Publishers

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 […]

As more money flows programmatically, Prisa Group and other publishers are changing their sales organizations and ad products to focus on serving data-driven buyers. Prisa Group owns or represents media brands in 22 Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries. Its properties, including El País and the sports site AS, reach 25 million unique users. It also serves […]

Mitú, a digital media company for young Latinos, started out as a multichannel network on YouTube and has since expanded onto Facebook and OTT devices. On Tuesday, the four-year-old publisher will add Snapchat Discover to the mix. “Snapchat recognized a significant portion of their audience, based on demo, is Latino, and wanted to find the […]

Two years ago, Media.net started helping publishers move their header bidding partners to a speedier server-to-server configuration, which has since attracted publishers like The Atlantic, Forbes, The New York Times and WebMD. Media.net had largely not marketed itself, said COO Namit Merchant. But following a $900 million acquisition this past summer by a Chinese consortium, […]

Twenty-First Century Fox revealed on Friday a preliminary bid to buy out the rest of British pay TV provider and telco Sky for $13.51 per share for a total of about $14.1 billion. Fox already owns a 39.1% stake in the company. In 2010, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. attempted to take over Sky (called British […]

“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. Two years ago, I saw the future of programmatic not as a budget channel, but rather a conduit through which all media changed […]

Purch, which first implemented header bidding three years ago, has moved on. The portfolio of product review and tech sites turned off most of its header bidders last month and moved to server-to-server integrations with the same partners. Industrywide, server-to-server is considered a logical next step after header bidding. Amazon is moving server-to-server, and Google’s […]

While private marketplaces (PMPs) and preferred deals are predicted to outpace open exchange buys by 2018, their rate of adoption has been inconsistent – especially when it comes to video advertising. Some ad buyers have avoided PMPs out of concerns over reach, leaving some publishers twisting in the wind to accurately forecast their fill rate. […]

Data management platform (DMP) Lotame has developed a campaign planning and measurement tool designed for linear TV broadcasters. Local broadcast consortium Pearl TV, which represents more than 200 local broadcast TV stations and network groups including Hearst, Cox Media and E.W. Scripps, is the first to test-drive it. While many advertisers want to buy across […]

Since launching “programmatic guaranteed” at the 2015 DoubleClick Leadership summit, Google says demand for programmatic execution of direct deals has skyrocketed. In the last 10 months alone it has quadrupled the number of video impressions served on a programmatic guaranteed basis. More recently, it opened this mode of buying to a wider set of customers, […]