Publishers

Before traditional, linear television ad buys can be fully automated, a couple of core constituents must align. “The [idea of programmatic] doesn’t entirely make me nervous, but it definitely needs boundaries and guidelines,” said Phil Lalonde, SVP of ad sales operations, MTV Networks, recently at a BrightRoll Video Summit. Rob Holmes, VP of advanced advertising at […]

There was no agency more present on the NewFront circuit this week than DigitasLBi. The Publicis-owned agency, formed when the holding company merged Digitas and LBi last February, was out in full force as a partner on AOL’s original content, Google Preferred and, at its own NewFront Thursday, as a partner to publishers and tech […]

The best marketing and advertising campaigns offer consistent content, optimized across devices. This might sound simple but, according to a number of media executives Tuesday at Tapad Unify Tech in New York, it’s easier said than done. Nevertheless, customers have certain expectations around consistency and optimization. According to “Tapad’s Path To Purchase Consumer Study,” a […]

RockYou is clawing its way back. The 8-year-old company, which once produced social games, was one of the first MySpace and Facebook third-party app developers until it suffered a major data breach five years ago that exposed unencrypted user account data of more than 32 million users. That wasn’t RockYou’s only struggle. The company couldn’t […]

The New York Times saw total Q1 2014 revenues increase 2.6% year over year to $390.4 million from $380.7 million. Advertising revenue increased year over year 3.4% to $158.7 million. Print advertising saw a bigger boost (3.7%) than digital advertising (2.2%); the latter clocked in at $37.8 million for Q1 2014, compared to $37 million […]

Media Storm, the media planning and buying arm of agency network Water Cooler Group, is breaking down siloes to mirror consumer – and client – media requirements. Media Storm’s sister companies Hip Genius (social media) and Maude (creative/strategy) share the same real estate and come in on cross-team campaign meetings, according to Charlie Fiordalis, who […]

While both programmatic buying and online video are in vogue, the best way for these two to come together—in the opinions of both publishers and brands—is through private marketplace buys. Programmatic video ad platform BrightRoll has seen 50% of the top 50 publishers engage in private marketplace deals, said company founder and CEO Tod Sacerdoti […]

Four months after first introducing support for native advertising, Twitter’s mobile exchange MoPub is pitching the solution to all publishers. Consisting of an native ads SDK, a publisher-side ad server,  and an RTB extension, the MoPub native product is a “a complete solution for direct sold and exchange traded native ads, delivering the same control […]

Premium publishers have needed some convincing to open up their more valuable inventory to programmatic buying technologies. But interest in tools that streamline the often unwieldy direct sales process has heated up. It’s one of the reasons Yieldex, a company best known for producing forecasting and analytics tools for premium inventory, introduced a new line […]

Rovio, the creator of the “Angry Birds” mobile game franchise, was one of the first companies to explode in the mobile gaming space. Mobile gamers are fickle, though, and the company has expanded into a multimedia enterprise in addition to growing its advertising business. AdExchanger spoke with Michele Tobin, VP of global brand partnerships and […]

A year after rolling out Catalyst, its audience targeting and insights tool, Condé Nast Digital is enhancing the product to unify its audiences across digital and mobile platforms. Like many publishers, Condé Nast has “seen massive growth in the last two years,” said Christopher Reynolds, VP of marketing analytics for Condé Nast. Last year, Reynolds […]

When Jimmy Maymann sold content distribution company GoViral to AOL in 2011, some expected the Danish entrepreneur to take his share of the $96.7 million exit and chase new startup opportunities. Instead, he stayed on at AOL as SVP for international, much to even his surprise. “I always knew I didn’t want to stay on […]

What’s up with The New York Times Co. and programmatic? We’ve pondered that question before, but the publishing giant declined to speak at the time. Since then, Times SVP of Ad Products and R&D Michael Zimbalist has revealed to AdExchanger that the company intends to release more inventory cautiously into the RTB space. It also is planning an […]

Comcast AdDelivery on Tuesday struck a deal with digital ad-distribution company Adstream to expand global video ad delivery efforts. The deal essentially fulfills each companies’ geographic delivery needs. While Comcast historically had a strong domestic delivery network, Adstream, an Australian-founded, $65 million-a-year business that’s headquartered in London, gives Comcast pertinent global reach. A trend in […]

Microsoft and Yahoo are loosening their stranglehold on their premium display inventory. MediaMath has set up a buying program that includes guaranteed direct buys in a programmatic environment. The program is enabled through partnerships with publishers Yahoo and Microsoft, along with technology partners Shiny Ads, iSocket and Yieldex. The partnership represents the latest industry attempt […]

“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. It looks like a good year to be a VC or investment banker. IPOs continue rolling out, and there is also a lot of healthy […]

Supply-side platform (SSP) AdsNative received Thursday a $2 million injection of funding led by Interwest Partners, raising about $750K in convertible debt prior to this series. The company also released a mechanism called Mediation/SSP, designed to maximize publisher fill rates for in-stream native ads. AdsNative will devote the majority of the funds to getting more publishers […]

Speculation about Alibaba’s upcoming IPO pegs Yahoo’s share at about $10 billion, giving Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer substantial firepower to acquire more companies and develop Yahoo’s businesses. But Mayer has an extremely thin margin of error to turn the Sunnyvale, CA company’s fortunes around. Despite its expected windfall, Yahoo is struggling. Its revenue for 2013 […]

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 […]