In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook’s VP of global marketing solutions, Carolyn Everson, acknowledged that some marketers are “feeling uneasy” about viewability, online ad metrics and brand safety. She outlined updates meant to address that discomfort. First, Facebook intends to give advertisers more control over where their ads are running by tightening guidelines on the […]
Slideshows have been hurt by growing demand for viewable inventory, as readers rarely scroll down and often click to the next slide before ads load. Topix, which buys traffic to slideshows that rack up tons of page views, was affected by this shift. Four months ago, the site’s viewability hovered around 40%, so programmatic buyers […]
Spanish-language broadcaster Univision hopes to offset declines in local TV ad revenue by doubling down on its digital ad business. It was an early adapter of Facebook Watch, Snapchat Discover and Snapchat Live Stories to reach its audience of millennial Hispanics, but Univision is emphasizing multiplatform campaigns to boost digital revenue. (Univision’s digital ad revenue […]
Taste of Home amassed almost 6 million followers on its Facebook pages, where readers actively commented and shared posts – without ever hiring anyone to run audience development. That raw engagement attracted Kari Hodes to join in January as Trusted Media Brands’ (which owns Taste of Home) VP of digital content and audience development. Hodes […]
The publication that shunned banner ads reversed course last week when BuzzFeed added programmatic ads. The decision came down to two factors: increased advertiser demand for programmatic and a better user experience, said Ken Blom, BuzzFeed’s VP of branded distribution, who leads the 30-person team that will handle the programmatic logistics. “We don’t want to […]
AppNexus and Index Exchange have the broadest adoption of their adapters and wrappers, according to the first-ever Header Bidding Index – a report from ServerBid, an Adzerk spinoff that builds wrappers for the demand side. Seventy percent of the top 1,000 publishers running programmatic advertising use header bidding, according to the report, which ServerBid created […]
Although Roku’s device sales make up 59% of its revenue, the growth of the segment is declining as Google, Amazon, Apple and other competitors push for more market share. However, its platform business, which consists of ads and subscription revenue, has expanded rapidly and now represents 41% of Roku’s total revenue. Advertising accounted for 67% […]
“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. Supply-path optimization (SPO), or, as I like to call it, supply pathing, might not sound like the sexiest topic, but is suddenly the […]
In its short, two-year lifespan, FuboTV, a streaming video service specializing in live sports content, has mostly monetized through paid subscriptions. But after raising a $55 million Series C round in June – and pushing to grow subscribers for its new skinny bundle, Fubo Premier – it’s turned its attention to its tech stack. FuboTV […]
Engaged readers make for loyal subscribers. The New York Times’ mobile app, which the publisher once feared would cannibalize its desktop subscriber rate, has proven to be the watering hole where many of the Times’ young, engaged readers hang out. Readers within the app rank among the most loyal and committed, in terms of the […]
While Google claimed advertisers are returning to YouTube, new data from Standard Media Index reveals advertisers really did tighten their purse strings after the video platform’s brand safety scare. YouTube ad spend declined about 26% YoY in Q2, while ad spend spread across digital video platforms such as Hulu or network-owned video services, in comparison, […]
If a new ad tech partner generates $50,000 in revenue for a publisher, is it safe to assume that gross revenue will increase by the same amount? Publishers that unify their analytics and rigorously test those partners increasingly are finding that the answer is no. “There is no such thing as purely incremental revenue,” said […]
Every vendor in the supply chain takes its cut before a CPM goes to work, and that includes a fee for brand safety protection. It’s a small price to pay, said John Montgomery, global EVP of brand safety at GroupM, running somewhere between two and 10 cents per thousand impressions for brand safety protection when […]
Publishers paying to promote content on social platforms need to determine the return on their ad spend, just like marketers. The sites Tickld, Clipd and Knowable, part of the “Pulse” division at publishing company Gateway Blend, rely on social platforms to distribute content. Gateway Blend used to optimize the ad campaigns for Pulse content with […]
When CEO Alicia Navarro started Skimlinks 10 years ago, affiliate marketing was a transactional game. Drive the last click before a sale, scoop up the credit. But that scenario didn’t reflect that content producers tend to bring value higher up the funnel. “Affiliate is very good at rewarding and incentivizing last-click behavior,” she said. “But […]
Until recently, “programmatic” meant “remnant” at Motorsport Network, a digital media and broadcast company geared toward motorsport enthusiasts. “One of the main concerns our salespeople had was that, when inventory becomes available to buy programmatically, it immediately has the stigma that it’s remnant or somehow lower in quality,” said Mark Fragoulias, global director of ad […]
Brands want to spend more on native, and plista, the native arm of WPP’s Xaxis, is hoping to oblige through a partnership with dynamic creative optimization platform Jivox. After several months of testing, the duo rolled out a solution on Tuesday to help plista and GroupM clients create and buy native ads programmatically and personalize […]
Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. Condé Nast’s Evan Adlman will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming PROGRAMMATIC I/O New York conference on October 25–26 on a panel titled “Data Accuracy And The DMP.” Condé Nast has sold programmatically for years. It was the first publisher to open a private marketplace, circa 2010. Over the last two […]
Facebook Watch, the social giant’s video hub that went live for select users on Wednesday, already has a roster of digital video launch partners – like Time Inc., Hearst, Brit & Co., Tastemade, Quartz and McClatchy. But Facebook also wants to broker content deals with the likes of big TV companies like Univision, Major League […]
Condé Nast’s Evan Adlman will speak at AdExchanger’s upcoming PROGRAMMATIC I/O New York conference on October 25-26 on a panel titled “Data Accuracy And The DMP.” Until recently, buyers who wanted to access Condé Nast’s ad inventory programmatically struggled to find enough impressions to buy. “The perception when I joined was that there wasn’t much scale there, and it […]
IBM-owned pub The Weather Co. is working to tap into people-based marketing budgets that would normally go to Facebook or Google by using LiveRamp’s IdentityLink product. Marketers and publishers alike onboard their data to LiveRamp’s huge online identity graph to kick off the process. Because LiveRamp can identify many more users than a marketer or […]
“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jarrod Dicker, vice president of commercial product and innovation at The Washington Post. When balancing both proactive and reactive strategies, it’s a continuous battle for publishers to decide when to push and when to […]
As NBCUniversal’s portfolio has evolved, so has its sales pitch to brand marketers. When NBCU merged its linear and digital sales teams in 2015 and combined all its content groups, its client partnerships team assumed a greater role within its sales organization. That team, led by client partnerships EVP Ali Tarrant, became the broadcaster’s conduit […]
As branded content becomes a bigger part of media budgets, marketers need to show how content is driving results for their brands. They want to prove that content can create not just awareness, but also purchase consideration and sales. To help marketers achieve those objectives, Refinery29 rolled out a product Monday dubbed Converge to connect […]
The New York Post has a love-hate relationship with pre-roll. While pre-roll typically commands high CPMs when sold directly, too often it’s hard to monetize because it’s either in short supply or locked up in private marketplaces. Sometimes the supply issue is technical. The New York Post recently found it had missed half of its […]
Because 30-50% of direct campaigns on Business Insider transact on a viewable CPM, getting those campaigns to deliver the contracted amount without wasting inventory helps the publisher’s bottom line. Making sure campaigns deliver within those stringent requirements – including 100% viewability – is one of the jobs of Marc Boswell, SVP of revenue operations and […]
OTT is a catch-22 for advertisers. While it reaches the cord cutters traditional TV advertisers want to target, that audience is still difficult to track in an OTT environment. Although the channel is capturing more attention (and dollars) from the traditional TV camp, digital buyers say connected TV needs to address the issue of identity […]
Granite Media, which is launching its first site, Work and Money, this week, wants to prove that a publication can run profitably with 100% programmatic ads and still turn out quality content. “There are very few digital only, programmatic-only companies that are actually profitable,” said Granite Media CEO Danny Khatib. “That’s the problem we are […]
Story updated at 1:40 p.m. Rubicon Project has acquired nToggle, a startup that builds infrastructure to streamline bid requests, for $38.5 million, the companies revealed Monday. NToggle’s technology uses machine learning to weed out impressions a DSP is better off not bidding on through a process known as “traffic shaping.” This capability is increasingly important […]
While broadcaster ProSieben owns about a 30% share of the German TV market, it’s looking to expand its influence in new channels – using its investment arm, SevenVentures, to scout startups. “We look to invest into promising startups on the B2C side of the business, which is different than the investment we make into our […]
Rather than relying on machine learning, SQREEM uses a mathematical AI model to track how systems change over time and predict audience behavior.
Given how much the market has changed since the Google trial began, and the wiggle room in the ruling itself, publishers aren’t expecting much relief from the court’s behavioral remedies.
Indie agency KWG says sell-side curation can target more high-performing inventory with better match rates and lower data fees than buy-side curation.
Infillion checked in with its latest acquisition on Friday: Foursquare. Apparently, if there’s a strategically interesting or distressed ad tech asset on the market, Infillion will find it.
A week ago, HBO MAX had its verified Reddit account overrun by a hacker group, which eluded notice for two days while it ran 108 different ad permutations targeting an unknown number of Redditors.
Adapting other channels’ strategies might be what gaming platforms need to do to get advertisers comfortable spending more. Leaning into gaming’s differentiators will come later, after bigger budgets arrive.
