Publishers

Turner’s revenue analytics team wasn’t always quickly able to answer questions like whether the presidential inauguration affected advertising revenue. The publisher couldn’t collate data more than weekly or monthly because it worked with more than a dozen programmatic partners, each with their own user interfaces, which supplied ads across Turner’s multiple sites – from CNN […]

News Corp. is shifting allegiance from Rubicon Project to AppNexus. News Corp. offloaded its entire 8% investment in Rubicon Project, or 3.9 million shares, according to an SEC filing on Friday. Last September, News Corp. invested $10 million in AppNexus. It also signed a master services agreement, enabling its publications to switch over to AppNexus […]

Since iCrossing entered the market as a search agency in 1998, digital spend has expanded to social, display and mobile, all of which are table stakes. As a result, iCrossing expanded into a full-service agency, eventually getting acquired by Hearst in 2010. Since then, it’s snagged AOR accounts for clients like Bayer, Church and Dwight and […]

Veteran Tremor Video CEO Bill Day has resigned, effective immediately, and will serve as a special adviser to the company through June. Paul Caine, the non-executive board chairman for Tremor since 2014 and former Bloomberg Media CRO, will step in as interim CEO and lead the search for a permanent replacement, the company said Thursday. […]

Traditional magazine companies believe they have weathered the storm of disruption over their business. They’re now ready to look ahead and use their subscription data to drive results for advertisers. “I think the businesses that got disrupted first are in a good position,” David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, said Wednesday during a panel at […]

If programmatic advertising has reduced readers to commodities, then Topix wants to be the ultimate trader. The site focuses on slideshows, the best way to get readers to cycle through multiple page views and earn more revenue per user. Topix’s most successful slideshow in 2016 earned $400,000. But getting that $400,000 required buying about $200,000 […]

Last year, the New York Daily News created a new advertising product to give clients a simple way to tap into the benefits of its data management platform (DMP). When clients opt in to the product, dubbed AdLift, the Daily News uses insights from the DMP to target and optimize their campaigns. Six months after […]

The New York Times saw its highest subscriber increase since 2011, the year the publication introduced digital subscriptions, following the November presidential election. It added 296,000 digital subscribers in the fourth quarter, up 19% from the previous quarter and a 45.9% increase year over year. CEO Mark Thompson said digital subscriptions had accelerated even prior […]

“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. Nearly two years after header bidding exploded onto the programmatic scene, we are seeing a race to embrace the next big thing: server-side […]

Year-old video news startup Cheddar is shaking up the current media model in two ways. On the content side, Cheddar wants to be the CNBC for millennials, quickly offering business news about the companies they care about. On the business side, Cheddar doesn’t see advertising as a main revenue driver. Instead, it’s struck deals with […]

Brooklyn-based health and wellness publisher Mindbodygreen is bringing on BuzzFeed exec Tessa Gould as COO to put more juice behind the content and commerce model. Gould, who started Monday, is the former head of commerce and VP of ad innovation at BuzzFeed, where she helped spur around $75 million in ecommerce transactions through BuzzFeed content […]

Chinese advertisers want viewability standards – but the country’s unique media landscape offers unusual challenges. “There is definitely a growing concern among advertisers here about wasted media budget and the transparency of their media buying,” said Martin Zhang, CEO and founder of Shanghai-based verification firm Adbug. Zhang is also chair of a Mobile Marketing Association China […]

IPG Mediabrands’ investment arm, Magna, revealed on Wednesday it is doubling its investment in over-the-top (OTT) TV provider Roku. It declined to name specifics but noted the deal has multiple implications for inventory rates and pricing, third-party research and data. Magna is forming a private deal with Roku to allow more precise targeting between the agency’s […]

Tubi TV knows that not everyone wants to pay for premium content. “We see a strong desire among viewers who want free content, whether they’re viewers in search of value or subscription viewers who can’t find the content they want on their SVOD [subscription video on demand] service,” said Thomas Ahn Hicks, co-founder and head […]

Any publisher who is not a big platform company is on the express train to becoming a niche ads business, predicts Meredith Kopit Levien, EVP and CRO of The New York Times. “Up until now, we’ve been a niche consumer business with a $1 billion-plus newspaper ad business,” Kopit Levien said, speaking Thursday at AdExchanger’s […]

  TV buying is becoming more data-driven, even on the linear side. But buyers and sellers are questioning whether audience targeting works on the medium. “’Should TV be bought on an audience basis?’ is still an outstanding question,” Donna Speciale, president of ad sales at Turner, said Wednesday at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference in New […]

Fake news flourishes with easy access to programmatic revenue. Real news doesn’t. The online pub Slate – in the real news category – has been diversifying its revenue stream through subscriptions since 2014. But the 2016 US presidential election dramatically accelerated its membership growth – up 50% from 18,000 in November to 27,000 now. This […]

Facebook is trying to reset its relationship status with publishers from frenemy to friend. “That is an area we can do better in,” acknowledged Brian Boland, Facebook’s VP of publisher solutions. As for exactly how Facebook will build stronger ties with publishers, Boland only said, “We’re listening to our partners.” On Wednesday, Facebook unveiled its […]

Header bidding, make way: In the next year, more publishers will switch to server-side header bidding. The solution offers clear advantages – while introducing other disadvantages – with which the industry will grapple as publishers update their tech. Like with header bidding, publishers run a pre-auction before the ad server to create a level playing […]

Like its competitors, IBM is acquiring and building a video stack. Instead of focusing on media execution, however, IBM is using Watson and data analytics to improve the relevancy of video content, ads and delivery models. “In ad-supported video, how do you make ultra-targeted ads tailored down to the individual for customer acquisition?” said David Mowrey, […]

Like other digital publishers, Condé Nast wasn’t immune to the challenges of scaling an upstart, owned-and-operated video property in a climate dominated by YouTube and Facebook. In 2015, Condé Nast’s video hub, The Scene, struggled to hit its stride, despite owning a portfolio of popular titles that includes Vogue and Vanity Fair. That’s changed, according to Joy […]

When Bankrate decided to add header bidding late last year, it chose a server-side solution. “When we did our RFI [request for information], it became clear to me that server-to-server is a much better and more enhanced version of header bidding,” said Irene Kwak, VP of revenue operations for Bankrate. The financial publisher plans to […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Paul Bannister, co-founder and executive vice president at CafeMedia. A new year brings the opportunity to start fresh and kick things off the right way. Often, the resolutions we choose are direct reactions to […]

  2016 was the year that header bidding crossed over and became a disruptive force in the ad industry. The wave of publisher adoption spurred tech companies to create header bidding solutions. Vendors that were slow to adopt, like Rubicon Project, saw their stock crash as their rivals scooped up market share in a world […]

A few years ago, when Twitch CRO Jonathan Simpson-Bint would walk into meetings with agencies and advertisers, they’d cock a dubious eyebrow. “That many people engage on Twitch? You’ve got to be kidding.’ That was the reaction,” said Simpson-Bint, who’s been with Twitch since 2011, three years before Amazon acquired the social gaming and live […]

Maureen Bosetti, the chief investment officer for IPG Mediabrands’ Initiative, will discuss dynamics for this year’s upfronts alongside other TV power players at Industry Preview on Jan. 18 in New York City. The 2016 TV upfronts ended with networks posting double-digit CPM increases, but will that momentum carry into 2017? Two key factors could help buyers wield […]

As part of The Weather Company’s shift to a vertical-based sales organization, it has hired Sarah Ripmaster as VP of automotive sales. Ripmaster, who has a decade of experience working with auto manufacturers, will help advertisers use The Weather Company’s location data, weather data and the Watson Ad platform in their ad campaigns. Ripmaster worked […]

One of Piera Gelardi’s personal mottos: “Friction creates sparks.” As executive creative director and co-founder of Refinery29, Gelardi is constantly working to balance quality with quantity and achieve scale while staying true to Refinery29’s roots as a “mission-driven publisher for millennial women.” “There was a point when I was scared to grow because I thought […]

Data-driven editorial just added a new weapon to its arsenal: a Slackbot. Clique Media Group (CMG), which owns flagship style site WhoWhatWear as well as MyDomaine, Byrdie and Obsessee, created a Slackbot in November to alert editors when stories over-index the benchmarks set for each author. The editors receive a Slackbot notification with details about […]

Over-the-top (OTT) television is at an inflection point. While it’s a promising way for media owners to capitalize on changing consumer consumption habits – the number of connected TV users totaled 181.8 million viewers in 2016, a 20% year-over-year increase, according to eMarketer – with reward comes risk. OTT’s lucrative CPMs could also attract bad […]