Publishers

The repercussions of cable heavyweight Comcast’s planned acquisitions of Time Warner Cable and video ad-serving platform FreeWheel are still unknown. One of the biggest questions for ad industry insiders is the extent to which the preexisting relationship between Amazon and FreeWheel, announced in early February, will continue. Although neither Amazon nor FreeWheel have confirmed whether […]

When The New York Times discontinued in February its director of programmatic advertising position, held by Matt Prohaska, partners and advertisers wondered how this would affect the publisher’s programmatic initiatives. Certainly the Times sought to alter its structure, saying in a statement it was “re-imagining and growing [its] programmatic organization and strategy with a focus […]

Comcast’s acquisition Thursday of video ad serving platform FreeWheel generated numerous questions, the most common being: What does this mean for the future of Pay TV and digital video ecosystem? Beyond anticipating the convergence of linear TV and digital video ad dollars, there’s still tremendous fragmentation between the worlds of the television operator and programmer, […]

“The Sell-Sider” is a column written by the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Steve Goldberg, senior adviser at EmpiricalMedia. The industry has gone into full hand-wringing mode over fraudulent traffic, spurious clicks and low levels of viewable ads. That is good. After all, these are serious issues and […]

Comcast will acquire video ad-serving platform FreeWheel, the companies confirmed Thursday. The development comes just weeks after the cable giant made public its intent to acquire Time Warner Cable for $42.5 billion. TechCrunch first reported the news, and Re/code confirmed Thursday it’s a done deal and pegged its value at approximately $360 million. That’s roughly in line with […]

Visible World, which has been developing addressable TV technology since 2000, claims to cover nearly 90% of cable TV households in the US through its targeted ad products. The company has developed a video and TV campaign platform used by advertisers directly or by distributors to sell to advertisers. That same platform is now being […]

Google’s publisher business is on a tear. Last week it struck two private exchange deals with Time Inc. and the 42-member Local Media Consortium. Google will support programmatic direct sales for these sellers and provide wider access to their quality inventory for global media traders such as trading desks at Publicis Groupe’s Vivaki AOD or […]

Time Inc. has set up a private exchange with inventory from its global properties, supported by Google technology. The new, expanded marketplace – called Time Inc. Global Exchange – is built on Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange and spans some 116 million global unique users (per comScore). Advertisers and marketers can use it to reach audiences across […]

A deal between Google and a collective of 42 local media holding companies could enable private exchange deals spanning some 800 newspapers and 200 broadcasters. The agreement is the first in a series of projects that the so-called Local Media Consortium (LMC) – formerly known as the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium — will bid out to […]

Google has notified some customers of its DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) suite that they will no longer have access to DFP phone support or dedicated account reps. The tweak appears to be the result of a decision to raise the ad serving threshold at which publishers qualify to get managed services. A Google rep said […]

The New York Times, which last May made a move – albeit reluctantly – toward programmatic media selling with the hire of the company’s first director of programmatic advertising, Matt Prohaska, seems to have backtracked. Prohaska’s position, AdExchanger has learned, has been discontinued as of Tuesday afternoon. Prohaska was not available for comment. It is unclear […]

By Ryan Joe and Judith Aquino Media and cable conglomerate Comcast Corporation’s $45 billion deal to acquire its peer, Time Warner Cable, could be a boon for the advertising and marketing industry, combining Comcast’s superior digital platforms with Time Warner Cable’s audience reach across major metropolitan markets. “[This will provide] a level of scale and […]

The distinction between an ad exchange and a supply-side platform (SSP) has become muddled as the once disparate but complementary technologies have merged. Rubicon Project’s description of its offering as an “Advertising Automation Cloud” in its S-1 filed Tuesday underscored that shift and showed how companies originating as SSPs have attempted to shed the label. […]

“Brand Aware” explores the data-driven digital ad ecosystem from the marketer’s point of view.  Today’s column is by Mike Zeman, director of North American digital marketing at Netflix. Numerous studies have outlined the importance of impactful creative in successful advertising campaigns. Many have shown that creative variables, such as messaging, formats and aesthetics, account for […]

2014 will be a “critical year in the story of advertising” at The New York Times Co., CEO Mark Thompson said during the company’s Q4 2013 earnings call today. It’s a story that will play out in ad tech, native ads, mobile formats and video. “In 2014, we will apply greater focus to mobile monetization, […]

At long last, sell-side platform (or do you say “ad exchange” or “marketplace”?) Rubicon Project has filed it’s S-1 Registration Statement with the U.S. Securities And Exchange Commission in preparation for an Initial Public Offering (IPO). The company is looking to raise $100 million. It has yet to reveal pricing for its offering so no […]

The 96-year-old Forbes Media has made an aggressive push into digital media. It’s invested in programmatic buying as well as native advertising through its BrandVoice platform. In October, it boasted that for the first time more than half (53%) of its total ad revenue came from digital advertising. The media company’s future has remained murky, […]

BuzzFeed, the ultrapopular purveyor of listicles and viral content, began with a question: “What does it take for something to spread on traditional media without the cost structure associated with traditional media?” The publisher’s CEO and founder, Jonah Peretti, recalled onstage at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview last week the way the company originated as “almost a […]

As the publishing industry attempts to find a way to bring the brand-friendly values of native advertising together with the scalability and speed associated with programmatic, blog network Federated Media Publishing (FMP) has decided those two functions would be best handled under separate roofs. FMP whose network includes heavily trafficked sites like Boing Boing and […]

Hearst Magazines Digital Media has continued expanding its programmatic focus by hiring former New York Times ad ops director Heather Keltz to fill its newly created position of VP for ad operations. Keltz reports to Mike Smith, the erstwhile Forbes chief digital officer who joined Hearst Magazines Digital as VP of revenue platforms and operations […]

If you’ve ever seen an online meme or a viral image (and these days who hasn’t?), chances are you either viewed it through the photo-sharing service Imgur (pronounced “imager”), or it was uploaded there first. Founded in 2009 by then-Ohio University computer science student Alan Schaaf, Imgur has seen its financial support structure evolve from […]

As publishers have become more comfortable with the idea of programmatic direct for their online sales, sell-side-focused analytics provider Umbel is trying to get sellers to expand that comfort zone to include audience targeting around offline media and live events. The 2-year-old Austin, Texas, startup’s pitch to publishers has rested on the idea that they […]

“Brand Aware” explores the data-driven digital ad ecosystem from the marketer’s point of view.  Today’s column is by Mike Zeman, director of North American digital marketing at Netflix. It comes as a surprise to most publishers, ad-tech firms and other marketers I speak to that Netflix operates its own internal programmatic trading desk. In other […]

UK-based news outlet The Guardian is accelerating its programmatic ad offerings with the creation of a private video marketplace powered by Adap.tv. For the most part, The Guardian plans to aim the video marketplace to best capture incremental value around content such as tent-pole events like the World Cup and the upcoming Olympics. “When experiencing […]

Thrillist Media Group, the digital men’s lifestyle company dishing up everything from visual case studies on alcohol composition to foolproof ways to fight angst on red-eye flights, is banking business growth on branded content. Owner of myriad media and commerce properties that include JackThreads.com, a members-only men’s shopping site; Supercompressor, a newly launched Pinterest-esque buyer’s […]

Meredith Corp., the publisher of magazine brands such as Ladies’ Home Journal, Parents, Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle, knows how to talk to women. With more than 18 titles, 100 special-interest publications and a digital audience of 50 million monthly visitors, the company is well-positioned to create unique marketing programs that engage its […]

Within IDG’s $3.55 billion global revenue across all businesses last year, its share of US online revenues remained stable at 66% in fiscal year 2013 from 2012. By contrast, the company’s US print share of revenues slipped to 19% last fiscal year, from 21%. Consequently, IDG intends to concentrate on its Web strength even more […]

Ever more companies on the buy side want to partner directly with publishers. Sell-side platforms (SSPs), ad networks, agencies, demand-side platforms (DSPs), retargeting networks and others have over the last year increased their efforts to gain visibility and direct inventory access. In a recent telling example, WPP Group’s Xaxis programmatic platform absorbed 24/7 Media to […]

Over the past few months, French real-time bidding (RTB) services provider AlephD has expanded work with AppNexus with particular focus on French publishers. Maxime Agostini, AlephD’s CEO, said that despite greater adoption of programmatic methods by advertisers there aren’t many services aimed at the sell side. Although AlephD is already integrated with AppNexus, Agostini said […]

As major publishers adopt programmatic methods to boost efficiency and cost-savings, one thing keeps them from putting more valuable inventory up for bid: The perceived lack of transparency in pricing. Consequently, an Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) task force made up of publishers has been working on guidelines to clear up the fees and better define […]