Publishers

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 […]

Why did Time Inc. decide to partner with Etermax, the Buenos Aires-based game studio responsible for the hugely popular app Trivia Crack? a) as a native play b) as a form of content discovery c) to encourage mobile engagement d) all of the above The answer: d. “We’re quickly evolving from being a print company […]

The Canadian publisher coalition CPAX officially added four new publishers (Metroland Media, Winnipeg Free Press, St. Joseph Media and Blue Ant Media) on Monday, bringing the publisher total to 18 and expanding CPAX’s presence on the West Coast. Impression volume has also doubled since Index Exchange helped relaunch it last year: One billion impressions flowed […]

Pubs and brands have complained about programmatic inventory on open exchanges for years, but a renewed focus on inventory quality is gaining traction. AppNexus has long positioned itself as the platform for ad networks, but it reversed its policy in recent weeks by removing ad networks that don’t provide direct publisher or seller relationships. Shortly […]

While the rise of subscription video services won’t lure all consumers away from ad-supported offerings, it represents a disruption to current business models – partially driven by ad blocking and consumer demand for better experiences. “If you think about all of the content we consume that is supported by an advertising model, if a consumer […]

There was a time around 2009 when you couldn’t talk about Zynga without also talking about Facebook. Back then, FarmVille, CityVille and CafeWorld were beyond ubiquitous. But Facebook wasn’t mentioned once on Tuesday during Zynga’s third-quarter earnings call. That’s partially because Facebook’s users are increasingly mobile, with 1.39 billion monthly actives out of 1.55 billion […]

For branded content to be a success, it must hurdle two key challenges. First, it must be authentic, entertaining and relevant, and second, it must be distributed effectively. Via a partnership with Guardian Labs, website design company Squarespace is attempting to do just that. The 39-part series “Side Hustle,” unfolding over Q4 2015 and Q1 […]

The Washington Post on Tuesday released a video product called FlexPlay that loads videos faster in diverse environments and customizes them to extract more engagement. Advertisers can use FlexPlay for video ads that run on the Post’s website, as well as those that run offsite, in exchange for a premium on the CPM. The idea […]

Google is beta testing a solution within DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) that will allow publishers to bring in high-value impressions before reserved inventory in their ad server. Jonathan Bellack, Google’s director of product management, made the announcement at the IAB Ad Operations Summit on Monday during a discussion about header bidding that pitted Google (anti-header […]

“Brand Aware” explores the data-driven digital ad ecosystem from the marketer’s point of view. Today’s column is by Tony Ralph, director of advertising technology at Netflix. Every time I open a mobile web browser I’m reminded of Wirth’s law. Wirth’s law postulates that software becomes slower more quickly than hardware grows faster. Mobile hardware advances […]

Making sure branded content is seen by an advertiser’s target audience is a common problem for publishers. Some redesign their sites to surface sponsored content more often, while others fulfill campaigns by turning to social media, Facebook ads, Taboola and Outbrain. Modern Healthcare, which delivers business news to C-suite health professionals, often runs sponsored content […]

NBCUniversal transacted 10-15% of its digital business programmatically during the 2015-2016 season, the company has revealed to AdExchanger. Prior to the upfronts, the company expected to secure 50% of commitments on a “converged” basis, with elements of both TV and digital in a single deal. In this most recent upfront, NBCUniversal’s digital business grew 50% and, of […]