Publishers

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 […]

The in-app header bidding space is gathering momentum – but not fast enough for AppLovin. The mobile ad network has acquired MAX, a startup that came out of beta just over four months ago with a solution that helps app publishers get a fair shake on the open exchange, the company announced Wednesday. “There are […]

When the founder of Diapers.com launched a media startup led by parenting brands Scary Mommy and The Dad, he brought his customer-focused metrics with him: customer acquisition cost (CAC) and lifetime value (LTV). When translated to media, Some Spider Studios CEO Vinit Bharara analyzes what content draws readers most efficiently (the media version of CAC) […]

The Big Story is a breezy new podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts. Is your suitcase packed for your Labor Day getaway? Don’t forget your 50 SPF zinc oxide sunscreen. And did you download enough apps to […]

Publishers who use a consent management platform (CMP) saw CPMs rise 9% and fill rates go up 5% post-GDPR, according to analysis of publishers using Mediavine, which manages ads for thousands of sites. Meanwhile, publishers who didn’t use a CMP for their European Union traffic saw CPMs dive precipitously. With no targeted ads, CPMs fell […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Searching For A Problem The Trump administration is “taking a look at” Google’s alleged practice of diminishing conservative news in search results after the president went on a Twitter tirade after seeing anecdotal reports from conservative media, according to The Washington Post. It would […]

In Netflix’s original film “Like Father,” the cruise line Royal Caribbean literally sets the stage for the movie – the brand is actually part of the story. While this sort of product placement isn’t new, it’s coming at a time when content providers are trying to decrease their ad loads and experimenting with new ways […]

Few Hollywood icons have had a career as illustrious as Mickey Mouse, who made his silver screen debut in “Steamboat Willie” back in 1928. Now, his bosses at Disney-ABC have become more tech-savvy, reorganizing the company’s ad sales strategy to make magic in advanced TV advertising. About a year ago, Disney-ABC unified its ad sales […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Leviathan Stirs Netflix is testing promo ads between episodes with some European users. Netflix subscribers in the UK started seeing unskippable units suggesting other shows they might like, which bubbled up on Reddit and were first reported by Cord Cutters News. Netflix already runs […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is by Paul Bannister, co-founder and executive vice president at CafeMedia. It’s unquestionable that brands need to use brand safety platforms to ensure their ads run in safe and appropriate environments. While these platforms were developed with positive intent, they also created […]

Just a few years ago, Roku focused on getting devices into as many households as possible. But at a certain point, Roku realized it had to do more to innovate and stay relevant in the over-the-top (OTT) battleground for ad dollars. Since then Roku has become an advertising titan. In its Q2 earnings call last […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Retired, But Not Resting Justice Department appeal or not, AT&T is full steam ahead with its advertising platform plans. AT&T’s advertising and analytics group, run by Brian Lesser, officially closed its acquisition of AppNexus on Wednesday. Brian O’Kelley, co-founder and CEO of AppNexus, will […]