Publishers

SheKnows Media now has $22 million extra to play with, as the result of an expanded credit facility, or loan, it closed with Ally Technology Finance on Monday. The company wants more funds to invest in its technology platform Momentum and to use for shopping. CEO Philippe Guelton said SheKnows Media is “getting ready for […]

When Condé Nast created its Food Innovation Group 14 months ago by combining Bon Appétit and Epicurious, the move gave it enough scale to take on AllRecipes and the Food Network. The group recently sensed an opportunity in the market to focus on short food videos designed for mobile and social audiences. It quickly pounced, […]

Health and wellness publisher Greatist raised $4.5 million in Series A funding Tuesday. The five-year-old publisher turned a profit last year for the first time, and it’s seeking more funds to create custom, high-touch programs with Kind, FitBit and other advertisers. CEO Derek Flanzraich wants Greatist to become a top player in the health and […]

Publishers thinking about how to deal with the growing rates of ad-blocking users can start by doing something simple: Just ask them to unblock. Requests to turn off ad blocking resulted in 30-40% of users whitelisting the publisher, according to data shared by GQ (30%), IDG Communications (37% for B2B and 38% for B2C) and […]

What if user-generated content platforms paid their creators? That’s the premise behind Slant News, which is attracting millennial writers by giving them 70% of the advertising revenue they generate. “Slant’s vision is to crowdsource the news,” CEO and publisher Aviram Elad said. “Today, people usually do it on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, […]

Upworthy lives in a “post-page view and post-impression era,” according to founder and chief executive Eli Pariser. While many digital publishers try to rack up enough unique visitors to warrant a spot on a media plan, and advertisers pay on impressions, Upworthy is trying to look not just at reach but also engagement. Since 2014, […]

AudienceXpress, a TV planning and buying platform Comcast acquired last summer via its purchase of parent Visible World, is opening up new programmatic TV tools to several agencies, including Horizon and US International. These tools include a self-serve platform and direct APIs, AudienceXpress’ first major product launch since the Comcast acquisition. The beta will last through the […]

Zynga has made 100% of its direct-sold inventory available for purchase programmatically, courtesy of Rubicon Project’s guaranteed orders capability. Buyers can access all of the premium Zynga ad formats, including “sponsored play” and “gamified units,” exclusively through Rubicon Project, a process that took months to set up. The deal offers important upsides for both Zynga […]

Eighteen months after rethinking its business, Paper Magazine’s traffic has increased 900%. Digital revenue is up 400% over the year before, and for the past six months, inventory has been sold out. The publisher unleashed these changes by prioritizing a platform-agnostic approach over print. It began publishing more frequently, paying closer attention to what readers […]

Advertisers carve out a portion of their multibillion-dollar ad budgets – 10% of what they’re spending locally or 5% of what they’re spending nationally – to fund nonprofits that align with their brand DNA. CBS Corp.’s EcoMedia division – one of the network’s fastest-growing units, according to Paul Polizzotto, who founded EcoMedia in 2001 – […]

When RTB knocks on a publisher’s doorstep, not everyone answers with the same greeting. While some publishers give it a warm embrace, prioritizing that demand or selling exclusively through programmatic channels, others are more cautious or turning it away. Here’s how publishers are tackling the upsides and blocking the downsides of programmatic. 1. Bring in […]

With attention shifting to online, investors have realized that dollars are moving there too, making 2015 a hot year for digital publishers looking for investments or to be acquired. The deals ranged from NBCUniversal’s $200 million investment each in BuzzFeed and Vox, to smaller ones like the $2.5 million PureWow picked up. “The value of […]

2015 is the year that publishers realized the power of platforms to distribute their content. Facebook had been sending traffic their way for some time, but this year, it invited publishers to monetize on the platform through Facebook Instant Articles. Meanwhile, Snapchat launched Discover, with custom-created articles for Snapchatters and the ability to sell on […]

Advertisers, ad tech companies and publishers pay heed: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released an enforcement policy Tuesday that outlines which forms of native advertising it deems acceptable and which it deems deceptive. A key thread in the guidelines is that the user needs to know if content is an ad before she clicks and/or consumes content. […]

Bauer Xcel Media is a digital latecomer and only began devoting attention to its websites three years ago, but the publisher of J-14, Life & Style and InTouch is operating like a young digital pure-play. Completely separate from its parent organization, which houses the print operation, Bauer Xcel sells 100% programmatically and has quickly embraced platforms, […]

True[X], the video ad platform Fox acquired last December, partnered Tuesday with Comcast’s TV ad-serving platform FreeWheel to bring more “engagement-based” video ads to broadcasters. The deal will give True[X] greater sell-in among FreeWheel’s base of media and entertainment brands, which include NBCUniversal, Turner Broadcasting, Viacom, Sky, DirecTV and ABC. True[X] creates interactive video ad […]

The content-and-commerce model is both highly seductive and deceptively tricky for publishers and purveyors alike. People don’t necessarily want to take their wallets out when they’re in reading mode. It’s hard to create authentic content that also serves business goals. Scale is a challenge. But is there still potential there? Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop empire, which […]

Header bidding is coming to mobile apps, via a solution Rubicon Project is beta testing with 20 publishers. Early results for the product, FastLane, saw CPM increases of up to 300%. Rubicon will release the product more widely to publishers in Q1 of next year. Unlike the mobile web or desktop, mobile apps bring in […]

Shoppable video is still a novel concept, despite the industry’s efforts to move it into the mainstream (with Google launching shoppable video on YouTube being the most recent example). But NBCUniversal’s Bravo TV still sees the value of shoppable video. The network wanted to expand its digital business and encourage fans to return to its properties on […]

Tribune Media will sink $25 million into Dose Media, a content company founded by 28-year-old media entrepreneur Emerson Spartz, who founded legendary Harry Potter fan site MuggleNet when he was 12 years old. Dose Media, which publishes Dose.com and OMGFacts.com, will use funds from the Series B round to start its sales outreach to brands […]

When it comes to driving traffic for publishers, Facebook is king. Publishers receive 90% of their traffic from the social network, according to social analytics firm SimpleReach. But what about Pinterest? While the site crossed 100 million monthly active users (MAUs) this year, that’s a fraction of Facebook’s 1.5 billion MAUs, and trails behind Instagram’s […]

“If I didn’t work for the Guardian, I would block ads,” said Guardian US CEO Eamonn Store. He’s fed up with the poor-quality ads that slip through on the Guardian and other trusted sites. As an avid reader of the Guardian, he sees ads for loan sharks and other unsavory ventures slip through frequently, leading […]

“The Sell-Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jeremy Hlavacek, vice president for programmatic at The Weather Company. Talk to some premium digital publishers these days and you will likely get a heavy dose of fear and loathing. You’ll hear how the business […]

Could it be that we’re entering the second generation of sponsored content? Nativo CEO Justin Choi thinks so. His case in point: US News & World Report, which started its sponsored content studio, BrandFuse, in 2012. “Publishers are shifting from the first gear of native, which was adoption and seeing if they could find success […]

YouTube’s TrueView has trained viewers to count backward from five – and then click “skip.” It’s a now-ingrained behavior that traditional and even nontraditional publishers like Norway’s VGTV are trying to grapple with. That’s because pre-roll engagement rates are the pits – and they often have an unfortunate effect on the engagement rate for whatever content […]

LiveRail and AppNexus removing resellers from their respective platforms last week were two more nails in the ad network coffin. If any publishers were upset, AdExchanger couldn’t find them. Just the opposite, in fact. While some publishers still use ad networks, most have significantly pared back in recent years, and those that still work with […]

“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. We’ve all been talking about it for years, but now by combining the right technology with the right approach, I believe that the promise of […]

The prospect of a viewable CPM (vCPM) standard for digital media buying had publishers running scared a year ago. Now, many are embracing the pricing model, but transacting this way is not without its hurdles. Publishers not only need to defend the value of their inventory to buyers when 20 to 50% of the ads […]

Since the beginning of the year, the Financial Times has been selling time-based ads, where the advertiser pays only for ads that have spent five seconds in view. It charges based on cost per hour (CPH). The Times decided to charge for an ad after five seconds because data from its viewability provider, Chartbeat, showed […]

Interactive video ad server Innovid has rolled out a programmatic creative tool designed to let agencies and advertisers personalize video messages across devices. This capability is driven, in part, by Innovid’s experience tackling different ad-serving requirements through a series of connected TV partnerships. Innovid entered an audience solutions agreement with Roku in the summer, which […]