Publishers

Maker Studios, the YouTube multichannel network (MCN) it acquired for more than $500 million in 2014, has been absorbed into Disney’s larger digital portfolio. After months of layoffs at the struggling MCN, Disney revealed at its NewFronts presentation on Tuesday that it would roll Maker’s remaining creators and influencers into the Disney Digital Network, a […]

Twitter’s first-ever NewFronts pitch to advertisers: We’re like TV for millennials. But do people really want to tune in to Twitter to watch long-form live-streaming content? Bloomberg, which announced an expanded live-streaming deal with Twitter on Monday, is betting on the fact that consumers are ready. “When we see millions of people go to Twitter […]

As brands flee the open marketplace, publishers like The New York Times are positioned to scoop up their programmatic spend. The Times’ programmatic strategy has long catered to marketers who value its context. It views programmatic as a way to transact, not a way to secure inventory inexpensively. And more marketers want to use its […]

IAC-owned About.com is losing its web 1.0 moniker and rebranding as Dotdash. Dotdash is the umbrella brand behind About.com’s slew of new vertical sites, which includes properties like personal finance-focused The Balance, as well as the health and fitness site, Verywell. Neil Vogel claimed that the vertical reinvention last year is paying dividends. Verywell, for […]

Welcome to AdExchanger Talks, a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. As global CRO at Bloomberg Media, Keith Grossman oversees a “business within a business” that reaches 62 million users and brings in nine figures of revenue annually. In the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks, Grossman describes his sales strategy for that business-focused audience, and […]

Alphabet beat its earnings forecast in the first quarter, sending the stock up 5% in after-hours trading. Revenue increased 22% year over year to $24.75 billion. The positive earnings report, however, was overshadowed by investor questions about the YouTube brand safety crisis. Since January, brands and agencies have withdrawn spend, leading Google to improve controls […]

Hulu is moving into phase two of its advanced TV strategy almost two years after launching its private exchange. But the market has changed since then, and Hulu has evolved its own ad technology stack in lockstep. For starters, Facebook shuttered the LiveRail supply-side platform (SSP) and ad server last year, so Hulu migrated to Tremor’s video SSP. Rather than entering a drawn-out RFP […]

As header bidding grows, ad exchanges are sending more ad impressions per second and DSPs must evaluate more impressions than ever. The massive uptick in volume, which far outpaces programmatic revenue growth, is straining ad tech infrastructure. With more queries to sift through, it costs more to buy the same ads. And as a result, […]

Facebook may be sidling away from ad tech, but it’s cozying up to marketing automation through a smorgasbord of APIs. At its F8 developer’s conference in San Jose this week, Facebook rolled out the next version of its marketing API suite, which includes new tools to automate creative production and targeting parameters. Those APIs make […]

Scale gets digital publishers noticed by advertisers, but audiences increasingly want content addressing niche interests, not broad ones. Some digital pubs, like Vox Media, build out a portfolio of completely separate brands, while others develop sub-brands, like BuzzFeed’s food-focused Tasty. Mic, which raised $21 million in Series C funding in April to fuel expansion, launched […]

On the heels of Google’s ongoing brand safety headache, MediaMath is trying to add a few safety bumpers to the sharp edges of the digital ad ecosystem. The programmatic buying platform took the wraps off a product on Thursday that aims to help advertisers find addressable audiences on brand-safe sites at scale. MediaMath vets a […]

Publishers are learning to love influencer marketing as a way to grow broader advertising and sponsorship deals. “An advertiser might come with a traditional sponsorship package, and to complement that, they want a programmatic component,” said Rachel Parkin, SVP of strategy and sales at digital media company CafeMedia. CafeMedia owns a network of women’s interest […]

British broadcasting and telecom giant Sky is building for a future where digital and programmatic TV play on the same court. To do so, Sky, amid a $14.1 billion takeover by Twenty-First Century Fox, is investing in new media opportunities and ramping up on ad tech. To boost its presence on Facebook and YouTube, Sky just acquired […]

MDC Partners’ media agency, Assembly, has forged a strategic deal with Fox’s true[X], whose products give consumers options in their video ad breaks. The deal also gives true[X] more access to Assembly’s brand roster, like Hotels.com. Assembly and true[X] extended their partnership after collaborating on engagement-based ads for clients like the anti-tobacco nonprofit Truth. While […]

The Weinstein Co.’s Oscar-nominated tearjerker “Lion” was a big hit in markets where the distributor expected to see more modest results – including Salt Lake City, Boise, Kentucky, Dallas, Houston, Nebraska, Minneapolis and Las Vegas. Native content created by values-oriented publisher FamilyShare and distributed on Facebook improved the box office receipts in those markets. The […]

The Digital Place Based Advertising Association (DPAA), an industry trade group spanning out-of-home media and advertising technology, on Monday released its first programmatic standards for digital out-of-home (DOOH) campaigns. The DPAA hopes these standards, which are like existing openRTB guidelines from the IAB, will facilitate digital out-of-home buys. The DPAA’s standards outline video ad formats […]

There’s a “simultaneous frustration” on the buy and sell sides to move beyond legacy TV currency standards like C3 ratings, said Linda Yaccarino, chairwoman of advertising sales and client partnerships at NBCU, at the 4As Transformation show in Los Angeles on Tuesday. This upfront season, NBCU is asking buyers to rethink the way they approach […]

The Weather Co.’s recently appointed chief revenue officer, Carrie Seifer, will oversee more than media sales in her new role. Responsible for B2B and B2C sales efforts across The Weather Co.’s properties, Seifer will tap Weather’s robust location and weather data sets to help clients streamline business processes like supply chain logistics. Parent company IBM’s […]

Like other platform-focused media companies, Vice produces lots of data. Its sources include an ad server, programmatic ad exchange, data management platform, site analytics, viewability analytics, order-management software, Facebook and YouTube. As the media brand increased its data team from one to three data scientists, Vice knew it needed to collate its sources and automate […]

Roku will offer audience guarantees this upfront season, joining big networks like NBC with similar programs. Several agencies, including Horizon Media and Hill Holliday’s media spinoff, Trilia, are beta testing Roku’s audience guarantees. Roku’s offering is based on the set-top box maker’s existing integration to Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings, which helped buyers determine their waste […]

The “last-look” advantage Google’s ad server gave to Google’s ad exchange so bothered publishers and exchanges that it gave rise to header bidding. As of this week, that advantage is no more, AdExchanger has learned. Google just reworked its auction so it no longer favors itself in the allocation of bids. A support document this […]

Apple’s big iOS update last year created large amounts of new media inventory, which the company is monetizing through a big ad deal with NBCUniversal and direct relationships with publishers. Now the mobile platform giant is opening the gates to outside measurement of its ad impressions, AdExchanger has learned. Through its sales agreement with NBCUniversal, Apple […]

Intuit CMO Lucas Watson wants to give the financial services software company more name recognition among the Googles, Facebooks and Apples of the world. And he’s well positioned to do so, considering he last served as Google’s VP of global brand solutions and innovations before he joined Intuit last July. “As we start to stitch […]

Affiliate marketing is old news, but not for newspapers. Most startup and legacy lifestyle publishers, such as Refinery29 or Condé Nast, and digital-first news companies have had affiliate networks quietly churning out reliable, incremental revenue streams. Now some newspapers, built on crumbling subscription and print advertising pillars, are starting to come around to the idea. […]

Location-based shopping app Retale will now offer advertisers a warranty: foot traffic or your money back – at least in the form of a media makegood. As of Tuesday, Retale will start doling out performance guarantees against its ability to drive in-store traffic within specific time parameters. “We don’t talk to anybody anymore that doesn’t say they […]

As advertisers yank spend from YouTube and Google Display Network due to brand safety concerns, premium publishers see an opportunity. These pubs have long complained that audience-based buying devalues the context they provide – context they claim ensures brand safety. “Marketers are recognizing in a blunt force way the difference between a platform and publisher,” […]

“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. Just as buyers are now grasping how header bidding impacts their programmatic buying approach, publishers have already moved on to the next big thing: server-side […]

By now, Google’s brand safety issue has been covered across a broad spectrum of media outlets, ranging from The Washington Post to Recode to (naturally) AdExchanger. Below we bring you the latest in the fast-moving story. Back Story. In February and March, The Times of London described how advertisers found their brands placed next to […]

Ad-supported brand-unsafe content is on the rise. DoubleVerify, which validates tens of billions of advertiser impressions per month, has blocked 8 million ads from appearing on content pages classified as hate speech – up threefold since January. And according to keyword targeting tech platform Grapeshot, the amount of terrorism-related content it sees flowing through its systems […]

The UK boycott of YouTube and the Google Display Network jumped the pond Wednesday when AT&T, Verizon and Johnson & Johnson joined the ever-growing pile-on of advertisers suspending their ad spend over brand safety concerns. But the issue at the heart of this developing scandal – ads appearing next to extremist and offensive content – […]