Publishers

Machine Zone’s (MZ) experiment with homegrown ad tech is over. The gaming company shuttered Cognant, an internal demand-side platform created in 2016 to help MZ’s media buying team plan, create, buy, optimize and measure marketing campaigns. MZ laid off the entire Cognant team in June, as well as around half of its in-house media buyers, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Zuck Abides Readers might be forgiven for thinking this has been a brutal year for Facebook, given the long string of scandals and investigations the company has faced. But in some important ways, Facebook is humming along as smoothly as ever, according to […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Outlook Hazy The fate of Hulu depends on the outcome of Comcast’s and Disney’s bidding war for 21st Century Fox. Whoever wins will own a majority stake in Hulu, and both companies have very different visions for the platform’s future. Comcast wants to invest […]

Header bidding-like tech is starting to pick up steam on mobile, but it’s still mostly SDK-based, which brings added latency along with the revenue bump. On Thursday, mobile monetization platform PubNative released a hybrid server-side/client-side header bidding tool to help publishers bring in more dough without messing up the UX. Dubbed HyBid, the solution allows […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Greg Smith, an independent advertising technology consultant. Spring has sprung, and now we enter the dog days of summer. One new advertising “flower” that is poised to grow, even among the walled gardens, is […]

Roku released its Audience Marketplace on Tuesday, designed to let publishers use its first-party data based on how consumers interact with the OTT device. The new marketplace allows publishers to match their audiences with Roku’s. The device’s first-party data also provides behavioral insights – such as what content Roku users search for or how much […]

Toddler-age publication Fatherly was designed for the future of digital media. Fatherly CEO Michael Rothman, a veteran of Thrillist, envisioned a branded content-focused publication, with maybe a sideline of commerce via product licensing (not the JackThreads variety). Programmatic was out as an option. “We are at a place where audience doesn’t grow at a pace […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. An Otter Acquisition Most people are still busy digesting news of AT&T’s $1.6 billion acquisition of AppNexus – but the telco already has another little deal up its sleeve. AT&T is in the process of securing full ownership of Otter Media, the streaming media company […]

Travel publishers often miss the boat on attribution. Although their content is an integral part of the trip-planning process at the top of the funnel, there’s no easy way to credit its role in an eventual hotel booking. Fathom, a site that publishes curated destination guides and first-person travel accounts, knew it was leaving money […]

While many advertisers are shying away from news content due to brand safety concerns, News UK is making the case that buying ads alongside emotionally charged content drives stronger results. The publisher of The Sun and The Times loaded its version of News Corp.’s News IQ platform with data about readers’ opinions, emotions and preferences. […]

Instagram dropped its answer to YouTube on Wednesday, and the timing couldn’t be riper. Ad spending across the top 70 YouTube channels is essentially flat, with only a 0.2% increase this year, according to ad sales intelligence business MediaRadar. Why? Marketers are increasingly worried about their brand reps on YouTube, said MediaRadar CEO and co-founder […]

CafeMedia is selling its entire publishing portfolio to RockYou, choosing to place its bets on AdThrive, the ad management firm it acquired two years ago. The AdThrive business is profitable but the sites being sold by CafeMedia – CafeMom, MamasLatinas, Revelist and Baby Name Wizard – were “break-even,” according to CafeMedia CEO Michael Sanchez. “It’s […]

In Bruce Falck’s office, there’s a piece of paper tacked to the wall with a list of important reminders: GDPR, MRC, transparency, measurement. But rather than focusing on “external factors,” the GM of Twitter’s revenue product and his growing team are “getting back to basics.” Twitter has spent the last two years striking content partnerships, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. DSPayday? AT&T is in talks to acquire AppNexus and the two companies are close to finalizing the deal, reports Cheddar. AppNexus brass are reportedly unwilling to sell for less than $2 billion. That sounds like an awful lot, but there are factors working in […]

Ad servers’ primary goal is to deliver direct-sold campaigns in full, so a publisher earns all revenue promised by the advertiser. But ad servers are dumb. They can deliver direct-sold campaigns too quickly, leaving an advertiser without active ads toward the end of the month. Or to ensure that direct campaigns deliver in full, they […]

The bid has dropped. Comcast on Wednesday again attempted to outmaneuver Mickey and acquire most of 21st Century Fox’s assets with a $65 billion cash offer, putting Disney’s deal in jeopardy. Disney offered Fox a $52.4 billion all-stock deal in December. Comcast wants to disrupt the deal and follow in AT&T’s footsteps: a content distributor […]

Reddit is hoping advertisers upvote its latest ad offering: outstream video. The ad unit is being made available to managed partners on Tuesday, and all advertisers will get a crack through self-serve within the next few months – but programmatic is still a long way off. Although programmatic is on Reddit’s road map, “we’re still in […]

USA Today Sports Media Group acquired Golfweek 20 months ago because of its great content and readership of obsessive golf fans. After working with Golfweek on advertising and content partnerships, the Gannett-owned group saw how much more it could do with Golfweek if it owned the property. “We thought we could run it much more […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The House Always Wins As YouTube keeps dialing up brand safety protections, creators in marginal or disreputable categories are feeling the brunt. A relatively small but active group of creators who stream from inside casinos (because people like to watch others gambling) have found […]

Ads.txt is headed to the app ecosystem. What form will it take? That’s still shaking out. The IAB Tech Lab released guidance on Wednesday with several proposals for how to implement Ads.txt within an app environment. Ads.txt is the Tech Lab’s initiative to reduce inventory spoofing and help advertisers distinguish legit supply sources from the […]

Facebook is hopping into in-app header bidding. Starting Wednesday, publishers can include Audience Network inventory in their in-app unified auctions. All formats will be available, including display, native and video. Facebook joins a long list of other platforms that have gotten jiggy with in-app header bidding in recent months, including Google’s AdMob, Oath, MoPub and […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Yaser Bishr, executive vice president of digital at Al Jazeera Media Network. Facebook’s days as a major disseminator of hard news are coming to a close. And while that puts the traffic of many […]

Video delivered over the internet to a smart television or connected TV could have a brand safety problem. We’re talking specifically about user-generated digital video streaming to a big screen and the niche OTT channels and streaming services that seem be springing up on a near-weekly basis. That type of video shouldn’t be confused with […]

When the sports news startup Minute Media was founded seven years ago, Bleacher Report, Huffington Post and other publishers already had demonstrated user-generated content and social traffic growth strategies before ditching the model for more traditional newsrooms. Minute Media wants to prove a new media company can stick with its contributors and generate returns by […]

Concert, the ad marketplace run by Vox Media and NBCUniversal, added three more large publishers to its network Thursday, increasing Concert’s reach from 80% to 90% of all internet users. PopSugar, Rolling Stone and New York Media were selected to create a strong offering around entertainment and female-focused content, according to Ryan Pauley, head of […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jay Friedman, COO at Goodway Group. In the past two weeks, I’ve been to two supply-side platform (SSP) summits and spoken in depth to more than a dozen publishers. I’ve learned a lot. In short, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Cleaning The Nest Twitter debuted a set of political advertising policies it will have in place for the 2018 US midterm elections. Read the blog post. Political advertisers will have to verify their identities and that they are based in the US, either by […]

Header bidding-enabled ad spend is on the upswing thanks to mobile. And though it’s still early days for in-app header bidding adoption, that train’s just about ready to leave the station. The number of mobile impressions transacted through unified auction technology increased more than 110% year over year in the first quarter of 2018, according […]

After purchasing programmatic audio platform AdsWizz in March, Pandora has become a force in the market. In February, Pandora began beta testing a private marketplace for video and audio. It also offers display inventory on the open exchange. As it jumps into programmatic, it’s training and staffing its 300-plus sales employees to become experts across […]

Publishers like to pretend that consumers can’t live without content – but if 95% of media brands disappeared tomorrow, no one would care, said Rafat Ali, CEO and founder of travel publisher Skift, at LUMA’s Digital Media Summit in New York City on Tuesday. Despite the value media people ascribe to the importance of what they […]