Publishers

Cookies are notoriously useless on mobile, but they’re the bread and butter of the Internet. If you go to diapers.com and then hit up Buy Buy Baby’s site, it’s likely you have a new baby in the house. If you use your phone in an airport in Miami and then check in to a restaurant […]

Scout Media is pulling together an A-team of digital talent in the wake of founder James Heckman’s repurchase of the business from Fox/News Corp. The new leadership, including Ross Levinsohn as executive chairman and Ramsey McGrory as EVP of programmatic and media partnerships, will help build Scout into a larger content and commerce play with programmatic […]

Inventory is where it’s at for RockYou. The company, which recently pivoted away from game publishing to focus on becoming a programmatic in-game video ad network, has raised $10 million in funding from FastPay, a sort of anti-VC that extends credit lines to digital media companies. It plans to use the money to buy up […]

Earlier this month, Upworthy – a curator of socially-conscious content – revealed native content was outperforming editorial content. The data was striking: Branded content received 3.5 times as many views, 2.9 times more “Attention Minutes” (an Upworthy-developed metric) and three times as many social shares compared to its in-house editorial content. All this for a […]

Just because there’s a push to adapt programmatic strategies doesn’t mean everyone is equipped to handle them. Publishers, in particular, have lagged behind advertisers in embracing programmatic. While agencies now have trading desks and brands like includes Kimberly-Clark, Kellogg’s, Procter & Gamble, Heineken and Mondelez International are taking it one step further, bringing programmatic brand […]

Like many publishers, The Washington Post’s Kelly Andresen grapples with success metrics for native advertising campaigns. As director of ad innovations and product strategy, she has a front-row seat on her publication’s digital evolution and oversees teams that are dedicated to creating new digital advertising revenue, including native. “When you move into content marketing, it’s […]

The New York Times’ overall revenue declined .6% in Q2 year over year to $388.7 million; its adjusted operating profit declined drastically from $70.7 million in Q2 2013 to 55.7 million in Q2 2014. Advertising revenues were down 4.1% to $156.3 million year over year, fulfilling a Q1 prediction by CFO James Follo that such […]

You don’t have to be good at math to know that if you only get $3 back on a $4 investment, then there’s something painfully wrong with whatever you’re doing. No one’s more aware of that than game app developers, some of whom spend thousands of dollars on user acquisition daily — though the truly […]

For publishers, the holy grail is to “engage, interact, and convert without leaving site,” according to Gary Portney, founder of Streamwize. Advertisers get their conversion, and publishers keep their consumer on-site. That’s why ShopBAZAAR, the ecommerce presence for fashion magazine Harper’s Bazaar, decided to license Streamwize’s “fractal content,” technology which creates browsable boxes on a […]

Yahoo has doubled down on its mobile bet, agreeing to buy mobile analytics and advertising company Flurry. What does that mean for a company that less than a week ago reported disappointing earnings as it struggled with declining CPMs? A company that’s not yet even breaking out its mobile revenue in its earning statements, while […]

Native advertising doesn’t fit into a 300×250 box. But as the category has taken off, so has the need to gather meaningful metrics in a manner similar to standardized display advertising. So when mobile-centric publisher Quartz developed a special native ad campaign for US Trust touting the bank’s sponsorship of the Aspen Ideas Festival, it […]

Whether or not you think native advertising is all buzz and no bite, one thing is clear: Banner ads have a less than a 1% click-through rate, which means many brand advertisers are on the lookout for a new solution. Retailer Old Navy, whose predominantly teen audience would most certainly roll its collective eyes at a performance-based […]

It goes something like this: While scrolling through the latest coverage on Syria, or doing research on a work project, you reach the end of an article, only to be greeted with the latest tabloid news about Kim Kardashian. With its teasing photo and promise of outrageousness, it takes all your willpower to resist. And you […]

Publishers using DoubleClick platforms will no longer have to rely on agencies to learn if their ads are viewable or not. Google has made its viewability product, Active View, available for publishers in addition to advertisers and agencies. “We’ve been hearing from publishers that discussions about viewable impressions with advertisers lack transparency making it difficult […]

In its second quarter, Yahoo sold 24% more ads compared to the second quarter of 2013, and yet the price per ad went down 24%, suggesting the company has been unable to stem the tide against declining CPMs. (Read the press release.) CEO Marissa Mayer expressed disappointment in the company’s display ad performance. “Our top priority is […]

In a bid to simplify forecasting, billing and ad-serving reconciliation for its publisher customers, Yieldex will incorporate Ad-Juster’s ad reporting capabilities within its YieldexDirect platform. The partnership will support unified inventory forecasting and ad-serving reconciliation for the companies’ joint publisher customers. The deal is part of a trend toward wider automation of media sales, said […]

On the heels of $7 million in fresh funding, cross-device ad targeting company Tapad has made its first foray across the pond, opening the doors at a location in London and one in Frankfurt, where it will focus on the German and UK publisher market. Tapad’s overall valuation is more than $220 million following the […]

Remember the scene in the movie “Kill Bill, Vol. 2“ where the vengeful heroine, the Bride, is buried alive in a coffin and has to pound her way out with her bare fists? That’s your video ad. It’s essentially trapped in a box and buried in the publisher’s web page, and whether it can get out […]

PubMatic had a good spring. The company won top honors in Forrester’s sell-side platform shoot-out, acquired a mobile ad server (Mocean Mobile) and hired up to support its product initiatives around programmatic direct. The macro strategy, according to CEO Rajeev Goel, is to provide a full stack spanning all publisher ad revenue. That means guaranteed […]

Free ad serving might be bad business for all but the biggest players in ad tech. AdZerk, an ad-selling platform for publishers, sent a notice to its free and self-service customers that it’s shutting down that part of the business to focus on its enterprise clients. The company will complete its exit Aug. 31. The […]

Hulu, Condé Nast Entertainment and other members of the digital video and television industry laid out their measurement and monetization challenges on Wednesday at VideoNuze’s Online Video Advertising Summit. Brands and publishers are well aware of the growing popularity of applying programmatic to direct buys. Hulu for instance has reportedly beta-tested a programmatic exchange for more […]

When Comcast’s ad sales division Spotlight revealed a partner deal with Rubicon Project earlier this month, it underscored the multiple system operator’s (MSO) push to power the TV buy through both programmatic and direct sales channels. It was a pivotal moment for Comcast. Digital advertisers for the first time could buy against 19 million subscribers […]

Social bookmarking mainstay AddThis has rolled out an online marketplace to help online publishers serve more targeted and relevant content to their visitors. Like other companies of its kind that have shifted strategies (Bitl.y for example), AddThis, which began initially with a distinct focus on sharing widgets and site plug-ins, has since expanded its pitch to include […]

IZEA, a company that connects social media content creators with brands, recently rolled out a cloud-based “Sponsorship Marketplace” to help advertisers automate content distribution and measurement. IZEA’s network is comprised of over 50,000 registered advertisers and agencies. Some of the company’s agency partners include Mindshare, Starcom, Initiative, Ogilvy and Hill Holliday. Founder and CEO Ted […]

Both site content and a publisher’s brand perception have significant impact on overall ad effectiveness, a new Millward Brown Digital publisher study reveals. The study, titled “Publisher Impact,” surveyed a sample group of 4,000 respondents, asking them to rate 40-some publishers across five categories for site “experience.” The end goal? Help premium publishers justify their position […]

The Economist has rolled out “First Impression” multiplatform ad units to let advertisers grab a weekly premium spot across all Economist channels, including its website, tablet and smartphone apps, as well as its print edition. The publisher has also debuted a new weekly reader measurement called “Total Economist Weekly Audience” (TEWA) in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers to help […]

Following its glitzy, star-studded digital NewFront in April, AOL got down to business. It closed in on marketing attribution vendor Convertro the same day Google grabbed pure-play competitor Adometry in early May. Then it went shopping again, snapping up TV audience-targeting platform PrecisionDemand. AOL’s acquisitive behavior is not entirely surprising. The company is constructing an […]

Independent media agency Harmelin Media, whose clients include BET and Blue Diamond Almonds, is constructing its own in-house trading desk. Working with TubeMogul, Harmelin, which used to work with a dozen vendors, will commit programmatic video buys to a single platform. Harmelin is doing this so it can be a better steward of client campaigns. […]

Time Inc. is in a tough spot after its spinoff from Time Warner Inc. It begins its run as an independent public company saddled with $1.3 billion in debt and revenue that has steadily declined with only two quarters of sequential growth in the past six years. In related (and unfortunately timed) news, the publisher’s […]

“The Sell-Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Jeremy Steinberg, senior vice president of digital ad sales for The Weather Company. I think everyone would agree that two of the biggest growth areas of digital advertising are mobile and video. Content consumption on […]