cash, enough to stay afloat for just three months. It needed revenue, and, although it had 20 million monthly active users, its inventory was severely undervalued. “We had no real […]

A dozen local news publishers participating in Facebook’s Local News Subscription Accelerator, including The Denver Post and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, flew to New York, Austin and San Francisco this spring for a 12-week program to learn the intricacies of running a digital subscription business. Facebook has had strained relationships with publishers, which hit a […]

As more people use smart speakers, publishers are establishing their own voice. News organization Al Jazeera is exploring how to position its brand on voice, which it believes will be the gateway to an internet-of-things-driven world, said Michael Weaver, SVP of business development and growth at Al Jazeera Network. “Voice assistants are the first entry […]

The TV ad buying ecosystem is getting even messier, according to GroupM’s second-annual “State of Video” report, released Thursday. Some of the report’s revelations are familiar: Linear TV ratings are still dropping and, as eMarketer predicted in September, Amazon is a “likely third force” in the struggle for ad spend between Facebook and Google. GroupM […]

Consumers already overwhelmed by the number of streaming services are about to get walloped by a wave of newcomers. And expect that wave to bring an ocean of ads designed to drive tune-in. This year, broadcast giants Fox and Sinclair are expected to launch their streaming services, the latter of which is named Stirr. In […]

Cheddar bought Rate My Professors from Viacom on Thursday, and Cheddar CEO Jon Steinberg isn’t just thinking about access to the college-aged audience. He liked that Rate My Professors helps students navigate college course selection. “We need to be in the direct-to-consumer business, where users are doing something other than consuming media. I wanted us […]

Political advertising has been good to Comcast. Comcast’s cable advertising revenue increased 15.2% to $684 million in Q3, but that bump would have been just 0.6% without political advertising, the company disclosed Thursday. Meanwhile ad revenue at media division NBCUniversal was up (4.2% for its cable networks, 9.2% for broadcast). The increase was attributed to […]

Despite AT&T missing its projected Q3 earnings, the telecom giant’s new data-driven ad unit Xandr had “strong growth,” executives told investors Wednesday. Xandr’s ad revenue grew 34% YOY, fueled by AT&T’s acquisition of AppNexus. Excluding AppNexus, revenue was still up 22%. Xandr’s Q3 revenues were $445 million, and its operating margin was 74.8%. In Q3 2017, […]

If Amazon-owned Twitch reaches its goal this year of – according to Bloomberg – doubling its ad sales revenue to $1 billion, it has quite a lot to offer but a lot it must still do. On the plus side, Twitch, the popular video streaming platform that boasts more than 15 million daily active users, […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Matt Harada, general manager of data at Sovrn. Publishers without an updated Ads.txt file are missing out on revenue and stand to lose more in the near future. Despite strong initial adoption of Ads.txt […]

Name a trend in digital media, and Bloomberg’s tried it in the past year: digital subscriptions, live events, agency-like strategic advisory services, podcasts, social media-distributed video and, of course, OTT. “The single most important thing for us is finding the right balance of revenue streams for our organization and thinking about maximizing and future-proofing where […]

FreeWheel released the next generation of its ad exchange on Tuesday. The Comcast-owned ad server built off its legacy ad exchange, enhanced by technology from its acquisition of StickyAds in 2016, for its updated ad product suite, DRIVE. The new exchange is designed to let marketers more easily buy over-the-top (OTT), set-top box video on […]

One year after first launching programmatic ads, BuzzFeed is doubling down with BuzzFeed Exchange, a formal expansion of its programmatic product offerings. BuzzFeed’s inventory has grown to 3 billion impressions a month, up from the  1 billion impressions a month it offered when it debuted programmatic ads a year ago. The BuzzFeed Exchange aims to […]

Roku wants to save the day for advertisers on over-the-top (OTT) video. The streaming platform launched a program Tuesday to help advertisers and publishers better understand the impact of their OTT campaigns on Roku. Roku’s Measurement Partner Program is made up of 11 partners, including Nielsen, comScore, Research Now, Nielsen Catalina Solutions, Acxiom, Experian, Oracle […]

Because WordPress hosts numerous blogs and websites – it claims to power 31% of the internet – it has a tough time scaling its ability to police brand safety. While brands can often find their audiences on WordPress domains, they can also find themselves next to unsavory content. So WordPress, which runs an exchange called […]

Why is the industry still talking about linear vs. digital when to consumers, it’s all just content? That’s the question Donna Speciale, president of ad sales at Turner, is asking to galvanize long-awaited changes to how network TV transacts media. “At some point, we’re not going to say linear or digital,” she told AdExchanger. “We’ll […]

Content providers are reducing their ad loads to accommodate viewers’ changing preferences, consumption patterns and attention spans. But what about rethinking the commercial break model so it doesn’t disrupt a good “Handmaid’s Tale” binge? Is a high-quality ad experience possible without a traditional ad break? Jeremy Helfand, Hulu’s new VP and head of advertising platforms, […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Rachel Parkin, senior vice president of strategy and sales at CafeMedia. It’s been a year, give or take, since the dominoes started to fall in the direction of first-price auctions. Our industry wasn’t fully […]

Snap Fizzle? This year, eMarketer estimates Snapchat will bring in $662.1 million in US ad revenue, a significant drop from the $1.03 billion it had projected last March. “We now expect that Snap will not break $1 billion in US ad revenue until 2020,” according to the revised figures. The downgrade is mainly due to […]

The Plateau Problem Digital publisher Vox is set to miss its goal of $200 million in revenue this year by more than 15%, though it should still see double-digit growth over last year’s take of about $160 million, The Wall Street Journal reports. The issue came up at a board meeting last week amid investor […]

Cold Shower For Market Power Big tech, are your ears burning? On Friday, the Federal Trade Commission held the second in an ongoing series of hearings digging into competition and consumer protection issues. The FTC is trying to update its enforcement and policy agenda in the face of fast-paced technological change. “Technology is no longer […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Alessandro De Zanche, an independent audience strategy consultant. A few days ago, I read an interesting exchange on Twitter. A well-respected newspaper editor-in-chief advocated for digital news being free, like the newspaper he had, […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Phil Schraeder, president and chief operating officer at GumGum. The question of who exactly bears the responsibility for ensuring brand safety has typically been a gray area, with no one […]

As of Monday, all advertisers on Facebook will be able to see a full list of contextual placements where their ads might appear before a campaign starts and where they actually ran after a campaign ends. Facebook has been testing this capability for more than a year. As of last autumn, advertisers were already able […]