Publishers

Yahoo reported earnings on Tuesday. Details are below – but that’s hardly what people care about now. The real question is: Who’s going to buy it? Verizon’s the clear frontrunner, but there also a few upstarts. One such is a joint investment group that includes big names like former Yahoo interim CEO Ross Levinsohn and […]

Facebook invited three new third-party ad verification partners into its inner sanctum on Tuesday – further evidence that what the buy side demands, the buy side gets. Integral Ad Science, comScore and Nielsen will now be able to verify viewability and attention metrics for display and video ads on Facebook, including mobile web and in-app. […]

Apester, a self-described digital storytelling platform, rounded out its Series A on Tuesday with $12 million, bringing its total funding to $17 million. The fresh infusion, which came after an initial $5 million round in July, was led by Blumberg Capital, with participation from Mangrove Capital, Wellborn Ventures and several others. The cash is earmarked for […]

Frankly’s content management system (CMS) and its “managed programmatic” ad selling service help more than 200 local TV news stations with their digital presence. As consumption shifts from desktop to mobile, the company is positioning itself to help these local TV stations make the transition too. But Frankly itself was under transition a year ago, […]

Updated with statement from Amazon. Amazon’s forthcoming $8.99-a-month subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service offers strong new competition to Netflix and Hulu. Will it include advertising as well? Not at first, but there is an internal debate at Amazon around the proper role of ads in its video offering. According to one source with knowledge of Amazon’s […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Samantha Price, director of ad products at The Weather Company, an IBM Business. I was recently asked if a recovered impression honored the user’s choice not to see an ad. It’s an interesting question, […]

Why did Google “democratize” dynamic allocation within its ad server on Wednesday to include external demand? Google addressed its rapid response to the rise of header bidding for broader exchange and publisher partners Thursday – and other developments – at AdExchanger’s PROGRAMMATIC.IO in San Francisco. “I find it interesting that this is the fastest time-to-market […]

In a major change to its Double Click for Publishers ad server, Google will bring in the real-time bids of a publisher’s outside exchange partners to its dynamic allocation product. The feature addresses a key problem that led to the rise of header bidding, essentially doing away with Google’s previous policy where it only allowed […]

Egmont, which operates more than a dozen publications in Europe, only started investing in digital advertising a couple of years ago. As the print business continued to decline, its Swedish operation decided to focus on fast-moving digital. By extension, that meant going all-in with programmatic. To kick it off, Lars Näslund joined in August as […]

It’s possible to sync radio ads and digital billboards to reach drivers with cross-channel messaging – but scale, targeting options and measurement are roadblocks to adoption. For one, there’s just not that much inventory available programmatically yet. “It’s nascent,” admitted Mark van de Crommert, CEO of Mediasynced, an Amsterdam-based TV/online syncing company that recently released […]

VICE is prioritizing off-platform distribution to reach new, loyal consumers who want more than a casual fling with its content. But although VICE has a gut read on who its audience is, it’s less clear what content mix resonates best across YouTube, Snapchat Discover and other platforms. “We have to recognize that Facebook is required […]

“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. As header bidding takes off, the advantages of private marketplaces (PMPs) are multiplying. With a PMP-first approach, advertisers lean toward maximizing PMP volume […]

Celebrities typically make money from their digital presences through influencer marketing, though some have become digital publishers. Consider Kim Kardashian’s app, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Lena Dunham’s Lenny, Derek Jeter’s The Player’s Tribune and LaurenConrad.com. While many of those sites are custom-built, new companies like DWNLD and Fanbread are cropping up and offering turnkey solutions to […]

A group of publishers is testing a header bidding solution from Rubicon Project that is compliant with Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages program. Tribune Publishing is among those who have implemented header bidding for AMP. It’s the first time header bidding functionality has been leveraged in support of the “platform publishing” craze that has lately seen […]

Condé Nast is expanding its programmatic offerings, giving buyers more options to use its first-party data and adding header bidding to boost programmatic supply. The new offerings, unveiled in a pitch to buyers Wednesday evening as “premium programmatic at scale,” comes three months after the company hired Evan Adlman as its head of programmatic. Condé […]

Beyond the headlines, the drama and all the talk, there’s the daily reality of actually putting viewability into practice. “The questions around how to transact around viewability have been such a big issue for both publishers and advertisers that I think there has been a session in just about every major conference over the past […]

LinkedIn is no Facebook, but it is a growing source of referral traffic for publishers. And as it turns to sponsored updates for more of its revenue, LinkedIn is encouraging users to spend more time scrolling through the feed – a move that will only benefit publishers posting content in that feed. Forbes, Bloomberg and […]

Mobile viewability is going through its awkward adolescent phase. There’s no official standard yet – the Media Rating Council (MRC) is planning to circulate a document for public comment in the next few weeks – and vendors are still tinkering with their methods. Which can lead to confusion around implementation, measurement-induced headaches and wonky reporting. “Everyone is […]

Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) and Time Inc. on Tuesday unveiled a new measurement product for attributing offline sales to print magazine advertising. “It’s the culmination of years of work and of a lot of pieces coming together,” said Leslie Wood, NCS chief research officer. And the product relies on a dense web of partners and […]

Consumer tech and lifestyle publisher Digital Trends always tries to provide what its brands request – rich media, video, custom units, home-page takeovers – but that can-do attitude is tested when it comes to native advertising and sponsored content. Since it was founded in 2006 out of Portland, Ore., product reviews have formed the core […]

Even with a header bidding solution, there can still be money left on the table. Spanish mobile optimization company Marfeel is looking to address that issue with the general launch of a supply-side platform Wednesday that sets dynamic floor prices. The product was in beta for the last two months. “Basically, our platform tries to […]

TheStreet is kicking standard mobile banners to the curb. Although the financial news and services site will still use them for internal ads and self-promo, banners will no longer be part of its sales team’s repertoire for apps or the mobile web. That’s because mobile consumption is moving steadily up and to the right – […]

If you hail from the northeastern United States, you’re probably accustomed to the slightly bitter bite of broccoli rabe common in many Italian dishes. It’s the population beyond New York and other big cities – as well as health-conscious millennials – to whom Salinas, Calif., grower Andy Boy wanted to appeal. But Andy Boy had […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jamie Molnar, senior manager of mobile client solutions at The Weather Company, an IBM Business. Precise and accurate location data is invaluable. It provides a wealth of information on consumers based on their real-world […]

How about this for a premiere? Beginning this fall, all NBCUniversal inventory will be available for sale programmatically via the network’s private exchange NBCUx. Ahead of the upfronts, NBCUniversal has rolled out an offering called NBCUx for Linear TV, which will put additional data and automation in the hands of media planners to apply to […]

MWC drinking game: Take a drink every time someone says “value exchange” in reference to the ad-blocking issue. You won’t stand a chance. “We believe in the fair value exchange. If someone wants content from CBS Interactive, we will deliver it to them happily for free in exchange for them watching an ad,” said CBS […]

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 […]