Publishers

The New York Times’ two-year-old sponsored content initiative is an apparent success: T Brand Studio posted more than $30 million in revenue in 2015, double what it did in 2014. That $30 million was just a slice of the $197 million in digital revenue the company recorded last year. Much of the rest is what […]

Ad tech has long poached talent from agencies and publishers. But those with publishing backgrounds have been returning to the media world recently. Media companies are seeing an uptick in resumes from people with ad tech backgrounds. Plus, as companies have created programmatic roles, they’ve staffed them with people who have experience in the ad […]

The combination of content and commerce can be a complex cocktail to get just right. Alcohol delivery service Thirstie is experimenting to find the right mix. “It’s not that content to commerce is all that hard to do,” said Devaraj Southworth, CEO and co-founder of Thirstie and a former AmEx exec. “It’s just hard to […]

Twentieth Century Fox’s new flick “Deadpool” shattered box office records over Valentine’s and President’s Day weekend, banking $135 million in the three days since its premiere. Although a popular Marvel comic (and actor Ryan Reynolds) certainly inspired that turnout, a week-long multiplatform activation from Viacom preceding the film’s launch helped generate awareness. Throughout the campaign’s […]

Brands need to earn the right to advertise directly to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. It’s a matter of credibility, said Albert Thompson, a digital strategist at multicultural marketing agency Walton Isaacson, in charge of the Lexus business. The car brand has a longstanding relationship with LGBT media company Q.Digital, the parent to […]

Spotify was a bit late to programmatic, but now it’s raring to go. “2015 was the year we started opening up, which was huge for us, and 2016 is the year we’re going to be fully open,” said Spotify CRO Jeff Levick. “We’re going to keep expanding and investing heavily in the programmatic channel.” In […]

Why shouldn’t Time Inc. take on Facebook? The 94-year-old media brand will acquire ad platform company Viant for its “people-based” marketing capabilities, the companies said Thursday. Viant – an amalgam of companies that rebranded a year ago from Interactive Media Holdings (IMH) – includes the remains of MySpace, ad network Specific Media, video ad platform Vindico and Xumowill, a smart […]

Fatherly co-founder Michael Rothman hopes that when the typical Thrillist reader grows up and has a baby, he will start reading Fatherly. Rothman, an early employee at Thrillist who worked there until 2012, realized that many in the site’s target audience were growing up and having kids. But content for those dads – funny, a […]

“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. With all of the talk of header bidding and now header bidding wrappers, it’s clear that most publishers are moving forward in this space in […]

In an age of banner blindness, nearly every publisher has added a sponsored content offering. Meanwhile, programmatic native is replacing banners and boxes. The programmatic native bucket, which includes Outbrain, TripleLift, Sharethrough, Taboola and Yahoo Gemini, features advertising in the form of article snippets, which look similar to sponsored content teasers. Sponsored content, by contrast, […]

Media CEOs have to do a lot of maneuvering to steer a print/digital publication, and many take different routes. At the American Magazine Media Conference in New York on Tuesday, five executives from Hearst, Condé Nast, Time Inc., Meredith and Rodale discussed how they compete with disruptive digital-first publications by investing, acquiring or imitating them. “With […]

Comcast is losing fewer cable TV customers than it has in the past eight years. That’s no small feat, considering signs of rampant cord cutting inundating the broadcast industry. Comcast added 89,000 customers for video service Xfinity in the fourth quarter, the most of any quarter since 2006, according to its earnings release. Video revenue […]

Magazine publishers need Snapchat, but Snapchat needs them, too. That may be one reason why Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s relatively press-shy CEO, appeared Monday at the American Magazine Media Conference in New York to discuss the origins of Discover and his plans to monetize the platform. Discover, Snapchat’s video magazine product, was created to “remove as […]

  Header bidding has been such a runaway hit for publishers that it’s required the development of a new technology to manage all the partners they want to add. What seems a small change – the addition of a wrapper that organizes buyers as they enter the ad server – further solidifies header bidding’s place […]

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 […]